284 
1'HE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Auorsx 16, 1859. 
They are all beat if the best is made of them ; and if 
every style and part are just where they, or something 
like them, should be and nowhere else, or nothing else 
out of that particular style. When anything is in the 
right place, no matter how taste goes, it is the best thing 
for that place. But let me give a specimen. 
Would two of these unique beds out of the old Yew 
tree, one on each side of a door or window, be in their 
proper places ? That depends on what kind of house or 
other building the door and the window opened into. 
They would be quite correct for a Swiss cottage, a Russian 
log-house, or “ my cottage near a wood ” of the old song; 
but at the Experimental they would be entirely and alto¬ 
gether out of place next the doors or windows. The 
style of the building is as old as the time of Pericles, and 
much in his country’s fashion; therefore, classic vases 
being part of the system, they stand nearest the mansion, 
and the rock and rustic works are in different and distant 
parts of the ground. 
The next question is, How comes it about that you, 
Donald Beaton, having got your right foot into that 
celebrated garden, can abide to see rustic baskets about 
after all you have written against them P I have answered 
that question more than once, though not in black and 
white. What I object to is, the fearful expense of rustic 
work, and the still more awful bad taste of making rustic 
on classic modes, which is the same in my eye as making 
boots on wig-blocks, and wigs on lasts, or on boot-jacks. 
The one is not one bit more incongruous than the other, 
unless, indeed, every other thing about the garden is in 
true cockney style,—the most derisive term among artists 
in the county. Sir William Middleton asked me scores 
of times to get window-sill boxes of Stocks and Migno¬ 
nette for Shrubland Park. “ No, Sir William, I have 
too much respect for you, and for Shrubland Park, to 
introduce cockney gardening here.” I knew all the 
time ho was only trying what was in me, and I am quite 
sure he would be the first to order down the silly things. 
But in Park Lane, what is more refreshing to the eye 
and nose than the gay, sweet boxes of the London fur¬ 
nishing. If the garden is a London Square, in looks, in 
shape, and in planting, why, then, a rustic basket, after 
the Etruscan Vase, may be placed up in the angle formed 
by the bow-window of the front drawing-room. The best 
of the present style of rustic work about London for 
garden purposes are absolute trumperies tried by that 
test. But trumperies are just as useful in their day as 
the most classic articles. A ploughman admires the 
flower-vases at the Crystal Palace, which let us call the 
first step in civilisation. He must have something like 
them: he makes a rustic imitation in basket-work, and 
his children water the flowers. His son returns from the 
diggings rich enough to have a house and garden of his 
own; his father’s wicker-baskets are to be his models, 
and he is happy and contented with any paltries : and why 
not P It is the second and right step in civilisation in 
his family ; and it will be quite time enough to think of 
the Crystal Palace style when his sons return from 
Egypt and Syria to marry and settle down for life; 
which is the third and last step in that branch of the 
family. The first step was necessary in that branch, and 
the second was just as necessary and useful as the first 
and last. 
But, there is no law against a man of taste having what 
he fancies ; and if he fancies the most expensive, or the 
most ridiculous rustic-works in his garden, all that we 
can say is, that he will be sure to set them down in the 
most appropriate situations for them. But, after all, 
there is no rustic basket at the Experimental of the kind 
I ever made any objections to. They are more or less 
made after the fashion of the old A"ew stump—all their 
rustic parts are clothed and hid by evergreens, with Ivy, 
Yew, or with Cotoneaster microphylla, and these hidden 
parts are made of stuff so durable as to last out an age. 
They look remarkably well, and set off the plants in them 
rather better, to some notions, than the classic vases them¬ 
selves. One is on a general model the shape of a garden 
basket, rounded at both ends aud narrower where the 
handle of the basket springs across. It is eighteen feet 
long, and six feet wide, and the surface of the bed inside 
the basket is fifteen inches above the level of the grass 
or lawn. The sides and the handle are covered with Ivy, 
which is kept quite close. 
Nothing would seem more easy than to make such a 
basket that would last a lifetime, at one-tenth of the price 
of a real rustic, that would be rickety in three or four 
years and patchy afterwards. The way to do it is to dig, 
or trench, the space first; then to place one row of bats 
or stones on the edge of the grass; then to plant small 
Ivy plants just inside the bats, and to take out the heads 
of the Ivy between the bats at the foundation; then 
draw the common soil of the bed up against the bats ; 
after that lay bats in layers, and the back soil to bed and 
mortar them as it were. Raise the edging to any height 
you choose ; then train the Ivy against the outside face 
of it, and, to hold it tight, push in the tops in the spaces 
between the top layer of bats—or anywhere else where 
the top of the Ivy reaches—or you can poke it in. Such 
a basket, or s\ich an edging to a basket-bed, has been 
made in my presence the same day that the bed was 
planted about the middle of May; and it may be done 
any time from this to that time next year. But about 
the handle to the basket. Two Hazel-rods and two Ivy 
plants in pots, and each seven or eight feet long, would 
make the handle in five minutes. A rickety handfe, it is 
true, but it w r ould last one season; and a whole season is 
sufficient to make up one’s mind to the expense of a 
galvanised iron rod. Or one might choose two smaller 
rods to be four or six inches apart, and a net-work of 
wire between them. The great thing is to have the 
handle of something to last one’s lifetime, and to be en¬ 
tirely hidden by a covering of Ivy. Nothing is so good as 
Ivy, as it looks well winter and summer, and can be kept 
for years and years to the same shape and space as at the 
beginning. Tropceolum elegans is one of the best creepers 
to rim over the handle, but it looks just as well without. 
Nothing but the plain broad-leaved Ivy is used for these 
handles at the Experimental. 
Two shades of scarlet Geraniums—a close-trussed kind 
like Punch for the middle, and a loose-headed one like 
the Model Nosegay round it; and an edging of the mixed 
common Nasturtium trained down, and most of the leaves 
kept picked off, will make as handsome a bed as any 
honest man need ever want, and a simpleton could see 
you had two kinds of Geraniums in it; but if your two 
lants were Punch and Tom Thumb , a practised eye might 
e deceived into the belief you had but one kind after 
all was done : hence one of the practical uses of using 
Nosegays along with close-headed trusses in lines or beds. 
Another of these baskets, in the centre of “ Emerald 
Bay,” Avhich lies to the right as one enters the Experi¬ 
mental, is a circle, perhaps ten feet across, fifteen or 
eighteen inches high, of rustic and Ivy sides, and a 
hidden post in the centre, which supports a circular rustic 
vase four feet across, and rather more than four feet 
above the lower bed. The top vase is of sound, hard 
wood, tarred. Cotoneaster microphylla is planted just 
inside it, and is trained dow'n to hide the sides ; then a 
circle of White Ivy-leaf Geranium to train down over the 
microphylla, and to fasten to it; the rest of the top being 
the Shrubland Rose Petunia pegged down and kept low 
for fear of the gales across this “ Bay.” Now, that top 
is very rusticated ; but the rusticology of the thing is sub¬ 
dued, and is not made a part of the design on the cockney 
model. Evergreens hide the post in winter, and old 
Wallflowers in the beginning of summer, till Mrs. Vernon, 
the tallest of all the Nosegays, rises and carries the day 
for itself. A row of large, old Tom Thumbs come next 
this Nosegay, and a row of white between Tom and the 
Ivy sides. This, too, I am persuaded, is one of the 
