THE LADIES’ MAGAZINE OF GARDENING. 
39 
Among these are some remarkably fine plants of Abies Douglasi and Picea 
Webbiana; and there was the largest Chinese Pine, Pinus sinensis, in 
England, till it was killed by the dreadful winter of 1837-8. This beau¬ 
tiful tree was sixteen feet high, and had produced cones, though it was 
only raised from seeds imported by Mr. Wells from China in 1829. A 
specimen of Araucaria imbricata , which stood near the Chinese Pine, and 
was exposed to the same degree of cold, was uninjured, and is now a 
remarkably fine tree. There are also some fine young cedars, which are 
interesting from having been all raised from seed by Mr. Wells, and from 
one of them having attained the height of fifty-two feet, with a trunk 
nearly six feet in circumference, in twenty-seven years. Fig. 21 
shows the general appearance of the rocky hollow, with the descent 
into it from the lawn by a flight of steps rudely cut in the shelving 
rock. 
The rocky path, after leaving the hollow, conducts the stranger through 
the lawn, which is beautifully diversified with trees and rocks (see fig. 22), 
to the English flower-garden. This garden is also situated in a hollow, 
and it is laid out in what is called the English style on the Continent. 
This style, which is an imitation of nature polished and refined by art, is 
well adapted to the general character of the scenery at Redleaf, and is 
strikingly opposed to the formal or geometric style adopted in the early 
ages of gardening. When gardens were first formed, the object was to 
render them as unlike nature as possible; and thus was introduced the 
geometric style, and the topiary art (that of cutting trees into the forms 
of animals, &c.), which we find was practised in Pliny’s garden, one of 
the few of those of the ancients, accounts of which have been handed 
down to us. In the English garden of Mr. Wells (see fig. 23), there are 
numerous groups of trees upon the lawn, interspersed with a few China 
vases, some for flower-pots, and some to serve as seats. In this garden, 
on a rocky ledge, stands a rustic summer-house, curiously and elegantly 
built of several different kinds of wood, but chiefly of oak and hazel rods. 
The floor is laid with oak chumps placed upright; and the furniture consists 
of a table beautifully inlaid with various native woods, and of some 
chairs and a kind of sofa, made of hazel rods with the bark on, and 
varnished. 
Beyond the English garden is an aquarium, or pond for choice water- 
plants, in front of a bank of rockwork (see fig. 24) ; and farther still, at 
the boundary of the lawn, is the natural rocky ledge, which has given 
the tone to the whole scene. Throughout the whole place, though the 
most consummate art has been displayed everywhere, art is never visible; 
and the whole, by a very small exercise of the imagination, might be 
