VARIOUS FLOWER GARDENS. 61 



EDGE HALL garden is one of those in which the hardy flowers of 

 the northern world are grown in numbers for the owner's delight and 

 the good of his friends, and it is in such large collections that charming 

 novelties for our gardens often make their appearance. Such gardens 

 in our own day carry on the traditions, so to say, of very interesting 

 English and Scottish gardens of the past, in which numbers of beauti- 

 ful open air things were grown among those I have had the happi- 

 ness to see were the late Mr. Borrer's at Henfield in Sussex, a garden 

 museum of beautiful hardy plants and of rare British forms of plants and 

 trees ; the Ellacombes' garden at Bitton ; Mr. Leeds' garden at Man- 

 chester ; Stirling's at Edinburgh ; Comely Bank, a home for the rarest 

 and most beautiful plants ; the Rev. Harpur Crewe's ; Mr. Atkins's 

 garden at Painswick ; Sir George McLeay's at Pendell Court; Major 

 Gaisford's at Offington, and many other delightful gardens. The riches 

 of the collection in such gardens are a source of danger as to effect, the 

 very number of plants often leading to a neglect of breadth and 

 simplicity of effect ; but there is no real reason why a garden, rich 

 in many plants, may not also be beautiful in its masses, airiness and 

 verdure. A mile to the east the well-wooded and well-heathered range 

 of the Broxton Hills gives shelter, whilst from the south-west to the 

 north-west the horizon is formed by Welsh mountain ranges. A sunk 

 fence of sandstone, easily jumped by a fox or a hare, and in other parts 

 a line of movable hurdles, well wired against rabbits, separate three 

 acres for house and garden from the surrounding grass fields and from 

 a small park of eighty acres. About 200 yards from the house the 

 sand rock comes through, forming a long terrace with an escarpment 

 towards the west. The woods in spring are carpeted first with Prim- 

 roses and wood Anemones, then with wild Hyacinths and Pink 

 Campion, whilst later there is a tall growth of Campanula latifolia 

 and large breadths of Japanese Knotwort, which have been planted to 

 supersede Nettles, while overhead is abundance of Hawthorn, Crab 

 and wild Cherry. The hall stands on the side of a hollow watercourse 

 worn in the stiff clay, which in Cheshire often lies over the sand 

 rock. Down this watercourse runs a torrent in heavy rains, but it is 

 quite dry in summer. On the sloping banks of this, close above the 

 house, there formerly stood ranges of cow-houses and pig-sties, which 

 drained into a stagnant pond in the bed of the watercourse within 

 twenty yards of the bedroom windows. Twenty-five years ago it was 

 drained, the watercourse confined within a covered culvert ; and the 

 whole space is now covered all summer with a dense forest of herbaceous 

 plants every good kind which will thrive in the cold soil on which 

 the house stands being cultivated there. 



STONELANDS, SUSSEX. It is pleasant to get out of the conven- 

 tional and there are many ways of doing so but gardens are often out 



