GARDENING STYLES AND GARDEN PLANS. 51 



the character and design of the edging corresponding with the architecture of 

 the house, often supported by retaining walls, with massive piers for vases, and 

 cmboUished with fountains. As a transition from the house to the garden, 

 nothing can be more pleasing than a geometric pleasure-garden, laid out in 

 tiu'f or gravel, connected with the house by an upper and lower teiTace, and 

 descending by broad stone steps, Horace Walpole's satirical remark about 

 " walking up and dovm stairs out of doors," notwithstanding, 



129. The Gardenesquo style may be described as a skilful disposition of 

 trees and shrubs- in regular or irregular figures, or singly and at equal or 

 unequal distances, preserving, amid apparent irregularity, a certain degree of 

 uniformity. The chief feature of this style is, that no two plants shall be 

 jjlanted so close together as to touch each other, and that no indiscriminate 

 mixture of flowers of different species shall be permitted in the same clump. 

 This style is generally employed in arboretums and pinetums, and is the only 

 one capable of exhibiting individual plants, shrubs, and trees in perfection. 

 It forms a tasteful gradation between the geometric and the picturesque style. 

 The latter, Mr. Loudon defines as imitating nature in a wild state, according 

 to art. He also gives an example of how this can be done: — ''A gravel 

 pit would be improved, according to art, if foreign trees, shrubs, and plants, 

 even to the grasses, were introduced instead of indigenous ones ; or a 

 Swiss cottage instead of a hovel. Eoek scenery, aquatic scenery, dale or 

 dingle scenery, forest scenery, copse scenery, and open glade scenery, may all 

 be imitated on the same principle ; viz. that of substituting foreign for in- 

 digenous vegetation, and laying out regular walks. This is sufficient to 

 constitute a picturesque imitation of natural scenery." Thus the picturesque 

 style may be said to consist of irregular groups of figures, masses or clumps, 

 disposed at u-regular intervals ; for, in this style, the grouping is everything, — 

 individual effect nothing. It is the connecting link, as it were, betv/een the 

 garden and the natural scenery outside. Notwithstanding all that has been 

 written about the importance of purity of style, I believe that every lai'ge 

 garden should combine all the three styles. I have, therefore, done so in the 

 accompanying designs. Furnishing the house with a broad and elevated base 

 of gravel to stand upon, a geometrical flower-garden succeeds it, supported by 

 an ornamental wall, which may be said to terminate in the architectural alcove 

 at each end of the west walk. The lawn itself is laid out in the gardenesquo 

 style, and all beyond the serpentine walk, on the east side, belongs to the pic- 

 turesque style. The transition from the highest artistic finish to nature undi-essed 

 is gradual and easy, and, as it appears to me, satisfactory to the mind. 



130. In the accompanying range of garden and pleasm-e grounds, in which I 

 have endeavoured to embody these principles, I have not been unmindial of 

 the prayer of Cowley — 



" Ah ! yet ere I descend into the grave. 

 May I a small house and large garden have.*' 

 The house is modest in its pretensions ; the garden-ground covering an area 

 of about a thousand feet by four hundred ; or, including houa^^y^j^^S|Q^SQp 



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