CHAPTER XXV. 



WALKS AND EDGINGS. 



OUR gardens are often laid out with so many needless walks, 

 edgings, and impediments of many kinds that work cannot be 

 done in a simple way, and half the time is lost in taking care of 

 or avoiding useless or frivolous things. In many large places 

 there is no true flower gardening; wretched plants are stuck out 

 in the parterre every year, a few stunted things are scratched in 

 round the choke-muddle shrubbery, and but little labour or love is 

 bestowed on the growth of flowers, or there are miles of walks bordered 

 by bare stretches of earth, as cheerful as Woking cemetery in its 

 early years. The gardener is helpless to turn such a waste into a 

 paradise ; his time and his thoughts are often taken up by the 

 keeping in order of needless and often ugly walks, leaving him little 

 time for true flower gardening, that is forming a real garden of 

 Roses, or groups of choice shrubs, or beds of Lilies, or of other 

 noble hardy plants, so that the beds may fairly nourish their tenants 

 for a dozen years. Instead of the never-ending and wearisome hen- 

 scratchings of autumn and spring, we ought to prepare one portion 

 of the flower garden or pleasure ground each year, so that it will 

 yield beauty for many years. But this cannot be done while half 

 the gardener's time is taken up with barber's work. 



Our own landscape gardeners are a little more sparing of these 

 hideous walks than the French ; but we very often have twice too 

 many walks, which torment the poor gardener by needless and stupid 

 labour. The planning of these walks in various elaborate ways has 

 been supposed to have some relation to landscape gardening ; but 

 one needless walk often bars all good effect in its vicinity. Flower- 

 beds are often best set in grass, and those who care to see them will 

 approach them quite as readily on grass as on hard walks. For the 

 three or four months of our winter season there is little need of 

 frequent resort to flower-beds, and for much of the rest of the year 

 the turf is better than any walk. I do not mean that there should 

 be no walk to the flower garden, but that every walk not necessary 

 for use should be turfed over. Few have any idea how much they 

 would gain, not merely in labour, but in the beauty and repose of 

 their gardens, by doing away with needless walks. 



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