Cook I. 



GARDENING IN HOLLAND. 



27 



ever at variance with local circumstances, and sometimes even with utility, it cannot be 

 altogether condemned. 



116. Grassy slopes and green terraces and ivalks are more common in Holland than in any 

 other country of the continent, because the climate and soil are favorable for turf; and 

 these verdant slopes and mounds may be said to form, with their oblong canals, the 

 characteristics of the Dutch style of laying out grounds. 



117. Hague, the Versailles and Kensington of Holland, and in fact the most magnificent village in Europe, 

 contains two royal palaces with their gardens in the ancient style. Evelyn, in 1641, describes them as 

 " full of ornament, close walks, statues, marbles, grottoes, fountains, and artificial music ;" and of the 

 village he says, " beautiful lime-trees are set in rows before every man's house." Sir J. E. Smith {Tour 

 on the Continent, vol. i.) described them in 1783, the one garden as full of serpentine and the other as full 

 of straight lines. In 1814, these gardens had lost much of their former beauty, partly from age and decay, 

 but principally from neglect. Jacob {Travels in Germany), in the same year, found them formal and 

 crowded with high trees. Neill, in 1817, found in them nothing becoming royalty. 



118. At Broeck and Alkmaar the ancient style is still maintained 

 in its purity in the villa gardens. M. Seterveldt's garden near Utrecht 

 is also a carefully preserved specimen. Here the grand divisions of the 

 garden are made by tall thick hedges of beech, hornbeam, and oak, 

 and the lesser by yew and box. There are avenue walks, and berceau 

 walks, with openings in the shape of windows in the sides, verdant 

 houses, rustic seats {fig. 8.), canals, ponds, grottoes, fountains, statues, 

 and other devices ; "and," adds the horticultural tourist, "we were 

 struck with this circumstance, that every thing in this garden has its 

 most exact counterpart: if there be a pond, or walk, or statues, or a 

 group of evergreens, on one side; the same may, with confidence, 

 be predicted on the other side of the garden ; so that the often quoted 

 couplet of Pope, ' Grove nods at grove, &c.' can no where be better 

 exemplified." {Hort. Tour, 249.) 



119. At Brussels, among other curiosities, Evelyn mentions a hedge 

 of jets cTeau, lozenge-fashion, surrounding a parterre ; and " the park 

 within the walls of the city furnished with whatever may render it 

 agreeable, melancholy, and country-like." It contained " a stately 

 heronry, divers springs of water, artificial cascades, walks, grottoes, 

 statues^ and root-houses." This park was considerably enlarged some 

 years ago; the then decayed root-houses, grottoes, and more curious water- works removed, and the 

 whole divided by broad sanded paths, and decorated with good statues, seats, fountains, and cafes for 

 refreshment. 





3 



--^-Si* •.-'-^*<<^* 



1 20. The modem, or English style of gardening, Sir 

 J. E. Smith informs us, was "quite the fashion" in 

 Holland, in 1783; but neither the surface of the 

 ground, the confined limits of territorial property, nor 

 the general attention to frugality and economy, are 

 favorable to this style. Some attempts, on a small 

 scale, may be seen from the canals, but we know 

 of no extensive parks and pleasure-grounds in this 

 manner. 



121. An example of a Flemish garden in the English 

 style (Jig. 9.) is given by Kraft; it is of small size, 

 but varied by the disposition of the trees, rustic 

 seats, and raised surfaces ; and surrounded, as Dutch 

 and Flemish gardens usually are, by a canal. It was 

 laid out by Charpentier, gardener to the senate of 

 France, in the time of Napoleon. 



122. The villa of M. Bertrand of Bruges is thus noticed in the Caledonian Horticultural 



Tour : — 



It has extensive grounds, and is flat, but well varied by art. Where the straight walks cross each 

 other at right angles, the centre of the point of intersection is shaped into an oblong parterre, resem- 

 bling a basket of flowers, and containing showy geraniums in pots, and gaudy flowers of a more hardy 

 kind planted in the earth. 



Some things are in very bad taste. At every resting-place, some kind of conceit is provided for sur- 

 prising the visitant : if he sit down, it is ten to one but the seat is so contrived as to sink under him ; 

 if he enter the grotto, or approach the summer-house, water is squirted from concealed or disguised 

 fountains, and he does not find it easy to escape a wetting. The dial is provided with several gnomons, 

 calculated to show the corresponding hour at the chief capital cities of Europe ; and also with a lens so 

 placed, that during sunshine, the priming of a small cannon falls under its focus just as the sun reaches 

 the meridian, when of course the cannon is discharged. 



The principal ornament of the place consists in a piece of %vater, over which a bridge is thrown ; at one 

 end of the bridge is an artificial cave fitted up like a lion's den, the head of a lion cut in stone peeping 

 from the entrance. Above the cave is a pagoda, which forms a summer-house three stories high. At 

 the top is a cistern which is filled by means of a forcing-pump, and which supplies the mischievous fountains 

 already mentioned. 



The' little lawns near the mansion-house are decorated with many small plants of the double pome- 

 granate, sweet bav, laurustinus, and double myrtle, planted in large ornamented flower-pots and in tubs. 

 These plants are all trained with a stem three or four feet high, and with round bushy heads after the 

 manner of pollard willows in English meadows. The appearance produced by a collection of such plants 

 is inconceivably stift", to an eye accustomed to a more natural mode of training. Eight American aloes 

 {Agave Americana), also in huge Dutch flower-pots, finish the decoration of the lawn, and it must be 

 confessed, harmonize very well with the formal evergreens just described. A very good collection of 

 orange-trees in tubs was disposed along the sides of the walks in the flower-garden : two of the myrtle- 

 leaved variety were excellent specimens. All of these were pollarded in the style of the evergreen plants. 

 The soil of the place, being a mixture of tine vegetable mould, resembling surface peat-earth, with a 

 considerable proportion of white sand, seems naturally congenial to the growth of American shrubs ; and, 



