The Kitchen-gardens in Scotland are generally formed at greater expense, and kept afterwards with more care and neatness, than they are in England. The reason may be, that the climate requires a greater variety of fruits to be cultivated against walls; and that the kitchen-garden, being usually well sheltered, and also ornamented with flowers, is, contrary to the English practice, as much used as a place to walk in, by the female part of the family, as the pleasure-ground. We found some Scotch kitchen-gardens kept, with remarkable neatness, tad without a single weed; the defective part being the gravel walks, which, as before observed, being hoed and raked, are generally loose, and disagreeable to walk upon. As may be supposed, from the number of hands being almost every where diminished, we recognised a falling off in the keeping of kitchen-gardens since the time we were last in this part of Scotland; but what struck us as the greatest defect in almost all the Scottish gardens, as well as in most of the English ones which we have seen during our tour, was the barrenness of the wall fruit trees. We do not recollect a single garden in Scotland, where there was a fair crop over every part of the walls, unless it were at Kilkerran. The cause is clearly owing to the practice of digging and cropping the borders. Most gardeners are as well aware of this as we are; but they say they cannot do without the crops produced by the borders; and that, if they were not to crop them, their masters would think they were not doing their duty. What we would say in answer is, that it is very absurd to be at so great an expense in building walls and training trees on them, and at the same time to take the most effectual means to prevent these wall trees from producing fruit. We shall not repeat what we have already advanced (Vol. VII. p. 542.); but it may be useful to mention, that, in the excellent new garden at Kilkerran, not a peach or a nectarine was produced, till the very intelligent gardener, Mr. Cullen, took up the trees, formed a substratum of lime rubbish, firmly beaten down, and covered it with soil not deeper than 1 ft., then replanted the trees, and never since cropped or even dug the ground about their roots. Mr. Cullen has now short well-ripened wood, and good crops of fruit every year. In the garden at St. Mary's Isle there is a vinery which never fails bearing an abundant crop; and here the border has not been dug for thirty years, but only covered with rotten leaves and rotten dung, underneath which Mr. Nisbet showed us a ### of fibres rising to the surface, and feeding on it. Planting standard fruit trees in kitchen-gardens is a bad practice, and generally prevalent; the vegetables or small fruits grown below them can never attain a proper size and flavour ? and the culture of the soil, required to produce these vegetables and small fruits, is as injurious to the standard trees as cropping borders is to the wall trees. Dwarfs and espaliers along the walks are less; objectionable than standards in the compartments but how seldom do we find such trees bearing good crops. The cause is in the digging and cropping. Standard fruit trees are generally best planted in an orchard by themselves; the ground very slightly cropped, till the trees have attained a considerable size, and the ground afterwards sown with grass; or, what is preferable, merely kept free of weeds, by hoeing, forking, or slight digging. The Construction of Hot-houses of every description is by no means so far advanced in the west of Scotland as it is in England, and still less the mode of heating them by hot water. By far too much labour is bestowed on the woodwork, in forming mouldings, panels, and other ornamental surfaces, which serve little purpose but that of harbouring dirt and moisture and vermin, rotting the materials, and darkening the house.
