, REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON ORNAMENTAL GARDENING. 225 



ing the rocks with their varied flowers and foliage, extending to 

 the water's edge ; thus constituting a Rockery, Fernery, and Grotto 

 of wonderful grace and luxuriant growth — a fit terminus and ac- 

 companiment of 



The Italian Garden. 



Few places in New England have attracted the attention or ex- 

 cited the wonder of all classes like this. It has been photographed 

 and pictured, time and again, and visited b}' thousands, yet its 

 curious contents and formation appear as fresh and as novel as 

 ever. Nature seems to have provided here, most felicitously, a 

 cove for the purpose, with high banks, and a fine delta below, just 

 above the surface of the Lake, with trees at each extreme. Its 

 rude shores and slopes have been converted by the hand of man, 

 into straight hillsides, terraced and run together at right angles ; 

 the top lines continuous, and the declivity aligned by several long 

 levels mitred together and extending from end to end, where 

 they curve into the woods. These, sodded and planted in the 

 most formal stjde, have an imperial grandeur. Their unity and 

 extent, with their weighty masses of foliage and shadow, give to 

 the whole an impress of majesty and strength. 



"While it resembles, in some respects, the famous gardens of 

 Lake Maggiore, its position, construction, and surroundings, make 

 it, in this climate, even more attractive. The easterly face, as 

 viewed from .the grotto, with its heights of impenetrable green, 

 its deep shadows, and long ranges of levels — rising one above 

 the other, in succession, to fhe parapet of a bank-wall — and the stiflT 

 points of conical figures, standing like sentinels around — strikes 

 you, at first sight, as a huge fortification — the openings in the 

 dense foliage disclosing the embrasures. This resemblance is 

 aided by a similar arrangement of the southerly side, though dif- 

 ferently planted. 



In a moment, the solid ramparts and breastworks of the imawi. 

 nation, change into hedges of marvellous thickness, compact as 

 turf; the sentinels become evergreen tops, lifting their heads " al\ 

 shaven and shorn " out of their masses : and White Pines '^uid 

 Scotch start up, here and there, clipped into every disguise, thim- 

 ble-shaped, dome-shaped, rounded, pointed or collared — j^qw as 

 tall spindles, with four or five bristling rings, at inter-' ^.^is o-row- 

 ing larger as they descend ; now as mammoth muf^ ^ . qj. [^ f^w 



