CURRENT GARDEN LORE. 



251 



Garden Craft. — Occasionally we meet some curious incongruity is mere childishness. From the same paper 

 relics of the old artificial style in landscape-gardening. we also reproduce a view in the gardens of Elvaston 

 In describing a noted garden in England .Gardeners' castle showing clipped yews, as a third example of this 

 Magazine says: Beyond the rose-garden is the maze, kind of curious antiquated taste in ornamentation. 



Forethought of Gardening. — 



Very early peas generally do well on 

 light, sandy soil and yield a nice early 

 crop. Late peas on the same soil 

 would be almost sure to fail. Radishes 

 do best on very light soil, and are 

 almost certain failures on a very heavy 

 one. Strawberries are at their best 

 on neither the one nor the other ; give 

 them a light, sandy loam with lots of 

 manure and good care, and they yield 

 bountifully. The planting must be 

 so arranged that the succession of 

 crops will follow each other without 

 confusion or interference. Land as 

 valuable as a good market-garden 

 ought to be is too valuable to rest 

 with a single crop in a year. The 

 question of rotation of the crops must 

 be carefully considered if one expects 

 to make his land do anything near its 

 best. — Practical Farmer. 



Simple Botanical Apparatus. 

 My apparatus consists of the foUow- 

 CLiPPED Yews in the Gardens of Elvaston Castle. j^^g ^^^^^^ cheaply obtained im- 



■which, like the garden on the western side of the mansion, plements and appliances; A trowel for deep-rooted 

 serves to remind us of the taste of our forefathers so far plants ; a press, consisting of the top of a table, news- 

 as it influenced the arrangement of the grounds round papers, two books and a stone; and for mounting, a bot- 

 the dwellings of the wealthy. This is an 

 excellent example of the labyrinth, so 

 popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, its interest being materially en- 

 hanced by its great age. The length is 

 174 feet and the width 108 feet, and the 

 hedges are of yew, those on the out- 

 side being four feet six inches through, 

 and those inside are three feet wide. 

 Gardeners'' Chronicle also gives some 

 examples of this old taste for artificiality. 

 One illustration here reproduced gives a 

 view in the gardens at Levens, West- 

 moreland. It would b e vandalism, 

 indeed, to destroy so fine an example of 

 a style no longer fashionable; but it 

 would be grotesque folly to copy it in any 

 modern garden. We cannot appreciate 

 shrubs clipped and tortured into th^ 

 semblance of birds or beasts, or any of 

 the quaint conceits of the old practi- 

 tioners of the topiary art ; we cannot 

 conceive that this practice is defensible 

 on any score whatever ; as well make a 



cannon of glass or a statue in soap as carve out of foliage tie of glue, a pen-knife and — a hair-pin ! With these sim- 

 forms utterly unsuitable for the purpose. Contrast is pie helps much pleasurable work maybe done. — Miss 

 allowable, and of ten agreeable in a garden, but deliberate JM. P. Williams, in Popular Science News. 



Clipped Yews in a Garden at Levens, England. 



