overlap the parapet of the steps ; their colour contrasting distinctly with 

 that of the more distant Ilex, a magnificent example of a tree that 

 deserves more general use in English gardens. The parterre above the 

 steps and on a level with the house has box hedges, after the Italian 

 manner, three feet high and two feet wide. These, with some of the 

 yew hedges, were planted a hundred years ago, though much of the 

 garden, with its ornaments of fine Italian flower-pots, was the work 

 of the former owner, the late Mr. Reginald Cholmondeley, a man of 

 powerful personality and fine taste. 



The most important part of the garden lies to the west of the house, 

 where there is a double garden of stiff pattern with high box borders 

 and clipped evergreens. At a right angle to this, the spectator, standing 

 at some distance westward, and looking back towards the east and 

 straight with the space between the pair of gardens of angular design, 

 sees a broad space flanked on either side by a row of handsome upright 

 yews. The ground between is a flower garden of large diamond-shaped 

 beds in two sizes, with cleverly-arranged green edgings. But now that 

 the large Irish yews have grown to their early maturity, dominating the 

 garden and insisting on their own strong parallel lines, it is open to 

 question whether it would not have been better to have had a wide, 

 clear middle space of green straight down the length, with the flowers in 

 shapely, ordered masses to right and left. The close succession of large 

 beds gives the impression of impediments to comfortable progress. 



It was wise to leave the Irish yews undipped. Though the common 

 English yew is the tree that is of all others the most docile to the 

 discipline of training and shearing, the upright growing variety will 

 have none of it. In some fine English gardens they are clipped, always 

 with disastrous effect. They will only take one form : that of an ugly 

 swollen bottle, or lamp-chimney with a straight top. Their own form is 

 quite symmetrical enough for use in any large design. 



IS 



