28 Subtropical Gardening. 



we shall be as anxious to avoid all formal twirlings 

 in our gardens as we now are to have them per- 

 petrated in them by landscape-gardeners of great 

 repute for applying wall-paper or fire-shovel pat- 

 terns to the surface of the reluctant earth, and 

 when we shall no more think of tolerating in a 

 garden such a scene as that shown in the pre- 

 ceding figure, than a landscape artist would tole- 

 rate it in a picture. 



The old landscape-gardening dogma, which tells 

 us we cannot have all the wild beauty of nature in 

 our gardens, and may as well resigr ourselves to 

 the compass, and the level, and the defined daub 

 of colour and pudding-like heaps of shrubs, had 

 some faint force when our materials for gardening 

 were few,* but considering our present rich and, to 

 a great extent, unused stores from every clime, and 

 from almost every important section of the vege- 

 table kingdom, it is demonstrably false and foolish. 



To these observations on arrangement, etc., one 

 good rule may be added : — Make your garden as 

 distinct as possible from those of your neighbours — 



* "In gardening, the materials of the scene are few, and those 

 few unwieldy, and the artist must often content himself with the 

 reflection that he has given the best disposition in his power to the 

 scanty and intractable materials of nature." — Allison. 



