Arrangement of Flower Gardens, 







BY HENRY PHILIPS, F.R.S. 



When we are too much confined for want of land to delight 

 by the appearance of extent, we should endeavor to please by- 

 beauty; and, where the bounds are too limited to display taste 

 on a large scale, elegance should be associated with neatness. 

 Addison says that there are as many kinds of gardening as of 

 poetry; the makers of parterre and flower gardens he styles the 

 epigrammatists and sonneteers in the art ; contrivers of bowers 

 and grottoes, treillages and cascades, he compares to romance 

 writers ; whilst those who lay out extensive grounds he honors by 

 the title of heroic poets. Thus, to imitate the serpentine wind- 

 ings of large plantations in small gardens, is scarcely less ridicu- 

 lous than to write heroic strains in an epitaph on a cock-robin ; 

 and it discovers an equal want of taste and good judgment, when 

 we see large grounds frittered into the trifling minutiae of a par- 

 terre displaying hearts and diamonds, where nature ought to 

 appear as if at liberty to sport in all her gay luxuriant frolics. 

 Even in the choice of our plants, we should take into considera- 

 tion the extent of our grounds, for large plants in small gardens 

 are like the use of high flown language when improperly selected 

 for familiar subjects. The all-wise Creator, who raised the ce- 

 dar, formed also the smallest moss ; but the former he planted on 

 the mountains of Lebanon, whilst the latter was placed on a peb- 

 ble. From this wise ordinance of nature we should learn to se- 

 lect Flora's miniature beauties for the small parterre, leaving the 

 towering and wide spreading plants to ornament extensive 

 grounds. 



Flowers never appear to so great advantage as when forming 

 a foreground in the shrubbery, or to the borders of woods. In 

 such situations they seem to have planted themselves, as if for 

 the sake of shelter ; whilst the boldness of the trees and shrubs 

 add as much to the delicacy of their blossoms, as the mass of 



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