VARIOUS FLOWER GARDENS. 59 



Scotch Firs, planted about the time that James I. who was just then 

 building the grand old house of Bramshill, hard by, as a hunting box 

 for Prince Henry planted the Scotch Firs in Bramshill Park, and 

 the clumps on Hartford Bridge Flats and Elvetham Mount. Most of 

 the garden consisted then of a line of ponds from the glebe fields, past 

 the house, down to the large pond behind the garden and churchyard. 

 The rector at once became his own landscape gardener, and the ponds 

 were drained. Plane trees, which threatened in every high gale to 

 fall on the south end of the house, were cut down, and masses of 

 shrubs were planted to keep out the cold draughts, which even on 

 summer evenings streamed down from the bogs on the edge of 

 Hartford Bridge Flats. What had been a wretched chicken yard in 

 front of the brick-floored room used as a study was laid down in 

 Grass, with a wide border on each side, and the wall between the 

 house and stable was soon a mass of creeping Roses, scarlet Honey- 

 suckles, and Virginian Creeper. Against the south side of the house 

 a Magnolia (M. grandiflora) was trained, filling the rooms with its 

 fragrance. Lonicera and Clematis montana, Wistaria, Gloire de Dijon 

 and Ayrshire Roses, and variegated Ivy hid the rest of the wall with a 

 veil of sweetness. In front of the study window, on the lawn, an 

 immense plant of Japanese Honeysuckle grows, and next to this the 

 pride of the study garden lay in its double yellow Brier Roses. These 

 grew very freely, and in June the wall of the house and garden was 

 ablaze with the golden blooms, the rooms being decorated for two or 

 three weeks with dishes of the yellow Roses. From the low, damp 

 situation of the rectory, none but the hardiest plants could be grown 

 out-of-doors ; but the borders were always gay with such plants as 

 Phloxes, Delphiniums, Saxifrages, Pinks, Pansies, and, above all, 

 Roses and Carnations. One bay in front of the house was well 

 covered with Pyracantha, in which a pair of white-throats built un- 

 disturbed for many years. Rhododendrons grew in the greatest 

 luxuriance, and the neighbours always came to see the rector's garden 

 when two beds, on either side of the front, were in blossom. An 

 ancient Yew tree, and a slight hedge of Laburnum, Hollies, Lilac, 

 and Syringa divide the rectory garden from the churchyard, and 

 here, again, the rector turned his mind to making the best of what 

 he had. The church, a plain red brick structure, was gradually 

 covered with Roses, Ivy, Cotoneaster, Pyracantha, &c., and, in order 

 that his parishioners should look on beautiful objects when they 

 assembled in the churchyard for their Sunday gossip before service, 

 the older part of the churchyard was planted with choice trees, flower- 

 ing shrubs, Junipers, Cypress, Berberis, and Acer Negundo, and the 

 Grass dotted with Crocuses where it was not carpeted with wild white 

 Violets. 



