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VISITS TO REMAKKABLE GARDENS. 
VISITS TO REMAREAELE GARDENS. 
Kedleap — "W. Wells, Esq. 
WE concluded our last account of this admirable place, vol. ii., p. 164, with, a notice of the English 
garden. We shall now step a few yards further through the shrubs and we are upon the 
Rocky Lawn, which is so unlike anything of the kind we ever saw elsewhere, that we doubt our power 
to convey a correct idea of its characteristics. Standing at the garden front of the house, at the 
part represented in the engraving (p. 45), nothing of unusual character presents itself, more than 
a beautifully wooded country, a smooth and polished lawn, and some fine specimens of choice trees and 
shrubs. But for these and the ugiy iron fence intervening between the park and the lawn, the latter 
might be taken for a better kept part of the park, so little are the remarkable beauties of the place to 
be seen until you are actually in the midst of them. And here the difficulty of introducing flowers 
and decorative objects into the very centre of the foreground, is got rid of in a manner highly interest- 
ing and artistic, but only attainable in situations where the ground has a considerable fall, and where 
there is the refined taste and artistic eye of a connoisseur in the fine arts like Mr. Wells, to direct the 
operations. As we have before remarked, the rockwork at Redlcaf is natural : that is, the substratum is 
stone — the Kentish sand-stone, in some places jutting completely out of the ground, and in almost 
every part of the pleasure grounds lying so near the surface as to require but very little labour to 
expose it to view. Hence the formation of rock scenery was a simple matter as to procuring material, 
yet requiring considerable taste in the disposal of the material when procured ; but on this subject we 
shall speak more fully when writing of the " rocky garden." 
The view below is taken from that part of the grounds where the visitor emerges from the English 
P 
garden to the lawn, and near to the site of that " living fountain," the Cedrus Deodara, shown at the 
extreme left of the engraving. The view is down the lawn to a small lake, with its rustic bridge at the 
bottom, a pretty placid scene — richly wooded, with fine groups of American and other shrubs, with huge 
pieces of stone jutting out here and there from beneath their branches, and some superb specimens of 
the rarer kinds of Conifers, at least those kinds which were rare at the time when these trees, which 
arc the largest in the country, were planted, and which even at the present time are by no means 
common. Here is a huge specimen of Pinus ponderosa, the largest in England, and a noble tree ; Pinus 
Lambertiana, a splendid plant, but too loose and sticky in character to make a gardenesque specimen ; 
and some exquisite specimens of Abies Morinda, which at the time of our visit had made about three 
inches of their new growth, and presented then certainly the most exquisite picture of evergreen 
j] completeness we ever beheld. We never saw trees half so elegant : even the Deodar sinks in our 
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