JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



No pleasing intricacies intervene. 

 No artful wildness to perplex the scene. 

 Grove nods at grove, each alley has its brother 

 And half the platform just reflects the other. 



So that the sarcastic old gentleman when it was said to him, 

 " Shall we go and have a look at the garden ? " was justified in 

 his reply, " Oh, thanks ; I can see it here." 



I love best the old English arrangement — clumps of trees and 

 shrubs, bordered by flowers of diverse shapes and at irregular 

 intervals, so that you can have a continual change of form and 

 colour, light and shade — a garden where we may read or think 

 in unobserved and unmolested peace ; in which children may play 

 at hide-and-seek, without being as conspicuous as Royal Charles 

 represented on the sign of the public-house in his crown and 

 robes about half as large as the oak ; a garden in which lovers 

 can gaze upon each other, with other signs of endearment, with- 

 out being pestered by brothers and sisters who are watching from 

 the window of the house. 



If his garden is large, I would advise the young gardener to 

 choose from his general collection some flower which seems to 

 succeed more than others in his soil, and to make them a 

 speciality in his garden, Roses, for example, or Lilies, Iris, 

 Narcissus, Carnations. At all events let me advise him to 

 cultivate most largely those flowers which thrive with him best, 

 and not to persevere with those which assure him by continual 

 failure that they dislike either the site or the soil. Few spectacles 

 are more depressing than the skeletons and cripples which we 

 sometimes see in a garden — the Rhododendron, for example, 

 " lank and brown," moribund in a cold clay soil. 



If he has a few large stones within reach, let him order my 

 friend William Robinson's little book on Alpine flowers and make 

 himself a rock-garden. In no other form can he obtain so 

 large a delight from so small a space. If he 



Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, 

 One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, 

 When he called the flowers all blue and golden, 

 Stars, which on earth's firmament do shine, 



here he would behold a constellation. Surely the rock-garden, 

 if it be well cared for and kept from weeds and slugs, is a fasci- 

 nation to the florist in the sweet spring-tide. It is 



A miniature of loveliness, all grace, 

 Summed up and clothed in little. 



