Roses only do fairly well; but though they sometimes will last two or three years, they are apt to give disappointments and must often be renewed. The climbing roses, however, in some gardens are very charming. In one of the prettiest in London--that belonging to Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema, in Grove End Road--the illustration shows how charmingly an iron trellis is covered with red and white roses. The garden is most artistically arranged and is a good illustration of how much can be made of a small space. A large evergreen oak overhangs the basin with a stone margin and splashing fountain, on which water-lilies gracefully float. The variety and harmony of the whole garden, with its paths shaded by fig-trees, apples and pears, cherries and lilacs, sunny borders with Scotch roses, Day lilies, foxgloves, and iris, and formal fountains, all in a small space, yet not crowded, and bright with flowers, is delightful. Another small garden in Kensington--tended by Lady Bergne--of quite another type, contains nearly all the flowers that have been mentioned as growing well in London. It is only the stereotyped long narrow strip at the back of the house; but by putting a path and rock-work and pools of water on one side, and having grass and flower borders on the other, backed by flowering shrubs and ferns at the shaded end, a great variety of plants have been grown successfully. In most London gardens very little enterprise is shown. The old system of bedding out is adhered to. Of the large London houses standing by their own lawns, none have gardens of any horticultural interest. Montagu House is on the site of the extensive gardens of Whitehall, and the present lawn is where the bowling green, with its gay throng of players, lay in former years, and the terrace keeps up the tradition of the wide terraces that descended from the palace to the green. The turf is still fair and green, and is brightened in summer by lines of geraniums, white daisies, and calceolarias. Devonshire House garden, on the site of the famous one belonging to Berkeley House that covered all the present Square, is in the same way merely planted with the usual summer bedding plants. Lord Portman’s house, 22 Portman Square, is where Mrs. Montagu, the Queen of the Blue-Stockings, held her court. The present garden, with spacious lawn, has no horticultural peculiarity, but its historical interest lies in the fact that it was here that Mrs. Montagu entertained the chimney-sweeps, every year on the 1st of May. She is said to have done so, to give these poor children “one happy day in the year,” and when the horrors and tragedies attending the lives and often deaths of these cruelly treated little creatures is realised, it is not to be wondered at that one lady was humane enough to befriend them.