LAROE COUNTPtY VILLAS. 299 



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383. Remarks. — The sections and sectional geometrical views in this design 

 would answer exceedingly well for giving a genera! idea of the effect of 

 improvements ; but they would not serve instead of a working plan. Such 

 designs were commonly given, when modern landscape-gardening was in its 

 infancy, by Kent, Brown, Wright, and others, and executed by contract with 

 alterations almost at pleasure, by a contractor under the name of a new ground 

 workman ; or sometimes in the ordinary routine, under the direction of the 

 gardener. All the details of execution, and the choice of the trees and shrubs 

 planted, were passed over in the general design of the artist, and left to be 

 supplied according to the taste, knowledge, or means, of the contractor or the 

 gardener. It does not appear that, in the infancy of landscape-gardening, 

 any great value was set upon having a variety of trees and shrubs in planta- 

 tions ; and, accordingly, in the first laid out places in the modern style, with 

 the exception of Pain's Hill, and one or two others, the trees and shrubs are 

 all of the common kind. At present, however, the taste is decidedly different, 

 and there is a laudable desire on the part of proprietors, and especially on 

 that of the females of their families, to render garden scenery botanically as 

 well as pictorially interesting. The subject of the kinds of trees is scarcely at 

 all mentioned by Mr. Parkins in the description of any one of his designs : he 

 looks on garden scenery entirely with the eye of a painter and a poet, while 

 the modern artist adds to these the eye of the botanist and the cultivator. 



Design XXVII. Plan and Description of Redleaf, at Penshurst, near 

 Tonbridge, the seat of the late William Wells, Esq. 



384. General observations. — The estate of Redleaf, near Penshurst, lies 

 along the north side and in the bottom of a valley distinguished by the bold- 

 ness of its imdulations, the large proportion of the surface which is under 

 wood and in pasture, the fortunate existence of a fine river, and the cropping 

 out of some rocky strata. The whole surface of this part of the country 

 appears, at no distant period, to have been native forest, or, at all events, 

 under coppice-wood ; and hence, in many of the fields, and in all the hedge- 

 rows, there are groups of oak trees, aged thorns, maples, and hollies, which 

 give the face of the country the woody appearance of a park. That portion 

 of the estate which Mr. Wells laid out as a residence, occupies a steep 

 undulating bank, facing the south-east, with a deep bi-oad valley at one end, 

 lying in the direction of north and south, and joining the valley of the 

 Eden, a river which afterwards takes the name of the Medway, and joins the 

 Thames at Sheerness. 



385. The bold and varied undulations of the grounds at Redleaf, the fortu- 

 nate disposition of the wood, and especially of the single trees and small 

 groups, left very little for art to do upon a large scale. In some places, a 

 field, or a part of a field, might require to be planted, in order to form, add 

 to, or connect, masses of wood : and, in othei-s, a coppice might require to be 



