Errors in laying out and managing Flo'wer-Gardens. 255 



Art. VIII. On certain prevailing Errors in laying out and managing 

 Flower-Gardens. By Alexander Forsyth. 



It has often struck me with astonishment, to see, in some of 

 our first-rate gardens, the meagre stock of what may be called 

 midsummer flowers. Now, there are in many families great 

 sums expended on gardens for the sole purpose of having one 

 grand display of conspicuous flowers during the fine weather 

 from midsummer till the middle of October ; and as this class 

 of families happily comprehends many of our best friends and 

 patrons of gardening, viz. the wealthier merchants, and the 

 members of parliament, who, tired with the dust and din of 

 London, leave the court and the counting-house to inhale the 

 uncontaminated air of heaven in the quiet loveliness of their 

 flower-gardens ; and as many of their gardens are really not 

 worth while going out of one's way to see, for reasons for which 

 gardeners are not altogether and at all times culpable ; and as I 

 hope that I have traced the evil (at least in many cases, and in 

 some measure) to its origin, my humble efforts shall not be 

 wanting to eradicate this fruitful cause of endless discontent and 

 disappointment between the employed and their employers. 



Leaving out one insurmountable difficulty over which the 

 practical man has often no control, I mean where the employer 

 grasps at more gardening than he is willing to allow the means 

 to manage properly, I come to another which I am persuaded, if 

 it were placed in proper light, the majority of employers would 

 admit and allow to be removed, I mean the incongruous mix- 

 tures and unmeaning medleys that are every where to be seen in 

 gardens, and to which even Loudon himself hath, in some in- 

 stances, lent his aid ; for I have somewhere seen in works bearing 

 the well known J. C. L., something like the following, " We 

 would admit of no herbaceous plant under deciduous and ever- 

 green shrubs except spring bulbs." Now, with all due de- 

 ference, I beg leave to remind you that you have laboured, and 

 that successfully, to show the world that the day is gone by 

 when a good deep raw-edged gulf should mark the boundary 

 between the clean-swept lawn and the clump of rhododendrons, 

 and instead of allowing their graceful forms to kiss the sombre 

 clod, you have spread as it were a carpet around them. Now, 

 would you have snowdrop and narcissus springing up in your 

 grass ? Adjoining the moss-clad walk in the wood you may 

 plant them, where their foliage may remain unshorn till the 

 bulbs are ripe and the herbage yellowed in the summer sun; 

 there without labour they will remain comely and in character, 

 like a brightly tinted halo thrown around the sphere of flowers ; 

 and, as their " heyday of blossoming" is frequently inhos- 

 pitable, we look upon them as martyrs, mikUamid their misery, 



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