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GARDENER'S MAGAZINE, 



FEBRUARY, 1836. 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



Art. I. Remarks on improvmg the Approa<ch Road to a small 

 Villa iKhich is nolo {Nov, 1835) undergoing Alteration. By the 

 Conductor. 



The following remarks referring to the plan (Jig. 4.), writ- 

 ten on the occasion of our being consulted professionally, we 

 think it may be useful to publish (of course without naming 

 either party or place), as a specimen of the manner in which we 

 would recommend young gardeners to prepare and arrange their 

 reasons when proposing alterations to their employers ; as the 

 very endeavour to do this will be of the greatest service to them. 

 These remarks may also serve as a hint to the employers of land- 

 scape-gardeners and architects, to require a reason for every thing 

 which these artists may suggest. Nothing is more common 

 among professional men, whether architects, landscape-painters, 

 or landscape-gardeners, when they object to any thing or recom- 

 any thing, to say that it is in bad or in good taste, without ex- 

 plaining why it is so ; but dicta of this kind are worth nothing 

 in point of reason or instruction, and they ought never to be ac- 

 cepted by either employers or the public. There is just as much 

 room for reasoning in matters of taste, as there is in matters of 

 common sense ; and that taste for which a reason cannot be as- 

 signed by the person possessing it, and such a reason, too, as can 

 be understood by those who can understand reasoning on any 

 other subject, cannot be depended on as either just or correct. 

 We would also strongly recommend the reasons for alterations, 

 improvements, or new creations, both in architecture and land- 

 scape-gardening, to be given by the artist in writing. This has 

 always been our practice (however imperfect our earlier re- 

 marks or treatises may have been), from the time that we first 

 made a plan for laying out a small garden in Leith Walk, in 

 1803, to this present Novem.ber, 1835, when we gave in a copy 

 of what is printed below. 



Vol. XII. — No. 71. f 



