TO IMPROVE THE GARDENS OF SQUARES.
THE gardens in London squares offer the finest chance in the world for making something pretty and delightful take the place of what at present gives very little pleasure to any one. In the block of London between the Marylebone Road and its immediate extensions east and west, and the river, there are at least thirty squares. The gardens in these are mainly the property of the owners of the squares, or of the occupiers of the houses jointly. A few possess fine trees; in a few some attempt is made to keep the grass, if there is . grass, nicely mown, and to have some bright patches of flowers. But, as a rale, they are ugly, and very little care or thought is expended on them. They do not give pleasure even to the children, because there are no flowers in them, and nothing else either in which they can take an interest. The only "parties" who thoroughly appreciate them are the London cats. Some square gardens are permanently locked up, and the gardener is the only person who has a key. In these the cats have the sole and exclusive dominion. They sit inside, immune from dogs, which cannot get through the railings, and regard the public and occupiers of the square with sneering complacency.
The private gardens in squares, or those which exist for the benefit of the people who live in the houses, not the few which, like Leicester Square or Lincoln's Inn Fields, have been thrown open to the public, are precisely those which might be made delightful for the owners to walk in, their children to play in, and for other people to look at. The intense conservatism of old-fashioned Londoners of the very best class may possibly stand in the way, because Londoners, or people who have town houses in the best residential area, areby nature and habitsabsolutely satisfied that their houses and neighbourhood cannot possibly be improved upon, and leave all matters to do with the outside of the houses, such as painting, gardening, or the like, to their servants and tradespeople, who are more conservative still. If any one doubts that this is what they do, and perhaps what they prefer, let him look at Belgrave Square, or Cavendish Square, or the area in front of Devonshire House, where through the beautiful light iron gates just put up in the wall, and apparently intended to give a view of the interior, the eye roams over a uniform expanse of_ dusty grit., decorated with a few- box trees in stone tubs. But as the public parks, which used to be just as dull, are full of lovely flowers, and tree ferns, and sweet green turf, the belief that anything prettier or nicer is impossible has to give way before facts. In addition, very many of the people who were satisfied with things as they were would now welcome the sight of a. little More outdoor beauty opposite their windows, or when driving or walking in town, and have acknowledged this in a timid and tentative fashion by filling their window-boxes with flowers, and admitting to them something else than the traditional and time-honoured rows of lobelias and caleeolarias, with scarlet geraniums behind. Those whose fancy reaches beyond the margin of the window-box may picture some such improvements as are here set down, with the additions or alterations which their taste and experience suggest.
• Like the old plans of the Garden of Eden, that of the garden in the square is generally a square itself, or an oblong. Four straight sides, sometimes of the same length, sometimes with those at the sides - longer than at the ends are the boundaries thereof. Sometimes the designer's fancy, or a plethora of macadam and roadmaking stuff, induced him to make the garden oval or circular, and to leave what would otherwise •have been the corners as an addition to the road-- outside:. Round this square or oval we have, first, the railing. ht. old London, instead- of the railing there used often to be a most -primitive wooden paling, painted green, or green and - white. The same paling marked off parts of. St. Jame&s Park. The present railings round our parks are bad enough, but in nineteen squares out of twenty the railing is hideous. - It is made of fat, round, cast-iron uprights, with badly moulded fleur-de-lis tops. All round iron railings- are mean and bad.. The oldest London railings were all: of ' wrought iron, and square. Many of them are quite good, and the spikes, like double Chinese tridents, which- adorned the tops of the walls round certain distinguished. houses, were decorative. Let us suppose a liberal London. landlord of one of the great estates of the Metropolis wishes. to make an experiment in improving the square from which-. he draws his highest rents, that it is a little falling in value,, and that he wishes to keep it as what the Americans call a " first-flight residential property," and not to let it drop into. the second. He might begin with the railings. They will cost a good. deal of money, but it will all help to keep up the rents. A light iron railing, of one of the standard designs of which he can find examples in any book on old gardens, with a well-proportioned stone pillar capped with a ball here and there, and light iron gates and pillars if he is in the mood to make this a feature of his garden, will make the outside boundary part of the beauty of the whole. If it is thought well to screen two sides or part of the garden entirely, the simplest form of railing can be used, and a light hedge grown inside. The open sides and breaks in this fence will still let the garden be seen, and the closed sides will suggest a little mystery and retirement. The rail will stand on a low foundation wall, rising perhaps a foot, and to the base of this turf should run. It is a mistake to plant flowers on the, edges of the square. In the first place, they will be picked by children from outside. And in the next, it is far better and cheaper to concentrate the colour more in the centre and by the paths. The trees, if there are trees, should have turf up to their thinks, as those near Hyde Park Corner and opposite St. George's Place have. And in no case should there be bushes and shrubs set in ugly bare earth. Lilacs, which are a beautiful feature in spring, and red May trees grow better in the turf. Both may be seen in perfection in the wilderness garden at Lilford Hall, in Northampton- shire, growing out of the lawns. The rake should be banished. The lawn-mower and the roller will do most of the " tidying " of the square garden. With a carpet of turf round the trees, and an elegant light railing round all, the pretty and decorative part will be the next, and by no means the least pleasant, object of thought. As a rule, all the paths in such gardens are too wide. The turf should be made as wide as possible, and the paths narrowed to a yard at most, and they were best paved with grey stone with the turf flush with them, or, if not, with reddish gravel, not the grey shell- dust from Holland. Some of the straight paths should be bordered with a light low trellis, and masses of sweet peas or climbing roses, with herbaceous borders of lower plants in front, of which there are hundreds, all beautiful, especially the pink and sulphur Canterbury bells, the blue larkspurs, gorgeous lilies, pinks, sweet williams, and other flowers that " in gay but quick succession shine," and are not so " quick" but that they will appear again another year. There is part of a garden three hundred years old in front of Hehningham Hall, in Suffolk, which suggests a hint for decoration in the London square.. There are short lengths of hedge, bright flowers, and square lawns, with an old medlar tree or Judas tree in each, and little pools for fish and water-lilies. There should be a sun-dial on the turf in the square; the position seems made for it, for the buildings are in the nature of the quadrangle of one great building. But, above all, there should be fountains, and pools of water held in marble basins, or kept so clear that the water is always flowing and translucent. In these pools there should be fish, and, if possible, bright-coloured birds in the garden. As at the Hague a whole avenue at the " Artis " is lined with brilliant parrots under every tree, and the same is done in a small way at the " Zoo " in Regent's Park, there is no reason whatever why there should not be stands for the gorgeous macaws and parrots in the square. The cats are used to them and do not touch them, and no other animal can get at them. At night they could be removed to their house, which need be no larger than a small conservatory, and when summer was over they could go back to the naturalist's shop, as the more delicate flowers do to the florist's. In the pools there should be numbers of fish. They are a great ornament, and would delight all the children who had the right of entry even as much as the birds. Golden carp, goldfish, big red- finned roach, and even some of the rarer kinds, could always be kept there. Neither birds nor fish would need any new machinery to provide or take care of them. There are tradesmen by the dozen in London whose business it is to supply them and whose men could look after them if they were paid to do so, and who would contract to provide a stock of birds and fish just as the florists contract to fill window- boxes or look after gardens. There is one firm in Covent Garden who could stock and maintain ornamental fish-pools in every garden in our squares or parks.
The above is a most modest project for this possible amenity for London. The houses round a square, perhaps, represent a million pounds of capital. What a want of the sense of proportion it shows not to beautify the garden out-
side which is common to all ! The expense would not be greater than the wages of three or four men at the utmost. and those only for two-thirds of the year. The gardens would be kept up by contract if the source of the revenue were once settled. In many cases, as we have said, it would pay the landlord to incur the cost. In others where the neighbourhood is at the acme of popularity, the united incomes of the residents are so large that they might agree to raise a fund, as is sometimes arranged for by lease in matters of simultaneous painting and repairs. But it would be a still more striking experiment if some great owner would make a really stately garden in a square, with the advice and designs of a good and sympathetic architect. There are examples of gardens both in Italy and Spain which were meant to be bedded in cities, such, for instance, as those made by King Pedro in the Alcazar at Seville. "Brick I found thee, marble I left thee," is a boast which, a little modified as to material, might be justly made by the creator of such a garden.
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