ON GARDENS. 
00 
nor send you communications of value; but I can unite my very 
humble endeavours with those of greater weight and power, to ren¬ 
der the pages of the Register generally interesting. 
Readers are become so numerous, and the study of horticulture so 
fashionable, that I venture to suppose mere details of culture may be 
enlivened by matter, which, although bearing on the subject of gar¬ 
dening, may yet communicate neither new methods of propagating 
plants, nor matter of scientific research. 
Some of your younger readers may be unacquainted with Lord 
Bacon’s Essays: that on gardens is so very beautiful, and the sub¬ 
ject so interesting, that I venture to hope a few extracts from it may 
please those to whom it is new. To such I need not apologize; and 
your elder readers, who are familiar with the writings of that “ wisest 
brightest, meanest of mankind/’ will, I hope, pardon me in consider¬ 
ation of those who have been less fortunate. 
Thus Lord Bacon begins his Essay :—“ God Almighty first 
planted a garden ; and indeed it is the greatest refreshment to the 
spirits of man ; without which, buildings and palaces are but gross 
handy works: and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to ci¬ 
vility and elegancy, men come to build stately, sooner than to garden 
finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection. 
I do hold it, in the royal ordering of gardens, there ought to be 
gardens for all the months in the year, in which, severally, things of 
beauty may be then in season. For December, January, and the 
latter part of November, you must take such things as are green all 
winter; holly, ivy, bays,juniper, cypress trees, yew, pines, fir trees, 
rosemary, lavender; periwinkle, the white, the purple, and the blue; 
germander, flag, orange trees, lemon trees, and myrtles, if they he 
stoved; and sweet marjoram, if warm set. 
There followeth for the latter part of January, and February, the 
nuzerou tree, which then blossoms; crocus vermis, both the yellow 
and the gray; primroses, anemones, the early tulip, the hyacinth us, 
orientalis, chaniairis fritellaria. For March, there come violets, es¬ 
pecially the single blue, which are the earliest; the early daffodil,* 
the daisy, the almond tree in blossom, sweet-briar. 
In April, follow the double white violet, the wall-flower, the stock- 
gilliflower, the cowslip, flower-de-luces, and lilies of all natures; 
rosemary flowers, the tulip, the double poeony, the pale daffodil, the 
French honeysuckle, the cherry-tree in blossom, the damascene and 
plum-trees in blossom, the white-thorn in leaf, the lilac-tree. 
* “ That comes before the swallow dares, 
“ And takes the winds of March with beauty.”— Shakespeare. 
