354 Notes on Gardens at Brighton. 



ficial mount thrown up to shelter the house from the south- 

 west, which is covered with shrubs interspersed with walks; a 

 shrubbery combining a fruit border, which leads to another mount 

 with shrubs and walks ; and a third walk with glades of lawn 

 and groups of shrubs and ornamental trees, which leads to the 

 kitchen-garden and reserve greenhouse and hotbeds. The beds 

 and shrubberies were remarkably well stocked with flowers, 

 among which the China rose, heartsease, wallflower, and Bromp- 

 ton stock were conspicuous ; and under an awning there was a 

 bed of tulips, containing many choice flowers. In short, we 

 were charmed with the beauty and variety of this place, which 

 we visited more than once, and should have wished to have 

 brought away ground plans and sketches for publication, which 

 we hope to do at some other time. 



One point practised here by the gardener, who was not brought 

 up to the profession, though not new, is too much neglected. 

 He always keeps a strong reserve of well-grown bushy wall- 

 flowers in loamy soil or in pots, and whenever any bed becomes 

 naked in the autumn, he fills it with wallflowers, which, being 

 evergreens, have a lively appearance through the winter ; and if 

 the bed is not wanted for other flowers, they make a fine show 

 in April and May, till the beds can be filled with geraniums, 

 verbenas, &c. Many gardeners profess to adopt this plan, but 

 for want of time, or some other cause, neglect it. It ought to be 

 adopted as a rule, that no flower-bed in front of a house should 

 at any time be left naked. It is scarcely necessary to add, that 

 the kinds of evergreens for covering beds in this way should not be 

 confined to the wallflower and the stock, but should be extended 

 to other evergreen herbaceous plants and low shrubs, such as 

 pinks, sweetwilliams, saxifrages, creeping thyme, common thyme, 

 rue, sage, rosemary, periwinkle, tutsan, heaths, box, rhodo- 

 dendron, and all similar plants that may be grown in No. 32 

 pots, or that, when planted in the common soil of the garden, 

 may be taken up with abundance of fibrous roots, so as not to 

 cause them to flag or check their growth. In some cases the plants 

 may be grown in thin beds of rich loamy soil, bottomed with 

 flagstone ; in which case all the roots might be taken up by in- 

 serting the spade between the soil and the flagstone, and taking 

 the plants up in masses, like turves, to be laid down where they 

 are wanted. To grow the plants in pots, however, is perhaps 

 the best mode for all those that have ramose roots, such as the 

 wallflower, stock, &c, using the proper means to prevent the 

 roots from growing far through the bottom of the pot, by giving 

 the pot a twist round occasionally. For saxifrages, pinks, &c, 

 the turf-transplanting mode is perhaps preferable. Where the 

 trouble of keeping a reserve of plants cannot be taken, a reserve 

 of turf ought to be maintained for the same purpose. 



