of the border, each buttress ending in an important shaped finial to the 

 front. Between these and the well-designed alcove in stone masonry that 

 so satisfactorily ends the walk, is a space of turf, leading on the left, 

 through an arch cut in the ten-foot-high yew hedge, to the bowling- 

 green. Nothing can make a more effective shelter than such grand yew 

 hedges ; the solid wall itself is scarcely better. Even on the roughest 

 days, with a storm of wind of destructive power outside, the space within 

 is calm and sheltered, and the flowers escape that cruel battering from 

 fierce blasts that add so much to the difficulty of gardening in exposed 

 places. But the planting and thus providing this much-needed shelter is 

 just good gardening, and when, in addition, it is done to a design of 

 happy invention and true proportion, with just such refinements of detail 

 and ornament as are suited to the garden's calibre and the owner's 

 endowment, then, with the addition of splendid masses of good flowers 

 grandly grown, do we find gardening at its best. 



The time of year of this picture is in or near the second week of July, 

 when the White Lily is at its finest, and the Orange Lily is in bloom, 

 with the Blue Delphinium and many another good garden flower. One 

 can see how all the best garden flowers are utilised here. There is the 

 White Sidalcea at the front of the border, one of the many plants of the 

 Mallow family that are so important in our borders ; for our grand 

 Hollyhocks are Mallows too. This White Sidalcea has much the same 

 value as the large White Snapdragon, one good variety of which, the 

 precursor of the many good large kinds now grown, was the only one of 

 its kind at the time the picture was painted. Of late their numbers have 

 greatly increased, and also their stature and the variety of their beautiful 

 colourings, so that now they can be used as tall plants of great effect. 

 Six feet two inches was the measurement of one grand spike of soft, rosy 

 colouring in the writer's own garden last autumn. These capital plants 

 have been " fixed," as gardeners say, in ranges of different heights ; tall, 

 intermediate, and the quite dwarf little cushions whose form is perhaps as 

 little suited to the character of the plant as the foolish little dwarf Sweet 

 Peas, that are only wilfully wanton, freakish distortions of a beautiful and 

 graceful plant, whose duty it is to climb and bring its pretty blooms up 

 to the level of our admiring eyes and appreciative noses. A good strong 



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