A RELIEF MAP GARDEN OF ENGLAND.
IN our correspondence columns will be found a suggestion which we commend to the consideration of those who, if Lord Plymouth's scheme of purchase and reconstruction is satisfactorily completed, will shortly have charge of the garden grounds belonging to the Crystal Palace. It is based on a project originally outlined in our issue of January 20th, by Mr. Bremner Davis. He proposed that a portion of the grounds should be set apart for the laying out of a garden map of England, and though he did not enter fully into details, the idea was of a representation of our island designed to scale as regards shape, division of counties, and so on, and in relief so as to show the varying features of the country as regards mountains, valleys, plains, and river basins. Such a map, we believe, if carefully drawn to begin with and filled in with particular regard to local details, would prove not only of very great educative value, but would be found to be a perpetual attraction to the Crystal Palace grounds— to a far greater degree than, for instance, the familiar Maze at Hampton Court. Such a map exists nowhere else. Nothing like it has been attempted on any large scale in any grounds accessible to the public. The Festival of Empire last year, it is true, provided an object lesson on the extent and resources of the British Empire, but the magnitude of the subject naturally prevented any correct design as to scale. Such a design, however, in the case of a smaller area of country, particularly an island, is obviously much more easily obtained. But perhaps the plan will better explain itself in detail than as a mere suggestion of a possibility.
To begin with, then, what is wanted in the Crystal Palace gardens is a piece of ground sufficiently level to ensure that the laying out of a map of England in relief would not be too expensive in the matter of time and labour. An area of ten acres would not be too much to admit of a satisfactory contrast between flat and mountainous districts, and to allow for intelligible spaces of country between the important towns. The map-maker would take first the broadest possible survey of the physical features of the country, and with a view to giving him as much space as possible in which to work out details, it would be best perhaps if he were to confine himself to the reproduction of England and Wales, reserv- ing Scotland for an Edinburgh or Glasgow garden. The Cheviot Hills would make a very convenient border and finish to the north of the map. Certain large features of English and Welsh country would mark themselves out at once. The Sat fenland of Lincoln, Norfolk, and the Isle of Ely would provide an easy level from which to work inland to the higher ground of the Welds, the East Anglian Heights, and the Chiltern Hills. In the north the Pennine Chain ranging down to the Peak, with the Cumbrian Mountains on one side and the Yorkshire Moors on the other, would stand up above the flatter country of Cheshire and Nottingham. Wales, from Snowdon in the north to Breakneck Beacon in the Black Mountains above Merthyr Tydvil, would be a succession of mountain ranges—of hill-tops huddling " one behind another like a herd of cattle into the sunset," as Stevenson writes of the hills beyond Hermiston. To the south-west would rise the lonely tors of Dartmoor ; to the south the eye would range to the parallel sweep of the North and South Downs, with the bed of the great river of scone gone running plain between them; and dotted over the Midland and Southern Counties would stand up the lesser chains of hills, the Mendips, the Cotswolds, the Malvern Hills, the Berkshire Downs. All these the visitor to the garden map ought to be able to pick out at once; and one of the first pro- blems which would confront the map-maker would be the point from which a survey of the whole could best be made from a height, and, doubtless, if such a. survey wore to be made from within the map (instead, for instance, of some such view-point as might be gained from one of the towers of the Crystal Palace itself), there could be no better position than the spot which would represent London.
The broad features of the map having been decided upon, details of treatment would follow. Mountains, plains, rivers, would be considered in turn, not merely from the point of view of construction, but with an eye to the possibilities of gardening. The treatment of the mountains as rockwork suggests itself at once. Mountains if modelled in plain rock, or rock and cement like the bears' enclosure in the Zoological Gardens,.would be bald and unsightly—terra inhospita colonic. The effect of mountains could be perfectly well retained by stones built into made-up soil and planted with the smaller rock-loving, plants which would cover, but would not alter, the shape of the stone-work under them. The smaller sedums and saxifrages, the dwarf campanulas, and such plants as Arenaria balearica, which likes a north aspect and covers a surface of rock with a clinging green carpet starred with white flowers, would produce the right effect of a garden without altering or obscuring other features in the neighbourhood. The uplands of Yorkshire and Derby- shire, again, might be covered with heather, and though there would doubtless be purists who would urge that nothing but our native heathers and ling should be planted, there are other kinds, such as Erica carnea and medilerranea hybrida which would give charming effects, particularly in winter. As regards the rivers, it might be possible for one or more of the most important to be treated as running water- courses, but, on the whole, the best effect would probably he obtained by making the river valleys into paths so that 't would be possible to walk from the mouth to the source, passing in turn the towns on the banks. While the plains and floors of the wider valleys would be green lawns the towns would be beds of flowers, as formally laid out as would suit with the surroundings, and here and there would be a peculiar fitness in a particular flower. York, for instance, ought to be a bed of white roses, and Lancaster a bed of red roses, and there might be some special way of marking cathedral cities—perhaps with topiary in some form rather than with flowers such as lilies, which would only bloom in summer. Another feature easily marked on the map would be the old Roman roads and the ancient trackways ; we could walk the length of Steno Street and Watling Street, and the Icknield Way, by which the Iceni went out and home again, and the Fosse Way—the " Quatuor Chimini," the Four Great Roads of England. The Pilgrims' Way from Winchester to Canterbury might be dotted along the flank of the North Downs with dwarf yews. Other relics —Stonehenge for example—might be modelled in miniature, and even smaller and less important " monuments " might have their place on the map. There should be a stone to mark Wayland Smith's cave by White Horse Hill, for instance, and for that matter the more famous of the white horses and men cut out on the hills and downs might well have their places on the map as historic features of the country-. side. On the coast, again, there would be opportunities of reproducing natural effects with particular emphasis as with the chalk cliffs along the South Coast, which for so many Englishmen have been the last of their country they have seen, and the first object they have looked for to lift above the line of the Channel on a homeward voyage. The Chesil Beach, as one of the wonders of the country, might have its counterpart, possibly made of the very pebbles which lie along that steep strip of shore from Portland to Abbotshury. And the Chesil Beach suggests at once the feasibility of hero and there showing the use and value of the natural features of the coastline as regards water and harbourage. It would be difficult to realise, for instance, what is the importance of such a place as Milford Haven unless it could be seen as a harbour of water, and the possibilities of Portsmouth, or London, considered as a port for the world would certainly be best understood if it could be shown standing at the head of a great waterway. Possibly some substitute for water might be arranged, but water would add enormously to the colour and life of the map, and not only along the coast, but in places like the Lake District, which, indeed, could hardly carry its name at all without miniature lakes among its mountains. The Lake District would give the map-maker and gardener one of the best of all his opportunities.
It may be urged that it would not be feasible to adhere absolutely strictly to scale in laying out a map of this kind. That may be; the relative heights of Dunkery Beacon and the Peak, for instance, need not be exactly differentiated in inches. The effect of hill and dale would be the main thing. A little extra licence in artistic convention, if it emphasized the natural features of the country, would probably fulfil the object of the map better than meticulous accuracy in measure- ment. The measurement of a beacon suggests a final possi- bility. Such a garden map as we have suggested would be a resort for visitors, not merely by day, but by night in the summer. The higher hills, then, might be arranged with some easily controlled system of lighting, so that it would ho possible, contemplating the map from above or walking by the paths which would be its watercourses, to watch the course of a beacon signal as Macaulay has imagined it ; to mark the "red glare on Skiddaw," "the Wrekin's crest of light," and the twelve counties lit by the fire above Malvern.
The scheme is, we are sure, practical, and would be instruc. tive and entertaining in a high degree without being ugly. To the man who was fond of a garden but oared nothing for geography the relief map garden would merely be a pleasant rock garden or series of rock gardens set in pleasant lawns interspersed with irregular flower beds, pools, and sinuous little streams or runnels, the whole surrounded by a bigger stream—" the stream of Ocean "—with many bays and inlets. None of the underlying geographical ideas would injure the garden in the least ; they would only give variety to the laying out. In the eighteenth century the parks of great commanders were planted to represent their battles. The groups of trees at Blenheim and in Kensington Gardens represent squadrons, platoons, and battalions in battle order. But no one for that reason thinks the ground spoiled. We shall not make a bad or ugly rock garden by making it a model of the physical features of England and Wales.
Previous page
