ENCLOSING^ LAYING OUT. 



17 



bound and lying upon the table, which is five in length, and three 

 in breadth ; that is to say, a piece of ground, to resemble it in form, 

 would contain five feet in length for every three feet in breadth. I 

 am about to recommend a garden to be wailed in, in the first 

 place, and then surrounded with a hedge. The dime sions within 

 the walls I recommend to be (casting away a trifling fraction) two 

 hundred and fifteen feet long, and one hundred and thirty-two feet 

 wide ; that is to say, thirteen rods long, at sixteen feet and a half 

 to the rod, and eight rods wide, the area being one hundred and 

 four square rods ; sixteen rods short of three quarters of an acre. 



29. The walls (of the construction of which I shall speak pre- 

 sently) would be half thrown away in point of horticultural utility, 

 unless there were a piece of garden ground all round them on the 

 outside, and that piece of garden ground protected by an efi^ectual 

 fence. Of this fence I shall also presently speak ; but, to con- 

 clude the subject of dimensions, the piece of ground, between the 

 wall and the outer fence, ought to be a clear rod wide, which would 

 add forty-two rods of ground to the hundred and foui enclosed 

 within the walls, making, in the whole, of garden ground, a hun- 

 dred and fifty-six square rods, being fourteen square rods short of 

 a statute acre. I know that some noblemen and gentlemen find 

 twice or three times this quantity of land insufficient for supplying 

 their houses, though in each house there is but one family ; but 

 if these noblemen and gentlemen were first to take a look, at any 

 time of the year, at a market garden in the parish of Fulham, and 

 then go immediately and take a look over their own gardens, they 

 would clearly perceive the cause of the insufficiency of their own. 

 In the former, they would see that there was not a single square 

 yard of ground tenanted by weeds, cabbage-stumps, or plants of 

 lettuce, and other things, suifered to stand and go uselessly to 

 seed ; and, in the latter, they would find all these in great abund- 

 ance, and large spaces of ground left, apparently as if of no use at 

 all. The quantity of kitchen vegetables which a hundred and forty- 

 six rods of ground is capable of producing in the course of a year 

 would astonish any man not accustomed to observe and to cal- 

 culate upon the subject. IMany a gardener, with a smaller quan- 

 tity of land, sends a hundred cart-loads of produce to the market 

 in the course of a year, exclusive of plums, cherries, currants, 

 gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberries. To speak of cabbages, 

 for instance, a square rod of ground will contain about a hundred ; 



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