350 ORNAMENTAL GARDENING, BOOK I. 



is* until the shrubs are so large as to render culture unneces- 

 sary ; the pasture ought to be allowed gradually to encroach 

 among the shrubs and flowers, until at last it wholly cover the 

 surface. After this, the group becomes rough and picturesque ; 

 the flowers still continuing to grow among the shrubs will pro- 

 duce exactly what we see in natural groups ; with this elegant 

 difference, that in place of nettles, thistles, and such gross 

 weeds, which however are as good to the painter as the finest 

 flowers, we shall have narcissus, saxifrage, saponaria, &c. which 

 will be quite in character with the rest of the pleasure-ground, 

 and thrive well among pasture. In planting the shrubs in 

 these groups, the great art is to put them in irregularly ; for 

 though the outline of the ground to be cultivated must, even 

 under the best taste, be somewhat formal, yet the shrubs can 

 always be planted as irregularly as if no outline or form of 

 group existed. This, however, is a thing never done ; for what- 

 ever be the form of the ground which is to be dug, the shrubs 

 are regularly distributed over every part of it :— even when dig- 

 ging is no longer attended to, still none of the shrubs are 

 thinned out, but the whole left a formal, unconnected clump 

 of vegetation ; an appearance as different from the irregular 

 group thickets of nature, as a green hillock is from a rocky pre- 

 cipice. Groups, or rather masses of formal shapes, such as 

 ovals in front of small villas, or basket-work patches upon lawn 



