overlap the parapet of the steps; their colour contrasting distinctly
with that of the more distant Ilex, a magnificent example of a tree that
deserves more general use in English gardens. The parterre above the
steps and on a level with the house has box hedges, after the Italian
manner, three feet high and two feet wide. These, with some of the yew
hedges, were planted a hundred years ago, though much of the garden,
with its ornaments of fine Italian flower-pots, was the work of the
former owner, the late Mr. Reginald Cholmondeley, a man of powerful
personality and fine taste.
The most important part of the garden lies to the west of the house,
where there is a double garden of stiff pattern with high box borders
and clipped evergreens. At a right angle to this, the spectator,
standing at some distance westward, and looking back towards the east
and straight with the space between the pair of gardens of angular
design, sees a broad space flanked on either side by a row of handsome
upright yews. The ground between is a flower garden of large
diamond-shaped beds in two sizes, with cleverly-arranged green edgings.
But now that the large Irish yews have grown to their early maturity,
dominating the garden and insisting on their own strong parallel lines,
it is open to question whether it would not have been better to have had
a wide, clear middle space of green straight down the length, with the
flowers in shapely, ordered masses to right and left. The close
succession of large beds gives the impression of impediments to
comfortable progress.
It was wise to leave the Irish yews unclipped. Though the common English
yew is the tree that is of all others the most docile to the discipline
of training and shearing, the upright growing variety will have none of
it. In some fine English gardens they are clipped, always with
disastrous effect. They will only take one form: that of an ugly swollen
bottle, or lamp-chimney with a straight top. Their own form is quite
symmetrical enough for use in any large design.