98 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
to do with half an acre; another is perplexed with liis 
dozen. Should a tree he planted here ? Shall an open¬ 
ing be made there? Would a rockery look well in that 
corner ? Where can I stow away my roses ? How shall 
I cany a walk round a square piece of ground ? A thou¬ 
sand such questions arise, but they are put in vain to 
those who are not on the spot to advise; for it may be 
taken as a general truth, that mere details of arrange¬ 
ment can never be settled, except upon personal in¬ 
spection, and a full knowledge of all the circumstances 
that may aid or injure a giveu operation either in winter 
or summer. Plans on paper are useful as guides, but 
beyond an indication of the general nature of a design 
they are worthless. A strict adherence to a plan on 
paper has wholly ruined the effect of many a place, 
which the genius of the landscape gardener, applied upon 
the ground, would have rendered charming.” Now, if 
all this be true—and there is no doubt about it—with 
reference to the whole design of a given place, with how 
much more force will it apply to that part of it which 
requires the highest degree of skill to arrange in such a 
manner as to add to the effect of the whole, and yet form 
a complete design in itself viewed as such. “It is not 
the mere unfolding of truth to others which constitutes 
the real criterion of usefulness in life. The exposure of 
an error may be fully as necessary and beneficial.” So 
says the author whose excellent book * suggested these 
remarks and the above quotation; and in reference to 
the subject in hand, what can be more true than what 
Mr. Kemp remarks, page 59, speaking of different ex¬ 
pedients to liide the offices from the garden or principal 
views—“ The preference to be given to any of these ex¬ 
pedients must be determined altogether by the locality, 
the style of the house, and the tastes and desires of the 
owner. Either of the methods suggested will require to 
be applied with skill, or they will, in remedying one evil, 
only create another.” The tastes or the desires of the 
owner, or the requirements of a given locality, are but too 
often the last tilings which enter the brains of dog¬ 
matism. My first essay in landscape gardening was on 
a fine April morning in 1818, or 1819, in the shape of a 
bundle of stakes to be placed where the genius of a 
Gilpin dictated; but whether the “tastes and desires” 
of the noble lord who paid us were consulted or not con¬ 
sulted, I shall not tell; but I recollect the conversations 
and remarks which arose out of a month’s work at 
“ laying out ” many plans, as if it were but yesterday. 
I have, since that time, seen the greatest' master minds 
of the age the first to detect and own faults in their own 
conceptions before they were half carried out, even when 
the requirements of the locality, the desires and the 
tastes of the owner had been the first leading features in 
the composition. All that the best of us can do with a 
plan—say of a flower-garden—is merely this, to conceive 
by the mind's eye a square or circular enclosure sur¬ 
rounded by high walls, the space included to be a level 
flower-garden, and ourselves looking at it from a door or 
window in tbe centre, and on the same level with it. In 
such a case, it is true, any one having a knowledge of the 
height and colours of flower-garden plants might say 
with confidence how all the beds would look best as a 
whole, and assist each other by a given arrangement in 
planting them, but now take away all ideal obstruction 
between this garden in full bloom and the surrounding 
parts or scenery, and the chances are that cross lights, 
j the shade or colours of a mass of trees and shrubs, of 
statuary, and of fifty other things, besides the inclination 
of the ground, may conspire to render your fine com¬ 
position, “ by this writer in The Cottage Gardener,” a 
really namby-pamby thing after all; and so with the 
best of us, also, in first planting a flower-garden in a new 
locality, we must see the effects of all and eveiy thing in 
* “ How to Lay-out a Small Garden,” by Edward Kemp, Landscape 
Gardener, Birkenhead-park. 
[November 14. 
and surrounding the flower-garden, until the actual 
effects are produced before us iu succession as the , 
season rolls on. 
But to return to Mr. Kemp’s book. As soon as I read 
the first notice of it I made up my mind at once to read 1 
it; but not from any curiosity, or a desire to leam—at ; 
my time of life—any new-fangled notions that it might 
recommend; but from a knowledge of Mr. Kemp’s per¬ 
sonal history for the last dozen years, which is just a 
counterpart of my own doings during the same period. 
He left London under the auspices of Mr. Paxton; but 
Chatsworth, large as it is, was not sufficiently so for two 
such heads; and he had Mr. Kemp removed to where he 
now dates his book from— Birkenhead Park ; and ever 
since Mr. K. may be said to be working out in practice 
such ideas and views as Mr. Paxton entertains on land¬ 
scape gardening; at any rate that is the way the Gar- • 
dener’s Chronicle accoimts for the subject matter of the 
book—a very good way, indeed, to sell the book, but a 
very uncharitable way of dealing with the author, who, 
although I have no more knowledge of him than I can 
gather from the book itself, I am quite sure would not 
write a page of it either for Mr. Paxton, or for Dr. 
Lindley, or Dr. Beaton (when he is one), or Dr. Any- 
body-else, if he could not subscribe to every word of it 
himself. Of coiwse all this was meant; but still an angry 
critic might, from the context, set it down against us 
poor gardeners that, because we are not overburdened 
with money, and must be digging ground for cabbages, 
or shooting caterpillars, we are not so independent in 
mind as we might be. All tliis time I was working 
under a higher artist than Mr. Kemp, and can speak, 
therefore, from experience ; though my head is too thick 
ever to write so good a book as he has, but I subscribe 
to every syllable of the work, except what is said on 
making new walks; and here, too, Mr. Kemp is far 
before nine-tenths of those who flew to Loudon to anti¬ 
cipate my own way of constructing walks and roads, for 
he wants a dry bottom for his walks, but not by opening 
a trench over “ retentive ” soil to collect water from the 
land right and left, and placing his walk as a covering 
for the drain. 
When I reflect on the awful nothingness of many of 
the large doses of landscape gardening I have had to gulp 
down for the last twenty year's,—yea, for the best ten of 
them,—I ought to be thankful that the . rising race of 
young gardeners are not likely to have sore throats from 
similar doses. Another great recommendation of the 
book is, that it is as cheap as The Cottage Gardener. 
And here, again, being an old rider, I must go in the 
saddle to say, that some authors and publishers are very 
much in their own light, and keeping light from us too, by 
a false notion, that a book is not respectable enough unless 
a high price is asked for it. No- such thing ! Where 
can there be a more respectable work than The Cot¬ 
tage Gardener, which every respectable person in the 
three kingdoms reads and delights in, not one of whom 
has yet sent us a complaint about its cheapness; and 
our new Dictionary will be a great deal cheaper; and we 
are quite confident already that it will pay us better than 
if we asked three times the money for it. 
Only one more book is now wanting about gardening, 
which would teach everybody to plant his or her own 
little flower-garden just in the way best suited to the 
locality ; but we must have the spirit of prophecy before 
that book can be printed, or else fall back on the 
unintelligibleness of the old landscape gardeners again. 
Now, on the supposition that the coast is clear, or that 
these observations are understood, I propose and promise 
to eveiy reader who will take the trouble to send to the 
Editor a plan of a flower-garden as it was planted last 
summer, or as it is intended to be planted next spring, 
with a list of the plants to fill the beds with, that I shall 
point out such defects and improvements in the plant- 
