300 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



Take the lawn-side, where the ground slopes gently away from 



the house, it may be, towards a river ; one of the best of gardens 



is one on the lawn, with a background of trees and 



The lawn garden, shrubs sometimes running in and out of the margins 



of the lawn. I do not think I know anything so 



beautiful as such a lawn garden. 



Often people are found bold enough to put their houses in all sorts 

 of situations on bluffs, near rocks, and on river banks, which may 

 limit their garden in a sense, but give other, and, perhaps, more 

 delightful, opportunities. 



Sometimes about country houses there happens a square garden 

 made at first as a kitchen or front garden, which is occasionally 

 turned into a flower garden, often with excellent effect. The walls 

 and the shelter and the drapery of climbers help. I think I have had 

 more pleasure from the little square garden at Warley, full of hardy 

 flowers, both in beds and borders, than ever I had in any garden. In 

 such situations one can get as far away from convention as one likes. 

 Another very pretty site of a flower garden is an old orchard. The 

 trees, the light and shade, and the form make it enchanting, as 

 compared with the fully exposed garden. In some of these orchard 

 gardens, the soil being very good and rich, the hardy flowers grow 

 very finely indeed, and the effect in one such garden I know is, 

 I think, almost better than that of any other kind of garden I 

 mean as regards the handsomer kinds of hardy flowers. 



