How to manage a Garden 



the plant, it cannot grow and luxuriate in adverse sur- 

 roundings. To discard the philosophical and turn to the 

 practical side of the question, we know that the beauty of 

 a garden (all other things being equal) increases as the 

 distance from manufacturing towns is lengthened. Per- 

 haps not all readers will have had opportunity for observing 

 the force of this great truth, though all who have the 

 faintest knowledge of plant life must admit the plausi- 

 bility of the argument. The matter is, however, better ex- 

 plained by illustration. 



For plant culture of any description the surroundings of 

 Manchester are anything but ideal. Coniferous trees and 

 shrubs are seldom seen, whilst even the sturdier rhodo- 

 dendron and accommodating laurel are painfully dis- 

 figured by the great prevalence of solid deposits of all 

 sorts of impurities. To watch the thick black smoke 

 issuing from the chimney, and see it wending its sooty 

 way towards a garden is a sickening sight, but one which 

 is only too powerfully real. All plants dread and resent 

 this unnatural treatment, for the unchecked prevalence of 

 which our local authorities are largely to blame; whilst 

 some plants can make no headway at all or give up the 

 struggle, and slowly retire into oblivion or on the rubbish 

 heap. The Manchester district is said by many to be 

 more injurious to plant life than the surroundings of 

 London, and experiments made by Sir William Thistleton 

 'Dyer show that during a fog at Chelsea six tons of solid 

 matter were deposited on a square mile, and included 

 matters far more injurious in their chemical action than 

 soot. By this we infer, and experience of the results 

 teaches us, that manufacture and successful gardening 

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