Villa Residences. 399 



a state of mediocrity, never can give pleasure to the gardener 

 or the stranger visitor, and surely not to the proprietor. 



In adopting this plan, art should always begin high on the 

 scale ; that is, a portion near the house, if only a few yards of 

 walks, a few groups of shrubs and flowers, and a quarter of 

 an acre of lawn, should be kept to the highest degree of order 

 and neatness; diminishing gradually or rapidly, according 

 either to the extent of the place or the amount of the money 

 allowed to keep it up. It may be thought that this would 

 shorten the length of walks necessary for the health and recre- 

 ation of a family too refined to take exercise by any kind of 

 manual labour ; but this is by no means the case. The style 

 of keeping which we recommend in no degree interferes with 

 the length of walks. Walks may extend for miles among 

 scenery so wild as seldom to be touched by the hand of the 

 gardener or forester | and this scenery may be as interesting 

 to the botanist, and even to the lover of showy flowers, as the 

 most highly kept pleasure ground ; while it is a great deal 

 more so to the lover of nature and of picturesque scenery. All 

 that the gardener has to do is, to plant at first a copious 

 variety of trees and shrubs in masses of one sort together, 

 every mass being very irregular in shape, and running into 

 those adjoining ; to plant all the herbaceous plants which 

 are hardy and cheap, and leave them to run wild ; to cut in the 

 trees and shrubs when they obtrude too much on the walks, 

 or on one another ; and to keep the walks constantly fit for use. 

 This last operation may be very advantageously done by the 

 labour of women and children, or by old men unfit for any 

 thing else. 



Villa Residences include those not enumerated as palaces 

 (p. 389.), or starred as mansions (p. 385.). It gives us great 

 pleasure to state that we found a few of these very much to 

 our mind, and one or two almost perfect The last were the 

 work of ladies ; Mrs. Robt. Philips of Heybridge, and Mrs. 

 Corrie of Woodville. The style of planting and managing 

 the groups of flowers on the lawn, in both these places, is 

 entirely to our mind ; and each displays more floral beauty 

 and neatness in less than an acre, than the large flower-gardens 

 at Stowe, and the extensive flower-beds on the lawn at Stone- 

 leigh Abbey, both very highly kept, do in ten acres. We 

 hope to give plans of the beds, and lists of the flowers, in the 

 gardens of both these ladies, in proof of what we assert. Mr. 

 Barker's villa, in Monument Lane, Birmingham, ranks next in 

 order to Heybridge. Moor Green, James Taylor, Esq., is all 

 but perfect in its kind ; but it wants botanical interest. As far- 

 as landscape-gardening is concerned, the Parsonage at Off- 



