1868. ] 
ARCHITECTURAL AIDS TO GARDENESQUE EFFECTS. 
223 
against the walls. These are most useful plants for association with 
architectural lines, and have a fine effect here. 
Passing through the archway at p we rest upon the top of the steps (of 
which through the kindness of Mr. Murray we are able to give the accompany¬ 
ing sketch). They are grand and massive in the extreme, consisting of a 
hundred or more steps 12 feet wide, with four rests 21 feet wide, and diverg¬ 
ing to the right and left with twenty steps at the bottom as shown in the 
sketch, down to the panel garden. The steps are finished off with a heavy 
balustrading and coping, just outside which, and in a line corresponding 
with the width of the rests, a low wall is carried up from top to bottom. 
Upon this wall, between each rest, three vases profusely filled with dense 
masses of Scarlet Pelargoniums, are placed. The effect of these sloping 
lines of scarlet against the white stone is startlingly beautiful. Beyond this 
closely-clipped shrubs, chiefly Box, creep up to the vases, so that the white 
stone is set in a framework of green, fringed next the steps with a band of 
scarlet. These shrubs are mostly cut closely down to the level of the base 
of the balustrade. But a novel effect is produced by allowing the Box to 
rise to the top of the balustrade at each rest, and also by permitting some 
Junipers, Arbor-vitass, &c., to tower up far above the clipped shrubs. 
The panel garden at the bottom is likewise decidedly architectural. It 
has a fine fountain in the centre, and its semicircular boundary is a highly 
