PERFECT GARDEN. 57 



the Chinese variety the tree-peony (P. moutan.), 

 are excellent for this purpose ; but there is nothing 

 to surpass the old-fashioned hollyhock. This, as has 

 been remarked, is the only landscape flower we 

 possess the only one, that is, whose forms and 

 colours tell in the distance ; and so picturesque is it, 

 that perhaps no artist ever attempted to draw a 

 garden without introducing it, whether it were really 

 there or not. "By far the finest effect (says the 

 essay we have already referred to) that combined art 

 and nature ever produced in gardening were those 

 fine masses of many-coloured hollyhocks clustered 

 round a weather-tinted vase ; such as Sir Joshua 

 delighted to place in the wings of his pictures. And 

 what more magnificent than a long avenue of these 

 floral giants, the double and the single not too 

 straightly tied backed by a dark thick hedge of 

 old-fashioned yew ?" * Such an avenue without 

 " the dark thick hedge," which would certainly 

 have been an improvement we remember to have 

 seen, in the fulness of its autumn splendour, in the 

 garden at Granton, near Edinburgh, the marine villa 

 of a deep lawyer and another may have been in- 

 spected by many of our readers at Bromley Hill. 

 Here the hollyhocks " broke the horizon with their 

 obelisks of colour ;" and the foreground was a mass 

 of dahlias, American marigolds, mallows, asters, and 

 mignionette. It was the most gorgeous mass of 



* We do not often indulge in a prophecy, but we will venture to 

 stake our gardening credit that, within five years' time, the hollyhock 

 will again be restored to favour, become a florist's flower, and carry 

 off horticultural prizes. [This prophecy has been more than fulfilled, 

 1852.] 



