A garden laid out in this manner may be managed with great ease, and at very little expense. During the spring months, such training and pruning as are required may be effected!; and, during summer, the chief operations will be mowing the grass, training the herbaceous plants, and roses, and keeping the latter free from insects, by frequently syringing them with clear water, and daily hand-picking the aphides, caterpillars, snails, etc. The culinary department of the garden will require nothing more, in the summer season, than to be kept clear of weeds; and, in the winter, a dressing of manure. All this may be done by the man-servant necessarily kept for the horse, with the direction and assistance of the occupier himself, and the female part of his family; with the exception of mowing the grass, which, during the summer months, will require one day's work of a jobbing gardener every fortnight; and during the spring and autumn months, once every three weeks. This is supposing that the fallen leaves in autumn are swept up every two or three days by the man-servant, or some one of the family; in performing which operation, in this garden, as in every other, a soft birch broom must be used, so as not to raise and sweep away the gravel from the walks.

The mown grass, the primings, the weeds, and the leaves, and such like refuse, may be thrown under the pit among the horse dung, so as to increase the quantity of fermentable matter, and thus to keep up a constant heat in the pit. The walks should be rolled at least every time the grass is mown; and, every three or four years, that part of the surface of the gravel which has become black should be removed, and the remainder stirred up, fresh gravel added, and the whole rolled with a heavy roller, till it has become as hard as a surface of pavement. The articles grown in the pit may be cucumbers and melons, the management of which will be given hereafter; or it may be used for raising and protecting pelargoniums (geraniums), or such other green-house or pot plants as the lady of the house may prefer. Gourds may be raised in the pit, and planted between the asparagus beds, so as to yield a supply, during the whole summer, of a very delicious vegetable. If there is any room against the side wall that faces the south, tomatoes, previously brought forward in the pit, may be planted against it, and trained so as to ripen their fruits, which are excellent, either plain boiled, or made into sauce. A row or two of scarlet runners may also be planted between the beds.

The total expense of managing such a garden need not exceed rom 3l. to 5l. a year.

158. Remarks

Such a garden is well calculated for a person of taste, who gets his chief supply of culinary vegetables from a market-gardener or a greengrocer. It will look well with very little care and keeping; more especially if a due attention be paid to give sufficient room to the arbutus, the laurustinus, the autumn-flowering mezereon, and other winter-flowering shrubs; and the Cydonia japonica, the common mezereon, and the Ribes sanguiueum, double-blossomed furze, and other spring-flowering shrubs. The dying off of the foliage of so many kinds of trees and shrubs in autumn, and their expanding foliage in spring, will produce a great variety of tints; exhibiting every morning something new, refreshing, and delightful to the lover of picturesque beauty, even if he should be no botanist. In this garden, as actually existing, all the trees and shrubs are named with zinc labels, suspended from their branches with metallic wire. The zinc is in pieces about 1 in. broad and 3 in. long; not painted, but written with a prepared ink; and, in addition to the scientific and English names, the native country of the plant is added.

Such labels, the wire included, cost little more than one farthing each; and they may be easily procured from any of the London seedsmen; they add greatly to the interest of the garden, and have a tendency to give young persons a taste for plants.