242 Landscape Gardening 



4. The Kitchen Garden. — It has before been intimated 

 in passing that a kitchen garden should be placed in the rear 

 of the house and be as near as possible to both it and the 

 stables, communicating with each pretty easily and directly 

 and without the necessity of going through the pleasure 

 grounds. The reason of these things is plain and simple. 

 As a kitchen is itself generally kept at the back of the house 

 and a kitchen garden has to be in communication with 

 it, the two should be in close proximity. The manure, 

 from the stables, having to be used in the kitchen garden, 

 ought to be capable of being readily applied, and hence the 

 desirableness of connecting the two parts as nearly as can 

 be done. 



A kitchen garden, being intended for convenience and use, 

 should be of some regular figure and have the walks, beds, 

 and borders, as much as practicable, in straight lines and at 

 right angles with each other. Any different arrangement 

 would waste the ground and render it less easily worked. 



Where practicable and when the space is pretty ample, a 

 kitchen garden will be warmer if entirely walled in, and the 

 walls will supply the means of growing a number of the better 

 sorts of fruit trees, a fashion which is now coming into use 

 again in America after many years of neglect. The wall on 

 the side nearest the north should be at least twelve or four- 

 teen feet high and like all the rest should have a coping to pro- 

 ject two or three inches. There may also be a good planta- 

 tion of trees behind this wall, if convenient, or at no great 

 distance from it, to increase the shelter. The side walls may 

 be of the same or of a lesser height — ten feet will probably be 

 sufficient. And the front wall should not be higher than six 

 feet or five feet six inches; or its place may be supplied by a 

 hedge, if absolute enclosure is not needed. Where a planta- 

 tion is necessary on the south side of a kitchen garden to 



