KITCHEN GARDENS AND ORCHARDS. 



and peaceful sights and sounds, where "Nature painteth all things gay," where the pro- 

 fuse Siberian and John Downie crabs vie with the apple and cherry blossom, and the 

 free rambler roses, allowed here to clamber up the apple tree stocks, or in free and wild 

 profusion, to form an embowering thicket, with the snug recess where are the bee hives 

 amidst marsh mallows completing the picture. Here the grass may be allowed to grow 

 up and exhibit its luxuriance and variety until its freshness begins to wane, variegated 

 here and there, in the seasons of blossom or fruit, with drifts of daffodils or meadow 

 flowers. 



The sense of quiet remoteness and peaceful seclusion which is the chief charm of 

 most old orchards is best attained by so designing them that they are approached through 

 one of the flower-bordered or fruit-embowered paths of the kitchen garden, which is 

 in itself an enclosed garden. Very often one main path through them leading to a 

 quaint but simple gate communicating with the home park or a pleasant field path, 



THOKNTOX MANOR CHESHIRE 



FIG. 319. 



may be gravelled, but other ways about the orchard itself are better laid down with 

 broad paths of closely shorn grass, and where they are enough used to make it difficult 

 to keep the turf in good condition, a strip of the green Westmorland flag may be laid 

 along the centre. This material may be obtained of a shade exactly suited to the 

 purpose, and which so harmonizes with the colour of the grass to be quite in keeping. 

 The boundary may be formed of a thick hedge of cluster roses, or better still, of the 

 fruitful cut -leaved blackberry, festooning a rough wattle fence and allowed to grow high 

 enough and thick enough to assist the air of seclusion. 



While dwarf bushes will soonest yield an abundant crop of fruit, the orchard designed 

 to form a part of the grounds of the domain will be more appropriately furnished with 

 the older fashioned standard fruit trees. All the remarks regarding the planting of 

 wall trees in the kitchen garden also apply to these, except, of course, that the young 

 trees would be fastened to strong stakes let well into the ground, and that it is necessary 



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