300 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, February 19, 1861. 
those of Kew. It is just a town garden in the first style 
of the art; and so it ought, seeing the mere finishings 
and furnishing will cost over £5000 the acre. There 
cannot be twenty acres in, or within, the arcades, which 
is strictly the terrace garden, but say twenty acres over 
which the ground landlords are to spend £50,000 and the 
tenant just as much, and if the thing, or any part of it, 
should turn out otherwise than as it ought, it could not 
be excused on the plea of want of money. I newer strove 
to temperate my feelings when I saw things in my own 
way going awry ; and I think that is the only reason I 
can lean to for the enjoyment—the real downright plea¬ 
sure I can feel in a thing wuth which I have no earthly 
concern when it comes up to what I have been taught to 
call the “real thing.” 
Now, although our town garden is yet in the rough, I 
felt a good deal of the pleasure of hope when viewing it 
by myself, and more so on seeing this hope is not likely 
to be long deferred. They are pushing on vigorously, 
the heavy planting is all but finished—I mean all the 
large trees for the dark groups on the plan. The slopes 
and flats for the different flights of the terrace are set 
out, and could soon be finished for turfing. All the main 
walks are as far forward as the rough gravelling of them ; 
and all the Box compartments are finished, planted, and 
partly set off. This setting off was the only thing in the 
plan on which I had my own doubts. It consists of 
small spaces as for flower-beds, coming in between the 
lines of a free-flowing tracery in Box, and they (these 
spaces) are to be filled with a diversity of coloured gravels, 
so to speak. A few of these compartments are already 
filled, or covered in with the, or rather with only two, 
colours—a grey slaty blue, as the colour of ice at a dis¬ 
tance, and a pure white. Well, hitherto—for it is of no 
use to disguise facts—my eye has only been tutored to 
pure white, and to two cr three shades of red, in Box- 
work decoration, on the fly-fancy style of composition— 
that is, pure white Beigate sand, or sand like it in colour, 
such as that which Mr. Taylor, at Shrubland Park, uses 
to plunge his pots in, and the different colours of the 
gravel used in our walks—say four shades of red and 
pure white ; and I had my doubts about the effect of 
introducing tints of colours in gravels along with tints 
of colours in real flowers. And here I must insist on 
another Committee for the Society, a Committee of 
ladies high up in the peerage, to decide if it is fair and 
proper to set hard grit in colours in contrast or in com¬ 
bination with our soft tints of colours from the varieties 
of variations in our seedlings, for I am persuaded that 
no other source is able to decide the point for us—and I 
shall tell you why I am persuaded. I have as firm a 
hold on the effects of the shades and tints of colours, 
as douce Davie Deans had on the precepts of the Cama- 
Tonians in the Bride of Lammermoor; and yet I was 
bewitched to look most favourably on the effects pro¬ 
duced by the simple contrast of the first few examples 
they made of grit with plain gravel, and smooth, dark 
brown earth. Depend unon it this will tell, for I have no 
prepossession of it either way ; and the first and last im¬ 
pression of a thing, be it the hazle or the azure of the 
Pye of a maid of honour, or the glowing of the evening 
sun on a flower-bed, are sure to be right, notwithstand¬ 
ing the world-wide difference which may rise between 
the extremes of first and last. 
The lines of dwarf Box in these Box tracings are most 
beautifully designed, and will be perfectly new to a 
great number of the Fellows of the Boyal Horticultural 
Society, and cannot fail to become the sampler patterns 
for imitations in this style of terrace gardens ; and the 
coloured grit or gravel that will be employed to fill in 
the designs cannot fail to lay a more sure foundation 
for the better arrangements of the tints of flowers than 
we have yet had access to ; and thus the very thing which 
I at first dreaded would lead to namby pambyism in 
flower gardening, will be a sure and certain source for 
the more extension of the natural tints of flowers, and a 
more extended use of different sized beds in the designers 
of flower-bed’s compositions in order to embrace a larger 
assortment of different shades of colours from flowers. 
A new field will be thus opened for the cross-breeders of 
popular flowers for decoration, and any tint, and every 
shade of colour will find a patch or bed, and the proper 
place for it in composition planting. 
The mauve and light lilac tints which were so fashion¬ 
able in 1859 have given way already, and all the shades 
of the newer magenta colour are fast taking their places. 
New shades of Verbenas, and of the Nosegay breed of 
Geraniums will soon make this magenta colour as fashion¬ 
able in the flower gardens as it is already in the tops and 
bottoms of Parisian fashion ; and he w ho can best keep 
pace with the magazines of fashion with his new seedlings, 
may least fear the schedules of the income tax. Every 
seedling that will tell on the fashion of the day will be 
sure to pay, and anything that will pay its cost is as sure 
to tell; and were it not on such terms alone, let alone the 
call for high artistic designing, I should hail the flowing 
lines of Mr. Nesfield, at Kensington Gore, as the best 
auxiliaries to what I have myself been aiming at in my 
doings and sayings for the last twenty years ; and I con¬ 
gratulate the Fellows of the Boyal Horticultural Society 
on the charms and excellencies of their town garden as 
they are already manifested in the rough, and look for¬ 
ward with great interest to the day on which Her Gracious 
Majesty will open it in person for us and ours, and the 
like of us, or all who like to see a first-class town garden 
kept in first-rate order by first-class gardeners, for I 
should like all to see it; and if the public could see it, 
on certain days, by paying a small sum for a great sight, 
as was once in contemplation, what with the Queen herself 
and the Boyal Family at the head of it, and the novelty 
of the thing so near to the richest and most fashionable 
parts of London, there could be little fear about those 
thousands of pounds having been cast in a sinking fund. 
The thing must surely pay and be a credit to all con¬ 
cerned. 
Talking about sinking money puts me in mind that I 
have a sinking-border this spring in my own private 
garden, which is sinking still, and will sink. There is no 
border at Kensington Gore which is half so good, how¬ 
ever, nor any thing like it, and yet it is as sure to pay 
me as the Bank of England. Any one who may wish to 
have a sinking-border like it, will be sure to have it pay 
almost anywhere ; and it is not an expensive thing by 
any means, and if it were and would pay, where would be 
the odds? My sinking-border was thoroughly frosted 
through and through to the depth of 22 inches this last 
January ; but five inches were the greatest depth of frost 
in any other part of the garden at the same time. I made 
the frosted border on the sinking principle in order to 
pay. Surely as I made pump water in July into frosted 
plates for butter at the breakfast table, I could see no 
great difficulty in frosting a border to the depth of 44mehes, 
the double of what I did. I said I made it to pay, and 
this is how I did it. At the beginning of the frost I took 
off the frosty crust for three or four days running, till I 
made sure of a running frost for some time ; then I 
emptied the whole border to the depth of 22 inches, or a 
little deeper, by throwing the soil across the path on to 
an open piece of ground which was then well frosted. I 
then spread the soil from the border over all that piece, 
and it made a layer of about 3 inches, and that also was 
soon frosted; but while it was freezing I took the advan¬ 
tage of the frost to get up the frosted crust from the 
surface of as much of the rest of the garden ground as 
filled the opened border in one day. I placed the layers 
of crust, or frozen slabs of earth, as loose and open as old 
tiles for a barn, so that the frosty air and wind could pass 
and get through them, in and out, up and down, as long 
as the frost lasted; and made the border 6 inches or 
8 inches higher than the old one, in order to allow for 
