In My Vicarage Garden 



had been very little done before by bamboo- 

 growers, but when we recollect that bamboos are 

 only gigantic grasses, and that on account of 

 their gigantic character they are very exhaustive 

 to the soil, the reason of the thing is at once 

 acknowledged. 



But to return to my imaginary friend. If he 

 was laying out a garden of some extent for the 

 first time, in which he was anxious to grow good 

 trees and shrubs, and was in despair at the mono- 

 tonous way in which nurserymen contract to lay out 

 gardens, planting them chiefly with laurels or with 

 any other shrub of which they happened to have 

 a supply, then I should say that an afternoon at 

 Kew would give him many good hints. There is 

 sold at the gates a plan of the garden, by which 

 it will be seen that while shrubs of all sorts are 

 dotted about the garden in every direction, yet 

 that there are many large families of which the 

 different species are collected together in near 

 neighbourhoods, so that the visitor can decide not 

 only what is the best species in itself, but also — 

 which is of more practical consequence — the best 

 for his immediate purposes. Thus in one part 

 there is a large collection of hollies, all separately 

 named ; in another, a collection of maples, much 

 enriched of late years by the Japanese maples ; 

 in another, a collection of Berberis, many of them 

 very beautiful ; in other parts are collections of 

 heaths, cratcegus, roses in their many species, 

 mostly single, brambles, spiraea, honeysuckles, ribes, 

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