VARIOUS FLOWER GARDENS. 47 



Cawdor Castle. — The view of Cawdor shows the good of having 

 some form and variety of shape in a garden, be the garden large or 

 small. The trees, shrubs, and bushes give the light and shade and 

 variety of form which is so often absent from our gardens. The hard 

 effect which the ordinary garden shows results from the want of all 

 mystery or variety of surface or form. In the case of Cawdor the 

 beds are simple, so that we are less concerned with pattern or plan 

 than with the flowers. This is as it should be. It is not a model to 

 be followed everywhere, but such freedom and variety is greatly to be 

 desired in gardens. After all considerations of plan have been settled, 

 we ought to abolish the too common practice of excluding all things 

 of a bushy, upright nature from our flower gardens. 



Drummond Castle. — A house on a rock, graced with many 

 Ferns and Ivy, and wild flowers natural to the spot. It would not 

 be easy to find a more'graceful example of " natural" rock gardening. 

 It is only, however, on going to the south side of the house, where the 

 ground falls rapidly and is supported by terrace walls, that all 

 gloom is dispelled by the brightest array of blossoming climbers that 

 ever clad gray stones with beauty. To fancy one's self in some 

 fairyland of sun-bathed flowers a thousand miles south in a lap of 

 the mountains would be easy. No Italian gardens could probably 

 show the same high beauty at the end of summer, whatever they 

 might do earlier, and the very coolness encourages and prolongs 

 the bloom. The shelter of the terrace, with the house behind, 

 helps many things ; but, beyond training, there is little artificial help. 

 It is our privilege of growing so many plants from other countries 

 that makes our open-air gardens so beautiful in the fall of the year : 

 here, when the leaves begin to colour, and when even the Harebell 

 is past its best on the banks, we have a very paradise of flowers. The 

 fact that this fine plant beauty may be enjoyed by all who have a 

 patch of ground and a wall makes it a precious gift, and the plants 

 that here give most flowers are nearly all as easily grown as our 

 common Honeysuckle. 



Loveliest of all the climbers here is the Flame Nasturtium 

 (Tropaeolum speciosum), which drapes these stately walls, as it does 

 those of many a cottage in Scotland. Admirable for walls as is this 

 fragile and brilliant plant, it is seen to even greater advantage when a 

 delicate shoot runs over a Yew-hedge, with its arrows of colour, 

 and near it on the walls are many flowers of the older and once 

 better-known Tropaeolums ; showy, climbing Nasturtiums of gardens 

 grow high on the walls, and add to the rich glow of colours. 

 Nothing could surpass the rich purple of the Clematis here — waves 

 of colour, and flowers of great size, the cool hill air suiting them 

 so well. 



