Sentence:  I went down into the garden, intended to be prim and quaint, with avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees, and statues, and water in stone basins; and everything was green, gaunt, weedy, straggling, under grown or over grown, mildewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of <WSD>slabby</WSD>, clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable life. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Of a surface: sloppy, slimy.