90 GARDEN MANAGEMENT. 



212. Besides brick and stone, chalk and clay have been sometimes employed 

 in erecting garden walls with success. In each instance the process is pretty 

 nearly the same. A foundation being obtained, a wooden frame is prepared 

 and laid down on each side, of the exact thickness of the intended walls. 

 Into this frame chalk or clay, previously worked into a thick paste, is thrown 

 in layers about six inches thick all round. The layer thus placed is made level 

 by raking, and left to consolidate, which it will do at one end before the 

 workman has reached the other end of the wall, if it is of any extent. In 

 this way the work proceeds layer by layer, until the intended height is 

 attained, when a coping of stone or other material is bedded on it with 

 cement or mortar. 



213. It will be readily enough understood that this sort of wall is only re- 

 sorted to where bricks and stone are nearly inaccessible, and then it is only 

 an indifferent substitute. Nails with eyes, or wooden slips, should be inserted 

 into such walls, to tie down the branches to ; for the shred-and-naU system 

 here would rapidly destroy them. Plates of wood will also be necessary to 

 bind them together ; and probably oak posts, at intervals not too great, will 

 be necessai'y to their support. For the gate-posts, of course, either stone or 

 wood will be requisite. We have heard of an entire house with garden walls 

 being erected on this principle, in chalk, but have never heard with what 

 success. It is, however, an interesting question, as the cost of such a house, 

 where the subsoil is chalk, is confined to the labour — and labour of the most 

 •ordinary kind, — the soil dug out yielding all the material. 



214. While treating of walls and laying out gardens, let us give the reader 

 an excellent piece of advice from quaint old John Lawrence : — *' To those 

 who are to form a garden anew, I say that thirty or forty yards square is 

 abundantly enough for that you intend for j-our best garden, where you would 

 have your choicest fruit to grow. More would only make you uneasy, to keep 

 and manage it as you ought." Eeturning again to this argument, he gives in 

 detail the produce under his own management of forty yards square. On his 

 north wall, or south aspect, he has seven peaches trained with his horizontal 

 shelters. Of these he reckons each tree under proper management will pro- 

 duce a hundred of large fair fruit ; *' but, lest that number may be thought 

 too large, let us take half, and say fift}' ; the seven peaches on the best wall, 

 will thus produce, at a very moderate computation, three hundred and fifty." 

 On the same wall he allows three of the " large Turkish apricot, which hath 

 a noble flavour," and on another wall five. " If they be managed as they ought, 

 and at full growth, I cannot say that I remember a year when they have 

 afiorded me less than a bushel of fruit." On his best wall he allows room for 

 four or five of the best French pears, which are so Uttle inferior to stone fruit, 

 and yet come to their maturity when the other is gone. With good management 

 €ach tree will yield half a bushel. "On the east, west, and south wall I 

 allow room for some of the best plums." Upon the whole, here is a square 

 wall, forty yards square, which will afibrd room for forty trees suited to ita 

 •ereral aspects, which, with the dwarf pears, plums, and cherries, which 



