76 



CASSELL'S POPULAB GARDENING. 



whole, the best stock for Teas ; that the Manetti is 

 admirable for Hybrid Perpetuals. Eoses on this last 

 stock are also earlier than on any other, with the 

 exception of the Gloire de Dijon, which is one of the 

 e uiiest as well as very best stocks for early Eoses. 

 But a halt must be called, lest the region of fact be 

 forsaken for that of fancy ; as the question of special 

 s:;ocks for particular Eoses is as yet in a nebulous 

 state, and what is here stated is ahead rather than 

 s;mply abreast of what is absolutely proved on the 

 subject. The time may probably come when, instead 

 of being dependent on wilding Dogs, the art of 

 raising and selecting Eose stocks will have been so 

 perfected, and their natural or acquired affinities so 

 thoroughly understood and appreciated, that almost 

 oveiy leading tyj)e of Eose will have its own stock, 

 and thus be mated to the foster-mother that suits it 

 best. 



" Tills IS an Art 

 Which does mend Nature ; change it rather j but 

 The Art itself is Nature." 



GAEDEN WALKS AND EOADS. 



BOADS AND LARGER WALKS. 



TO make a garden without providing sufficient 

 means of ingress and egress, is like hanging 

 pictures in a cellar with only one narrow staircase 

 leading down into its dingy light. The pictures 

 may be gems of art, but they cannot be seen to 

 any advantage, nor visited with any ease or com- 

 fort. It is just so with not a few gardens. They 

 are full of gems of art and fine examples of natm-al 

 beauty, but they cannot be ^dsited with any pleasure, 

 unless during exceptionally fine weather. Even in 

 summer, when the gardens are full of beauty, a pass- 

 ing shower or day's rain renders the walks that lead 

 to them soft and miry, and at times veritable sloughs 

 of despond, from which ladies have been only too 

 glad to escape, leaving their shoes behind them. 



Admitting that such very bad walks are rare, 

 it is to be hoped that for all future time they 

 will become impossible. A demesne without good 

 roads, as a garden without good walks, is shorn 

 of fully one-half its charms.' Facile and cleanly 

 access to and return from house and garden are 

 vital factors to their full enjojTnent. Much has 

 been said and written about the line of beauty 

 in both, and that we will endeavour to illustrate 

 alike by precept and example ; but the direction is 

 of far less moment than the quality. It is very 

 much a matter of taste whether walks or roads 

 should be straight or curved, stiff or meandering, 

 offensively formal or softly melting into flowing lines 

 of beauty ; but it is an affair of absolute necessity 



that they should be hard and dry, and inadhesive in 

 all weathers. Even the Garden of Eden would have 

 failed to give j)leasure had oui' first parents had. to 

 walk ■ through its blissful bowers handicapped with 

 half a stone of sludge on either fuot. 



The radical fault in road and walk making consists 

 in trusting to the material employed rather than to the 

 proper preparation of the ground as the basis of per- 

 fection in either : because stones, brickbats, builder's 

 refuse, burnt earth, gravel, are hard and porous, and 

 a foot or more of these is used to form good roads or 

 walks, therefore these must continue good and dry. 

 This popular error has caused more failures in this 

 useful branch of civil engineering than all other 

 fallacies put together. To give another extreme 

 example to illustrate our point : try these hard ma- 

 terials on a swamp ; they would simply disappear, 

 like the mountain of earth that George Stephenson 

 tipped into Chat Moss before it would carry his rails 

 or carriages across. In a lesser degree, but by virtue 

 of the operation of similar laws, millions of tons of 

 road and walk materials are being lost or utterly 

 ruined every year through resting on wet bottoms. 

 The process of deterioration is slower, but equally 

 sure as if the stones were cast into a morass ; they 

 simply sink into the mire ; or, by vii'tue of the con- 

 stant filtration of earthy j)articles from the upper 

 strata of the road or walk, or the passage of rain- 

 water, the mass of the road materials become assimi- 

 lated to the character and consistency of mud. 



The Foundation. — Another almost equally 

 common and mischievous fallacy is that the materials 

 are, in fact, the road, and bear the weight of the 

 traffic ; on the contrary, these are so much dead weight 

 added to the foundation of the road; that is, the 

 earth. It is the latter, not the former, that carries 

 the entire burden of the traffic, whether carriage 

 or jjedestrian, plus the weight of the rubbish, 

 stone, gravel, employed in making and maintaining 

 the roads. Hence the vital importance of strength- 

 ening the foundation of our roads and walks before 

 j^roceeding to make them. Just as the stability 

 of our noblest buildings depends on the solidity 

 and massiveness of their foundations, so also does 

 the excellency and dirrability of our roads and 

 walks. As to mass of - base, we have a sufficiency, 

 for the wide area of garden or demesne is at om- 

 disposal. But we may add to the durability and 

 buttress the solidity of our base in two ways : by 

 intercejDting the surface water from above, and 

 cutting off the rising water from below. The first 

 is done by as nearly as possible rendering our road 

 materials waterproof, and so placing surface drains 

 as to remove quickly any excess of surface water 

 that may lodge on the sui'face. Both of these, how- 



