4 THE PARKS AND GARDENS OF PARIS. [Chap. I. 



Bacon. There is no indication that any knowledge of the all- 

 important necessity for rariety exists in the minds of those who 

 arrange or manage onr gardens, public or private. And yet this 

 unrecognised variety is the life and soul of true gardening. If 

 people generally could see this clearly, it would lead to the greatest 

 improvement our gardening has ever witnessed. Considering the 

 wealth of the vegetable kingdom, even in northern countries, and 

 the differences in soil, climate, and position which we can command, 

 it is impossible to doubt that our power to produce variety is 

 unlimited. 



The necessity for it is great. "What is the broadly marked 

 defect of the gardening of the present day ? The want of variety. 

 "What is it that causes us to take little more interest in the 

 ordinary displays of " bedding out," which are fostered with so 

 much care, than we do in the bricks that go to make up the face 

 of a house ? Simply the want of that variety of beauty which a 

 walk along a flowery lane or over a wild heath shows us may be 

 afforded by even the indigenous vegetation of one spot in a 

 northern and unfavourable clime. But in our parks we can, if 

 we will, have an endless variety of form, from the Fern to the Oak 

 and the Pine — infinite charms of colour and fragrance, from the 

 Alpine plant to the Lilies of Japan and Siberia. And yet out of 

 all these riches the fashion for a long time has been to select a 

 few kinds which have the property of producing dense masses of 

 their particular colours on the ground, to the almost entire neglect 

 of the nobler and hardier vegetation. The expense of the present 

 system is great, and must be renewed annually, while the end 

 obtained is of the poorest kind. To a person with no idea of the 

 rich variety of vegetation the system may prove sufBcient, and to 

 the professional gardener it is often so ; but to most persons the 

 result attained by the above method is almost a blank. There 

 can be little doubt that numbers are, for this reason unknown to 

 themselves, deterred from taking any interest in the garden ; in 

 fact, it is without meaning to them. 



Eyes everywhere among us are hungering after beauty ; but in 

 our public gardens they, as a rule, look for it in vain ; for the 

 presence of a few things with which they are already as familiar 

 as with the texture of a gravel walk must impress them with an 

 opinion that gardening is the most inane of arts. In books 



