44 Landscape Gardening 



entrance court, treated architecturally and with proper 

 accompaniments may be an excellent substitute for a short 

 drive; and in this case a large graveled area with perhaps 

 bold margins of grass, a few evergreens and some climbing 

 plants here and there scrambling over the walls would be 

 wholly unobjectionable. 



A carriage-drive that would pass the windows of any of the 

 principal rooms of a house or terminate nearly in front of 

 them would be still more exposed to the objections here 

 urged. For callers or visitors to have to pass the windows 

 of sitting-rooms is always an undesirable arrangement though 

 this has sometimes to be tolerated from a variety of con- 

 siderations. But the evil is much aggravated when such an 

 approach is one for vehicles also, and servants as well as 

 friends have thus the free use of it. Of course this will 

 depend very much on the arrangement of the house, the cor- 

 rect position of the entrance door being a matter frequently 

 overlooked by architects. 



i6. Kitchen Gardens. — Some gardens are so contracted 

 or of such a peculiar shape that the appropriation of any 

 part of them to vegetables or fruits appears quite inconsistent 

 with the attainment of any kind of beauty in the ornamental 

 portions. And in such instances the kitchen department 

 may very properly be omitted. A mere scrap or corner of 

 kitchen garden which only serves to mar the general design 

 can afford no real pleasure, and the food it would supply 

 is commonly otherwise easily obtainable. The propriety of 

 devoting a piece of ground to these purposes will depend 

 more on the general figure of the land and the position 

 and arrangement of the house than on the mere size of the 

 plot. If the ground lies entirely in front of the principal 

 windows and is but narrow, a kitchen garden would seem 

 inadmissible in point of taste. Besides, kitchen gardens are 



