The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-12-10 00:00:00

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The attempt to limit the style of modern gardening to
certain fixed rules cannot be blamed, and until a code of
regulations for this branch of taste is thoroughly esta-
blished, we can never hope to accomplish any great excel-
lence. But it does not follow that the rules should not
admit of many modifications ; as for instance, oil painting
is not limited to certain square feet of canvas ; it also
shines as an art in the locket miniature,—therefore, why
not have miniature gardens as wall as miniature pictures.
indeed, there is greater reason for the latter because the
majority of persons are limited to square feet instead of
acres, and these small garden owners are by no means be-
hind the richer ones in their anxiety to rear a large num-
ber of plants, and have a succession of floral beauties.
That this is a matter of great interest is proved by the
extraordinary interest taken by the gardening public in
Mr. Kemp's little work, " How to lay out a small garden,"
which has had an almost unprecedented sale. Still, how-
ever, the subject is not yet fairly met, and another work
is still wanted to show how to form miniature gardens
where only a few square feet of space can be had ; and in
taking up this subject it will be necessary to commence
de novo, and strike out anew style altogether. At present
all the good books written merely detail the best methods
of laying out upon the established system. It is plain in
doing this we must look for instruction to the Chinese
gardeners, who form such miniature gardens after a style
quite their own, devised to suit their peculiar taste for
miniature plants, which of itself probably arises from the
high value of land amongst that curious people. They
not only make diminutive gardens but they also grow
diminutive plants to suit the gardens, and everything bear-
ing a corresponding relation, and the whole harmonises in a
satisfactory manner. Look from the neat arrangements of
the Chinese to our own clumsy attempts at small gardens,
where we, for want of room, make small parterres, but pay
no attention to the plants; the consequence is that however
neat our first arrangements appear, the beds are all over-
grown before the end of a single season and all traces of
symmetry are lost. This may be avoided if we throw the
usual plan out of the question altogether, and study to
find out the most diminutive plants, and of these more
than a thousand might be selected which would bear the
same relative proportions to a garden of a dozen square
yards that the oak does to a park of a hundred acres.
Such a miniature garden as we propose might also have a
small greenhouse on the same scale, and should be made
up entirely of fancy work of a miniature description. We
recollect during the last summer calling upon a gentle-
man in London who had taken a fancy to those miniature
plants, in pots, which we now often see for sale, and lead-
ing from one of the windows of his sitting-room, he had
built a small greenhouse about twelve feet square, the
shelves and "stands of which were all made on a scale
suited to these small pots, of which he had some hun-
dreds, and he assured us that he hoped soon to have at
least a thousand or more.species;, there was also a small
glass fountain with gokt tali, and. vat mall cages with