CHAP. I VILLA GARDENING 3 



equal to a long wall of tree or shrub growth. A stout, thick 

 Thorn hedge is better than a brick or stone wall for sheltering 

 tender plants from cutting winds. The hedge or belt of trees 

 being oj^en and elastic, the wind becomes entangled, and its force 

 broken and scattered ; whilst the swift current simply rebounds 

 from the harsh, stubborn, unyielding surface of the wall, and 

 starts again with a fresh impetus added to its force. 



Thoughts on Garden Design. — The uppermost impres- 

 sion on my mind is that villa gardens are needlessly expensive 

 in design, and that the cost of after keeping is increased by over- 

 elaboration at the outset. This must be taken of course as a 

 general statement. There are exceptions, which are usually the 

 reflections of superior individual minds brought to bear vipon their 

 gardens. There are villas and villas, but the vicarage garden 

 comes nearest to my idea of what an average villa garden should 

 be for real comfort and happiness. The evidences of refined 

 thought which commonly abound in the average rectory garden, 

 the free use that is made of trees and shrubs, the freedom of 

 treatment which is the natm-al outcome of much thought unfet- 

 tered by preconceived notions, produces a pleasing whole. The 

 gardens of the present day are most of them too stiff", too formal, 

 to give pleasure to the calm thinking man who goes to nature 

 for his models. But the average man is an imitator; it saves 

 trouble to do as others are doing rather than think out a course 

 for ourselves. Hence it follows that there is such a dearth of 

 originality. Where, in laying out a garden, the tendency is to- 

 wards extravagance, the result is seldom commensvu'ate with the 

 outlay. Extravagance never gives pleasure for any length of 

 time ; the idea is sure to crop up in the mind when the novelty 

 has worn oft" — is the game worth the candle 'i And the answer 

 is nearly always in the negative. The pleasantest gardens are 

 those which present a series of pretty pictures separate and dis- 

 tinct, and yet blending harmoniously, and the garden must be 

 very small which does not pernut of this being done. It is 

 delightful to have a lawn of closely-sliaven turf running up to the 

 windows, fidling away and losing itself in vistas and glades through 

 shrubs and the branches of trees. And it is pleasant to penetrate 

 these openings in the shrubs and trees, and discover the rockery, 

 the fernery, and other phases of culture which a garden of only 

 very moderate extent may possess. 



Of late years too much use has been made of bright-flowered 

 exotics. Every bit of level gi-ound has been laid out in geometrical 

 flgures, and every mound or bit of rising ground has been scarped 

 into terraces with their accompanying architectural features, which 



