4 
THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
ot the home counties. We have other pieces much more 
favourably situated, but we are bound to say of these adjuncts 
to the home garden that we obtain from them a great variety 
and abundance of vegetables and fruits of the finest quality, 
the result simply of suitable management. In what the 
suitable management consists will be explained as we proceed ; 
our object in referring to these gardens is merely to indicate 
at starting that we do not for our own use possess gardens 
representative of the essential primary principles that we have 
enumerated above. In all practical matters there is a com- 
promise of some sort to be accomplished, and hence, in 
working out a theory or a scheme, allowance must be made 
for friction, the defects of material, and human fallibility. 
It is well, however, to keep in mind all that is required, for 
much may be done by the exercise of skill and patience to 
remove or modify the various impediments to success that will 
have to be encountered as we go along. Whatever the soil 
or situation, the “laying out” should be a very simple matter. 
It may be prudent to plant a shrubbery and intersect it with 
winding walks and flower borders on one or on all sides of the 
kitchen garden. But whatever the kind of boundary taste or 
convenience may suggest, we must have rectangular plots, and 
symmetrical angular divisions where the work of the kitchen 
garden is to be carried on, and the amateur who enters upon 
the business with no experience to fall back upon, may be 
content for a time with grass walks or narrow ways marked 
with a few inches of coal ashes, and by the aid of these carry 
on the work until a definite idea is arrived at as to the most 
convenient and serviceable method of settling the configura- 
tion of the ground. In taking an old garden, you take the 
system with it, and generally speaking, it will be well to adapt 
operations to that system, even if it be a bad one, rather than 
to attempt a revolution, for that is sure to prove a costly 
business. Before altering an old garden, a prudent man will 
consider the cost, and the probability that it is better adapted 
to the locality, and to the circumstances of its owner than at 
first appears. At all events our advice to the amateur who 
takes a garden ready made is, make the best of it, and be in 
no haste to make important alterations, for they will cost 
money, and interrupt the work of production, and when 
accomplished may prove to be alterations only and not im- 
provements. 
