312 CULINARY GARDENING. BOOK I. 



of commonly cultivated kinds, or annuals, utility is not much 

 frustrated, and the effect is not strikingly incongruous. But 

 when rare or uncommon sorts are introduced, they require such 

 careful and diversified culture, that the general use of garden 

 ground, and the pulverization of the soil for the growth of the 

 trees in the borders, cannot be sufficiently attended to ; and 

 with regard to beauty or taste, there is such a contrast between 

 the state and appearance of a wild plant grown only to amuse 

 the botanist, and the monstrosity of cabbages, turnips, fruits, 

 and even roses, lilies, and pinks, that in place of producing 

 variety or harmony, which moderate contrasts will do, it pro- 

 duces discord, and thence excites disgust. 



There was once in this country a kind of gardens where 

 beauty, grandeur, and use, were mingled in a way at present 

 unknown, or nearly forgotten. In them terraces, green slopes, 

 ballustrades, stone steps, ponds, statues, arbours, high hedges, 

 and other architectural and aquatic decorations, were mingled 

 with fruit-trees, flowers, herbs, and culinary vegetables. The 

 union of so many different things was certainly in a high degree 

 unnatural ; but it was so fully avowed, and was so completely 

 blended and harmonized by the appearance of great art in 

 every part of the garden, and by the immediate vicinity of the 

 house itself, that they must have produced a whole agreeable 

 to good principles ; and as pleasing to connoisseurs at the time, 



