178 



PARKS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS. 



lections of plants^ and for lawns to be decorated more 

 or less with ornamental slirnbs and showy annual and 

 perennial flowers- Lawns are seldom well managed in 

 botanic gardens. They often exhibit the dotting system 

 in its perfection^ or are intersected by a multitude of 

 paltry figures crowded with herbaceous plants. We are 

 not disposed to recommend that these gardens should 

 be laid out generally for lawn-scenery properly so called : 

 the space within them is too valuable to admit of that 

 system as a whole ; but the introduction of one or two 

 lawns of moderate extent wiU relieve the prevalent ap- 

 pearance of crowdings and will soften the effect of that 

 multiplicity of figuring and dotting which, it must be 

 owned, cannot be wholly avoided. 



Another difficulty in the botanic garden, which is 

 often imperfectly overcome, and sometimes is not even 

 attempted to be obviated, is to be found in the proper 

 management of the collections of herbaceous plants. 

 As these require a considerable space of ground, they 

 are frequently overcrowded. Perhaps their most general 

 efiect is baldness and monotony — an effect not lessened 

 by the colour of the earth, and those ranks and files of 

 painted tallies bearing the names, in winter more con- 

 spicuous than the plants themselves. When these col- 

 lections are arranged in lines, with alleys of bare earth 

 between them, the result is extreme baldness, and the 

 plants seldom thrive, as the bare and generally weedless 

 soil, reflecting the glare of summer light and heat upon 

 them, aftbrds a home as unlike the natural habitats of 

 most as possible. When the lines are waved, with grass 

 alleys intervening, the general eflfect is ameliorated, and 

 in winter the ground has partially the semblance of a 

 lawn. When the natural system of arrangement is 



