If your different gardens are so situated that the roads through them, that is from one garden to the other, can be along the side of any garden without increasing the length of the road, by all means adopt that route. There is no such good boundary for a garden as a road that is being continually traversed. It will save many rupees by preventing the encroachment of jungle into a garden, and more space is thus also given for plants. It is, however, of no use to do it if a road through the middle of a garden is shorter, as coolies will always take the shortest route.
The lines of plants on sloping ground should neither run up and down, nor directly across the slope. If they run up and down, gutters or water-courses will form between the lines, and much additional earth will be washed away thereby. If they run right across the hill the same thing will occur between the trees in each line, and the lower side of each plant will have its roots laid very bare. It is on all slopes a choice of evils, but if the lines are laid diagonally across the hill, so that the slope along the lines shall be a moderate one, the evil is reduced as far as it can be by any arrangement of the plants. No, I forgot; there is one other thing. The closer the lines to each other, and the closer the plants in the lines to each other, in short, the more thickly the ground on slopes is planted the less will be the wash, for stems and roots retain the soil in its place, and the more there are the greater the advantage.
Where slopes are steep (though, remember, steep slopes are to be avoided) terracing may be resorted to with advantage, as the washing down of the soil is much checked by it.
On flat land, of course, it does not really signify in which directions the lines run, but such a garden looks best if, when the roads are straight, the lines run at right angles to them.
In laying out a garden, choose a central spot with water handy for your factory, bungalow, and all your buildings; let your Tea-houses be as close to your dwelling-house as possible, so that during the manufacturing time you can be in and out at all hours of the day and night. Much of your success will depend upon this. Let all your buildings be as near to each other as they can, but still far enough apart, that any one building may burn without endangering others. You need not construct any Tea-buildings until the third year.
[CHAPTER IX.]
VARIETIES OF THE TEA PLANT.
These are many, but they all arise from two species: the China plant, the common Tea-bush in China; and the indigenous plant, first discovered some forty years ago in Assam.
These are quite different species of the same plant. Whether the difference was produced by climate, by soil, or in what way, no one knows, and here we have only to do with the facts that they do differ in every respect. A purely indigenous plant or tree (for in its wild state it may more properly be called the latter) grows with one stem or trunk, and runs up to 15 and 18 feet high. It is always found in thick jungle, and would thus appear to like shade. I believe it does when young; but I am quite sure, if the jungle were cleared round an indigenous Tea-tree found in the forest, it would thrive better from that day. The China bush (for it is never more) after the second year has numerous stems, and 6 or 7 feet would seem to be its limit in height. The lowest branches of a China plant are close to the ground, but in a pure cultivated indigenous, from 9 inches to 1 foot above the soil the single stem is clean.
The indigenous grows quicker after the second or third year than the China, if it has not been over-pruned or over-plucked when young. In other words, it flushes quicker, for flushing is growing.