606 Horticultural RePister. 



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difficulty in establishing a garden of this kind near every large town in the 

 kingdom : and such as Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, 

 Leeds, Nottingham, &c., ought to have three or more of them, for the 

 different classes of society; and no town, however small, should be without 

 one or more, as the size of the garden might entirely depend on the 

 number of persons who wish for little gardens. In most large towns there 

 are gas companies, water companies, &c., and we can see no reason why 

 there should not be garden companies. A good way to establish such a gar- 

 den, we conceive, would be, to have it consist of as many shares as there would 

 be divisions in it ; and should any subscriber wish to dispose of his allot- 

 ment, he could readily do so, either by private contract or public auction. 

 The whole garden should be enclosed with a wall, on which choice fruits 

 might be grown. The cross divisions would be better planted with dwarf 

 apples, or some other kind of fruit trees ; they would form an excellent 

 hedge, and also produce a considerable quantity of fruit. In the centre of 

 these gardens should be formed a botanic or flower garden ; for if about 

 four acres, in addition to the little gardens, were devoted to the purpose 

 of holding the most beautiful plants, it would greatly induce persons to 

 become subscribers, for the purpose of having the pleasure to walk in this 

 garden after the toils and anxieties of the day. 



" Subscribers to this botanic garden might be admitted who did not wish 

 to have a share in the little gardens; this would greatly assist the funds 

 for keeping it in proper order. Schools might also be allowed to walk in 

 this department until a certain hour in the da}', by paying a small yearly 

 contribution. 



" The expense of keeping in order a little garden so situated would be 

 according to the inclination of the individual possessing it, for such must 

 have the entire control of his own compartment ; but, for the assistance 

 of all who wished for information, it would be necessary to have a first- 

 rate gardener to give all the instruction required, as well as to have the 

 entire management of the ornamental part, and be responsible for the 

 labourers employed by the different subscribers properly attending to their 

 duty : this would be very satisfactory to a proprietor, knowing, that, al- 

 though prevented from attending himself, his garden would be as well 

 managed as the best private garden in the kingdom." 



The wood-cut accompanying this paper is a parallelogram, divided 

 lengthwise into three parts ; the centre part being the botanic or orna- 

 mental garden, and the two side parts being divided into the small vegetable 

 gardens. There can be no objection to the general arrangement ; but the 

 laying out of the ornamental garden is liable to all the objections which 

 we have made in our preceding Number, p, 400., and illustrated by the 

 engravings in p. 401., to the practice of putting down groups or clumps at 

 random ; in short, we could not have referred to a better figure as an illus- 

 tration of the prevalent bad taste in this way, which we entirely disapprove, 

 from the neglect it manifests of the principle of having always a " sufficient 

 reason." * The water, in the same plan for an ornamental garden, has 

 numerous bays and sinuosities ; but scarcely a tree or bush near any of 

 them : there are two bridges across it, and two walks over these bridges, 

 which, in their junction with the main walks, are objectionable also on the 

 before mentioned principle of not exhibiting a sufficient reason. On flat 

 surfaces there ought to be no turns in the walks for which a reason is not 

 made evident by the position of the adjoining groups, trees, or plants : 

 here there are numerous turns, windings, and junctions of walks, without 

 any apparent reason whatever. We regret to be obliged to make these 

 remarks on a plan, of the general purpose of which we so highly approve. 



* This principle of Leibnitz will be found applied to gardening and archi- 

 tecture in Dugald Stewart's Philosophical Essays. 



