520 Notes on Gardens and Country Seats : — 



dry situation, and not surrounded by trees or shrubs, as is too 

 often the case : it has a kitchen, back kitchen, and parlour on 

 the ground floor, and three good bed-rooms over. Nine 

 gardener's houses in ten are rendered unheaUhy by being 

 placed behind the hot-houses in damp situations ; by being, 

 when detached, closely surrounded by trees or shrubs ; or by 

 having the bed-rooms on the ground floor. Nothing can be 

 a greater mistake on the part of masters, than to suppose that 

 servants can do their duty when not rendered thoroughly 

 comfortable. 



A Villa between Gunnersbury and Brentford has a kitchen- 

 garden which faces the road. The coping to the walls of 

 this garden is formed by a vine trained along the upper edge 

 of the wall in the manner v^^hich Mr. Gorrie (p. 464.) recom- 

 mends to be done with the Ayrshire rose. 



Mr. Bonalds's Ntirsery, Brentford. — In the shop there were 

 two handsome models of heath and moss houses, made by two 

 young men of Stirling, candidates for employment in this way 

 on a large scale. The}' were brought into notice by Messrs. 

 Drummond, the patriotic seedsmen of that town, and we 

 hope they will be employed by some wealthy amateur in 

 England. We noticed specimens of twenty different sorts of 

 peas, the names of some of which we had never before heard 

 of; a proof, as we have elsewhere observed, that gardeners 

 ought always to give a certain licence to their seedsmen, in 

 order that they may have every new thing sent to them. We 

 also found, by a prospectus, that the large and handsome con- 

 servatory (Vol. V. p. 268. fig. 55.), erected by the spirited 

 plumber and glazier, Mr. Roberts of Oswestry, is to be dis- 

 posed of by raffle, as soon as 800 subscribers of a guinea each 

 can be found. This sum, we are assured, and we can readily 

 believe it, is less than one half of what it cost. The nursery 

 at Brentford, and at the four other places where Mr. Ronalds 

 has grounds, is everywhere in the very best order, and in no 

 season have the articles been better grown ; in few, indeed, so 

 well. Besides fruit trees, Mr. Ronalds has always been cele- 

 brated for raising garden seeds, and especially the seeds of 

 flowers. We saw immense quantities of the ice plant, Sal- 

 piglossis, ^c\\\ziv[\\huSiPetu7iia, BrowalhV/, balsams, &c., in pots 

 in the green-houses for ripening seeds. Among the shrubby 

 plants in the open ground finely in flower were, Ceanothus cse- 

 rCileus; a hedge of rose acacias; scarlet coluteas, both in flower 

 and seed, at once beautiful and singular; Sollya heterophylla; 

 and a very handsome plant of Aralia spinosa with a branchy 

 top, and its broad leaves forming horizontal lines like one of 

 Martin's cedars. There is here the best stock which we 



