XXV111 . 



Gardens for Small Country Houses. 



designing, viz., surprise. Running east and west, and dividing the area already 

 described from the kitchen garden, is an old wall. An opening was made in it at the 

 end of the paved walk, which runs below the big stepped hedge and parallel with it. 

 This opening was filled with a charming old iron gate, slenderly wrought, through which 

 access is given to a long pergola with brick piers, leading to the far wall with an opening 

 filled by a similar gate. This pergola is very well placed. A too frequent defect in 

 the use of such a feature is its obtrusiveness, and the failure to relate it to other features 

 of the garden design. Here, however, it forms a natural shelter for the path leading 

 across the kitchen garden to the open parkland beyond. It must be explained that 

 all these alterations have only just been made, and that the photographs now reproduced 

 were taken in December. They, therefore, reveal only the bones of the design, and 



FIG. XVII. MARKYATE CELL! CURVED STAIR AT SOUTH-EAST CORNER OF ROSE GARDEN. 



do not give any idea of the added richness which will come when the rose garden is 

 blazing with colour and the borders are gay with lavender, pinks and hollyhocks. 



Markyate Cell is altogether a very good example of what can be done in the 

 treatment of a hillside site by a just use of architectural features and formal growths. 



Owlpen and Markyate Cell are both jewels in rich and gracious settings, but, 

 beautiful as they are, a like treatment would accord ill with a wild moorland 

 hillside. Such a place has possibilities that are delightful, and all the easier to 

 accommodate because the poor soil imposes certain conditions and restricts the 

 choice of plants. There are natural gardens in these places, and especially natural 

 groves, that cannot be bettered in the way of consistent and harmonious planting 

 by any choice from a nursery catalogue. "Such a region is a hillside clothed with 



