66 



THE CENTURY BOOK OF GARDENING. 



In many English gardens, even where great opportunities exist, the grass walk is a 

 thing unseen, though so delightful to walk upon and a delicate setting to flowers grouped by its 

 margin. Immediately near to the house a grass walk is not advisable, because of its dampness 

 in wet and showery weather, but away from the house, where walks run into the woodland, 

 skirt some mixed border, or intersect shrubberies, the grass drive and walk are grateful to the eye 

 and restful in every way. Grass walks are as readily made as the lawn. Often they exist 

 naturally, or may be taken from the surrounding verdure. The beautiful grass walk leading 

 from the Palm House at Kew was once hard gravel. Now a wide walk of velvety turf is there 

 which does not offend, and creeps back into the surrounding woodland. Occasional cutting is 

 necessary, of course, but grass walks entail less labour than many suppose, certainly not the 



needless work 

 of weeding and 

 raking, whilst at 

 all times gravel 

 walks are hard 

 and comfortless. 

 The green sward 

 is artistic and 

 agreeable — a 

 cool setting to 

 the mixed border 

 with its wealth 

 of f 1 o w e r s , 

 which, may be, 

 skirts it on 

 either side, with, 

 perhaps, crjm- 

 s o n P e o n i e s 

 tumbling over 

 the margin. In 

 the early sum- 

 mer months one 

 seeks the gar- 

 den, not the 

 terrace garden 

 or formal par- 

 terre, but the 

 shady nooks and 

 Rose - perfumed 

 pergolas and the 

 green grass 

 walks w h i c h 



lead up away to the woodland or lure to delightful retreats, where to put a gravel walk would 

 be akin to sacrilege. For many years, with merely attention to the trees near or plants or 

 shrubs by the margin, the grass walk remains cool and pleasurable, but overhanging boughs 

 and shrub branches must be cut away from time to time to prevent the grass becoming bare 

 from want of sun and air. Many of the gardens of England owe their chief attraction to the 

 velvetv grass walks and drives. Bulwick would not be so fine a place if all the walks were 

 gravel, and the glorious mixed borders would lose their fresh colouring and wonderful effect. 

 Nor would that garden of grass walks — Alton Towers — prove so interesting without its green 

 vistas, fringed with leafy Rhododendrons and many .shrubs. 



A FLOWER-FRINGED GRASS WALK. 



