the late Comtesse de Vandes. 477 



encloses the garden from the disagreeable mews, a prepossessing display of 

 floral splendour instantly bursts on the eye. A broad, straight, longish, 

 gravelled, well kept, box-edged walk, conducts you from the entrance-gate 

 up to the stove, one end of which just juts into view at the end of the 

 walk, and to the gardener's residence behind it. This fine walk is sup- 

 ported all the way, on the right hand and left, by a broadish border, richly 

 stocked with the more showy and comparatively choice herbaceous plants, 

 all receding, in the order of heads at a theatre, from the walk, according to 

 their relative heights, and supported in the rear by a liberal supply of well- 

 established, large-headed, tallish-stemmed, standard rose trees. Two banks 

 of flowers are thus formed, which slope to the walk ; and the numerous 

 plants now blooming, with their flowers in form and hue almost as various 

 as the species which produce them, constitute a richly variegated scene, 

 which cannot be viewed in any part of this walk, and from either end 

 especially, without the spectator's being enlivened, refreshed, and gratified. 

 The rose trees, although abounding in buds, had, as yet, scarcely expanded 

 any of their blossoms, except the Boursault's and the crimson Chinese : 

 Boursault's seems to branch too diffusively and droopingly to become an 

 elegant standard rose tree. When the end of this walk and the corner of 

 the stove are reached, you perceive that the stove forms but part of a 

 range of houses which traverses the garden directly across its centre, and 

 that the first-named walk divides itself, at the stove's end, into a walk in 

 front and a walk behind this range. Walking along in front of the rano-e, 

 you have dwarf pits covered by lift-up lights hinged into the front wall of 

 the houses on your left hand, and a lawn on your right. The lawn is the 

 length of this range, is in figure the segment of a circle, and without great 

 depth, but is occupied by the choicer herbaceous plants, and some shrubs, 

 grouped in beds, and by various ornamental shrubs placed singly. Among 

 the latter is a fine Ribes sanguineum, bearing numerous oblong berries, 

 which, in their present green state, are even more astringent than are the 

 black and ripened berries of the fragrant-flowered Ribes aureum. A 

 Chionanthus virginica, a bushy broad-leaved shrub 6 ft. in height, is now 

 abounding in panicles of blossoms, which are cut into linear segments, and 

 so may justify the appellation of fringe tree, as their snowy whiteness does 

 that of Chionanthus. A very fine Althaea frutex, whose multitudinous buds 

 are just now perceptible, and promise how superbly showy it will be some 

 weeks hence, is another of the single shrubs. A cincture of flowering 

 plants and shrubs encircles the back or bottom of the lawn, and separates 

 it from the horticultural quarters situate beyond, which, by these shrubs 

 and flowers, are partly concealed from view. Leaving the lawn, you have 

 reached the other end of the range of houses, and there behold the exact 

 counterpart of the opposite side of the garden, that up which you passed 

 on entering, namely, a similar broad walk, skirted on its two sides by two 

 borders of the same capacity as those beside the first-named walk, and, 

 like them, beautified with the lovely furniture of blooming herbaceous 

 plants, and standard rose trees, for the most part yet in bud but very 

 partially in blossom. Between the back of the outermost of the flower- 

 borders, on both sides of the garden, and the boundary wall or fence, a 

 short space intervenes as a border for the fruit trees, with which the 

 boundary walls are fruitfully occupied. The inner two of the above- 

 named four flower-borders, and the cincture encircling the back or bottom 

 of the lawn, enclose three sides of the central part of the garden, which is 

 in figure a rectangular oblong, and appropriated to the growth of vege- 

 tables and fruits ; but even here the love for decoration manifests itself in 

 some standard rose trees and other objects of ornament planted beside the 

 cross walks. It should have been remarked, that the two outer of the 

 four flower-borders mentioned are led round, past the end, and one of 

 them to the back, of the range of houses, where they terminate. The 



