It is of course impossible to lay down any code of rules which would be equally applicable to every garden. As I have already said, there will always be a certain amount of bedding-out necessary, especially for the architectural gardens that surround a stately house; but we may hope that in all bedding-out more attention will be given than at present to the proper harmony of colours. It really would sometimes appear that half our English gardeners must be colour-blind. The gaudiest and most glaring contrasts pain instead of gratifying the eye, with their crude patches of pink and red and blue and yellow. In France the bedded-out borders have more generally a variety of plants mixed on the same bed, and this certainly tends to soften the general effect. But both in the outside lawns and shrubberies, and in the walled inner garden, there is much room for improvement. A great principle in laying out the lawns is the old principle of Batty Langley’s (a principle which he himself parodied rather than illustrated) of so arranging your grounds that everything cannot be seen at once, and that each turn of the walks excites some fresh interest. The curved lines of a shrubbery, now approaching and now receding, the grass running up into little bays and recesses among deodaras and groups of rhododendrons, specimen trees occasionally breaking a formal line, but never dotted about at regular intervals,—these are the features that lend attraction to a lawn. We would allow of no flower-bed whatever except the shrubbery border, though an occasional clump of tritomas, of cannas, or of Pampas grass, may take the place of flowering shrubs, and start up from corners of the grass. Their height and general aspect enables them to form part of the picture. But—one cannot repeat it too often—the expanse of the lawn should be rarely broken except by shrubberies; and that the lawn itself should be carefully kept and free from weeds is of course essential. One of the most beautiful gardens I ever knew depended almost entirely on the arrangement of its lawns and shrubberies. It had certainly been most carefully and adroitly planned, and it had every advantage in the soft climate of the west of England. The various lawns were divided by thick shrubberies, so that you wandered on from one to the other, and always came on something new. In front of these shrubberies was a large margin of flower border, gay with the most effective plants and annuals. At one corner of the lawn a standard _Magnolia grandiflora_ of great size held up its chaliced blossoms; at another a tulip-tree was laden with hundreds of yellow flowers. Here a magnificent _Salisburia_ mocked the foliage of the maiden-hair; and here an old cedar swept the grass with its huge pendent branches. But the main breadth of each lawn was never destroyed, and past them you might see the reaches of a river, now in one aspect, and now in another. Each view was different, and each was a fresh enjoyment and surprise.