256 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



storeys, that garden shelters, loggias, and the like may be most 

 effectively made ; of this we see examples at North Mymms and 

 Bramshill, and where they give shade or a " garden room " as part 

 of the house they are a real gain. 



Few things about country houses and gardens are worse in effect 

 and "construction than the so-called " rustic work." It is complex 

 and ugly, its merit being that it rots away in a 

 Bridges. few years. It is probably at its worst in garden 

 chairs, summer-houses, and rustic bridges. An 

 important rule for bridges is never to make them where they are 

 not really needed, though the opposite course is followed almost 

 in every place of any size where there is water. On rustic bridges 

 over streams, natural or otherwise, there is much wasted labour. A 

 really pretty bridge of a wholly different sort I saw once with the 

 late James Backhouse near Cader Idris on a farm which had a 

 swift stream running through it, to cross which some one had cut 

 down a tree that grew near, and had chopped the upper side flat and 

 put a handrail along it. Time had helped it with Fern, Lichen, 

 and Moss, and the result was far more beautiful than is ever seen 

 in more pretentiously "designed" rustic bridges. It is not, however, 

 the far prettier effects we have to note, but the advantage which 

 comes from strength and endurance. It looked very old and Moss- 

 grown, and no doubt it is there now, as the heart-wood of stout trees 

 does not perish like the sap-wood of the " rustic "-work maker. The 

 sound Oak tree bridge was the earliest footway across a stream, 

 and it will always be one of the best if the sap-wood is carefully 

 adzed off. Foot-bridges these should be called, as they are too 

 narrow for any other purpose, but with a good Oak rail at one 

 side the tree bridge is distinctly better than a bridge of planks. 

 Where stones are plentiful, stone put up in a strong, simple way 

 is the best to make a lasting bridge, and a simple structure in 

 brick or stone is better in effect than any rustic bridge. Where 

 stream beds are rocky and shallow, stepping stones are often better 

 than a bridge, though they cannot be used where the streams cut 

 through alluvial soils and the banks are high. 



Some of the worst work ever done in gardens has been in the 

 construction of needless bridges, often over wretched duck -ponds 

 of small extent. Even people who have some knowledge of 

 country life, and who ought to possess taste, come to grief over 

 bridge building, and pretty sheets of water are disfigured by bridges 

 ugly in form and material. For the most frivolous reasons these 

 ugly things are constructed, though often by going ten yards further 

 one could have crept round the head of the pond by a pretty 

 path aided, perhaps, by a few stepping stones. 



