10 GARDENS OF THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES. 



wLoIe^ and an edging of ivy. 



Fig. 



tlie gronnd- 



Ground plan of the small 

 gardens in the Place 

 Napoleon III. 



No gaudy colouring of 

 no expensive temporary 

 decoration with tender costly flowers, 

 but everytMng as green and quiet as 

 could be desired. There are four 

 outlets always open, so that visitors 

 can go in and view the little gardens 

 !^^y v --^^ and the rich pavilions rising behind 



X y their small but sufficient foregrounds 



of verdure. 



Tt is quite common amongst land- 

 scape gardeners and others to lay down 

 as a sort of law, that when we make 

 a garden very near to any kind of ornamental building it is 

 above all things necessary to make it " associate^'' with them 

 — to carry the lines of the building as much as possible into 

 the garden, to make it as angular, and it may be, as brick- 

 dusty as possible, like some recent examples with us ; but 

 these gardens prove the fallacy of this reasoning as regards 

 city gardens and open spaces. There are numbers of men 

 professing taste in designing gardens who would never think 

 of putting anything in this position, surrounded as it is, but 

 some miserable prettinesses, expensive gewgaws in the way of 

 trees in tubs, squirting water, vases, coloured broken gravels, 

 &c. &c., things which in their opinion would harmonize 

 with the work of the architect. But from the simplest 

 materials the most satisfactory results may be obtained, as we 

 see here ; and economical reasons also demand simplicity and 

 permanence in all similar attempts. Ten times the amount 

 might be spent on the space occupied, and perhaps with a 

 far less satisfactory result, while there would of course be 

 so much less force to expend on the ventilation and 

 improvement of the many close and sunless quarters that 

 still remain. The small patches of grass in these gardens 

 are like that everywhere in Paris, deep and vividly green, 

 and fresh at all seasons. They usually give it a top dressing 

 of fine and thoroughly decomposed manure in April, but the 

 secret is, dense and repeated waterings at all seasons when the 

 natural rainfall does not serve to keep it as fresh as June leaves. 



