VARIOUS FLOWER GARDENS. 65 



of the Broxton Hills gives shelter, whilst from the south-west to the 

 north-west the horizon is formed by Welsh mountain ranges. A sunk 

 fence of sandstone, easily jumped by a fox or a hare, and in other parts 

 a line of movable hurdles, well wired against rabbits, separate three 

 acres for house and garden from the surrounding grass fields and from 

 a small park of eighty acres. About 200 yards from the house the 

 sand rock comes through, forming a long terrace with an escarpment 

 towards the west. The woods in spring are carpeted first with Prim- 

 roses and wood Anemones, then with wild Hyacinths and Pink 

 Campion, whilst later there is a tall growth of Campanula latifolia 

 and large breadths of Japanese Knotwort, which have been planted to 

 supersede Nettles, while overhead is abundance of Hawthorn, Crab, 

 and wild Cherry. The hall stands on the side of a hollow watercourse 

 worn in the stiff clay, which in Cheshire often lies over the sand 

 rock. Down this watercourse runs a torrent in heavy rains, but it is 

 quite dry in summer. On the sloping banks of this, close above the 

 house, there formerly stood ranges of cow-houses and pig-sties, which 

 drained into a stagnant pond in the bed of the watercourse within 

 twenty yards of the bedroom windows. Twenty-five years ago it was 

 drained, the watercourse confined within a covered culvert ; and the 

 whole space is now covered all summer with a dense forest of herbaceous 

 plants — every good kind which will thrive in the cold soil on which 

 the house stands being cultivated there, 



Stonelands, Sussex. — It is pleasant to get out of the conven- 

 tional and there are many ways of doing so but gardens are often out 

 of all sympathy with the surrounding country, whereas the landscape 

 and sylvan beauty of a pretty country might often be reflected, so to 

 say, in the home landscape. It might indeed often tell us what to do 

 as regards grouping, and kinds of trees and the natural character of 

 the ground even give hints as to ground work in gardens. Stonelands 

 is characteristic of the small manor house of the woodland district of 

 Sussex, with its groups of Scotch Firs behind the house and in intimate 

 connection with the farm buildings near. The house, too, is of a good 

 Sussex kind with bright sunny windows, stone, pretty in colour, big 

 chimneys, and there is a small terrace necessary from the lie of the 

 ground, which also cuts off the house from the road to the farm 

 buildings near. 



Golder's Hill. — Places where there are simple conditions for 

 beauty in design and planting are rare, and it is all the more pleasing 

 to meet with an example of artistic treatment of a garden almost in 

 London, on the western border of Hampstead Heath. As regards design 

 and views, it is the prettiest of town gardens, and the conditions of its 

 beauty are so simple that there is little to be said about them ; an 

 open lawn rolling up to the house, groups of fine trees, and wide and 



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