32 THE PLKASURES OF GARDENING. 



when of the size above mentioned, and are much esteemed, making 

 excellent preserves. 



Having room for some plants in tubs, I had some planted in all 

 respects as to a due proportion of drainage, compost, watering, &c., 

 and treated in pruning too; they have thrived admirably. My com- 

 position water is prepared as follows : three wheelbarrows full of cow- 

 dung fresh from a pasture- field, two wheelbarrows full of fresh sheep's 

 dung, and two pecks of quick lime, are tiirown into one hogshead of 

 soft water ; the mixture is frequently stirred for a week or ten days 

 before it is used, and when applied to the plants, ought to be about the 

 consistence of cream. 



THE PLEASURES OF GAUDENING: 



NECESSITY OF GOOD ORDER AND ARRANGEMENT. 

 BY WILLIAM CHITTT, STAMFORD HILL. 



At the present advanced period in the history of gardening, when so 

 much time and talent are devoted to elevate to the highest degree of 

 perfection the various subjects that come within its province, it may 

 appear almost presumption to offer any remarks on the necessity of a 

 corresponding degree of attention being paid to arrangement, order, 

 and neatness in the management of the flower or pleasure-garden ; but 

 if, as the late Mr. Loudon somewhere observed, " pleasure is the 

 avowed object of the flower-garden, the shrubbery, and the pleasure- 

 ground," and if it is also true that no well-regulated mind can derive 

 any pleasure from a spot in which a great number of the beauties 

 usually comprehended in the idea of a garden are brought together, 

 without any reference to harmony and arrangement, and if, again, we 

 too frequently find such a state of things really to exist, it may not, 

 perhaps, be deemed altogether out of place (at least by some of your 

 readers), if I oflTer a few remarks, having for their object to show, that 

 if pleasurable feelings are expected to be excited and kept alive by a 

 cultivated spot of either of the above descriptions, a continued attention 

 to order and finish are absolutely necessary, in all their variety of 

 detail. The foregoing and subsequent remarks were suggested by the 

 perusal of tlie last paragraph in the Article " On the Arrangement 

 of Plants in Masses," by Amicus, in the last December Number of your 

 Magazine ; the first sentence of which it were well if it was firmly 

 rivetted upon the attention of the possessors of large or small gardens ; 

 " in small gardens, nothing is more unpleasing than a want of 

 neatness and high finish." The people of England have been described 

 by an Italian writer as " a nation working to the stroke of the clock," 

 and the same regularity and predilection for order which characterizes 

 the business proceedings of our countrymen has been introduced into 

 our gardens, and it would be diflicult to find more than a very few 

 persons who could derive pleasure from such gardens as we learn the 

 Chinese sometimes form for themselves, by having their paths, for 

 instance, along those parts of the surface which happen to lie most 

 convenient for that purpose, by leaving their clumps of trees and 



