FULHAM PALACE 



But it is in spring that this kitchen garden is at its loveliest ; 

 for then the young apple, and pear, and plum trees, in long per- 

 spective on either side of the cinder walk, are in blossom. They 

 do not all flower at once, and they have few leaves in early April ; 

 but their white and red blend deliciously with the delicately- 

 tinted hyacinth, the daffodil, and the narcissus, and, a little 

 later, with the wallflower and the white iris ; this last is very 

 abundant and much in evidence here, growing in bushy clumps. 

 The pale spring flowers, better behaved than their summer sisters, 

 do not straggle over the borders, but hold themselves upright 

 within their legitimate limits, which are marked out by frontier 

 lines of ancient box. This is ever-green box, of course ; dark in 

 winter, but now " in the sweet of the year," bright with tender 

 young leaves. 



The path itself, though only a " cinder walk," assumes in the 

 sunshine an indescribably delicate and beautiful colour something 

 between lilac and peach-blossom in tint while the short, smooth, 

 dry tufts of " bent " grass, that push themselves and lift them- 

 selves up everywhere between the minute cinders, turn to pale 

 gold as they catch the light ; for that is the way in which Nature 

 always treats her colour schemes ; to avoid monotony she carefully 

 embroiders them with something else. 



The eye follows the walk up to the old brick boundary wall at 

 its farther end ; above this a magnificent evergreen-oak tells as 

 a precious touch of dark, enhancing by contrast the pallid delicacy 

 of the lovely vernal hues of earth and sky. 



Though this scarcely shows in the drawing, the wall is 

 intersected by a second cinder path, which ends on the right in 

 a pergola-arch, bare in spring, but in blazing August, overhung 

 with a thick growth of the large purple clematis ; through 

 this, looking back, there is a charming vista. Passing under it 

 we turn to the left, and, keeping the glass-houses, with the vineries, 

 on the right, enter what is perhaps the prettiest, as it is certainly 

 the most old-English and interesting, corner of the Manor-House 

 demesne. It is an ancient garden within a garden, not an unusual 

 arrangement in old-fashioned pleasure-grounds ; it is a bit, stolen 

 as it were, from the kitchen garden, and separated from it on two 

 sides by a truly magnificent wisteria. This must be of patriarchal 

 age, for its gnarled and knotted stem is very strong and thick, 



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