GENERAL GARDENING DIFFERENT FROM LANDSCAPE. 37 



examples of odd-shaped gardens may be useful to give hints 

 to those "who are laying out grounds for plain gardens at pre- 

 sent. The principal feature is, that the outer walk is "within 

 as near as may be the "vvidth of a border from the extreme 

 boundary ; and that, consistent with this, the path is in angles 

 to meet the inequalities of the boundary, the border being 

 liere and there narrower or wider, as the straight line of the 

 path happens to differ from the boundary line. 



GENEEAL GARDENING DIFEEEENT EEOM 

 LANDSCAPE. 



Straight walks, as far as they are practicable, are the most 

 convenient in general gardening, which is every way different 

 from landscape gardening. The one is a market garden or 

 nursery for plants, and right lines are the most profitable ; 

 the other, a dress garden, or an imitation of nature in her best 

 features, and must exhibit no trace of art except in perfecting 

 such features as are natural. The la"wn may be kept up as 

 smooth as velvet, or imitation of some pastures ; the clumjis 

 may be like those of the forest, which are more beautiful than 

 the rest ; the artificial river, or brook, or lake, m.ay imitate the 

 finest spot in nature, but the artist's entire aim must be to 

 conceal art in the production of natural features. He may 

 imitate nature's softest scenes, or her most rugged beauties, 

 but he must not expose the artist's work. Consistency must 

 characterise every inch of the space he covers or appropriates ; 

 every tree or shrub he plants must be in nature's strict rules 

 of propriety — not only so, he must only follow nature as far 

 as she is correct. He must not run after lusus naturce. An 

 artist would be as mad to paint a picture with one of those ex- 

 traordinary and unnatural-looking skies of mottled, streaked, 

 and fantastically-marked clouds of gold and green and silver, 

 as a gardener who would put bulrushes and Avater-lilies on 

 a hill, or firs in a swamp. There have been such things seen 

 in nature, but they are the mere sports of nature. But in 

 artificial, or, as we might call it, manufacturing gardening, — 

 that is, gardening for production only instead of for ornament, 

 — not an inch should be lost for the sake of appearance. The 

 crops are in roAvs as straight as the line can mark them, for 

 the sake of giving the exact room required, and no more; and 

 the paths should be the same. Even the boundary, which we 



