502 Notes of a Gardening Tour in 1833. 



selves, most deficient in, at the present day, is in what relates to 

 taste in gardening as an elegant art; that is, in the art of laying 

 out and planting pleasure grounds and parks, and keeping them 

 in order afterwards. Even in laying out flower gardens, which 

 may be considered the easiest and simplest part of landscape- 

 gardening, the gardeners of the present day, and their employers, 

 are strikingly deficient. Will any artist, — a painter or an archi- 

 tect for example, — at all acquainted with the general principles of 

 composition in lines and forms, say that there is one flower- 

 garden in a hundred laid out in accordance with these prin- 

 ciples ? 



With respect to trees and shrubs, we would ask any one who 

 has studied, however slightly, the collections in the arboretum of 

 the Horticultural Society's Garden, of Messrs. Loddiges, and 

 Messrs. Buchanan, about London ; and of Mr. Donald, at Gold- 

 worth; Mr. Miller, at Bristol, and those in the Birmingham, Man- 

 chester, and other botanic and horticultural gardens in the 

 country, how it happens that so very few of these trees and 

 shrubs are to be found in gentlemen's pleasure grounds ? To 

 take one genus, for example, Cratse^gus ; how does it happen 

 that in very few pleasure grounds more than three or four sorts 

 are to be seen, while in the arboretums mentioned there are from 

 thirty to fifty sorts, besides varieties ? It cannot be on account 

 of the price, because that of all the sorts is the same; viz. \s 6d. 

 for dwarfs, and 25 6d. for standards. It cannot be owing to the 

 tenderness of the sorts ; because they are all grafted on the com- 

 mon hawthorn, and all, practically speaking, as hardy as that 

 species. 



To what, then, can the absence in our pleasure grounds of so 

 many species of trees and shrubs, which might easily be planted 

 there, be owing ? Simply to the want of knowledge of those 

 trees and shrubs, among gardeners and their employers. It 

 cannot be expected that either should recommend plants that 

 they have never seen, and of the culture of which they cannot 

 know anything, and the names of which they would not know, 

 even if the plants were brought before them. The truth is, 

 that a knowledge of this branch of gardening among gardeners, 

 and a taste for it among their employers, are both as yet in their 

 infancy. 



It appears, then, that the two grand points in which the gar- 

 deners and their employers of the present day are most deficient 

 are, landscape gardening and arboriculture ; and it is to these two 

 points, as we have stated in the preface to our tenth volume, 

 that we intend mainly to direct the attention of our readers, for 

 some time to come. We have done this in our two last volumes ; 

 not, however, as our readers will be aware by referring to their 

 contents, to the neglect of whatever is new and valuable in points 



