Gaj-dens of Herefordshire. 217 



trees, pears and apricots especially, throw out a superabundance 

 of barren shoots instead of forming blossom-buds. Gardeners 

 are now beginning to see the advantages which shallow^ well- 

 drained fruit-tree borders possess over the deep pits recom- 

 mended by most gardening authors, whose directions have in 

 too many cases been implicitly followed in this matter, however 

 at variance with common sense or every-day experience. Per- 

 haps no circumstance is more inimical to fertility in fruit trees 

 than excess of moisture at their roots ; and this can be corrected 

 only by the proper constitution of the medium in which they 

 find their food. 



Coals are very dear in Herefordshire, consequently forcing is 

 not much practised generally. At Garnstone, the hot-houses 

 consist of two vineries, one peach-house, and a fig-house. The 

 vineries have lately been reconstructed, and a new border made, 

 and the plants in them are now growing and bearing well. The 

 fig-house is also of recent erection : it is wide and low, having 

 two rows of bushy plants growing in the border inside the house, 

 and others nailed against the back wall. Mr. Smith considers 

 the Brunswick a coarse-fleshed fig; and he prefers a middle- 

 sized pale green variety (the name of which is not known) to all 

 others, for richness and delicacy of flesh. Large trees of this 

 variety formerly existed at Foxley, the seat of Sir Robert Price, 

 Bart., M.P. ; but these have lately been destroyed. Besides the 

 hot-houses above mentioned, there is a small green-house in the 

 flower-garden, but it is so badly situated as to be almost useless. 

 The Garnstone scarlet strawberry was raised at this place by the 

 late Mr. Andrew Henderson, who was gardener there many 

 years. 



Foxley. — Two or three miles south of Garnstone is Foxley, 

 once the residence of the late Sir Uvedale Price, Bart., the ce- 

 lebrated author of An Essay on the Picturesque, &c., and now in 

 the occupation of his son Sir Robert. It is well situated in a nar- 

 row dale, formed by two converging ridges of wood-covered hills, 

 which range nearly east and west, and unite at a short distance 

 above the house; the view, therefore, is necessarily confined, 

 except towards the east, in which direction it stretches over a 

 wide expanse of beautiful country. Extensive alterations of the 

 house and its appendages have been in progress several years ; 

 and, so far as I could learn, the place is now about as far from 

 completion as when the improvements were first begun, the 

 greater part of the time having been spent in undoing on one 

 day that which had been done the day before. As an instance, 

 a wall, intended for the support of a grass terrace, which extends 

 along the south and east, fronts, has already been twice removed 

 from its original situation, and it is thought that it is not yet 

 permanently fixed. These patchwork proceedings, by which so 

 much unnecessary expense will be incurred, and, most likely, 



