lo Landscape Gardening 



and to walk upon. It will be cold and greasy in wet weather, 

 and cake together and crack during drought. Few vegetable 

 crops will succeed in it, and a still smaller number of flowers. 

 Even grass grown upon it will generally be either very wet or 

 very dry; and the atmosphere above it will be correspond- 

 ently. cold and moist throughout the winter. Unless the 

 utmost care be used to prevent any part of a building from 

 coming into contact with it, a considerable dampness will 

 be communicated from it to the walls, and a house will thus 

 be made exceedingly miserable. 



Land of a light and open texture is, on the contrary, con- 

 ducive to both health and enjoyment and renders a house 

 comfortable and a garden delightful at all times. It never 

 becomes too wet; it is readily worked in almost any weather; 

 it makes a lawn pleasant to walk upon and encourages the 

 growth of the finer grasses; it is the best of soil for flowers, 

 and, with due enrichment, for vegetables and fruit trees; and, 

 in short, for any purpose it will be found either perfectly 

 suitable or capable of quickly being made so. 



Nor is the surface soil alone of consequence, for the sub- 

 stratum will continually more or less affect the upper crust. 

 A cold and clayey foundation soil, or a close retentive layer 

 of gravel, will act upon the roots of all the larger growing 

 plants, and tend to produce feebleness and disease after they 

 have once reached it. A rocky, chalky, or sandy bottom 

 will be much the driest, and altogether the most calculated 

 to promote human enjoyment and vegetable health. 



It follows, therefore, that a light and porous (though not a 

 very sandy or friable or shallow) soil, on a dry and open, 

 or rocky foundation, will be the best to build upon,, so as 

 to secure dryness and warmth in a house, and tbe fittest 

 to make a garden pleasurable and to supply the conditions 

 most needed by the bulk of vegetables, flowers, and fruits. 



