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ON BEAUTY OF LINES IN GARDENING. 
shoots) as early in autumn as possible. They enjoy a free compost of sand, loam, and rotten 
manure, well incorporated, and, being thirsty plants, must at all times, especially when the 
flowers are about expanding, be freely supplied with water or weak liquid manure. And 
although severe stopping and thinning of the young wood early in their season of growth is 
indispensable, the process must not be repeated after the formation of flowers (beyond 
thinning out the buds individually, if very fine flowers are a desideratum), or the season’s 
bloom will be altogether lost. 
The fields and river-banks of Britain teem with many an indigenous flower, whose 
beauty and fragrance could vie, if subjected to cultivation, with many a rare exotic. 
Myosotis palustris, the marsh Forget-me-not, for example, is ever a charming plant (alike 
from the associations inseparable from its name, and the intrinsic modest beauty of its 
flowers), and will bear forcing capitally, if grown in spongy soil, and is in turn denuded of 
all its summer inflorescence. 
Note . — In the removal of undeveloped flowers from plants the season before, i. e. the summer previous to 
forcing in the ensuing winter, such plants as the Rhododendron, of course, are not included. 
ON BEAUTY OF LINES IN GAKDENING. 
By Mr. Kemp, the Parle , Birkenhead. 
Trivial as such a subject may appear at first sight, or to the unobservant, it nevertheless 
lies at the very foundation of all ornamental gardening, and includes every species of 
object that can adorn or disfigure a landscape. To the mind unpractised in analysing the 
effects which are presented to it, combination, colour, variety, and many other things, may 
seem to produce the good or bad impression which an object or a scene excites ; but the 
more prying examiner will not fail to have discovered that form, figure, or, as expressed 
in the heading, “ lines,” play a far more important part in the production of both pleasure 
and annoyance, whether in a garden view, or a more general prospect. 
Hence, in the fashions which, as in almost every other art, have at different times 
swayed the lovers of gardening, the adoption of one particular kind of line, or the blending 
of two kinds, has been the real and principal basis of such changes. Scarcely more than 
a century ago, little was known or seen of any other description of linefin gardening than 
the straight line. This was the governing rule in the formation of all roads, walks, 
plantations, flower-beds, &c. And even plants themselves were cut into hedges or other 
regular shapes in gardens, and seldom left to assume their proper character. 
After this period, and as a somewhat natural revulsion, the serpentine line, which the 
genius of Hogarth had fastened upon as the source of all beauty, came rapidly into vogue ; 
and so violent was the re-action, that many of the noble creations of former ages, in which 
the straight line prevailed, were unsparingly swept away. To this last rage, however, as 
to the first, but all the more speedily in correspondence with the greater recent progression 
of everything relating to taste, there followed in due time a pause; and since the 
beginning of the present century a happy mixture of straight and curved lines, or the 
adoption of either according to the peculiar circumstances of the case, has been the 
recognised rule. 
Perhaps it ought here to be mentioned, that intermediately between the advocates of 
the straight and the curved line, although subsequently to the latter in point of date, 
there sprang up a school, the admirers of what is termed “ the Picturesque,” in which 
broken or irregular lines are the leading features. But such lines are hardly applicable, 
except to rough ground, or water, or vegetation in general ; not being adapted to roads, 
walks, and dressed ground, save to a very limited extent. 
In respect to the two great distinctions in the character of lines, there are even yet 
many who entertain and propound the strongest prejudices, almost or altogether repu- 
diating the use of anything like a straight line, and regarding an angle (especially a right 
