520 General Results of a Gardening Tour . 



neatness, e fed without ■■& single weed ; the defective part being 

 the gravel walks, which, as before observed, being hoed and 

 raked, are generally loose, and disagreeable to walk upon. 

 A® :?may be supposed, from the number of hands being almost 

 every where diminished, we recognised a falling off in the 

 keeping of kitchen-gardens since the time we were last in 

 this part of Scotland ; but what struck us as the greatest de- 

 fect in almost all the Scottish gardens, as well as in most of the 

 English ones which we have seen during our tour, was the 

 barrenness of the wall fruit trees. We do not recollect a 

 single garden in Scotland, where there was a fair crop over 

 every part of the walls, unless it were at Kilkerran. The 

 cause is clearly owing to the practice of digging and cropping 

 the borders. Most gardeners are as well aware of this as we 

 are ; but they say they cannot do without the crops produced 

 by the borders; and that, if they were not to crop them, their 

 masters would think they were not doing their duty. What 

 we would say in answer is, that it is very absurd to be at so 

 great an expense in building walls and training trees on them, 

 and at the same time to take the most effectual means to pre- 

 vent these wall trees from producing fruit. We shall not 

 repeat what we have already advanced (Vol. VII. p. 542.) ; 

 but it may be useful to mention, that, in the excellent new gar- 

 den at Kilkerran, not a peach or a nectarine was produced* 

 till the very intelligent gardener, Mr. Cullen, took up the 

 trees, formed a substratum of lime rubbish, firmly beaten 

 down, and covered it with soil not deeper than 1 ft., then re- 

 planted the trees, and never since cropped or even dug 

 the ground about their roots. Mr. Cullen has now short 

 well-ripened wood, and good crops of fruit every year. In 

 the garden at St. Mary's Isle there is a vinery which never 

 fails bearing an abundant crop ; and here the border has not 

 been dug for thirty years, but only covered with rotten leaves 

 and rotten dung, underneath which Mr. Nisbet showed us a 

 web of fibres rising to the surface, and feeding on it. Plant- 

 ing standard fruit trees in kitchen-gardens is a bad practice, 

 and generally prevalent : the vegetables or small fruits grown 

 below them can never attain a proper size and flavour ; and 

 the culture of the soil, required to produce these vegetables 

 and small fruits, is as injurious to the standard trees as crop- 

 ping borders is to the wall trees. Dwarfs and espaliers along 

 the walks are less objectionable than standards in the com- 

 partments : but how seldom do we find such trees bearing 

 good crops! The cause is in the digging and cropping. 

 Standard fruit trees are generally best planted in an orchard 

 by themselves ; the ground very slightly cropped, till the trees 



