Introduction. 



xliii. 



bay, some silvery foliage would have served, such as stachys, woundwort, gnaphaUum, 

 catsfoot or cerastium. The idea is well worthy of adoption in modern walled 

 gardens, where the recesses could be arranged to suggest some device appropriate to 

 the owner of the garden, whether heraldic in character or marking some hobby or 

 special interest. 



Fig. xxxiii. reminds us of the advantage of a wall backing a flower-border, but 

 care needs to be taken lest the roots of the hedge should appropriate to them- 

 selves all the virtue of the manure provided for the flowers. This can be done by 

 cutting back the hedge roots, so that they do not trespass on the border, or by 

 building a rough underground wall to separate the two territories. In the 

 example illustrated in Fig. xxxiii. the border might, with advantage, have been 

 wider ; it was, no doubt, made narrow in order that the path should go straight 

 to the doorway at the end. It is one of the many cases in garden arrange- 

 ment where the 

 course that is 

 easiest is chosen 

 rather than one 

 that is more 

 thoughtful and 

 less obvious. 

 Where neither 

 wall nor hedge is 

 suitable, there is 

 the device of treil- 

 lage, which takes 

 the least room in 

 point of width of 

 any kind of 

 planted fence. 

 This may be either 

 of the carefully 

 designed and con- 

 structed kind as 

 at Ravensbury 

 (Fig. xxxiv.), 

 where it fitly 

 a c c o m p a nies a 



house of eighteenth century character, or it may be of simple oak posts and laths, 

 as at Orchards (Fig. xxxvii.). Here it is in the walled kitchen garden. Espalier 

 fruit trees are trained against it, and it forms the back on each side of a double 

 flower-border that runs right through the middle of the garden. The posts, standing 

 five feet out of the ground, are set seven and a-half feet apart, and are connected 

 by a top rail, two by one and a-quarter inches, mortised into the posts. The end 

 posts are four inches square ; the intermediate ones three inches. The laths, one 

 and a-half inches wide by half an inch thick, are set square at a distance apart of 

 eleven inches from centre to centre. 



Not the least merit of treillage is that it gives opportunity for the inexpensive 

 construction of all sorts of architectural fancies. The garden shown in Figs, i., xxxv. 

 and xxxvi. is an admirable example of its possibilities in this direction. Fig. xxxv. 

 shows a broad, elliptical treillage arch, which forms a most attractive entrance to the 



FIG. XXXIV. — TREILLAGE AT RAVENSBURY MANOR. 



