86 PRACTICAL GARDEXING. 



specimen plants and shrubs, wliicli should only be sufficiently 

 removed from the path to secure room for their proper growth. 

 Trees in the centre, or far away from the path, are blemishes ; 

 and if there be no other reason, specimen plants should be 

 seen well without going out of the gravel walk. 



On the side of the path next the boundary, breaks may be 

 formed with clumps of roses, or American plants, or even 

 flowers, that the outer border may not be so formal. By a 

 receding of the clump towards the corner, the real boundary 

 may be so concealed that it is impossible to tell whether there 

 are ten yards or ten acres round the corner ; and these contri- 

 vances, varied a little, but to the same effect, give an appear- 

 ance of far greater extent than there really is. It is perfectly 

 immaterial whether this leads to a statue or a seat, though we 

 always prefer the latter ; it is more useful and appropriate 

 than any statue. Small beds or clumps cut in the grass, 

 between the path and the border, help to break the line still 

 more. We need hardly say that the boundary border of 

 shrubs ought to be higher than the fence, whatever that fence 

 may be, because the appearance of a fence or wall completely 

 upsets all attempts to conceal the real extent. The greatest 

 evil that most men fall into is the cutting up of a lawn by 

 planting trees and making beds away from the gravel walk, 

 and this makes us the more desirous to press upon the mind 

 the impropriety of all such work. It may be permitted^ to 

 put a circular basket occasionally near the mansion, and form 

 beds to imitate baskets of flovv^ers ; but even these should be 

 carefully and sparingly adopted. 



A flower garden may be formed as mechanically as you 

 please, of any pattern that a pair of compasses, twirled about 

 twenty ways, will suggest ; but they should always be adopted 

 in isolated places, out of the general landscape — in some 

 favoured nook that we may find. 



So far as it can be accomplished, all ugly or formal buildings 

 should be planted out. Greenhouses, and other horticultural 

 buildings, often form no exception ; for they are occasionally 

 great obstructions to a fine bit of landscape. 



The road being kept wide, and the borders planted in pro- 

 portion, the clumps that join the path at intervals on the in- 

 side or outside — that is, towards the border or towards the 

 centre of the lawn — must be made large in proportion ; so that, 

 when the shrubs grow up to a reasonable size, the proportion 



