144 
THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
remove them, or substitute a more wholesome arrangement ; and, 
would he do so, our next neighbours, right and left, “ Cliurl ” 
and “ Curmudgeon,” animated with the traditional Englishman’s 
loVe of privacy, and jealous of innovation, would not permit it. 
It only remains, therefore, to make the best of circumstances, 
and mitigate evils that cannot be removed. 
The first thing we have to do, then, is to study the dimensions 
with which we have to deal. If we are the happy possessors of 
semi-detached premises, we shall probably have a certain extent of 
width in our allotted strip. In such a case, we construct a border at 
the foot of the wall all round, and bodily plant it out with quick, 
strong-growing evergreens; converting blemish into beauty, and 
securing a screen of verdure to meet the eye all the year round, 
and afford an agreeable basis and background for any style of laying 
out our plot we may think proper to adopt ; such arrangements are, 
however, outside our present purpose. The case we have supposed 
presents an unusually favourable specimen of the “ garden wall ; ” 
the more common illustration will be a rough, uneven structure of 
coarse bricks, line upon line as far as the eye can reach, enclosing 
a narrow plot reached throngh kitchen or scullery door, a narrow 
stripe of tiles or stones conducting to the dust-bin of the establish- 
ment. We shall say nothing of the frequent water-butt, and other 
appendages which are usually found in such situations. It will be 
admitted that the prospect is melancholy and disheartening enough 
to the eye of taste. The task here will be quite as much to shut 
out and conceal causes of offence, as to introduce objects of interest 
and beauty ; and yet, though difficult, both may be fairly done. A 
friend of ours has admirably met the untoward circumstances of such 
a position. The dust-bin and its associates he has shut out of sight 
with a neat trellis. On each side of the top of the wall he has had 
a wooden scantling, painted green, fixed all along the top of the wall, 
capable of holding three or four inches of mould — a continuous box, 
in fact, of which the wall forms the bottom — wherein are planted 
wallflowers, snapdragon, moneywort, stonecrop, and other subjects 
suited to flourish in such situations. Consequently, the top of the 
wall is always gay. At the foot he has constructed a border of 
clinkers, flints, quaint roots, and so on, furnished with appropriate 
plants, and from which different sorts of ivies and close-growing 
climbers — “ dingers ” would be a more expressive term — are made 
to completely cover up the obnoxious bricks. 
We have also seen another way of concealing, or rather, perhaps, 
of utilizing walls, involving a kind of aerial application of the 
plunging system. At sufficient distance from the wall, to allow 
pots to be dropped in, somewhat after the fiishion of hat-rails in 
railway carriages, two or three iron rods, at suitable distances 
apart, were fixed all round the garden. These were kept full 
of different plants in pots throughout the season, being changed for 
others as they passed out of bloom. It must be admitted that the 
area was not large, ’ and that there were copious appliances for 
striking and forcing a stock of plants close at hand. 
The ordinary galvanized wire net, with a strong rod at top and 
