368 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, September 18, 1860. 
boundary: therefore, all landscape ideas, rules, and in¬ 
cidents, must have been created and carried forward on 
their own merits, as we say of a single flower-bed which 
has no help from other beds or borders; and of all the 
things in this world, landscape gardening is the most 
difficult of execution on flat grounds without views from 
them. Before Kew was altered to the present style it 
was the best example we had in England of our free-and- 
easy mode of dealing with flat surfaces by means of 
judicious planting and easy winding walks. The change 
from this has added some of the best features of the 
geometric style—such a3 the terraces, the long vista 
walks and avenues, the waterworks and architectural 
elevations—and Kew Gardens are now in the mixed style ; 
and, considering the difficulties which the artist never fails 
to encounter in altering from one style to another, the 
mixture is very satisfactory, and will be more and more 
appreciated as the growth of the planting will mark the 
features more and more prominently. 
In going from the left corner along the top of the 
grounds we came to an iron barrier—say at one-third of 
the distance from corner to corner: so far the public 
may go at present. A little farther on is the best sight 
of Rhododendrons, perhaps, in England, if you except 
Highclere ; perhaps, also, they are the oldest planted in 
England ; and they were planted in the grounds or garden 
of the “ Queen’s Cottage;” a hlllf Swiss, half old-Englisli- 
looking retreat—once gay enough, no doubt, but now only 
a private reminiscence of “ Auld Lang Syne.” 
If twenty acres had then been planted with these 
Rhododendrons, there would be nothing in Europe now 
like them. It is their rude health and the seeming yearly 
increase of their strength which strike one so much more 
than their actual size ; the longest of them being about 
twelve feet high, and from twelve to fifteen feet in 
diameter, and a perfect pot-specimen-like plant, full on all 
sides, and sweeping along the grass with unusual luxu¬ 
riance. The stem being six inches through; but some 
having grown into many plants are much thicker in the 
stem ; but no one can reach into them from the arms and 
cross boughs in the way. Arbutuses that were planted at 
the end of the cottage ten years back are just as healthy 
and growing as fast; both kinds in the moist sandy soil of 
the district. The front of the cottage is characteristic 
enough, covered with climbers and creepers, and the 
Virginian Creeper hanging down in easy pendants from 
every point and corner. 
There are thirty acres of ground enclosed with this 
cottage, which are additional to the two hundred acres 
within the “ ring fence.” The greater portion of this 
land was recently added, in order to square the boundary¬ 
line ; and from eighteen to twenty thousand plants, in 
trees and shrubs, from their own private nursery, were 
used to plant it—first, on the model of the rest of this 
part of the pleasure-ground ; and, secondly, to clothe 
the ground at once, and nurse up the permanents. That 
is how they make things pay, and be thus able to keep 
an experimental nursery of considerable extent to the 
bargain. Many thousand bush plants could now be well 
spared from the new planting. It was there I saw such 
quantities of Ceanoihus americanus and intermedins in 
full bloom, in the most exposed situation from one end of 
the Thames to the other. In 1834 I saw the same pro¬ 
fusion of C. americanus in the nursery of the Messrs. 
Pope, at Handsworth, near Birmingham, and I never 
saw the plant in any other English garden or nursery 
before or since, and there is not a gardener in fifty 
thousand who knows the plant or had ever seen it—one 
of the most useful autumn little flowering shrubs we 
have when done as I said last week. When Loudon 
wrote his “ Arboretum,” none in the London trade 
knew how to manage this plant or tell him how to do it. 
At this corner, opposite Sion House, and down the 
whole length of Kew Gardens, the moat is entirely and 
altogether in the possession of the Water Witch; and of all 
the witches the Water Witch is the greatest enemy to us 
gardeners and to our waterworks. A witch once sailed 
to America in the shell of an egg—my grandmother told 
me so ; and people tell me now this Water Witch came 
from America, and if so, probably in that very shell. At 
all events, our fountains, basins, lakes, canals, mill- 
streams, ponds, and pools, will, in a few years, be half 
choked up and half useless through this very plant; and 
some have found it already the dearest plant that ever 
was introduced. My word for it, the people at Kew will 
find out its bewitching 'influence ere long, unless some 
one has a charm to render it harmless. The Water Chick- 
weed is another name for it, and the* book name is Ana- 
charis alsinastrum. At the Crystal Palace it has full 
possession of some of their best basins, and it will cost 
them a round yearly sum to keep it down so as to allow 
the fountains to play. You will find it in the grand 
circular basin behind the water temple. So, if you have 
anything you value above a duck pond, keep your 
eye on it against the Water Witch, or you will rue it 
when you cannot help her spell. From having raised 
so many seedlings of common things here, you see new 
forms of Laburnums, Spiraeas, and other shrubs along 
these new plantations, and no doubt something will be 
got at the origin thereof. 
But, on, on, on we go, and wind and turn till we come 
to a point where we see the first inland port in England, 
after the port of London. This is opposite the bottom of 
the page for Kew, at Brentford, and is the watermouth 
of a branch from the Great Western Railway. Then 
another iron barrier and we are out on public grounds, 
and soon after in front view of the grand new lake that 
is to be towards the extremity of the long vista avenue 
in that direction, which is at right angles with the axis of 
the great Palm conservatory from which it starts. First, 
through the American Garden, then through the Pillar 
Rose Avenue, and after then in a full half-mile stretch to 
the brink of the moat, and all on a dead level, as far as 
one could judge by the eye. In the centre of this avenue 
is a walk twenty-four feet wide, and twenty-four deep of 
good gravel; the subsoil in that direction being a bed of 
gravel. The avenue is formed by two rows of Deodars, 
which run on either side at a distance of seventy-five feet 
from the centre of the walk, with a Lime tree between 
each pair of Deodars, and two rows of the Umbrella 
Acacia in standards, and ten feet from the sides of the 
walk. 
On the left-hand side, looking down from the west 
entrance of the Palm-house, and near the extremity of 
this avenue, stands the ground-plan of the new lake ; and 
the Deodar-line of the avenue at that part skirts the very 
edge of the lake on that side. The banks of the lake are 
rounded, and a collection of the different Piceas planted 
on the sloping banks. Picea bracteata being the newest 
and one of the finest of them. There are, also, fine 
specimens of standards of the different Weeping Willows 
planted on these banks, which, when the whole are well 
clothed with such suitable kinds, will look remarkably 
well. There are three or four islands in the lake, some 
of which are well clothed already with old standing trees, 
and the rest are planted with kinds of Willows and other 
trees. The bottom of the lake is not yet cleared out. It 
is chiefly of gravel, and the bulk of it will be removed to 
form the terrace round the new, large range of conserva¬ 
tories which are in the course of construction, but not 
yet so forward as to allow the bottom of the lake to be 
cleared to make the terrace, and thus kill two birds with 
one stone. Here, then, is a sure sign of forethought, 
good management, and two strings to one’s bow, to shoot 
up from the bottom of the lake to the top of the terrace. 
Verily, if all public grants were thus economised and 
made the best of, there would be no need of cooking the 
schedules of the income-tax papers. The extent of the 
lake will be quite five acres when fully completed. Even 
as it is, it has already proved a most remarkable fact— 
