FILLING IN WITH COLOURS 277 



sparkling background. The effect obtained is so 

 satisfactory that if one pays any attention to the 

 subject at all, the fact stands out prominently that a 

 good background should be supplied for flowers if 

 the best results are desired; a background of 

 hedges, or brick walls, and a setting of trees that 

 will form a frame, or second enclosure, and will 

 serve the double duty of warding off or breaking 

 the force of inhospitable winds. 



In the famous garden of Levens, in Westmore- 

 land, which was laid out about the year 1700 by a 

 Frenchman named Beaumont, in a Dutch style, and 

 which has since become absorbed by its surround- 

 ings and Anglicized, many strangely cut forms of 

 Yew and Box that resemble chessmen, or the wide- 

 petticoated figures of a Noah's ark were used to- 

 gether with solid blocks of Yews with rounded roofs 

 and mushroom finials, and arched recesses forming 

 arbours. Miss Jekyl says that this effect might be 

 supposed to be puerile, but that such is far from 

 the case. The square-clipped trees offer facets to 

 the light which plays upon them with infinite va- 

 riety, and the weird, stiff forms accent and dif- 

 ferentiate the many good hardy perennials with 



