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The English, or Natural Flower Garden, which ought always to take 

 precedence of every other style, is composed of lawn, and beds or patches 

 of earth, in which flowers and flowering shrubs are planted. This garden 

 should, in all cases, be arranged with returning walks, so that a visiter may 

 return gradually into the principal walk homewards, when a more lengthened 

 one would not be agreeable. A flower garden provided with only one walk, 

 and that through the centre, is, unquestionably, ill-contrived ; because it 

 always obliges a person to return the way he came. And a flower garden on 

 turf, without a gravel or dry walk, is worse. A walk is not only an interesting 

 feature in the flower garden, but it is indispensable for the inspection of 

 flowers, when the grass is wet. This kind of garden, when space will allow, 

 may be subdivided into the following compartments, namely, — The General 

 Flower Garden, American Garden, Florist Garden, Rosarium, Annual 

 Garden, and Group Garden, which, though severally quite distinct and 

 perfectly complete, need only be separated by walks, assisted by a judicious 

 disposal of various masses and groups of shrubs and low trees, in order to 

 produce one interesting whole. 



Gentle and smooth undulations add much to the interest of the English 

 Flower Garden, which, when the ground is an extensive flat, may be arti- 

 ficially contrived by sinking some portions of the ground, and raising others. 

 The character of the flower beds (see Plan for a Country Residence) should 

 generally be long rather than otherwise, of various elegant forms, produced by 

 angles and graceful curves ; all repetitions, except circles, and all such figures 

 as ovals, hearts, squares, oblongs, queen cakes, &c, being studiously avoided. 



I may here mention, that I disapprove of the common practice of 

 raising the soil in beds much above the level of the lawn. These unnatural 

 mole-hill-hke forms, throwing, as it were, the lawn into sudden inharmonious 

 slacks, are highly offensive to the eye of taste. When a bed is formed on 

 level ground, the centre should never be raised more than from two to six 

 inches above the turf, according to the size of tire bed ; but when formed on 

 rising ground, and the turf appears to follow naturally, it will be in perfect 

 keeping to raise the soil boldly to the centre of the bed. 



In the disposal of the beds, the lawn must not be regularly spotted over 

 with them, as we often see, exhibiting equal walk-like portions of grass 

 between ; they ought to be thrown into different forms, the beds arranged in 

 some degree in groups, with naturally varied expanses of lawn, the narrowest 



