xxiv 



INTRODUCTION. 



even in places where want of room is not a drawback. If 

 I am not misinformed^ the footway on the land side of the 

 road that is to run alongside the Thames Embankment^ near 

 the Houses of Parliament, is to be sixteen feet wide^ and 

 probably some of that will be taken up with the proposed 

 line of trees. In this magnificent position, to which any 

 in Paris is insignificant_, we are to have a footway that 

 would be considered half a dozen feet too narrow for a 

 second-class boulevard or avenue in Paris ! 



Whether our general scheme of city gardening be 

 changed or not_, we may carry it on with greater economy 

 and much improvement by the adoption of a system re- 

 sembling that of the public nurseries of Paris — as pointed 

 out in the chapter on these. It is impossible to have 

 greater need for economy than exists in this matter of public 

 gardening ; yet the public, in supplying its great London 

 parks, does what hundreds of landed proprietors would be 

 foolish to do, in buying its own evergreens and common 

 nursery stuff! Our parks are already so vast that the 

 sums required for planting must alone form a heavy item, 

 nearly all of which could be saved by a judicious system of 

 public nurseries. At present, too, there is growing up in 

 each park a nursery of glass, an expensive affair — certain 

 to annually increase in cost if a check be not applied. 

 All this is really unnecessary. With a sensible reduction 

 of our expensive system of bedding out, or even as matters 

 are at present arranged, great saving might be effected by 

 having all the tender plants for the park gardens raised in 

 one establishment. If the true and great principle of 

 variety — the advantages of which as applicable to public 

 gardening are treated of at p. 28 — were adopted in earnest, 

 this concentration of the expensive glass-house work would 

 be all the more convenient and advantageous. 



Another great improvement might be effected by a rigid 

 exclusion from the plantings of every subject that is not 

 likely to thrive healthfully under the influences of London 

 smut. Many specimens of fine evergreen trees and shrubs 

 have been planted in our parks during the last few years, 

 though the only fate that awaits them therein is a lingering 



