"36 Strictures on layincj out Flower -Gardens, 



Art. XIII. Remarks on one of the Designs in the Article " On 

 Laying out and Planting the Lawn, Shrubbery, and Flower- 

 Garden." By W. P. Ayres. 



I HAVE just been reading over your article " On Laying out and Planting the 

 Lawn, Shrubbery, and Flower-Garden," p. 54-7., and, though you have cen- 

 sured poor gardeners rather severely, I must confess that, as designers or even 

 carriers out of plans for lawns or flower-gardens, we are by no means unde- 

 serving of censure. You might, however, in passing, as well have stated that 

 many who profess and call themselves " landscape-gardeners " are equally 

 ignorant of the true principles of design, as a walk through nine tenths of 

 the gardens in the country, both public and private, will most fully testify ; 

 and I think you yourself could not name half a dozen professional landscape- 

 gardeners in the United Kingdom whom you would undertake to pronounce 

 men who really understood their profession as an art of design and taste. 

 A gardener of reputed eminence, at present intrusted with the formation of an 

 extensive garden, when interrogated by a non-professional friend of mine as 

 to the principles of constructing plant and forcing-houses, replied, " Oh, it is 

 merely a matter of taste :" and, while men in high places disseminate such 

 notions, it is not to be wondered at, that landscape-gardening and garden 

 architecture, as an art and a science, should make but very lethargic progress. 



The greatest barrier to the progress of improvement in landscape-gardening 

 is the want of taste among the aristocracy and gentry; and, until they are 

 somewhat better informed as to the principles of the science, so as to be 

 capable of understanding plans that are laid before them for their approval, it 

 is nonsense to expect much in the way of improvement from gardeners. 

 But so soon as they shall require original designs adapted to the local pecu- 

 liarities of the situation they are intended to embelUsh, then will they have a 

 race of gardeners capable of doing things properly. At present the rage is 

 for imitation "; and if a gentleman requires a new flower-garden, or to alter 

 an old one, he does not think of having an original design, but takes a 

 pattern from some celebrated garden, as, for instance, Dropmore, Chatsworth, 

 Woburn, or some such place ; or, what is worse, collects a number of fancy- 

 formed beds from various places, and huddles them together, with about as 

 much taste or system as an infant would display in forming a map of the 

 world. Thus it is no uncommon thing to see a Swiss cottage with a geo- 

 metrical flower-garden, and a terrace in the front ; or a splendid Italian villa 

 surrounded by an irregular garden of common trees, shrubs, and herbaceous 

 plants. If T wished for an example of really bad taste, I would point to the 

 flower-garden at Wimbledon, figured in the Suburban Gardener, p. 162. [see 

 p. 650., in which we say, " in point of general design, this flower-garden has 

 nothing to recommend it"]; indeed it is almost inconceivable how such an abor- 

 tion could have been jumbled together. The flower-gardens in the Horticul- 

 tural Gardens at Chiswick, though of a diiFerent character, are nearly as bad, 

 and no man could group them so as to make them look well. In making 

 these remarks it is not my wish to give offence ; but it may be fearlessly 

 stated that the gardens in question are at least half a ceatury behind the 

 spirit of the age. 



Again, in the gardens at Hewell, noticed with considerable commendation 

 and eclat in the Gardener''s Chronicle for 1843, p. 663., a few weeks back, 

 there area splendid fountain and flower-garden at the bottom of an old stone 

 quarry, and a grass garden in the front of the conservatory ; two examples of 

 perhaps as bad taste as could well be conceived. Had they placed the foun- 

 tain and dressed flower-garden in front of the conservatory, and consigned 

 the grasses to the company of the other British plants in the rock garden, I 

 think they would have been much more appropriately arranged. The water- 

 dipping willow at Chatsworth was always a monstrosity in my estimation, and 



