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How to lay out a Small Garden , intended as a Guide to Amateurs , in Choosing , Forming , or Improving a Place; with 
Reference to both Resign and Execution. By Edward Kemp, Landscape Gardener, Birkenhead Park. London: 
Bradbury & Evans. 
Landscape Gardening, like all other sciences, though it has been inundated with elaborate treatises, which require 
a month to read, and years to understand, has never been illustrated by one of those elementary works, which may 
justly be considered as stepping-stones to the more solid materials of taste; and hence the small matters of 
Landscape Gardening, the laying out of “ a quarter of an acre” which Mr. Kemp starts with, have never received 
that attention which they deserve; but have been left to the mere empiricism, or the know-nothingness of “ day 
gardeners;” a class of men whose main object is plunder, and who calculate upon the gullability of their 
employers as a ready means of enriching themselves. It has somewhere been written by the late Mr. Loudon, 
though we cannot, at the present moment, call the place to mind, that it requires as much mind or talent to 
manage properly —a place of a quarter of an acre, with a few frames and hand-glasses—as one the size of 
Chatsworth; and, no doubt, taking the word properly in its full acceptation, Mr. Loudon was not far out of his 
calculcation. To make much of a small place, requires considerable taste, perhaps more than where there is 
scope sufficient to carry out great principles without curtailment; for there is always less difficulty to carry out a 
design on a large scale than upon a small one. 
The works of Evelyn, Brown, Bepton, Gilpin, Price, Loudon, Downing, and others, though individually 
excellent, are far too recondite and philosophical for general readers. They treat of general principles, and though 
serviceable to the occupiers of large estates, are worse than useless to small proprietors. A man of industrious 
habits, after years of toil as a City merchant or tradesman, amasses, as he ought to do, sufficient to purchase a 
small estate, and then his real troubles begin. He wishes to build a comfortable house, to lay out a small garden, 
and to put his estate in good order. He calls in a friend who has a taste for building, perhaps a retired builder; 
then, Mr. Jones, his gardening friend, who has a beautiful place in Males, advises about the garden; and, possibly, 
a third party is consulted as to the management of the land. After months, perhaps years, of continued scheming, 
they find they are all wrong ; the house is improperly placed, the grounds have been hacked and hewn into what, 
but from their existence, might have been considered impossible shapes, and the proprietor, after having frittered 
thousands away, and finding his house cannot be altered, is advised, at last, to consult a landscape gardener, so 
as to bring the garden into something like shape. "Well, a professional man is called in, and what does he find ? 
Hills raised here, and holes dug there, here a walk and parallel with it another walk, both very probably useless 5 
plants and shrubs of the foreground planted in the background, and vice versa ; and, to crown all, the ground has 
not been drained, the borders trenched, nor the escape of water from the walks sufficiently provided for, and, the 
consequence is, the whole has to be pulled to pieces and re-arranged. 
To remedy these things, and to afford persons of limited income the means of judging for themselves, and of 
gaining a little insight into the first principles of Landscape Gardenings this little work has been prepared, and if 
Mr. Kemp has not done all that fastidious persons may require, he has done more than, judging by precedents, 
could have been expected in a compass so limited—and what he has done, is done well. The work is divided into 
fotu’ parts, viz., “Preliminary Considerations as to the Choice of a Place; AVI at to Avoid ; AVKat to Attain; and 
Practical Directions ;” and these parts are divided again into sections and sub-sections, the latter being numbered^ 
and each complete in itself. AVe have rarely perused a work with which we have been so much pleased, the direc¬ 
tions, whether exemplifying principles or practical details, being alike plain and to the pmpose, so much so that we 
believe an uninformed person may take it up, and leam more from it in a few clays than he would from the large 
works on the same subject in half a life time. The great fault of the large works on this subject is, they are too 
expansive for ordinary readers, they deal too much in great principles which few have an opportunity of 
carrying into practice, and hence, with the amateur, they bewilder where they ought to inform, and leave the 
tyro to draw his own inferences, where principles ought to have been laid down; in fact, they have soared among 
clouds, and rhapsodized about the sublime and beautiful, while Air. Kemp has taken his stand on solid land, and 
talked about it, as if he understood what he was about. AVith a few examples, borrowed from the work we must 
close our present notice, but we shall recur to it with pleasure occasionally for an extract. 
Ill the Preface, Air. Kemp states a fact, which must be familiar to every one, whether an ordinary or 
professional Landscape Gardener. At page 6, he observes :— 
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“From the author’s every-day intercourse with gentlemen 
who are either laying out new grounds, or are seeking to amend 
errors in design formerly committed, he is also enabled to per¬ 
ceive that sound and useful information is greatly wanted on the 
subject of landscape-gardening, and that to this defect is mainly 
attributable the deformities so lamentably frequent. He feels 
certain, moreover, that other landscape-gardeners will hear hi in 
out in the assertion, that their services are more employed to 
remedy irregularities which have been fallen into for want of 
due consideration and enlightenment, than to furnish entirely 
new designs. And the difficulty and expense of rectifying such 
errors can scarcely be over-estimated. It is wisely ordained 
that while a truly beautiful object will yield permanent 
and increasing delight, everything of a contrary nature is 
nearly sure, at some period or other, to pall and disgust the 
mind.” 
Under the part of “ AVhat to Avoid,” the following is worth marking, as containing some sound good sense : 
