LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
291 
art, so no dispositions of art, it is said, should be exhibited as imitations 
of nature. 
This impression, whether right or wrong, begins to take effect, as 
several flower-gardens on rather a large scale have been lately laid out 
among us in the old Dutch or geometric style — a style of all others the 
most rigidly artificial. It is probable, however, that, except for flower- 
plots on a few square yards of surface, it will never be generally 
fashionable. 
There is yet another idea broached respecting the arrangement of 
plants in flower or other pleasure-gardens: it appears to be founded on 
the principle that, as all gardens are works of art, so every thing in 
and about them should partake of that character;—plants should all 
be grouped according to their kinds and general characters ; trees with 
trees, shrubs with shrubs, and herbaceous plants by themselves. In 
nature they are found intermixed, and for that very reason they should 
be, when cultivated, classed apart, and ranked each kind by themselves. 
According to this notion, a public nursery is the true type of a well- 
arranged pleasure-garden; and though it may be considered so by a 
rigid lover of order, the eye, which, in viewing the vegetable creation, 
is delighted with its endless variety, will be disappointed in seeing 
that variety composed of harshly-marked and distinct grades, rather 
than in that harmonious amalgamation in which wild vegetation 
usually appears. Neither for the continuous beauty of a flower-garden 
is this grouping of genera expedient. Many of the herbs are seasonal, 
and visible but for a short time; consequently blanks would be ever 
occurring, which would either remain unsightly, or cause considerable 
labour to refurnish. There is a happy medium in all things; and the 
pleasure arising from a well-designed and well-kept garden flows 
directly from our feelings at the moment, rather than from any abstract 
ideas we may entertain as to whether the scene before us be exactly 
agreeable to, or consistent with, the rigid rules of pure taste or not. 
No one would object to the violet or snowdrop peeping from below the 
rhododendron, nor the hollyhock shooting up from among the laurels ; 
but if we had seen either rhododendrons or hollyhocks in the wild wood 
s' 
in which we were riding, they would have been condemned as unso¬ 
ciable intruders. 
In executing gardenesque scenery, the grouping and variety of 
forest combinations may be imitated with propriety, but it must be 
with very different kinds of plants: no rustic tree or shrub looks well 
if associated with cultivated exotics in dressed ground; nor do the 
homely forms of orchard fruit-trees assimilate with ornamental plants. 
I am. Sir, A. B. 
(To be continued.') 
