THE 
 
 FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 WITH AN ESSAY OX THE 
 
 POETRY OF GARDENING. 
 
 V7' 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE 'QUARTERLY REVIEW.' 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1852. 
 
THE following Essay on Flowers appeared originally in 
 the Quarterly Eeview in the year 1842. Though many ad- 
 ditions and corrections might now be made, it has been 
 thought better on the whole to print it almost word for word 
 as it was first published. A Chapter on the Poetry of 
 Gardening, by the same writer, which first appeared in another 
 Miscellany, has been added, as embodying, though under . a 
 somewhat conceited form, the same views of Gardening at 
 greater length. 
 
 March, 1852. 
 
 0349359 
 
 B2 
 
CONTENTS. . 
 
 Page 
 Excellence of gardening .... 5 
 
 Its patrons 5 
 
 Its authors 5 
 
 Royal patronage 6 
 
 History of gardens 7 
 
 The Romans and Greeks.... 9 
 
 Schools of gardening 10 
 
 Italian 11 
 
 French 12 
 
 Versailles 12 
 
 Extravagancies 13 
 
 Dutch 17 
 
 English 19 
 
 Shenstone 19 
 
 Price on the Picturesque.... 20 
 The formal and the natural 
 
 style 22 
 
 Modern progress of horti- 
 culture 25 
 
 Newspapers 25 
 
 Societies 26 
 
 Florists 27 
 
 Tulipomania 27 
 
 Endless varieties 28 
 
 Names of flowers 29 
 
 Pedantry of gaixleners 31 
 
 Orchideous plants 32 
 
 Use in manufactures 34 
 
 Ferns 35 
 
 Ward's glass-cases 36 
 
 The sick chamber 38 
 
 Curiosities of gardening .... 41 
 
 Darwin 41 
 
 Floating gardens 43 
 
 Travelling gardens 44 
 
 Lady-cardeners 44 
 
 Page 
 
 Mrs. Loudon 45 
 
 Watering 47 
 
 Lawns 47 
 
 Walks 47 
 
 Edgings 49 
 
 Progress of gardening 51 
 
 Exhibitions of Horticultural 
 
 Society 53 
 
 Old English style 54 
 
 'Poetry of Gardening ' 55 
 
 A perfect garden 56 
 
 Hollyocks 57 
 
 Bromley Hill 57 
 
 Site 59 
 
 I Hemlock-spruce 60 
 
 Berberis 60 
 
 | Deodara 61 
 
 Herb-garden 62 
 
 Maze 63 
 
 Mound 63 
 
 Bowling-green 63 
 
 Oxford gardens 64 
 
 Formal style 64 
 
 Evelyn's hedge 65 
 
 Associations of gardens 66 
 
 Lovers of gardens 67 
 
 English climate 68 
 
 Hybernation of plants 70 
 
 Blessings of gardening 72 
 
 To all classes 72 
 
 Christian teaching 74 
 
 To the poor man 75 
 
 To the clergy 77 
 
 Seedlings 79 
 
 Flower-decoration 80 
 
 Poetry of Gardening 83 
 
THE FLOWER GAEDEN. 
 
 IF Dr. Johnson would not stop to inquire " whether 
 landscape-gardening demands any great powers of 
 the mind," we may surely be excused from the like 
 investigation on the humbler subject of gardening- 
 proper. But whether or not these pursuits demand, 
 certain it is that they have exercised, the talents of 
 as numerous and brilliant an assemblage of great 
 names as any one subject can boast of. Without 
 travelling into distant times or countries, we find 
 among our own philosophers, poets, and men of taste, 
 who have deemed gardening worthy their regard, 
 the names of Bacon, Evelyn, Temple, Pope, Addi- 
 son, Sir William Chambers, Lord Kames, Shenstone, 
 Horace Walpole, Alison, Hope, and Walter Scott. 
 Under the first and last of these authorities, omitting 
 all the rest, we would gladly take our stand in de- 
 fence of any study to which they had given their 
 sanction on paper and in practice. Even in its own 
 exclusive domain, gardening has raised no mean 
 school of literature in the works of Gilpin, Whateley, 
 the Masons, Knight, Price, and Eepton. 
 
 Time would fail us to tell of all those royal and 
 
6 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 noble personages whom old Grerarde enumerates in. 
 his ' Herbal ' as having either " loved to live in gar- 
 dens," or written treatises on the subject. We know 
 that Solomon " spoke of plants, from the cedar that 
 is in Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth out of the 
 wall:" though here the material surpassed the 
 workmanship, for in all his wisdom he discoursed not 
 so eloquently, nor in all his glory was he so richly 
 arrayed, as " one lily of the field." The vegetable 
 drug mithridate long handed down the name of the 
 King of Pontus, its discoverer, " better knowne," 
 says Grerarde, " by his soveraigne Mithridate, than 
 by his sometime speaking two-and-twenty lan- 
 guages." " What should I say," continues the old 
 herbalist, after having called in the authorities of 
 Euax king of the Arabians, and Artemisia queen of 
 Caria, " what should I say of those royal personages, 
 Juba, Attalus, Climenus, Achilles, Cyrus, Masynissa, 
 Semyramis, Dioclesian " all skilled in " the excel- 
 lent art of simpling ? " We might easily swell the 
 list by the addition of royal patrons of horticulture 
 in modern times. Among our own sovereigns, 
 Elizabeth, James I., and Charles II. are mentioned 
 as having given their personal superintendence to 
 the royal gardens, while a change in the style of lay- 
 ing out grounds is very generally attributed to the 
 accession of William and Mary though we doubt 
 whether a horticultural genius would have met with 
 any better or more fitting reception from the hero of 
 the Boyne than did the great wit to whom he offered 
 a cornetcy of dragoons. The gardens of Tzarsco-celo 
 
PATRONS OF GARDENING. 
 
 and of Peterhoff were severally the summer resorts 
 of Catherine I. and Elizabeth of Russia, where the 
 one amused herself with building a Chinese village, 
 and the other by cooking her own dinner in the 
 summer-house of Monplaisir. There are more thrill- 
 ing associations connected with the Jardin Anglais 
 of the Trianon at Versailles, where some rose-trees 
 yet grow which were planted by Marie Antoinette ; 
 nor will an Englishman easily forget the grounds of 
 Claremont, which yet cherish the memory and the 
 taste of that truly British princess who delighted to 
 superintend even the arrangement of the flowers in 
 the cottage-garden. At the present moment great 
 things are promised at Windsor, both in the orna- 
 mental and useful department ; and we trust that 
 the alterations now in progress, avowedly under the 
 eye of royalty, will produce gardens as worthy of the 
 sovereign and the nation, as is the palace to which 
 they are attached. 
 
 Little new is to be said upon the history of gar- 
 dening. Horace Walpole and Daines Barrington 
 have well-nigh exhausted the subject, and all later 
 writers go over the same ground. Beginning with 
 the Eden of our first parents, we have the old stories 
 of the orchard of the Hesperides, and the dragon, 
 and the golden fruit (now explained to be oranges) 
 the gardens of Adonis the Happy Isles the 
 hanging terraces of Babylon till, with a passing 
 glance at those of Alcinous and Laertes, as described 
 by Homer, we arrive at the Gardens of Epicurus 
 and the Academe of Plato. Roman history brings 
 
8 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 up the rear with the villas of Cicero and Pliny, the 
 fruits of Lucullus, the roses of Psestum, and Caesar's 
 
 " Private arbours and new-planted orchards 
 On this side Tiber." 
 
 To how different a scene in each of these instances 
 the term " garden " has been applied we have now 
 no time to inquire ; but we may perhaps be allowed, 
 before entering upon the fresher and more inviting 
 scene of the English parterre, to say one word in 
 correction of an error common to all writers on the 
 horticulture of the ancients. They would have us 
 consider all classical gardens as little more than 
 kitchen-gardens or orchards to use the expression 
 of Walpole, " a cabbage and a gooseberry -bush." 
 This is a great mistake. The love of flowers is as 
 clearly traceable in the poets of antiquity as in those 
 of our own times, and their allusions to them plainly 
 show that they were cultivated with the greatest 
 care. Fruit-trees no doubt were mingled with their 
 flowers, but in the formal, or indeed in any style, 
 this might be made an additional beauty. The very 
 order* indeed of their olive-groves had a protecting 
 deity at Athens, and with such exactness did they 
 set out the elms which supported their vines that 
 Virgil compares them to the rank and file of a 
 Roman legion. But the " fair-clustering " f narcis- 
 sus and the " gold-gleaming " crocus were reckoned 
 among the glories of Attica as much as the nightin- 
 gale, and the olive, and the steed ; and the violet J 
 
 * Soph. (Ed. Col. 705. f Ibid. 682. 
 
 J Aristoph. Equit. 1324. Acharn. 637. 
 
ANCIENT GARDENS ROMAN GREEK. 
 
 was as proud a device of the Ionic Athenians as the 
 rose of England, or the lily of France. The Ko- 
 mans are even censured by their lyric poet* for 
 allowing their fruitful olive-groves to give place to 
 beds of violets, and myrtles, and all the " wilder- 
 ness of sweets." The first rose of spring f and the 
 " last rose of summer " { have been sung in Latin as 
 well as English. Ovid's description of the Floralia 
 will equal any account we can produce of our May- 
 day ; nor lias Milton himself more glowingly painted 
 the flowery mead of Enna than has the author of the 
 Fasti. Cicero distinctly enumerates the cultiva- 
 tion of flowers among the delights of the country ; 
 and Virgil |] assures us that, had he given us his 
 Georgic on Horticulture, he would not have for- 
 gotten the narcissus or acanthus, the ivy, the myrtle, 
 or the rose-gardens of Pgestum. The moral which 
 Burns drew from his " mountain daisy " had been 
 marked before both by Virgil Tf and Catullus ; ** 
 and indeed a glance at the Eclogues, the Georgics, 
 or the Fasti, will show the same love of flowers in 
 their authors which evidently animated the great 
 comedian of Greece, where he describes the gentle- 
 men of " merry old Athens " as " redolent of honey- 
 suckle and holidays ;" |f an( l which is so conspicuous 
 in our own Shakspeare as to have led to some late 
 
 * Hor. ii. xv. 5. f Virg. Georg. iv. 134. 
 
 J Hor. Od. i. xxviii. 3. 
 
 " Nee vero segetibus solum, et pratis, et vineis, et artmstis res 
 rusticas la?tae sunt, sed etiam in hortis et pomariis ; turn pecudum 
 pastu, apium examinibus, florum omnium varietate." De Sen., c. 15. 
 
 || Georg. iv. 124. f .En. ix. 435. ** Catull. xi. 
 
 ft <Tfj.i\a.Kos ofav Kal cbrpcry/x.ocn/j'Tjs. Aristoph. Nub. 1007. 
 
10 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 ingenious surmises that he was born and bred a gar- 
 dener.* 
 
 Addison amused himself by comparing the dif- 
 ferent styles of gardening with those of poetry 
 " Your makers of parterres and flower-gardens are 
 epigrammatists and sonneteers ; contrivers of bowers 
 and grottos, treillages and cascades, are romance- 
 writers ;" while the gravel-pits in Kensington Gar- 
 dens, then just laid out by London and Wise, were 
 heroic verse. If our modern critics were to draw a 
 similar comparison, we suppose our gardens would 
 be divided into the Classical and the Eomantic. The 
 first would embrace the works of the Italian, Dutch, 
 and French, the second those of the Chinese and 
 English schools. The characteristics of the three 
 symmetric styles are not easily to be distinguished, 
 but from the climate and character of the nations, 
 perhaps even more than from the actual examples 
 existing in their respective countries, a division lias 
 
 * We may perhaps return to the subject of ancient gardens. 
 Meanwhile, we answer to Daines Barrington's remark, that " he knew 
 of no Greek or Latin word for nosegay," that the ancients wore 
 their Mowers on their head, not in their bosom ; and there is surely 
 mention enough about " (rretyavoi" and " coronce." But we need 
 hardly wonder at such an oversight in an author who, noticing the 
 passages on flowers in our early poets, makes no allusion to Shakspeare. 
 To H. Walpole, who says, " their gardens are never mentioned as 
 affording shade and shelter from the rage of the dog-star," we can 
 now only quote 
 
 " Spissa ramis laurea fervidos 
 
 Excludet ictus ;" 
 and 
 
 " platanum potantibus umbram ;" 
 
 and Hor. ii. xi. 13. The platanus was the newly introduced garden- 
 wonder of the Augustan age. 
 
SCHOOLS OF GARDENING. 11 
 
 been made which is recognised in most works 011 
 gardening, and may be useful in practice in keeping 
 us to that " leading idea " on which the critics insist 
 so strongly, but which has been sadly neglected in 
 most modern examples. 
 
 The Italian style is undoubtedly the offspring, or 
 rather the continuation, of the xystus and quincunx 
 of the ancient Eomans. With them the garden was 
 only the amplification of the house : if indeed their 
 notion of a villa did not almost sink the consideration 
 of the roofed rooms in the magnificence of the colon- 
 nades and terraces that surrounded them. The same 
 spirit has animated the style of modern Italy. The 
 garden immediately about the house is but the ex- 
 tension of the style and materials of which the build- 
 ings themselves are composed. Broad paved ter- 
 races and, where the ground admits of them, tiers 
 rising one above the other vases and statues (not 
 half hidden in a shrubbery, or indiscriminately scat- 
 tered over a lawn, but) connected, and in character 
 with the house itself these, with marble fountains 
 and such relics of antiquity as may have been dis- 
 covered in the neighbourhood, form the chief beau- 
 ties of the magnificent gardens of Italy, which have 
 in many instances swallowed up the whole wealth of 
 their princely possessors. Spite of Walpole's sneer 
 about " walking up and down stairs in the open air," 
 we own that there are to us few things so beautiful 
 in art as stately terraces, tier above tier, and bold 
 flights of stone steps, now stretching forward in a 
 broad unbroken course, now winding round the 
 
12 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 angle of the terrace in short and steep descents, each 
 landing affording some new scene, some change of 
 sun or shade a genial basking-place, or cool retreat 
 here the rich perfume of an ancestral* orange- 
 tree, there the bright blossom of some sunny creeper 
 while at another turn a balcony juts out to catch 
 some distant view, or a recess is formed with seats for 
 the loitering party to " rest and be thankful." Let all 
 this be connected by colonnades with the architec- 
 ture of the mansion, and you have a far more rational 
 appendage to its necessarily artificial character than 
 the petty wildernesses and picturesque abandon 
 which have not been without advocates up to the 
 very threshold. 
 
 Isola Bella, the creation of Vitaliano Borromeo, 
 may be considered as the extravagant type of the 
 Italian style. A barren rock, rising in the midst of 
 a lake, and producing nothing but a few poor lichens, 
 has been converted into a pyramid of terraces, sup- 
 ported on arches, and ornamented with bays and 
 orange-trees of amazing size and beauty. 
 
 The French are theatrical even in their gardens. 
 There is an effort after spectacle and display which, 
 while it wants the grace of the Italians, is yet free 
 from the puerilities of the Dutch. The gardens of 
 Versailles may be taken as the great exemplar of 
 this style ; and magnificent indeed they are, if ex- 
 pense and extent and repetition suffice to make up 
 
 * There are in Holland many orange-trees which have been in the 
 same family 200 and 300 years ; one at Versailles has the inscription 
 "Sam* en 1421." 
 
ITALIAN FREXCH. 13 
 
 magnificence. Two hundred acres and two hundred 
 millions of francs were the materials which Louis 
 XIV. handed over ;to Le Notre, wherewith to con- 
 struct them. To draw petty figures in dwarf-box, 
 and elaborate patterns in particoloured sand, might 
 well be dispensed with where the formal style was 
 carried out with such magnificence as this, but other- 
 wise the designs of Le Notre differ little from that 
 of his predecessors in the Geometric style, save in 
 their monstrous extent. This is the " grand man- 
 ner " of which Batty Langley, in his ' New Prin- 
 ciples of Gardening,' published in 1728, has given 
 such extraordinary specimens. We wish it were 
 only possible for us to transfer a few of his designs 
 to these pages, that the absurdity of that fashion 
 might be fully shown up. Some notion may be 
 formed of his system from his starting with the prin- 
 ciple that the " true end and design of laying out 
 gardens of pleasure is, that we may never know 
 when we have seen the whole." * The great wonder 
 of Versailles was the well-known labyrinth, not such 
 a maze as is really the source of much idle amuse- 
 ment at Hampton Court, but a mere ravel of inter- 
 minable walks, closely fenced in with high hedges, 
 in which thirty-nine of JEsop's Fables were repre- 
 sented by painted copper figures of birds and beasts, 
 each group connected with a separate fountain, and 
 
 * Brown who, though an uneducated man, and alluded to, we 
 suppose, by Sir W. Chambers where he speaks of " peasants emerging 
 from the melon-ground to take the periwig and turn professor,"" left 
 many good sayings behind him used to say of these tortuous walks, 
 that you might put one foot upon zig and the other upon z-tg. 
 
14 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 all spouting water out of their mouths. A more dull 
 and fatuous notion it never entered into the mind of 
 bloated extravagance to conceive.* 
 
 Every tree was here planted with geometrical 
 exactness, parterre answered to parterre across 
 half a mile of gravel, 
 
 " Grove nods to grove, each alley has its brother, 
 And half the garden just reflects the other." 
 
 " Such symmetry," says Lord Byron, " is not for 
 solitude ;" and certainly the gardens of Versailles 
 were not planted with any such intent. The Pari- 
 sians do not throng there for the contemplation to be 
 found in the " trim gardens " of Milton. There is 
 indeed a melancholy, but not a pleasing one, in 
 wandering alone through those many acres of formal 
 hornbeam, where we feel that it requires the gal- 
 liard and clinquant air of a scene of Watteau its 
 crowds and love-making its hoops and minuets a 
 ringing laugh and merry tambourine to make us 
 recognise the real genius of the place. Taking 
 Versailles as the gigantic type of the French school, 
 it need scarcely be said that it embraces broad gra- 
 
 * Some idea may be formed of the more than childishness of the 
 thing from a contemporary account : " These waterworks represent 
 several of ^Esop's Fables : the animals are all of brass, and painted in 
 their proper colours ; and are so well assigned, that they seem to be 
 in the very action the Fable supposes them in, and the more so, for 
 that they cast water out of their mouths, alluding to the form of 
 speech the Fable renders them in." Here follows the description of 
 a particular fountain. " Fable XIII. The Fox and the Crane. Upon 
 a rock stands a Fox with the Crane ; the Fox is lapping somewhat on 
 a flat gilded dish, the water spreads itself in the form of a table- 
 cloth ; the Crane by way of complaint spouts up water into the air :" 
 and so on through thirty-eight others. Versailles Illustrated, 1726. 
 
VERSAILLES. 15 
 
 veiled terraces, long alleys of yew and hornbeam, 
 vast orangeries, groves planted in the quincunx 
 style, and waterworks embellished with, and con- 
 ducted through, every variety of sculptured orna- 
 ment. It takes the middle line between the other 
 two geometric schools ; admitting more sculpture 
 and other works of art than the Italian, but not 
 overpowered with the same number of " huge masses 
 of littleness " as the Dutch. There is more of pro- 
 menade, less of parterre ; more gravel than turf ; 
 more of the deciduous than of the evergreen tree. 
 The practical water-wit of drenching the spectators 
 was in high vogue in the ancient French gardens ; 
 and Evelyn, in his account of the Duke of Richelieu's 
 villa, describes with some relish how " on going, two 
 extravagant musketeers shot at us with a stream of 
 water from their musket-barrels." Contrivances for 
 dousing the visitors " especially the ladies " which 
 once filled so large a space in the catalogue of every 
 show-place, seem to militate a little against the 
 national character for gallantry ; but the very fact 
 that everything was done to surprise the spectator 
 and stranger evinces how different was the French 
 idea of a garden from the home and familiar pleasures 
 which an Englishman looks to in his. Paintings on 
 a large scale, and illusive perspectives* at the end 
 
 * An instance of these " agreeable deceptions," perfectly character- 
 istic of the French taste of the day, may he given from Evelyn's 
 tour: " In the Rue de la Seine is a little garden, which, though 
 very narrow, by the addition of a well-painted perspective is to ap- 
 pearance greatly enlarged ; to this there is another part, supported by 
 arches, in which runs a stream of water, rising in the aviary, out a 
 
16 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 of their avenues, may be ranked among their charac- 
 teristic embellishments. 
 
 But during the madness of the Revolution, gar- 
 dens of course could not be allowed alone to remain 
 unaltered ; and as Reason and Nature were to carry 
 everything before them, here too the English style 
 was of course adopted with the same amount of en- 
 thusiasm and of intelligence as they showed in taking 
 up the democratic parts of our constitution, Ermc- 
 nonville, the seat of Viscomte Girardin, was the- lirst 
 place of consequence laid out in the natural style, 
 and a more complete specimen of French adaptation 
 was never heard of. We have not space even to 
 glance at half its charms ; but some idea of the genius 
 loci may be conveyed from the fact that " a garden 
 in ruins " was one of its lions. And it seems tluit 
 the Viscomte kept a band of musicians continually 
 moving about, now on water, now on land, to draw 
 the attention of visitors to the right points of view 
 at the right time of the day; while Madame and 
 her daughters, in a sweet mixture of the natural, 
 the revolutionary, and the romantic, promenaded the 
 grounds, dressed in brown stuff, " en amazones" 
 with black hats ; and the young men wore " habille- 
 ments les plus simples et le plus propres d les faire 
 confondre avec les enfants des campagnards" * One 
 instance, more Frenchified and ridiculous still, was 
 that of the " Moulin Joli" of Watelet. He was a 
 
 statue, and seeming to flow for some miles, by being artificially con- 
 tinued in the painting, where it sinks down, at the wall." 
 * Gaz. Lit. de 1' Europe, quoted by Loudon, Encyc., p. 80. 
 
DUTCH. 17 
 
 writer of a system of gardening on utilitarian prin- 
 ciples ; but, having erected divers temples and altars 
 about his grounds, he felt himself bound, in consis- 
 tency with his theory, to employ occasionally troops 
 of sacrificers and worshippers, to give his gimcrack 
 pagodas and shrines the air of utility ! In good 
 keeping with this garden was the encomium of the 
 Prince de Ligne. " Allez-y, incredules ! Meditez 
 sur les inscriptions que le gout y a dictees. Me- 
 ditez avec le sage, soupirez avec Vamant, et benissez 
 Watelet." 
 
 The line of demarcation between the Dutch and 
 French styles is perhaps more imaginary than real. 
 The same exact symmetry everywhere prevails. 
 There is a profusion of ornaments, only on a smaller 
 scale, 
 
 " Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees," 
 
 with stagnant and muddy canals and ditches, pur- 
 posely made for the bridge that is thrown over them ; 
 but they abound also in the pleasanter accompani- 
 ments of grassy banks and slopes, green terraces, 
 caves, waterworks, banque ting-houses set on mounds, 
 with a profusion of trellis-work and green paint 
 " furnished," in the words of Evelyn, " with what- 
 ever may render the place agreeable, melancholy, 
 and country-like," not forgetting " a hedge of jets 
 d'eau surrounding a parterre." 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Antwerp is a lawn with 
 sheep like the gray wethers of Salisbury Plain of 
 stone, and shepherd and dog of the same material to 
 
18 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 match. Generally, however, the scissors and the 
 yew-tree make up the main " furniture " of the 
 garden; and there is something so venerable, and 
 even classical,* about cones and pyramids, and pea- 
 cocks of box and yew, that we should be loth to 
 destroy a single specimen of the topiary art that 
 was not in flagrant disconnection with the scene 
 around it. 
 
 However, the most striking and indispensable 
 feature of a private garden in the Dutch style is the 
 " lust-huis," or pleasure-house, hundreds of which 
 overlook every public road and canal in Holland. 
 Perched on the angle of the high wall of the en- 
 closure, or flanking or bestriding the stagnant canal- 
 ulet which bounds the garden, in all the gaiety and 
 cleanliness of fresh paint, these little rooms form the 
 resort, in summer and autumn evenings, of the 
 owners and their families, who, according to sex and 
 age, indulge themselves with pipes and beer, tea 
 and gossip, or in observing the passengers along the 
 high road, -while these, in their turn, are amused 
 with the amiable and pithy mottoes on the pavilions, 
 which set forth the " Pleasure and Ease," " Friend- 
 ship and Sociability," &c. &c., of the family-party 
 within. 
 
 We have thought it necessary to give a slight 
 sketch of the principal continental styles, before we 
 entered upon the consideration of that which is 
 universally recognised as appropriate to the English 
 garden. In a former number of our Review a his- 
 
 * See Pliny and Martial we may say passim. 
 
ENGLISH SHENSTWE. 19 
 
 tory of the changes that have passed over English 
 gardens was given, in his usual happy manner, by 
 Sir Walter Scott, which precludes the necessity of 
 more than a passing reference to the same subject. 
 London and Wise were among the earliest innovators 
 on the old Dutch school in England, and received 
 the high praise of Addision in the ' Spectator,' for 
 the introduction of a more natural manner in Ken- 
 sington Gardens, then newly laid out. Bridgeman 
 followed, laying the axe to the root of many a ver- 
 durous peacock and lion of Lincoln-green. Kent, 
 the inventor of the Ha-ha, broke through the visible 
 and formal boundary, and confounded the distinction 
 between the garden and the park. Brown, of " capa- 
 bility " memory, succeeded, with his round clumps, 
 boundary belts, semi-natural rivers, extensive lakes, 
 broad green drives, with the everlasting portico sum- 
 mer-house at the end. Castle Howard, Blenheim, 
 and Stowe, were the great achievements of these 
 times ; while the bard of the Leasowes was creating 
 his sentimental farm, " rearing," says Disraeli, 
 " hazels and hawthorns, opening vistas, and winding 
 waters," 
 
 " And, having shown them where to stray, 
 Threw little pebbles in their way ;" 
 
 displaying according to the English rhymes of a 
 noble foreigner who raised a "plain stone" to the 
 memory of " Shenstone" " a mind n&tural," in 
 laying out "Arcadian greens rural."* 
 
 * Dr. Johnson, who, we think, used to boast either that he did or 
 did not (and it is much the same) know a cabbage from a cabbage- 
 
 C 2 
 
20 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 Whateley's book completed the revolution. It 
 was instantly translated into French, the " Anglo- 
 manie " being then at its height ; and though the 
 clipped pyramids and hedges did not fall so reck- 
 lessly as in England, yet no place of any pretension 
 was considered perfect without the addition of its 
 " jardin Anglais."* The natural style was now for 
 some time, in writings and practice, completely 
 triumphant. At length came out ' Price on the 
 Picturesque,' who once more drew the distinction 
 between the parterre and the forest, in opposition to 
 the straggling, scrambling style, which Whateley 
 called " combining the excellences of the garden and 
 the park." 
 
 From the times of Socrates and Epicurus to those 
 of Wesley, Simeon, and Pusey, the same story of 
 Master and Scholars is to be told ; and if theology 
 
 rose, has a passage in his ' Life of Shenstone ' so perfectly Johnsonian 
 that we must transcribe it : " Now was excited his delight in rural 
 pleasures, and his ambition of rural elegance. He began from this 
 time to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his 
 walks, and to wind his waters ; which he did with such judgment 
 and such fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great and 
 the admiration of the skilful a place to be visited by travellers and 
 copied by designers. Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, 
 and to place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch 
 the view to make water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate 
 where it will be seen to leave intervals where the eye will be 
 pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be 
 hidden demand any great powers of the mind, I will not inquire : 
 perhaps a surly and sullen spectator may think such performances 
 rather the sport than the business of human reason. But it must at 
 least be confessed that to embellish the form of nature is an innocent 
 amusement, and some praise must be allowed by the most scrupulous 
 observer to him who does best what multitudes are contending to 
 do well." 
 
 * Horace Walpole's description of M. Boutin's garden. 
 
PKICE ON THE PICTURESQUE. 21 
 
 and philosophy could not escape, how should poor 
 gardening expect to go free ? It is the natural 
 effect of the bold enunciation of a broad principle, 
 that it will oftener be strained to cover extreme 
 cases than be applied to the general bearing of the 
 subject. Withdraw the pure and intelligent mind 
 that first directed its application, and hundreds of 
 professed disciples and petty imitators spring up, 
 whose optics are sharp-sighted enough to see the 
 faults condemned in the old system, though their 
 comprehension is too limited to embrace the whole 
 range of truth and beauty in the new ; with just so 
 much knowledge as to call up a maxim or phrase 
 for the purpose of distorting it, and passing it on the 
 world as the ipse dixit of the master, though without 
 intellect enough to perceive the time, the measure, 
 or the place, which alone make its application desir- 
 able. Wilkes was at much trouble to assure George 
 III. that he was not a Wilkite ; and if many an 
 ordinary man has need at times to exclaim, " Pre- 
 serve me from my friends," all great ones have much 
 more reason to cry out, " Defend me from my dis- 
 ciples." Perhaps all this is a little too grandiloquent 
 for our humble subject ; but if a marked example of 
 discipular ultraism and perversion were wanting, no 
 stronger one could be found than that supplied by 
 the followers of Price. And if we have made more 
 of this matter than it deserves, we care not, for our 
 great object is to impress upon our readers that this 
 unfortunate word " picturesque " has been the ruin 
 of our gardens. Price himself never dreamt of ap- 
 
22 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 plying it, in its present usage, to the plot of ground 
 immediately surrounding the house. His own words 
 are all along in favour of a formal and artificial 
 character there, in keeping with the mansion itself; 
 and, as Sir Walter Scott remarks, he expresses in a 
 tone of exquisite feeling his regret at his own de- 
 struction of a garden on the old system. He might, 
 indeed, have used the term picturesque with refer- 
 ence to those splendid terraces, arcades, and balconies 
 of Italy with which we are familiar in the archi- 
 tectural pictures of Panini ; but he would have 
 shrunk with horror to have his theory applied to 
 justify the substitution of tadpole, and leech, and 
 comma, and sausage designs for the trim gardens of 
 symmetrical forms, even though he might see in the 
 latter (as Addison says) " the marks of the scissors 
 upon every plant and bush." 
 
 Scott very justly finds fault with the term " land- 
 scape gardening," which is another that has proved 
 fatal to our parterres. If such a word as " land- 
 scaping " be inadmissible, it is high time to find 
 some phrase which will express the laying out of 
 park scenery, as completely distinct from " garden- 
 ing " as the things themselves are. 
 
 Though it may be questioned whether a picture 
 should be the ultimate test of the taste in laying out 
 gardens and grounds, Price, even on this view, offers 
 some very ingenious arguments in defence not only 
 of Italian but even of the old English garden ; and 
 his feelings would evidently have led him still further 
 to adopt the formal system, had his theory not stood 
 
NUTURAL STYLE. 23 
 
 a little in the way. He seems to recognise a three- 
 fold division of the domain the architectural terrace 
 and flower-garden in direct connection with the 
 house, where he admits the formal style ; the shrub- 
 bery or pleasure-ground, a transition between the 
 flowers and the trees, which he would hand over to 
 the " natural style " of Brown and his school ; and, 
 thirdly, the park, which he considers the proper 
 domain of his own system. This is a distinction 
 which it would be well for every proprietor to keep 
 in view, not for the sake of a monotonous adherence 
 to its divisions in every case, but in order to remem- 
 ber that the tree, the shrub, and the flower, though 
 they may be occasionally mingled with effect, yet 
 require a separate treatment, and the application of 
 distinct principles, where they are to be exhibited 
 each in its full perfection. Our present subject of 
 complaint is the encroachments which the natural 
 and picturesque styles have made upon the regular 
 flower-garden. Manufacturers of by - lanes and 
 lightning-struck cottages are all very well in their 
 own department, but that must not be in the vicinity 
 of the house. We suppose that even Whateley him- 
 self would admit that the steps and threshold of the 
 door must be symmetrical, and would probably allow 
 a straight pathway more appropriate, and even more 
 natural, than a winding one, leading directly to the 
 door of the house. Once get a single straight line, 
 even the outline of the building itself, and it then 
 becomes merely a matter of situation, or convenience, 
 or taste, how far the straight lines and right angles 
 
24 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 shall be extended ; and though nature must needs 
 be removed a few paces further into her own proper 
 retreat, yet simplicity may still remain in regular 
 and symmetrical forms, as much as in undulations 
 and irregularities and mole-hills under the very 
 windows of the drawing-room. Nothing, as Scott 
 has remarked, is more completely the child of art 
 than a garden. It is, indeed, in our modern sense 
 of the term, one of the last refinements of civilised 
 life. " A man shall ever see," says Lord Bacon, 
 " that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men 
 come to build stately sooner than to garden finely." 
 To attempt, therefore, to disguise wholly its artificial 
 character is as great folly as if men were to make 
 their houses resemble as much as possible the rude- 
 ness of a natural cavern. So much mawkish senti- 
 mentality had been talked about the natural style, 
 that even Price himself dared not assert that a gar- 
 den must be avowedly artificial. And though now 
 it seems nothing strange to hazard such a remark, 
 yet its truth still requires to be brought more boldly 
 and closely home to us before we can expect to see 
 our gardens what they ought to be. 
 
 Since the publication of Price's book no writer 
 has appeared advocating any particular theory or 
 system of gardening. Principles and practice have 
 become of a like composite order, and in general it 
 has been left to the gardener to adopt, at his own 
 pleasure, the stucco and cast-iron and wire orna- 
 ments, that fashion has from time to time produced, 
 to suit the last importations or the favourite flower 
 
PROGRESS OF HORTICULTURE. 25 
 
 of the season. The early part of the nineteenth 
 century presents a great coolness in the garden 
 mania with which the eighteenth was so possessed ; 
 and it was hardly till after the peace that public 
 attention again took this direction. We presume 
 that it will only be in the philosophical fashion of 
 the day to say that this was a natural reaction of the 
 public mind, after the turmoil of a foreign war, to 
 fall back upon the more peaceful occupations of 
 home. The institution of the Horticultural Society 
 of London, however, took place a little earlier, and 
 it no doubt gave both a stimulus and a stability to 
 the growing taste of the nation. 
 
 It may be amusing to run over some few statistics 
 of the progress of horticulture since that time. It is 
 now only thirty-three years since the foundation of 
 the London Society, the first comprehensive institu- 
 tion of its kind : there are now in Great Britain at 
 least 200 provincial societies, founded more or less 
 upon its model. We find merely in the ' Gardener's 
 Chronicle ' for last year notices of the exhibitions of 
 120 different Societies. Everything else connected 
 with gardening has increased in the like proportion. 
 There were at that time not more than two botanical 
 and those strictly scientific periodical works : 
 there are now at least twenty monthly publications, 
 each entirely devoted to some branch or other of 
 botany or horticulture ; and, what may perhaps still 
 more surprise those of our readers who live apart 
 from the influence of the gardening world, there are, 
 or were very lately, published every week three 
 
26 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 newspapers professedly monopolised by horticultural 
 subjects. Even during the last year two new So- 
 cieties have sprung up in the metropolis the Lon- 
 don Floricultural and the Royal Botanic each taking 
 a line of its own, distinct though not antagonistically 
 so, from that of any previously formed institution ; 
 and both, we believe, prospering, and likely to 
 prosper. 
 
 Many of" our readers, who have heard of a fashion- 
 able, and a scientific, and a sporting, and (stranger 
 name still !) a religious WORLD, may perhaps be in 
 unhappy ignorance of the floricultural one. But 
 such indeed there is, with its own leaders, language, 
 laws, exclusiveness nay, even its party bitternesses 
 and personal animosities. And shameful indeed it 
 is that such pure and simple objects should be the 
 source of the unseemly quarrels and bickerings which 
 are too often obtruded into floricultural publications ; 
 that men should extract " envy and malice and all 
 uncharitablencss " out of " the purest of all human 
 pleasures " 
 
 " Even as those bees of Trebizond, 
 
 Which from the sunniest flowers that glad 
 With their pure smile the garden round 
 Draw venom forth that drives men mad ! " 
 
 Lalla Rookh. 
 
 The division of labour, both in the horticultural 
 and floricultural world, is carried to an extent that 
 the uninitiated little dream of. There are not only 
 express exhibitions for each particular plant that has 
 been adopted into the family of " florist's flowers " 
 as for the tulip, dahlia, pink, and heartsease but 
 
SOCIETIES CLUBS FLORISTS. 27 
 
 there are actually several existing " cucumber clubs" 
 and "celery societies;" and, within a very short 
 period, four or five treatises have been published on 
 the culture of the cucumber alone. Then we must 
 speak of the "flake" of the carnation the "edging" 
 of the picotee the "crown" and the "lacing" of 
 the pink the "feather and flame" of the tulip 
 the "eye and depth" of the dahlia the "tube, 
 the truss, and the paste" of the auricula and the 
 "pencil" and "blotch" of the pansy. Besides 
 these peculiar pets of the fancy, there are the old- 
 fashioned polyanthus, the ranunculus, the geranium, 
 the calceolaria, the chrysanthemum, and the hyacinth, 
 which are also under the especial patronage of the 
 florists ; and, lately, the iris, the gladiolus, the 
 fuchsia, and the verbena may be considered as added 
 to the list. 
 
 The tulipomania of Holland is well known : it 
 was at its height in the year 1637, when one bulb 
 its name is worth preserving " the Viceroy" was 
 sold for 4203 florins ; and for another, called " Semper 
 Augustus," there were offered 4600 florins, a new 
 carriage, a pair of grey horses, and a complete set of 
 harness ! * 
 
 The florimania, as it has been called we should 
 rather say "anthomania" has never reached so 
 ridiculous a height in England, nor, with all our 
 
 * At the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon, in the year 1836, 
 100?. was given for a single bulb, " Fanny Kemble ;'' and from 51. to 
 1QL is no uncommon price for the new and choice sorts. We see 
 also frequent advertisements of geraniums and dahlias, the first year 
 of their " coming out," at the like price. 
 
THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 love for flowers, is it likely to do so, though there 
 are staid men of business among us who would 
 doubtless be amazed at the sums of money even now 
 occasionally lavished on a single plant. A noble 
 Duke, munificent in his patronage of horticulture, 
 as in everything else, and who though till quite 
 lately, we believe, ignorant of the subject now 
 understands it as thoroughly as he appreciates it, is 
 said to have given one hundred guineas for a single 
 specimen of an orchideous plant ; and we know of 
 another peer, not quite so wise in this or perhaps 
 other matters, who, seeing a clump of the rich and 
 gorgeous double-flowering gorse, instantly gave his 
 gardener an order for fifty pounds' worth of it ! 
 
 Before we have done with the florists and botanists, 
 we must say one word about their nomenclatures. 
 As long as the extreme vulgarity of the one and the 
 extreme pedantry of the other continue, they must 
 rest assured that they will scare the majority of this 
 fastidious and busy world from taking .any great 
 interest in their pursuits. Though " a rose by any 
 other name will smell as sweet," there is certainly 
 enough to prejudice the most devoted lover of flowers 
 ;i irainst one that comes recommended by some such de- 
 signation as " Jim Crow," or " Metropolitan purple,'' 
 or " King Boy," or " Yellow Perfection." When 
 indeed calceolarias and pansies increase to 2000 
 " named varieties," there must of course be some 
 difficulty in finding out an appropriate title for every 
 new upstart ; but in this case the evil lies deeper 
 than the mere name: it consists in puffing and 
 
NAMES OF FLOWERS. 29 
 
 palming off such seedlings at all, half of which are 
 either such counterparts of older flowers that nothing 
 but the most microscopic examination would detect 
 a difference, or else so utterly worthless as to be fit 
 only to be thrown away. This is an increasing evil ; 
 and if anything gives a check to the present growing 
 taste for choice flowers, it will arise from the dis- 
 honesty and trickery of the trade itself. 
 
 Meanwhile, let there be at least some propriety 
 in the names given. We cannot quite agree with 
 Mr. Loudon, who seems to approve of such names 
 as " Claremont-nuptials primrose" and "Afflicted- 
 queen carnation !" though they do point to the years 
 1816 and 1821 as the dates of their respective ap- 
 pearances : neither will we aver that Linnaeus was 
 not something too fanciful in naming his " Andro- 
 meda," * and in calling a genus Bauhinia, from two 
 illustrious brothers of the name of Bauhin, because it 
 had a double leaf; but surely there is marked cha- 
 racter enough about every plant to give it some 
 simple English name, without drawing either upon 
 
 * The following is his reason for thus naming this delicate shrub, 
 one of those bog-plants not half so much cultivated as it deserves to 
 be : " As I contemplated it, I could not help thinking of Andro- 
 meda, as described by the poets a virgin of most exquisite beauty 
 and unrivalled charms. The plant is always fixed in some turfy hil- 
 lock in the midst of the swamps, as Andromeda herself was chained 
 to a rock in the sea, which bathed her feet, as the fresh water does 
 the root of the plant. As the distressed virgin cast down her blushing 
 face through excessive affliction, so does the rosy-coloured flower hang 
 its head, growing paler and paler till it withers away. At length 
 comes Perseus, in the shape of summer, dries up the surrounding 
 waters, and destroys the monsters, rendering the damsel a fruitful 
 mother, who then carries her head erect." Tour in Lapland, 
 June llth. 
 
30 . THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 living characters or dead languages. It is hard 
 work, as even Miss Mitford has found it, to make 
 the maurandias, and alstrsemerias, and eschscholtzias 
 the commonest flowers of our modern gardens 
 look passable even in prose. They are sad dead 
 letters in the glowing description of a bright scene 
 in June. But what are these to the pollopostemono- 
 petalas and eleutheromacrostemones of Wachendorf, 
 with such daily additions as the native name of 
 iztactepotzacuxochitl icohueyo, or the more classical 
 ponderosity of Erisymum PerofFskyanum ? 
 
 " like the verbum Grsecum 
 Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides, 
 Words that should only be said upon holidays, 
 When one has nothing else to do." 
 
 As to poetry attempting to immortalize a modern 
 bouquet, it is utterly hopeless ; and if our cultivators 
 expect to have their new varieties handed down to 
 posterity, they must return to such musical sounds 
 as buglosse, and eglantine, and primrose, before bards 
 will adopt their pets into immortal song. We per- 
 ceive some attempt made lately in Paxton's Maga- 
 zine and the better gardening journals to render the 
 names somewhat more intelligible by Englishing the 
 specific titles, as Passiflora Middletoniana Mid- 
 dleton's Passion-ilower, and the like ; but this is not 
 enough : the combination of a little observation and 
 taste would soon coin such names as " our plainer 
 sires " gave in " larkspur," and " honeysuckle," and 
 " bindweed," or even in " ladies'-smocks," and 
 "ragged-robin," and "love-lies-bleeding." 
 
GARDENING PEDANTRY CRABBE. 31 
 
 As names run at present, the ordinary amateur is 
 obliged to give up the whole matter in despair, and 
 rest satisfied with the awful false quantities which 
 his gardener is pleased to inflict upon him, who, for 
 his own part, wastes hours and hours over names 
 that convey to him no information, but only serve 
 to puff him up with a false notion of his acquire- 
 ment, when he finds himself the sole possessor of 
 this useless stock of " Aristophanic compounds and 
 insufferable misnomers." Crabbe, whom nothing was 
 too minute to escape, has admirably ridiculed this 
 botanical pedantry : 
 
 " High-sounding words our worthy gardener gets, 
 And at his club to wondering swains repeats ; 
 He there of Rhus and Rhododendron speaks, 
 And Allium calls his onions and his leeks. 
 Nor weeds are now ; from whence arose the weed, 
 Scarce plants, fair herbs, and curious flowers proceed ; 
 Where cuckoo-pints and dandelions sprung 
 (Gross names had they our plainer sires among), 
 There Arums, there Leontodons we view, 
 And Artemisia grows where wormwood grew." 
 
 To make confusion worse confounded, our bota- 
 nists are not satisfied with their far-fetched names ; 
 they must ever be changing them too. Thus it is a 
 mark of ignorance in the world of flowers to call our 
 old friend geranium otherwise than Pelargonium ; 
 the Glycine (6r. sinensis) the well-known specimen 
 of which at the Chiswick Gardens produced more 
 than 9000 of its beautiful, lilac, laburnum-like 
 racemes from a single stem is now to be called 
 Wistaria : the new Californian annual ^Enothera is 
 already Godetia ; while the pretty little red Hemi- 
 
32 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 meris, once a Celsia, is now, its third designation, 
 an Alonsoa ; and our list is by no means exhausted.* 
 
 Going on at this rate, a man might spend the 
 morn of his life in arriving at the present state of 
 botanical science, and the rest of his days in running 
 after its novelties and changes. We are only too 
 glad when public sanction triumphs over individual 
 whim, and, as in the cases of Georgina proposed for 
 Dahlia, and Chryseis for Eschscholtzia, resists the 
 attempted change. 
 
 One class of plants, which, though it has lately 
 become most fashionable and cultivated by an almost 
 separate clique of nurserymen and amateurs, cannot 
 yet be said to rank with florists' flowers, is that of 
 the Orchidaceae, trivially known, when first intro- 
 duced, by the . name of air-plants. It is scarcely 
 more than ten years ago that any particular attention 
 was bestowed upon this interesting tribe, and there 
 are now more genera cultivated than there were 
 then species known. Among all the curiosities of 
 botany there is nothing more singular we had almost 
 said mysterious than the character, or, to speak 
 more technically, the " habit " of this extraordinary 
 tribe. The sensation which the first exhibition of 
 
 * There is a curious perversion of name in the tuberose, which has 
 nothing to do with " tubes " or " roses," but is the conniption of its 
 specific name, Polianthes tuberosa, simply signifying " tuberous :" so 
 Jerusalem artichoke has nothing to do with the hill of Sion, but is 
 vulgarized from the Italian Girasole, sunflower, of which it is a 
 species ; so Mayduke cherry, from Medoc ; and " grass," from aspa- 
 ragus. Gilliflower is probably July-flower ; but it would take an 
 essay to discuss which is the true gilliflower of our great-great- 
 grandmothers. 
 
ORCHIDEOUS PLANTS. 
 
 the butterfly-plant (Oncidium papilio) produced at 
 the Chiswick Gardens must still be remembered by 
 many of our readers, and so wonderful is the re- 
 semblance of the vegetable to the insect specimen, 
 floating upon its gossamer-stalk, that even now we 
 can hardly fancy it otherwise than a living creature, 
 were it not even still more like some exquisite pro- 
 duction of fanciful art. Their manner of growth 
 distinct from, though so apparently like, our native 
 misletoe, and other parasitical plants generally re- 
 versing the common order of nature, and throwing 
 summersets with their heels upward and head down- 
 ward one specimen actually sending its roots into 
 the air, and burying its flowers in the soil, living 
 almost entirely on atmospheric moisture, the blos- 
 soms in some species sustained by so slender a thread 
 that they seem to float unsupported in the air, all 
 these things, combined with the most exquisite con- 
 trast of the rarest and most delicate colours in their 
 flowers, are not more extraordinary characteristics 
 of their tribe than is the circumstance that in nearly 
 every variety there exists a remarkable resemblance 
 to some work either of animate nature or of art. 
 Common observation of the pretty specimens of this 
 genus in our own woods and fields has marked this 
 in the names given to the fly, the bee, and the 
 spider-orchis ; * but in the exotic orchises this mi- 
 mickry is still more strongly marked. Besides the 
 butterfly-plant already alluded to, there is the dove- 
 
 * These British species are now transferred by botanists to the 
 genus Ophrys. 
 
34 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 plant, and a host besides, so like to other things 
 than flowers, that they seem to have undergone a 
 metamorphosis under the magic wand of some trans- 
 forming power. 
 
 Remembering the countries from which most of 
 them come the dank jungles of Hindostan the 
 fathomless woods of Mexico the unapproached 
 valleys of China one might almost fancy them the 
 remains of the magic influence which tradition 
 affirms of old to have reigned in those wild retreats ; 
 and that, while the diamond palaces of Sarmacand, 
 and the boundless cities of Guatemala, and the 
 colossal temples of Elephanta, have left but a ruin or 
 a name, these fairy creations of gnomes, and sprites, 
 and afreets, and jinns (if so we must call them), 
 being traced on the more imperishable material of 
 Nature herself, have been handed down to us as the 
 last vestiges of a dynasty older and more powerful 
 than European man. It is impossible to view a 
 collection of these magic-looking plants in flower 
 without being carried back to the visions of the 
 Arabian Nights not indeed wandering in disguise 
 through the streets of Bagdad with Haroun and his 
 vizier (we beg pardon wezeer), but entering with 
 some adventurous prince the spell-bound palace of 
 some sleeping beauty, or descending with Aladdin 
 into the delicious subterranean gardens of fruits, and 
 jewels, and flowers. 
 
 To pass from the romantic to the useful, we can- 
 not do a kinder deed to our manufacturers than to 
 turn their attention to the splendid works of Mr. 
 
USE IN MANUFACTURES. 35 
 
 Bateman and Dr. Lindley, dedicated to this class of 
 plants. It is well known how contemporaneous was 
 the cultivation of flowers and manufactures in some 
 of our large cities (at Norwich, for instance, where 
 the taste yet survives, and where there is a record of 
 a flower-show being held so early as 1687) the 
 flowers which the foreign artisans brought over with 
 them suggesting at the same time thoughts of years 
 gone by and designs for the work of the hour. Our 
 new schools of design might literally take a leaf 
 and a flower out of the books we have mentioned, 
 and improve our patterns in every department of art 
 by studying examples of such exquisite beauty, 
 variety, and novelty of form and colour as the tribe 
 of orchideous plants affords. 
 
 Another class of plants, very different from that 
 just mentioned, to which we would call the attention 
 of designers, is that of the Ferns. Though too com- 
 monly neglected by the generality, botanists have 
 long turned their researches towards this extensive 
 and elegant class. These humble denizens of earth 
 can boast their enthusiasts and monographists, as 
 much as the pansy or the rose ; nor has the exquisite 
 tracery of their fronds escaped the notice of the artist 
 and the wayfarer. But few, perhaps, even of those 
 who have delighted to watch the crozier-like germ 
 of the bracken bursting from the ground in spring, 
 and the rich umber of its maturity among the green 
 gorse of autumn, are aware that Britain can produce 
 at least thirty-six distinct species of its own, with a 
 still greater number of subordinate varieties ; these, 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 too, constituting but a very small fraction of the 
 1508 species which Sadler enumerates in his general 
 catalogue. Mr. Newman, in his recent work,* has 
 figured more than eighty varieties, the natural 
 growth of our own isles alone, and mentions fourteen 
 distinct species found in one chasm at Ponterwyd ! 
 Though some of the tail-piece vignettes of his volume 
 fail in representing as how could it be otherwise ? 
 the natural abandon and elegance of this most 
 graceful of all plants, we would still recommend the 
 great variety and beauty of his larger illustrations as 
 much to the artist and manufacturer, and embellisher, 
 as to the fern-collector himself. 
 
 Our notice of ferns might seem rather foreign to 
 the subject of ornamental gardening (though we shall 
 have something to say of a fernery by and bye), 
 were it not for the opportunity it affords us of intro- 
 ducing, probably for the first time to many of our 
 readers, a botanical experiment, which, though for 
 some years past partially successful, has but lately 
 been brought to very great perfection for the pur- 
 poses both of use and ornament. We allude to the 
 mode of conveying and growing plants in glass-cases 
 hermetically sealed from all communication with the 
 outer air. There are few ships that now arrive from 
 the East Indies without carrying on deck several 
 cases of this description, belonging to one or other of 
 our chief nurserymen, filled with orchideous plants 
 and other new and tender varieties from the East, 
 which formerly baffled the utmost care to land them 
 
 * A History of British Ferns, by E. Newman. 
 
FERNS. 37 
 
 here in a healthy state. These cases, frequently 
 furnished by the extreme liberality of Dr. Wallich, 
 the enterprising and scientific director of the Hon. 
 Company's gardens in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, 
 form on shipboard a source of great interest to the 
 passengers of a four-months' voyage, and, after hav- 
 ing deposited their precious contents on our shores, 
 return again by the same ship filled with the common 
 flowers of England, 
 
 " That dwell beside our paths and homes," 
 
 which our brethren in the East affectionately value 
 by association above all the brilliant garlands of their 
 sunny sky. 
 
 This interchange of sweets was a few years ago 
 almost unattainable, the sea-air and spray, as is well 
 known, being most injurious to every kind of plant ; 
 but their evil effects are now completely avoided by 
 these air-tight cases, which admit no exterior in- 
 fluence but that of light. Without entering into any 
 deep physiological explanation, it may be enough to 
 say that vegetable, unlike animal life, does not 
 exhaust the nutritive properties of air by repeated 
 inhaling and exhaustion ; so that these plants, aided 
 perhaps by the perfect stillness of the confined atmos- 
 phere, so favourable to all vegetation, continue to 
 exist, breathing, if we may so say, the same air, so 
 long as there is moisture enough to allow them to 
 deposit every night a slight dew on the glass, which 
 they imbibe again during the day. The soil is moist- 
 ened in the first instance, but on no account is any 
 
38 THE FLOWER GARDEN, 
 
 further water or air admitted. The strangers which 
 we have seen thus transmitted, being chiefly very 
 small portions of succulents and epiphytes, though 
 healthy, have shown no inclination to flourish or 
 blossom in their confinement ; but it must be remem- 
 bered that the temperature on the deck of a ship 
 must be very much lower than what this tribe re- 
 quires, and the quantity of w,ood-work which the 
 cases require to stand the roughness of the voyage, 
 greatly impedes the transmission of light. As soon 
 as the slips are placed in the genial temperature of 
 the orchideous house, they speedily shoot out into 
 health and beauty. 
 
 But while this mode of conveyance answers the 
 purposes of science, a much more beautiful adapta- 
 tion of the same principle is contrived for the bed- 
 room garden of the invalid. Who is there that has 
 not some friend or other confined by chronic disease 
 or lingering decline to a single chamber ? one, we 
 will suppose, who a short while ago was among the 
 gayest and the most admired of a large and happy 
 circle, but now through sickness dependent, after her 
 One staff and stay, for her minor comforts and amuse- 
 ments 011 the angel visits of a few kind friends, a 
 little worsted-work, or a new Quarterly, and, in the 
 absence or dulness of these, happy in the possession 
 of some fresh-gathered flower, and in watering and 
 tending a few pots of favourite plants, which are to 
 her as friends, and whose flourishing progress under 
 her tender care offers a melancholy but instructive 
 contrast to her own decaying strength. Some mild 
 
S GLASS-CASES. 
 
 autumn-evening her physician makes a later visit 
 than usual the room is faint from the exhalations 
 of the flowers the patient is not so well to-day he 
 wonders that he never noticed that mignionette and 
 those geraniums before, or he never should have 
 allowed them to remain so long some weighty words 
 on oxygen and hydrogen are spoken her poor pets 
 are banished for ever at the word of the man of 
 science, and the most innocent and unfailing of her 
 little interests is at an end. By the next morning 
 the flowers are gone, but the patient is no better ; 
 there is less cheerfulness than usual ; there is a list-- 
 less wandering of the eyes after something that is 
 not there ;* and the good doctor is too much of a 
 philosopher not to know how the working of the 
 mind will act upon the body, and too much of a 
 Christian not to prevent the rising evil if he can ; he 
 hears with a smile her expression of regret for her 
 long-cherished favourites, but he says not a word. 
 In the evening a largish box arrives directed to the 
 fair patient, and superscribed, " Keep this side up- 
 wards with care." There is more than the common 
 interest of box-opening in the sick chamber. After 
 a little tender hammering and tiresome knot-loosen- 
 ing, Thompson has removed the lid; and there lies 
 a large oval bell-glass fixed down to a stand of ebony, 
 some moist sand at the bottom, and here and there 
 over the whole surface some tiny ferns are just push- 
 ing their curious little fronds into life, and already 
 
 v 5' iv 
 ei Traa' ety>/>o5iVa. JEscii. Again. 408. 
 
40 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 promise, from their fresh and healthy appearance, to 
 supply in their growth and increase all the beauty 
 and interest of the discarded flowers, without their 
 injurious effects. It is so. These delicate exotics, 
 for such they are, closely sealed down in an air-tight 
 world of their own, flourish with amazing rapidity, 
 and in time produce seeds which provide a generation 
 to succeed them. Every day witnessing some change 
 keeps the mind continually interested in their pro- 
 gress, and their very restriction from the open air, 
 while it renders the chamber wholesome to the in- 
 valid, provides at the same time an undisturbed 
 atmosphere more suited to the development of their 
 own tender frames. We need scarcely add, that the 
 doctor the next morning finds the wonted cheerful 
 smile restored, and though recovery may be beyond 
 the skill, as it is beyond the ken, of man, he at least 
 has the satisfaction of knowing that he has lightened 
 a heart in affliction, and gained the gratitude of a 
 humble spirit, in restoring, without the poison, a 
 pleasure that was lost. 
 
 For more minute particulars of the management 
 of these chamber-gardens, we must refer our readers 
 to page xviii. of Mr. Newman's Introduction, where 
 also they will find described the ingenious experi- 
 ments of Mr. Ward, of Wellclose Square, of the 
 same kind, but on a much larger scale ; and if delicate 
 health restricts any friend of theirs to the confine- 
 ment of a close apartment, we recommend to them 
 the considerate kindness of our good physician, and 
 to "go and do likewise." 
 
CURIOSITIES OF GARDENING. 41 
 
 Gardening, as well as Literature, has its " curi- 
 osities," and a volume might be filled with them. 
 How wonderful, for instance, the sensitive plant 
 which shrinks from the hand of man, the ice-plant 
 that almost cools one by looking at it, the pitcher- 
 plant with its welcome draught, the hair-trigger of 
 the stylidium, and, most singular of all, the car- 
 nivorous " Venus' fly-trap " (Dioncea muscipula) 
 
 " Only think of a vegetable being carnivorous ! " 
 
 which is said to bait its prickles with something 
 which attracts the flies, upon whom it then closes, 
 and whose decay is supposed to afford food for the 
 plant. Disease is turned into beauty in the common 
 and crested moss-rose, and a lusus natures reproduced 
 in the hen-and-chicken daisy. There are phos- 
 phorescent plants, the fire-flies and glow-worms of 
 the vegetable kingdom : there are the microscopic 
 lichens and mosses ; and there is the Kafflesia Arnoldi, 
 each of whose petals is a foot long, its nectary a foot 
 in diameter, and deep enough to contain three gal- 
 lons, and weighing fifteen pounds ! What mimickry 
 is there in the orchisses, and the hare's-foot fern, 
 and the Tartarian lamb (Polypodium Baronyetz *) ! 
 
 * So, we believe, rightly spelt ; though otherwise by Dr. Darwin, 
 whose well-balanced and once-fashionable lines are now so forgotten, 
 that we think our readers will not be sorry to be reminded of their 
 pompous existence : 
 
 " Cradled in snow and fann'd by arctic air, 
 Shines, gentle BAROMETZ ! thy golden hair ; 
 Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends, 
 And round and round her flexile neck she bends ; 
 
 Crops 
 
42 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 What shall we say to Gerarde's Barnacle-trees, 
 " whereon do grow certaine shells of a white colour 
 tending to russet, wherein are contained little living 
 creatures : which shells in time of maturity do open, 
 and out of them grow those little living things, 
 which falling into the water do become fowles, which 
 we call Barnacles ?" What monsters (such at least 
 they are called by botanists) lias art produced in 
 doubling flowers, in dwarfing, and hybridizing; 
 " painting the lily," for there are pink (!) lilies of 
 the valley, and pink violets, and yellow roses, and 
 blue hydrangeas ; and many are now busy in seeking 
 that " philosopher's stone of gardening," the blue 
 dahlia a useless search, if it be true that there is 
 no instance of a yellow and a blue variety in the 
 same species. Foreigners turn to good account this 
 foolish rage of ours for everything novel and mon- 
 strous and unnatural, more worthy of Japan and 
 China than of England, by imposing upon the 
 credulous seeds and cuttings of yellow moss-roses, 
 and scarlet laburnums, and fragrant pasonies, and 
 such like* 
 
 Strange things too have been attempted in garden 
 ornaments. We have spoken of water-works, like 
 the copper-tree at Chatsworth, to drench the unwary ; 
 and the Chinese have, in the middle of their lawns, 
 ponds covered with some water-weed that looks like 
 
 Crops the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme> 
 Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime ; 
 Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, 
 Or seems to bleat, a Vegetable Lamb ! " 
 
 JBot. Gard., ii. 283. 
 
FLOATING GARDENS. 43 
 
 grass, so that a stranger is plunged in over head and 
 ears while he thinks he is setting his foot upon the 
 turf. In the ducal gardens at Saxe-Gotha is a ruined 
 castle, which was built complete, and then ruined 
 expres by a few sharp rounds of artillery ! Stanislaus, 
 in the grounds of Lazienki, had a broad walk flanked 
 by pedestals upon which living figures, dressed or 
 undressed " after the manner of the antients," were 
 placed on great occasions. The floating gardens, or 
 Chinampas, of Mexico, are mentioned both by 
 Clavigero and Humboldt. They are formed on 
 wicker-work, and when a proprietor wishes for a 
 little change, or to rid himself of a troublesome 
 neighbour, he has only to set his paddles at work, or 
 lug out his towing-rope, and betake himself to some 
 more agreeable part of the lake. We wonder that 
 the barbaric magnificence which piled up mimic 
 pyramids, and Chinese watch-towers, and mock 
 Stonehenges, never bethought itself of imitating 
 these poetical Chinampas. It was one of Napoleon's 
 bubble* schemes to cover in the gardens of the 
 Tuileries with glass those gardens which were 
 turned into potato-ground during the Ee volution, 
 though the agent funnily complains that the Direc- 
 tory never paid him for the sets ! One of the most 
 successful pieces of magnificent gardening is the new 
 conservatory at Chatsworth, with a carriage-drive 
 through the centre, infinitely more perfect, though 
 we suppose not so extensive as the covered winter* 
 garden at Potemkin's palace of Taurida, near St. 
 
 * [A bubble, however, since crystallized in Hyde Park, 1851.] 
 
44 THE FLOWER (?ARDEN. 
 
 Petersburgli, which is described as a semicircular 
 conservatory attached to the hall of the palace, 
 wherein " the walks wander amidst flowery hedges, 
 and fruit-bearing shrubs, winding over little hills," 
 in fact a complete garden, artificially heated, and 
 adorned with the usual embellishments of busts and 
 vases. When this mighty man in his travels halted, 
 if only for a day, his travelling pavilion was erected, 
 and surrounded by a garden a VAnglaise ! " com- 
 posed of trees and shrubs, and divided ly gravel 
 walks, and ornamented with seats and statues, all 
 carried for ivard with the cavalcade /" We ought in 
 fairness to our readers to add that Sir John Carr, 
 notorious by another less honourable prsenomen, is 
 the authority for this ; though, indeed, his statement 
 is authenticated by Mr. Loudon (Encyc. Grard. 
 sect. 842). We have heard of the effect of length 
 being given to an avenue by planting the more dis- 
 tant trees nearer and nearer together ; but among 
 gardening crochets we have never yet seen a 
 children's garden as we think it might be made 
 beds, seats, arbours, moss-house, all in miniature, 
 with dwarf shrubs and fairy roses, and other flowers 
 of only the smallest kind ; or it might be laid out on 
 turf, to suit the intellectual spirit of the age, like a 
 map of the two hemispheres. 
 
 It is time that we pass to that portion of our sub- 
 ject which is generally considered under the peculiar 
 patronage of the ladies. Evelyn, a name never to 
 be mentioned by gardeners without reverence, says 
 somewhere, in describing an English place which he 
 
GARDENING FOR LADIES. 45 
 
 had visited, " My lady skilled in the flowery part ; 
 my lord in the diligence of planting ;" and this is a 
 division of country labour which almost universal 
 consent and practice have sanctioned. The gardens 
 at Wimbledon House and Baling Park (we dare not 
 trust ourselves to take a wider view, or we know not 
 where to stop) are alone enough to show what the 
 knowledge and taste of our countrywomen can 
 achieve in their own department; and with the 
 assistance of Mrs. Loudon, the fair possessors of the 
 smallest plot of garden-ground may now emulate on 
 an humbler scale these splendid examples. 
 
 In her * Gardening for Ladies,' Mrs. Loudon, 
 indeed, initiates them far beyond the mere culture 
 of flowers, and those lighter labours which have 
 usually been assigned to the amateur. She enters 
 into practical details in real good earnest, gives 
 directions to her lady-gardeners to dig and manure 
 their own parterres on this latter subject there is 
 no mincing of the matter she calls a spade a spade. 
 Perhaps she satisfies herself that, if not a feminine, 
 this has at least been a royal pastime, and so throws 
 in the weight of King Laertes in Homer* to balance 
 the scale. But really, what with our nitrate of soda, 
 bone-dust, gypsum, guano, all our new patent pocket- 
 
 * According to Cicero, De Sen., c. 15. " Homerus Laertem leni- 
 entem desiderium, quod capiebat e filio, colentem agrum, et eum ster- 
 corantem facit." " Memoriae lapsu," say the critics ; the passage in 
 Odys., w. 226, not bearing out this meaning. But in line 241 of the 
 same book, the aia(^\dxaiv may imply the renewal as well as the 
 loosening of the soil. We should venture to translate it by the word 
 " mulching." 
 
46 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 manures, portable, compressed, crystalline, liquid, 
 desiccated, disinfected, and the rest of them, we are 
 by no means sure that this most necessary but rather 
 disagreeable portion of horticulture may not soon be 
 performed by the same delicate nerves that have 
 hitherto fainted at the mention of it. 
 
 Ten years ago, when our authoress married Mr. 
 Loudon, " it was impossible," she says, " to imagine 
 any person more completely ignorant of everything 
 relating to plants and gardening " than herself. She 
 has been certainly an apt scholar, and no expert 
 reviewer can doubt there is some truth in her remark, 
 that her very recent ignorance makes her a better 
 instructor of beginners, from the recollection of her 
 own wants in a similar situation. One wrinkle of 
 hers we recommend strongly to our fair readers, the 
 gardening gauntlet,* described and pictured in page 
 10. We have seen this in use, and can assure them 
 that it is far from an inelegant, and certainly a most 
 comfortable assistant in all the operations of the gar- 
 den. Let us also add a contrivance of our own, a 
 close- woven wicker-basket, on two very low wheels, 
 similar to those used at the Euston Square and most 
 railway stations for moving luggage, only on a smaller 
 scale : it is much more useful than a wheelbarrow 
 for carrying away cuttings, dead leaves, and rubbish 
 of all kinds. 
 
 * Here, again, our old friend Laertes meets us. Truly there is 
 nothing new under the sun. He had his gardening gloves before 
 " Miss Perry of Stroud," celebrated by Mrs. Loudon as the inventor 
 of them : 
 
 eVt xepcrl, &O.TUV weKa. Od., u. 229. 
 
WATERING. 47 
 
 There are in this volume many excellent general 
 directions for the ordinary garden labours, some of 
 which we shall notice, interweaving them with 
 further observations of our own. 
 
 Watering is the mainstay of horticulture in hot 
 climates. When King Solomon, in the vanity of 
 his mind, made him " gardens and orchards," he 
 made him also " pools of water to water therewith 
 the wood that bringeth forth trees ;" and the pro- 
 phets frequently compare the spiritual prosperity of 
 the soul to " a watered garden." It is with us also 
 a most necessary operation, but very little under- 
 stood. Most young gardeners conceive that the 
 water for their plants cannot be too fresh and cold ; 
 and many a pail of water that has stood in the sun 
 is thrown away in order to bring one " fresh from 
 the ambrosial fount." A greater mistake could not 
 be made. Rain-water is best of all ; and dirty and 
 stagnant water, and of a high temperature anything 
 is better than cold spring- water. Mrs. Loudon re- 
 commends pump-water to be exposed in open tubs 
 before it is used, and to be stirred about to impreg- 
 nate it with air; perhaps the addition of liquid 
 manure or any other extraneous matter would be 
 useful. Those who have found how little service 
 their continual watering has done to their plants in a 
 dry summer would do well to attend to these simple 
 rules. 
 
 Lawns and gravel-walks, the pride of English 
 gardens, can hardly have too much care bestowed 
 upon them. Oftentimes more of the beauty of a 
 
48 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 garden depends on the neatness with which these 
 are kept than even on the flowers themselves. Great 
 attention should be paid to the kinds of grass-seeds 
 which are sown for new lawns. The horticultural 
 seedsmen have selections made for this purpose. We 
 must refer our readers to Mrs. London's 9th chapter ; 
 but let them be sure not to omit the sweet-scented 
 spring-grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum) , which gives 
 its delicious fragrance to new-made hay. Lime- 
 water will get rid of the worms when they infest the 
 lawn in great quantities ; but perhaps it is as well 
 not to destroy them altogether. Most gardeners 
 strive to eradicate the moss from their grass : it 
 seems to us that it should rather be encouraged : it 
 renders the lawn much more soft to the foot, prevents 
 its being dried up in hot weather, and saves much 
 labour in mowing. The most perfect kind of lawn 
 is perhaps that which consists of only one kind of 
 grass ; but for the generality a mossy surface would 
 be far better than the mangy, bare aspect we so often 
 see. The grass should never be mown without 
 having also its edges trimmed. We have seen in 
 some places a small slope of grass filling up the right 
 angle usually left between the turf and gravel, and 
 ,we think it an improvement. 
 
 The smoothness and verdure of our lawns is the 
 first thing in our gardens that catches the eye of a 
 foreigner ; the next is the fineness and firmness of 
 our gravel-walks. The foundation of them should 
 always be thoroughly drained. Weeds may be de- 
 stroyed by salt ; but it must be used cautiously. 
 
LAWNS WALKS EDGINGS. 49 
 
 No walk should be less than seven feet broad. For 
 terraces a common rule given is, that they should be 
 twice the breadth that the house is high. Though 
 of course it is enough for a " lover's walk " with- 
 out which no country place is perfect to accommo- 
 date a duad, yet, be it in what part of the grounds 
 it may, every path should be broad enough to admit 
 three persons walking abreast. 
 
 Who cannot call to mind many an awkward feel- 
 ing and position where want of breadth in a garden- 
 walk or wood-path has called into play some unsocial 
 precedence or forced into notice some sly predilec- 
 tion? And who likes to be the unfortunate lag- 
 behind the last in a wood ? 
 
 The edging of borders is always a difficult affair 
 to manage well. Box, the commonest, and perhaps 
 the best, is apt to harbour slugs, and get shabby, 
 unless closely attended to. The gentianella, where 
 it nourishes well, is a beautiful edge-flower. Thrift, 
 of which there is a new and handsome variety, was 
 once (like its namesake) much more in vogue than 
 it is now, and deserves to be restored. We have 
 seen very pretty edgings made of dwarf oaks clipped ; 
 nothing could look neater ; but it seemed like rob- 
 bing the forest. Worst of all are large rugged flints, 
 used commonly where they abound, and in small 
 area-gardens. In a symmetrical garden, and where 
 they harmonise with the house, strips of stone-work 
 might be introduced ; and we think that a tile might 
 be designed of better shape and colour than any we 
 have yet seen. 
 
50 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 On the minor decorations of the garden, such as 
 rock- work, moss-houses, and rustic seats, &c., Mrs. 
 Loudon gives some very good hints, though we 
 should be sorry to set up on our lawn the specimen 
 baskets which embellish pp. 357 and 358 ; but, in 
 truth, these things, contrary to the common rule, 
 usually look better in reality than on paper. Where 
 beds of irregular wavy lines are required to be made 
 we have found nothing better than a good thick 
 rope, which, thrown at random on the ground, will, 
 with a little adjustment, give a bold and natural out- 
 line that it would be difficult to work out otherwise 
 in tenfold the time. 
 
 Mrs. Loudon's ' Ladies' Companion to the Flower 
 Garden,' is in alphabetical arrangement, and exclu- 
 sively devoted to flowers. In all our references to 
 this book for practical purposes and for the present 
 paper, we have scarcely once been disappointed. 
 Though chiefly a book of reference, it is written 
 in so easy a style and so perfectly free from pedantry, 
 that, open it at what page we may, there is some- 
 thing to instruct, interest, and amuse. The practi- 
 cal directions are necessarily very compressed, but 
 nothing of importance seems omitted. The greatest 
 " Ignorama " * in flowers could not have this volume 
 on her table long without having every doubt and 
 difficulty removed. We know of no book of the 
 kind so likely to spread a knowledge of, and taste 
 
 * So, appropriately enough, signs herself a fair correspondent of 
 one of our gardening Journals. We think this quite equal to Mr. 
 Hume's "Omuibt." 
 
MARCH OF GARDENING. 51 
 
 for, flower-gardening as this. With the addition of 
 the botanical volume of Dr. Lindley, Mr. Pax ton, or 
 Mrs. Loudon, the beginner's gardening library would 
 be complete. He would afterwards like to add the 
 Encyclopaedias of Plants and Gardening ; the first of 
 which is a typographical as well as scientific wonder, 
 the second a perfect treasure-house of information on 
 every subject connected with horticulture. 
 
 The rapid progress made in horticultural studies 
 we have already alluded to in the immense increase 
 of works devoted to these subjects, especially of those 
 addressed to ladies and treating immediately of 
 flowers. And it is this particular turn which gar- 
 dening taste at the present moment is taking. We 
 first had the Herbalist with his simples " tempera- 
 ture " of every plant given, hot or cold in the second 
 or the third degree and a " table of virtues " for 
 both body and mind " against the falling-sickness " 
 " to glue together greene wounds " " to comfort 
 the heart, to drive away care, and increase the joy 
 of the mind," and the like. Then came the Kitchen- 
 gardener, with his sallet-herbs and fruit-trees then 
 the Botanist with his orders and classes then the 
 Florist with his choice bulbs and thousand and one 
 varieties : meanwhile sprang up the critical school 
 of essayists, which produced the Landscape-gardener ; 
 1 the modern march of intellect has added the Vege- 
 table Physiologist ; and, latest of all, the Agricul- 
 tural Chemist. All these seem at the present 
 moment to have centred their exertions in a single 
 point, and to be giving in each his contribution to 
 
52 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 make up the perfection of the Flower-gardener. A 
 very different spirit is now abroad from that when 
 Sir W. Temple wrote " I will not enter upon any 
 account of flowers, having only pleased myself with 
 seeing or smelling them, and not troubled myself 
 with the care, which is more the lady's part than 
 the man's, but the success is wholly with the 
 gardener." Now not only have we beat the old 
 herbalists, kitchen-gardeners, and botanists on their 
 own ground for " the leaf," " the root," and " the 
 weed," tea potatoes tobacco* were either un- 
 known or hardly noticed by the earlier writers on 
 these very subjects but governments, and com- 
 panies, and societies, vie with men of science, and 
 commerce, and wealth, in gladdening our British 
 gardens with a new flower. Without dwelling on 
 the dahlia, brought into fashion by Lady Holland in 
 1804, and the pansies first patronised and hybridized 
 by Lady Mary Monk in 1812, what treasures have 
 the last few years added to our gardens in the 
 splendid colours of the petunias, calceolarias, lobelias, 
 phloxes, tropoeolums, and verbenas the azure cle- 
 matis the blue salvia the fulgent fuchsia ! What 
 gorgeous masses of geraniums, the " Orange-bo\en " 
 
 * Parkinson, in 1629, says only of tobacco " With us it is 
 cherished as well for the medicinal qualities as for the beauty of its 
 flowers;" not a word of smoking. Gerarde, in 1633, though he 
 knows " the dry leaves are us^d to be taken in a pipe, set on fire, and 
 suckt into the stomache, and thrust forth againe at the nosthrils," yet 
 "commends the syrup, above this fume or smoky medicine." Of the 
 potato, he mentions its being " a meat for pleasure " as secondary to 
 its " temperature and vertues ;" and that its " too frequent use causeth 
 the leprosie." Neither of them, of course, mentions "tea." 
 
CHISWICK SHOWS. 53 
 
 and " Coronation " and " Priory Queen " for instance 
 and what rich and endless bouquets of roses for 
 there are more than 2000 varieties of " the flower " 
 in cultivation did the last horticultural fete at 
 Chiswick produce ! 
 
 These exhibitions of the London Horticultural 
 Society have done wonders in improving public taste 
 and exciting the emulation of nurserymen. It is 
 something, even if the prize is missed, to know that 
 your flower will be gazed at by five or six thousand 
 critical admirers. But they have done more than 
 this : they have brought together, on one common 
 scene of enjoyment, an orderly and happy mass, 
 from the labourer of the soil to the queen upon the 
 throne. We could only have wished that royalty 
 had been pleased to have paid a public as well as 
 private visit to the gardens. Her Majesty would 
 have gratified the loyalest and best-conducted portion 
 of her subjects, and would have seen, on the only 
 occasion, perhaps, when she could have done so 
 without annoyance, a sight, as beautiful even as the 
 flowers the cheerful faces of thousands of well- 
 dressed and happy-looking people of every degree, 
 making the most innocent and enjoyable of holidays 
 out of such simple elements as Music and Flowers. 
 The " Derby day" is certainly a glorious display of 
 Old England, from the proprietor of the aristocratic 
 drag to the hirer of the Whitechapel cart; but 
 the line of distinction, both on the road and the 
 course, is too strongly marked between the drinker 
 of champagne and of bottled stout, and it is rather 
 
54 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 the jostling than the amalgamation of ranks that is 
 seen here. If we wished to show an " intelligent 
 foreigner" what e very-day England really is what 
 we mean by the middle classes what by the wealth, 
 the power, the beauty of the gentry of England 
 what by the courtesy and real unaffectedness of our 
 nobility we would take him on a horticultural fete- 
 day to see the string of well-ordered carriages and 
 well-filled omnibuses, the fly, the hackney, and the 
 glass-coach taking up their position with the britzcha, 
 the barouche, and the landau, in one unbroken line 
 from Hyde Park Corner to Turnham Green bid 
 him look at the good-humoured faces of those who 
 filled them, and say whether any other country in 
 the world could, or ever would, turn out a like popu- 
 lation. Sir Kobert Peel need not fear the return to 
 be made to his property-tax, if he will cast his eye 
 on the Windsor road about three o'clock on the first 
 fine Saturday of May or June. Last year more than 
 22,000 persons visited these exhibitions ; and from 
 the way in which they have commenced this year, 
 there is no reason to apprehend any falling off of 
 numbers. We rejoice in this ; and trust that the 
 same good arrangements will be continued, that the 
 interest may be kept up in the only meeting where 
 our artificial system tolerates the assemblage of every 
 rank and class upon an equal footing. 
 
 The formal style which we have already advo- 
 cated for the private garden seems even much more 
 adapted to the public one ; and that there are many 
 neglected features in the Old English style which 
 
OLD ENGLISH STYLE. 55 
 
 might with peculiar propriety be restored in any 
 new grounds laid out for public use not, as has 
 been done in some tea-gardens on the Croydon Rail- 
 road, cutting up the picturesque wildness of the 
 beautiful Penge Wood by hideous right-angled walks 
 and other horrors too frightful to name but where 
 no natural scenery already exists, a place of pro- 
 menade and recreation may be much more expe- 
 ditiously, and, we think, more appropriately formed, 
 in the Continental and Old English style, by long 
 avenues, terraces, mounds, fountains, statues, monu- 
 ments, prospect - towers, labyrinths, and bowling- 
 greens, than by any attempt of a " picturesque " or 
 "natural" character. 
 
 We have before us Lord Bacon's sketch for his 
 "prince-like" garden, and Sir William Temple's 
 description of his " perfect " one ; but though we 
 would recommend them, the first especially, to the 
 student of ancient gardens, and though Dr. Donne 
 considered the second " the sweetest place " he had 
 ever seen, yet neither of them is so well suited to 
 our present purpose of assisting the formation of 
 garden-making in the^ present age, as the descrip- 
 tion given in fanciful style in ' The Poetry of 
 Gardening.' * 
 
 If we rightly understand the plan here described, 
 It is intended to combine the chief excellences of 
 
 * [In place of the extract given in the Quarterly, we have appended 
 the whole Essay on ' The Poetry of Gardening,' which appeared 
 originally in the Carthusian, as being generally difficult of access, 
 and appropriate on the whole to the subjects of this volume. The 
 passage immediately referred to above is from p. 100 to 106.] 
 
56 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 the artificial and natural styles ; keeping the decora- 
 tions immediately about the house formal, and so 
 passing on by gradual transitions to the wildest 
 scenes of nature. 
 
 The leading features then in such a garden would 
 be an architectural terrace and flight of steps in con- 
 nection with the house lower terraces of grass-slopes 
 and flower-beds succeeding these branching off on 
 one side towards the kitchen department, through 
 an old English garden, of which a bowling-green 
 would form a part, and where florists' flowers might 
 be sheltered by the trim hedges on the other 
 towards an undulating lawn bounded by flowering 
 shrubs and the larger herbaceous plants with one 
 corner for the American garden, beyond which would 
 lie the natural copsewood and forest-ground of the 
 place: of course the aspect and situation of the 
 house, and the character of the neighbouring ground 
 and country, would modify these or any general 
 rules which might be laid down for the formation of 
 a garden ; but we think some advantage might, in 
 every case, be taken from these hints. 
 
 In a place of any pretension, a good clear lawn 
 where children of younger or older growth may 
 romp about, without fear of damaging shrubs or 
 plants, is indispensable. 
 
 Single shrubs and flowers, or groups of them, on 
 the verge of this lawn, springing up directly from 
 the turf, and dotted in front of shrubberies that 
 bound it, are preferable to those growing with a dis- 
 tinctly marked border. The common peonies, and 
 
PERFECT GARDEN. 57 
 
 the Chinese variety the tree-peony (P. moutan.), 
 are excellent for this purpose ; but there is nothing 
 to surpass the old-fashioned hollyhock. This, as has 
 been remarked, is the only landscape flower we 
 possess the only one, that is, whose forms and 
 colours tell in the distance ; and so picturesque is it, 
 that perhaps no artist ever attempted to draw a 
 garden without introducing it, whether it were really 
 there or not. "By far the finest effect (says the 
 essay we have already referred to) that combined art 
 and nature ever produced in gardening were those 
 fine masses of many-coloured hollyhocks clustered 
 round a weather-tinted vase ; such as Sir Joshua 
 delighted to place in the wings of his pictures. And 
 what more magnificent than a long avenue of these 
 floral giants, the double and the single not too 
 straightly tied backed by a dark thick hedge of 
 old-fashioned yew ?" * Such an avenue without 
 " the dark thick hedge," which would certainly 
 have been an improvement we remember to have 
 seen, in the fulness of its autumn splendour, in the 
 garden at Granton, near Edinburgh, the marine villa 
 of a deep lawyer and another may have been in- 
 spected by many of our readers at Bromley Hill. 
 Here the hollyhocks " broke the horizon with their 
 obelisks of colour ;" and the foreground was a mass 
 of dahlias, American marigolds, mallows, asters, and 
 mignionette. It was the most gorgeous mass of 
 
 * We do not often indulge in a prophecy, but we will venture to 
 stake our gardening credit that, within five years' time, the hollyhock 
 will again be restored to favour, become a florist's flower, and carry 
 off horticultural prizes. [This prophecy has been more than fulfilled, 
 1852.] 
 
58 THE FLOWER GARDEN". 
 
 colouring we ever beheld ; but was only one of the 
 many beautiful effects produced on this spot by the 
 taste of the late Lady Farnborough. For a modern 
 garden, of limited size, this was the most complete 
 we ever visited, the situation allowing greater variety 
 than could well be conceived within so small a com- 
 pass. A conservatory connected with the house led 
 to a summer-room : this looked on a small Italian 
 garden the highest point of the grounds, and afford- 
 ing a dim view of the dome of St. Paul's in the 
 distance ; and thence you descended, by steep grassy 
 banks and steps of rock and root-work, from garden 
 to garden, each having some peculiar feature of its 
 own, till you came to the most perfect little Ruysdael 
 rivulet, and such crystal springs, in all their natural 
 wildness, that it seemed, when you saw them, you 
 had never known what pure cold native fountains 
 were before. Any common taste would have be- 
 dizened these springs with cockle-shells and crockery, 
 and what not ; but there they lay among the broad 
 leaves of the water-lily and the burdock, glittering 
 like huge liquid diamonds cast in a mould of nature's 
 own making, and in their simplicity and pureness 
 offering a striking contrast to the trim gardens and 
 the dusky distant city you had just left above.* 
 
 * There was no occasion in this place for the exclamation of the 
 Roman satirist on a similar scene which had been marred by art 
 Quanto praestantius esset 
 
 Numen aquae, viridi si margine clauderet undas 
 Herba, nee insenuum violarent marmora tophum." 
 
 Juv. iii. 19. 
 
 And which shows, by the way, that there were some Romans, at 
 least, who could appreciate the beauties of natural scenery. 
 
BROMLEY HILL GARDEN-SITE. 59 
 
 Another source of great beauty in these gardens 
 was the evident care bestowed on the growth and 
 position of the flowers. Every plant seemed to be 
 just in its right place, both for its flourishing and 
 its effect. There was a very great abundance and 
 variety of the tenderer kinds that required pro- 
 tection in winter; but we believe they were, for 
 the most part, kept in cold pits, very little forcing 
 being used ; and there were not more than six or 
 eight gardeners and labourers at any time employed. 
 We still have before our eyes the splendid masses of 
 the common scarlet geranium, and a smaller bed of 
 the variegated-leafed variety, edged with a border 
 of the ivy -leafed kind ; nor ought we to forget the 
 effect of a large low ring of ivy on the lawn, which 
 looked like a gigantic chaplet carelessly thrown there 
 by some Titan hand. 
 
 A garden should always lie sloping to the south, 
 and if possible to the south of the house.* In this 
 case the chief entrance to the house should be, in an 
 ordinarily sheltered situation, on the east or north ; 
 for, common as the fault is, nothing so entirely spoils 
 a garden as to have it placed in front of the public 
 approach. Views, it should be remembered, are 
 always clearest in the opposite direction to the sun. 
 Thus the north is most uninterruptedly clear through- 
 
 * To show how difficult it is to lay down any general rule, uncon- 
 troverted, here is one from Macintosh's * Practical Gardener,' one of 
 the hest practical works on horticulture we possess. " In all cases, 
 unless in small villas or cottage residences, the flower-garden should 
 be entirely concealed from the windows of the house, and be placed, 
 if circumstances will admit of it, in the shrubbery." 
 
60 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 out the day ; the west in the morning ; the east in 
 the afternoon. Speaking with a view only to garden- 
 ing effect, trees, which are generally much too near 
 the dwelling for health, and beauty, and everything 
 else, should be kept at a distance from the house, 
 except on the east side. On the south and west 
 they keep off the sun, of which we can never have 
 too much in England ; and on the north they render 
 the place damp and gloomy ; whereas, on that side 
 they should be kept so far from the windows as to 
 back and shelter a bright bank of shrubs and flowers, 
 planted far enough from the shadow cast by the house 
 to catch the sun upon them during the greater 
 part of the year and day. The prospect towards 
 the north would then be as cheerful as any other. 
 
 It is astonishing how people continue to plant 
 spruce and Scotch firs, and larches, and other incon- 
 gruous forest-trees, so close that they chafe the very 
 house with their branches, when there are at hand 
 such beautiful trees as the Lebanon and Deodara 
 cedars ; or, for smaller, or more formal, or spiral 
 shrubs, the red cedar, the Cyprus, the arbor-vitas, 
 the holly, the yew, and most graceful of all, either 
 as a tree or shrub, or rather uniting the properties 
 of both, and which only requires shelter to make it 
 flourish the hemlock spruce. 
 
 As a low shrubby plant on the lawn, nothing can 
 exceed the glossy, dark, indented leaves and bright 
 yellow spikes of the new evergreen berberries (Ber- 
 beris* aquifolium and B. repent), with their many 
 
 * Now changed to Mahonia. 
 
BERBER1S DEODARA. 61 
 
 hybrid varieties. They are becoming daily more 
 popular, not only from their beauty, but as affording 
 perhaps the best underwood covert for game yet 
 discovered. The experiments made in the woods of 
 Sudbury and elsewhere have completely succeeded ; 
 the plant being evergreen, very hardy, of easy 
 growth, standing the tree-drip, and affording in its 
 berry an excellent food for pheasants. Our nursery- 
 men are already anticipating the demand, and we 
 have no doubt that a few years' time will see this 
 the main undergrowth of our game-preserves. The 
 notice we took a few years ago (in an Article on the 
 Arboretum Britannicum) * of the Deodara pine 
 now classed among the cedars has unless the 
 dealers flatter us given a great impetus to the 
 cultivation of this valuable tree. Its timber qualities 
 as a British-grown tree have not of course been yet 
 tested ; but as an ornamental one in which cha- 
 
 * Q. R., vol. Ixii. p. 359. The Chili pine (Araucaria imbricata) 
 is now treading upon the heels of the Deodara cedar as an ornamental 
 garden-tree ; but though announced as " the largest tree in the world,'' 
 it will ever want the elegance of the latter. Even yet another monster 
 is threatening us under the name of Pawlonia imperials: it was intro- 
 duced into France from Japan by Dr. Siebold, and promises to be one 
 of the most imposing plants in our gardens. We saw some young 
 plants this spring in Mr. Bollison's nursery, which were obtained 
 from the Royal Gardener at Versailles. The leaves of a specimen in 
 the Jardin des Plantes are said to measure from 18 to 24 inches 
 across. While speaking of trees, we would say one word on the acacia 
 Cobbett's famous locust-tree (Robinia pseudoacacid), now more than 
 necessarily depreciated. We are fully aware of its defects as a timber- 
 tree from the brittleness and splitting of its branches, and slowness in 
 making bulk ; but once get a bole large enough to cut a post out of 
 it, and ask your carpenter whether it will not last as long as the iron 
 fixed into it. It is more to our present purpose to say that it is by far 
 the best tree to be used for ornamental rustic-work, as its bark is as 
 tough as its timber, and never peels off. 
 
62 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 racter only we can refer to it here it has more than 
 surpassed the highest expectations entertained re- 
 specting it. The nurserymen cannot propagate it 
 fast enough by grafts and layers, and the abundance 
 of seed which the East India Company has so libe- 
 rally distributed. 
 
 The olitory, or herb-garden, is a part of our horti- 
 culture now comparatively neglected ; and yet once 
 the culture and culling of simples was as much a 
 part of female education as the preserving and tying 
 down of " rasps and apricocks." There was not a 
 Lady Bountiful in the kingdom but made her dill- 
 tea and diet-drink from herbs of her own planting ; 
 and there is a neatness and prettiness about our 
 thyme, and sage, and mint, and marjoram, that 
 might yet, we think, transfer them from the pa- 
 tronage of the blue serge to that of the white muslin 
 apron. Lavender, and rosemary, and rue, the feathery 
 fennel, and the bright-blue borage, are all pretty 
 bushes in their way, and might have their due place 
 assigned them by the hand of beauty and taste. A 
 strip for a little herbary, halfway between the flower 
 and vegetable garden, would form a very appropriate 
 transition stratum, and might be the means, by being 
 more under the eye of the mistress, of recovering to 
 our soups and salads some of the comparatively neg- 
 lected herbs of tarragon, and French sorrel, and 
 purslane, and chervil, and dill, and clary, and others 
 whose place is now nowhere to be found but in the 
 meres of the old herbalists. This little plot should 
 
 JL O -L 
 
 be laid out, of course, in a simple geometric pattern ; 
 
" OLITORY- MAZE BOWLING-GREEN. 63 
 
 and, having tried the experiment, we can boldly 
 pronounce on its success. We recommend the idea 
 to the consideration of our lady-gardeners. 
 
 We can recall so much amusement in early years 
 from the maze at Hampton Court, that we could 
 heartily wish to see a few more such planted. 
 Daines Barrington mentions a plan for one in 
 Switzer (Iconographia, 1718) with twenty stops : 
 that at Hampton has but four. A fanciful summer- 
 house perched at the top of a high mound, with 
 narrow winding paths leading to it, was another 
 favourite ornament of old British gardens. Traces 
 of many such mounds still exist ; but the crowning- 
 buildings are, alas! no more. We must own our 
 predilection for them, if it were only that the gilded 
 pinnacle seemed to prefigure to the young idea 
 " Fame's proud temple shining from afar " (it is 
 always so drawn in frontispieces) ; while the hard 
 climbing was a palpable type of the ambition of after 
 years. 
 
 The snug smooth bowling-green is another desi- 
 deratum we would have restored; and gardeners 
 ought to know that the clipped yew hedges which 
 should accompany it are the best possible protection 
 for their flowers ; and that there is nothing flowers 
 need so much as shelter, the nursery-grounds, 
 where almost alone these hedges are now retained, 
 will testify. Where they already exist, even in a 
 situation where shelter is not required, and where 
 yet a good view is shut out, we should prefer cutting 
 windows or niches in the solid hedge to removing it 
 
64 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 altogether. In conjunction with these, what can be 
 handsomer than the iron tracery-work which came 
 into fashion with the Dutch style, and of which 
 Hampton Court affords so splendid an example? 
 Good screens of this work, which on their first intro- 
 duction were called clair-voyees, may be seen at 
 Oxford in Trinity and New College Gardens. Some 
 years ago we heard of a proposition to remove the 
 latter : the better taste of the present day will not, 
 we think, renew the scheme. Though neither of 
 these are in the rich flamboyant style which is some- 
 times seen, there is still character enough about 
 them to assure us that, were they destroyed, nothing 
 so good would be put up in their place. Oxford has 
 already lost too many of its characteristic alleys and 
 parterres. The last sweep was at the Botanic Gar- 
 den, where, however, the improvements recently 
 introduced by the zeal and liberality of the present 
 Professor must excuse it. If any college-garden is 
 again to be reformed, we hope that the fellows will 
 have courage enough to lay it out in a style which 
 is at once classical and monastic ; and set Pliny's 
 example against Walpole's sneer, that "in an age 
 when architecture displayed all its grandeur, all its 
 purity, and all its taste ; when arose Vespasian's 
 amphitheatre, the temple of Peace, Trajan's forum, 
 Domitian's baths, and Adrian's villa, the ruins and 
 vestiges of which still excite our astonishment and 
 curiosity a Roman consul, a polished emperor's 
 friend, and a man of elegant literature and taste, 
 delighted in what the mob now scarce admire in a 
 
OXFORD GARDENS THE FORMAL STYLE. 65 
 
 college-garden." He little thought how soon sturdy 
 Oxford would follow in the fashion of the day, and 
 blunt the point of his period. Still more astonished 
 would he have been to have had his natural style 
 traced to no less a founder than Nero, and even the 
 names of the Bridgeman and Brown of the day 
 handed down for his edification.* 
 
 The same train of thought is followed out in ' The 
 Poetry of Gardening/ p. 86. 
 
 The good taste of the proprietors of Hardwick and 
 Levens still retains these gardens as nearly as pos- 
 sible in their original state ; but places like these are 
 yearly becoming more curious from their rarity. 
 We have heard of one noble but eccentric lord, the 
 Elgin of the topiary art, who is buying up all the 
 yew-peacocks in the country to form an avenue in 
 his domain at Elvaston. Meanwhile the lilacs of 
 Nonsuch, and the orange-trees of Beddington, are 
 no more. The fish-pools of Wanstead are dry ; the 
 terraces of Moor-park are levelled. Even that " im- 
 pregnable hedge of holly " the pride of Evelyn 
 than which "a more glorious and refreshing object" 
 did not exist under heaven " one hundred and 
 sixty foot in length, seven foot high, and five in 
 
 * Tacitus, in the Sixth Book of his ' Annals,' gives us this inform- 
 ation : <; Ceterum Nero usus est patriae ruinis, extruxitque domum, 
 in qua haud perinde gemmae et aurum miraculo essent, solita pridem 
 et luxu vulgata, quam arva et stagna et in modum solitudinum hinc 
 syivse, inde aperta spatia et prospectus ; magistris et machinatoribus 
 Severo et Celere, quibus ingenium et audacia erat, etiam quse natura 
 denegavisset per artem tentare, et viribus principis illudere." We 
 since learn from ' Loudon's Encyclopaedia,' sec. 1145, that this passage 
 was suggested by Forsyth to Walpole, who promised to insert it in 
 the second edition of his ' Essay,' but failed to do so. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 diameter" wliicli lie could show in liis "poor 
 gardens at any time of the year, glitt'ring with its 
 arm'd and vernish'd leaves the taller standards, at 
 orderly distances, blushing with their natural corall" 
 that mocked at " the rudest assaults of the 
 weather, the beasts, or hedge-breaker" even this 
 is vanished without a solitary sucker to show where 
 it once stood. Proof it long was against the wind 
 and " weather," nay, against time itself, but not 
 against the autocratic pleasure of a barbarian Czar. 
 The " beast " and the " hedge-breaker " were united 
 in the person of Peter the Great, whose great plea- 
 sure, when studying at Deptford, was to be driven 
 in a wheelbarrow, or drive one himself, through this 
 very hedge, which its planter deemed impregnable ! 
 If he had ever heard, which he probably had not, of 
 Evelyn's boast, he might have thus loved to illus- 
 trate the triumph of despotic will and brute force 
 over the most amiable and simple affections ; but at 
 any rate the history of this hedge affords a curious 
 instance not only of the change of gardening taste, 
 but of the mutability and strangeness of all earthly 
 things. 
 
 No associations are stronger than those connected 
 with a garden. It is the first pride of an emigrant 
 settled on some distant shore to have a little garden 
 as like as he can make it to the one he left at home. 
 A pot of violets or mignionette is one of the highest 
 luxuries to an Anglo-Indian. In the bold and pic- 
 turesque scenery of Batavia, the Dutch can, from 
 feeling, no more dispense with their little moats 
 
LOVERS OF GARDENS. 67 
 
 round their houses than they could, from necessity, 
 in the flat swamps of their native land. Sir John 
 Hobhouse discovered an Englishman's residence on 
 the shore of the Hellespont by the character of his 
 shrubs and flowers. Louis XVIII. on his restoration 
 to France made in the park of Versailles the fac- 
 simile of the garden at Hartwell ; and there was no 
 more amiable trait in the life of that accomplished 
 prince. Napoleon used to say that he should know 
 his father's garden in Corsica blindfold by the smell 
 of the earth ; and the hanging gardens of Babylon 
 are said to have been raised by the Median queen of 
 Nebuchadnezzar on the flat and naked plains of her 
 adopted country, to remind her of the hills and 
 woods of her childhood. 
 
 Why should we speak of the plane-trees of Plato 
 Shakspere's mulberry-tree Pope's willow By- 
 ron's elm ? Why describe Cicero at his Tusculum 
 Evelyn at Wooton Pitt at Holcot Walpole at 
 Houghton Grenville at Dropmore ? Why dwell on 
 Bacon's " little tufts of thyme," or Conde's pinks, or 
 Fox's geraniums ? There is a spirit in the garden as 
 well as in the wood, and " the lilies of the field " 
 supply food for the imagination as well as materials 
 for sermons. " Talke of perfect happiness or pleasure," 
 says old Gerarde to the " courteous and well- willing 
 reader," from his " house in Holborn, within the 
 suburbs of London " " and what place was so fit for 
 that as the garden-place wherein Adam was set to be 
 the herbalist ? Whither did the poets hunt for their 
 sincere delights but into the gardens of Alcinous, of 
 
 F2 
 
68 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 Adonis, and the orchards of the Hesperides ? Where 
 did they dream that heaven should be but in the 
 pleasant garden of Elysium ? Whither doe all men 
 walke for their honest recreation but thither where 
 the earth hath most beneficially painted her face 
 with flourishing colours ? And what season of the 
 yeare more longed for than the spring, whose gentle 
 breath enticeth forth the kindly sweets, and makes 
 them yield their fragrant smells ?" 
 
 And what country, we may add, so suited, and 
 climate so attempered, to yield the full enjoyment 
 of the pleasures and blessings of a garden, as our 
 own? Everybody knows the remark of Charles II. , 
 first promulgated by Sir W. Temple, "that there 
 were more days in the year in which one could enjoy 
 oneself in the open air in England than in any other 
 portion of the known world." This, which contains 
 so complete an answer to the weather-grumblers of 
 our island, bears also along with it a most encourag- 
 ing truth to those " who love to live in gardens." 
 There is no country that offers the like advantages 
 to horticulture. Perhaps there is not one plant in 
 the wide world wholly incapable of being cultivated 
 in England. The mosses and lichens dragged from 
 under the snows of Iceland, and the tenderest creep- 
 ers of the tropical jungles, are alike subject to the 
 art of the British gardener. Artificial heat and 
 cold, by the due application of steam and manure, 
 sun and shade, hot and cold water, and even ice 
 mattings, flues in every variety of pit, frame, con- 
 servative wall, conservatory, greenhouse, hothouse, 
 
ENGLISH CLIMATE. 69 
 
 and stove, seem to have realised every degree of 
 temperature from Kamskatka to Sincapore. But 
 apart from artificial means, the natural mildness of 
 our sky is most favourable to plants brought from 
 countries of either extreme of temperature ; and, as 
 their habits are better known and attended to, not 
 a year passes without acclimatising many heretofore 
 deemed too tender for the open air. Gardeners are 
 reasonably cautious in not exposing at once a newly- 
 introduced exotic ; and thus we know that when 
 Parkinson wrote, in 1629, the larch, and the laurel 
 then called bay-cherry were still protected in 
 winter. We are now daily adding to the list of our 
 hardy plants ; hydrangeas, the tree-peony, fuchsias, 
 salvias, altromaerias, and Cape-bulbs, are now found, 
 with little or no protection, to stand our mid- 
 England winters. 
 
 Then we alone have in perfection the three main 
 elements of gardening, flowers apart, in our lawns, 
 our gravel, and our evergreens. It is the greatest 
 stretch of foreign luxury to emulate these. The 
 lawns at Paris, to say nothing of Naples, are regu- 
 larly irrigated to keep up even the semblance of 
 English verdure ; and at the gardens of Versailles, 
 and Caserta, near Naples, the walks have been sup- 
 plied from the Kensington gravel-pits. It is not 
 probably generally known that among our exporta- 
 tions are every year a large quantity of evergreens 
 for the markets of France and Germany, and that 
 there are some nurserymen almost wholly engaged 
 in this branch of trade. This may seem the more 
 
70 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 remarkable to those who fancy that, from the supe- 
 riority of foreign climates, any English tree would 
 bear a continental winter ; but the bare appearance 
 of the French gardens, mostly composed as they are 
 of deciduous trees, would soon convince them of the 
 contrary. It is not the severity or length of our 
 December nights that generally destroys our more 
 tender exotic plants, but it is the late frosts of April 
 and May, those "nipping frosts," which, coming 
 on after the plant has enjoyed warmth enough to set 
 the sap in action, freeze its life-blood to the heart's 
 core, and cause it to wither and die. The late 
 winter of 1837-8 proved this fact distinctly, which 
 had hardly been sufficiently remarked before. That 
 year, which cut down even our cypresses and china- 
 roses, and from which our gorse-fields have hardly 
 yet recovered, while it injured nearly every plant 
 and tree on south walls and in sheltered borders, and 
 in all forward situations, spared the tender est kinds 
 on north walls and exposed places ; and in Scotland 
 the destruction was hardly felt at all. It was the 
 backwardness of their growing state that saved these 
 plants ; and the knowledge of this fact has already 
 been brought to bear in several recent experiments. 
 The double yellow rose, for instance, one of the 
 most delicate of its class, is now flowered with great 
 success in a northern exposition. It has led men 
 also to study the hybernation of plants perhaps the 
 most important research in which horticulturists have 
 of late engaged ; and it has been ascertained that this 
 state of winter-rest is a most important element in 
 
HYBERNATION OF PLANTS. 71 
 
 their constitution ; but no doubt it will also be found 
 that as the dormouse, the sloth, the snake, the 
 mole, &c., undergo a greater or less degree of tor- 
 pidity, and some require it not at all so in plants, 
 the length and degree will vary much in different 
 species, and according to their state of artificial cul- 
 tivation. As a general rule, young gardeners must 
 take heed not prematurely to force the juices into 
 action in spring, nor to keep them too lively in 
 winter, unless they are well prepared with good and 
 sufficient protection till all the frosts are over. The 
 practical effect of these observations will be, that 
 many pknts which have hitherto only been culti- 
 vated by those who have had flues and greenhouses 
 at their command, will now be grown in as great or 
 greater perfection by those who can afford them a 
 dry, though not a warm shelter. One instance may 
 serve as an example : the scarlet geranium, one of the 
 greatest treasures of our parterres, if taken up from 
 the ground in autumn, after the wood is thoroughly 
 ripened, and hung up in a dry room, without any 
 soil attaching to it, will be found ready, the next 
 spring, to start in a new life of vigour and beauty. 
 
 One characteristic of our native plants we must 
 mention, that,, if we miss in them something of the 
 gorgeousncss and lustre of more tropical flowers, we 
 are more than compensated by the delicacy and 
 variety of their perfume ; and just as our woods, 
 vocal with the nightingale, the blackbird, and the 
 thrush, can well spare the gaudy feathers of the 
 macaw, so can we resign the oncidiums, the cactuses^ 
 
72 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 and the ipomaeas of the Tropics, for the delicious 
 fragrance of our wild banks of violets, our lilies-of- 
 the- valley, and our woodbine, or even for the passing 
 whiff of a hawthorn bush, a clover or bean field, or 
 a gorse -common. 
 
 With such hedgerow flowers within his reach, and 
 in so favourable a climate, it is not to be wondered 
 that the garden of the English cottager has been 
 remarked among our national distinctions. These 
 may be said to form the foreground of that peculiar 
 English scenery which is filled up by our hedge- 
 rows and our parks. The ingenious authoress of 
 ' Leila in England ' makes the little new-landed girl 
 exclaim for the want of "fountain-trees" and 
 " green parrots." This is true to nature but not 
 less so the real enthusiasm of Miss Sedgwick, on her 
 first arriving in England, at the cottage-gardens of 
 the Isle of Wight. Again and again she fixes upon 
 them as the most pleasing and striking feature in a 
 land where everything was new to her. Long may 
 they so continue ! It is a trait of which England 
 may well be proud ; for it speaks would we could 
 trace it everywhere ! of peace, and of the leisure, 
 and comfort, and contentedness of those who " shall 
 never cease from the land/' 
 
 We would even make gardens in general a test of 
 national prosperity and happiness. As long as the 
 British nobleman continues to take an interest in his 
 avenues and hot-houses his lady in her conserva- 
 tories and parterres the squire overlooks his 
 labourers 1 allotments the "squiresses and squirinas" 
 
BLESSINGS OF GARDENING 73 
 
 betake themselves and their flowers to the neigh- 
 bouring horticultural show the citizen sets up his 
 cucumber-frame in his back-yard his dame her 
 lilacs and alrnond-trees in the front-court the 
 mechanic breeds his prize-competing auriculas the 
 cottager rears his sun-flowers and Sweet- Williams 
 before his door and even the collier sports his 
 " posy jacket " as long, in a word, as this common 
 interest pervades every class of society, so long shall 
 we cling to the hope that our country is destined to 
 outlive all her difliculties and dangers. Not because, 
 like the Peris, we fight with flowers, and build 
 amaranth bowers, and bind our enemies in links of 
 roses but because all this implies mutual interest 
 and intercourse of every rank, and dependence of one 
 class upon another because it promotes an inter- 
 change of kindnesses and favours because it speaks 
 of proprietors dwelling on their hereditary acres, and 
 the poorest labourer having an interest in the soil 
 because it gives a local attachment, and healthy 
 exercise and innocent recreation, and excites a love 
 of the country and love of our own country, and a 
 spirit of emulation, devoid of bitterness because it 
 tells of wealth wisely spent, and competence wisely 
 diffused, of taste cultivated, and science practically 
 applied because, unlike Napoleon's great lie, it does 
 bring " peace to the cottage," while it blesses the 
 palace, and every virtuous home between those wide 
 extremes because it bespeaks the appreciation of 
 what is natural, and simple, and pure teaches men 
 to set the divine law of excellence above the low 
 
74 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 liuman standard of utility and because, above all, 
 in the most lovely and bountiful of God's works, it 
 leads them up to Him that made them, not in a 
 mere dumb, inactive admiration of His wonderful 
 designs, but to bless Him that He has given them 
 pleasures beyond their actual necessities the means 
 of a cheerful countenance, as well as of a strong 
 heart. 
 
 Still more because if ours be not too rude a 
 step to venture within such hallowed ground it 
 speaks of a Christian people employed in an occu- 
 pation which, above all others, is the parable that 
 conveys the deepest truths to them which daily 
 reads them silent lessons, if their hearts will hear, of 
 the vanity of earthly pomp, of the beauty of hea- 
 venly simplicity, and purity, and lowliness of mind, 
 of contentment and unquestioning faith which sets 
 before them, in the thorns and thistles, a remem- 
 brance of their fallen state in the cedar, and the 
 olive, and the palm-tree, the promise of a better 
 country which hourly recalls to their mind the 
 Agony and the Burial of Him who made a garden the 
 scene of both, and who bade us mark and consider 
 such things, how they bud, and " how they grow," 
 giving us in the vine a type of His Church, and in 
 the fig-tree of His Coming. 
 
 Again, we would ask those who think that national 
 amelioration is to be achieved only by dose upon 
 dose of Eeform or Ked-t apery, where should we now 
 have been without our savings-banks, our allotment 
 system, and our cottage-gardens? And lest we 
 
TO THE POOR MAN. 75 
 
 should be thought to have been led away from 
 flowers to the more general subject, we will add that, 
 when we see a plot set apart for a rose-bush, and a 
 gilliflower, and a carnation, it is enough for us : if 
 the jasmine and the honeysuckle embower the porch 
 without, we may be sure that there is a potato and 
 a cabbage and an onion for the pot within : if there 
 be not plenty there, at least there is no want ; if not 
 happiness, the nearest approach to it in this world 
 content. 
 
 *' Yes ! in the poor man's garden grow, 
 
 Far more than herbs and flowers ; 
 Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind, 
 And joy for weary hours." 
 
 Gardening not only affords common ground for the 
 high and low, but, like Christianity itself, it offers 
 peculiar blessings and privileges to the poor man, 
 which the very possession of wealth denies. " The 
 Spitalfields weaver may derive more pleasure from 
 his green box of smoked auriculas " than the lordly 
 possessors of Sion, or Chatsworth, or Stowe, or Alton, 
 from their hundreds of decorated acres ; because not 
 only personal superintendence, but actual work, is 
 necessary for the true enjoyment of a garden. We 
 must know our flowers, as well as buy them. Our 
 great-grandmothers, who before they were great- 
 grandmothers " flirted on the sunny terraces, or 
 strolled along the arched and shaded alleys " of our 
 old manor-houses, 
 
 '* had their own little garden, where they knew every flower, 
 because they were few ; and every name, because they were 
 
76 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 simple. Their rose-bushes and gilliflowers were dear to 
 them, because themselves had pruned, and watered, and 
 watched them had marked from day to day their opening 
 buds, and removed their fading blossoms and had cherished 
 each choicest specimen for the posy to be worn at the 
 christening of the squire's heir, or on my lord's birthday." 
 
 In a like strain the wise and good author of 
 ' Human Life ' beautifully says 
 
 " I would not have my garden too extended ; not because 
 flowers are not the most delicious things, speaking to the senti- 
 ments as well as to the senses, but on account of the intrinsic 
 and superior value of moderation. When interests are divided, 
 they are not so strong. Three acres of flowers and a regi- 
 ment of gardeners bring no more pleasure than a sufficiency. 
 Besides which, in the smaller possession there is more room 
 for the mental pleasure to step in and refine all that which is 
 sensual. We become acquainted, as it were, and even form 
 friendships, with individual flowers. We bestow more care 
 upon their bringing up and progress. They seem sensible of 
 our favour, absolutely to enjoy it, and make pleasing returns 
 by their beauty, health, and sweetness. In this respect a 
 hundred thousand roses, which we look at en masse, do not 
 identify themselves in the same manner as even a very small 
 border ; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly attuned, 
 the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than 
 belongs to the owner of a thousand acres. All this is so 
 entirely nature, that, give me a garden well kept, however 
 small, two or three spreading trees, and a mind at ease, and 
 I defy the world." 
 
 Nor do we find anything contravening this in 
 Cowley's wish that he might have " a small house 
 and large garden, few friends and many books." 
 Doubtless he coveted neither the Bodleian nor Chats- 
 
TO THE CLERGY. 77 
 
 worth, and intended his garden to be " large " only 
 in comparison with his other possessions. 
 
 It is this limited expenditure and unlimited in- 
 terest which a garden requires, combined with the 
 innocence of the amusement, that renders it so great 
 a blessing more even than to the cottager himself 
 to the country clergyman. We must leave to the 
 novelist to sketch the happy party which every sum- 
 mer's evening finds busied on many an English 
 vicarage-lawn, with their trowels and watering-pots, 
 and all the paraphernalia of amateur gardeners ; 
 though we may ask the utilitarian, if he would deign 
 to scan so simple a group, from the superintending 
 vicar to the water-carrying schoolboy, where he 
 would better find developed " the greatest happi- 
 ness of the greatest number" than among those very 
 objects and that very occupation where utility is not 
 only banished, but condemned. 
 
 We would have our clergy know that there is no 
 readier way to a parishioner's heart next to visit- 
 ing his house, which, done in health and in sickness, 
 is the keystone of our blessed parochial system than 
 to visit his garden, suggesting and superintending 
 improvements, distributing seeds, and slips, and 
 flowers, and lending or giving such gardening books 
 as would be useful for his limited domain. And 
 many a poor scholar, in some obscure curacy, out of 
 the way of railroads and book-clubs, 
 
 " In life's stillest shade reclining, 
 In desolation unrepining, 
 Without a hope on earth to find 
 A mirror in an answering mind," 
 
THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 lias made the moral and intellectual wilderness in 
 which he is cast bloom for him in his trees, and 
 herbs, and flowers ; and if unable, from the narrow- 
 ness of his means and situation, 
 
 " To raise the ten-ace or to sink the grot," 
 
 has found his body refreshed and his spirits lightened, 
 in growing the salad to give a relish to his simple 
 meal, and the flower to bedeck his threadbare but- 
 ton-hole, enabled by these recreations to bear up 
 against those little every-day annoyances which, 
 though hardly important enough to tax our faith or 
 our philosophy, make up, in an ill-regulated or un- 
 employed mind, the chief ills of life. 
 
 Pope, who professed that of all his works he was 
 most proud of his garden, said also, with more nature 
 and truth, that he " pitied that man who had com- 
 pleted everything in his garden." To pull down 
 and destroy is quite as natural to man as to build up 
 and improve, and this love of alteration may help to 
 account for the many changes of style in gardening 
 that have taken place. The course of the seasons, 
 the introduction of new flowers, the growth of trees, 
 will always of themselves give the gardener enough 
 to do ; and if the flower-garden is perfect, and there 
 is a nook of spare ground at hand, instead of extend- 
 ing his parterres, which to be neat must needs be 
 circumscribed, he had better devote it to an arbore- 
 tum for choice trees and shrubs ; or take up with 
 some one extensive class as for a thornery or a 
 pinery ; or make it a wilderness-like mixture of all 
 
SEEDLINGS. 
 
 79 
 
 kinds. Such ground will not require mowing more 
 than twice or thrice in the year, and will afford 
 much pleasure, without much labour and expense. 
 If there is a little damp nook or dell, with rock- 
 work and water at command, let it by all means 
 be made a fernery, for which Mr. Newman's book 
 will supply plenty of materials. 
 
 But we are straying too far from our immediate 
 subject of flower-gardens and flowers, and with a 
 few more remarks upon the latter we must bring 
 this dissertation to a close : otherwise we should 
 have something to say of the unique beauties of 
 Eedleaf, and the splendid Italian garden lately de- 
 signed at Trentham by the genius of Mr. Barry ; 
 something more too of the gorgeous new importations 
 which every day is now bringing, some for the first 
 time, into blossom. We are even promised new 
 varieties of orchideous plants from Mr. Eollisson's 
 experiments in raising seedlings for the first time 
 in this country. 
 
 To produce new seedling varieties of one's own, 
 by hybridizing and other mysteries of the priests of 
 Flora, is indeed the highest pleasure and the deepest 
 esotericism of the art. The impregnating them is 
 to ventiire within the very secrets of creation, and 
 the naming them carries us back to one of the highest 
 privileges of our first parents. The offspring be- 
 comes our own c^yov ; which, according to Aristotle, 
 claims the highest degree of our love. We should 
 feel that, in leaving them, we were leaving friends, 
 and address them in the words of Eve, 
 
80 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 " flowers, 
 
 My early visitation and my last 
 At even, which I had bred up with tender hand 
 From the first opening bud, and gave ye names, 
 Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank 
 Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount ? " 
 
 Par. Lost, xi. 
 
 We cannot but admire the practice of the Church 
 of Rome, which calls in the aid of floral decorations 
 on her high festivals. Though we feel convinced 
 that it is the most bounden duty of the Church of 
 England, at the present moment, to give no un- 
 necessary offence by restorations in indifferent mat- 
 ters, we should be inclined to advocate, notwith- 
 standing the denunciations of some of the early 
 Fathers, an exception in the case of our own 
 favourites. We shall not easily forget the effect of 
 a long avenue of orange-trees in the Cathedral of 
 St. Gudule at Brussels, calling to mind as it did the 
 expression of the Psalmist " Those that be planted 
 in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts 
 of our God." The white lily is held throughout 
 Spain and Italy the emblem of the Virgin's purity, 
 and frequently decorates her shrines ; and many 
 other flowers, dedicated to some saint, are used in 
 profusion on the day of his celebration. The oak- 
 leaf and the palm-branch have with us their loyal 
 and religious anniversary, and the holly still gladdens 
 the hearts of all good Churchmen at Christmas a 
 custom which the Puritans never succeeded in 
 effacing from the most cant-ridden parish in the 
 kingdom. Latterly, flowers have been much used 
 among us in festivals, and processions, and gala-days 
 
FLOWER-DECORATION. 81 
 
 of all kinds the dahlia furnishing, in its symmetry 
 and variety of colouring, an excellent material for 
 those who perhaps in their young days sowed their 
 own initials in mustard-and-cress, to inscribe in their 
 maturer years their sovereign's name in flowers. 
 Flowering plants and shrubs are at the same time 
 becoming more fashionable in our London ball-rooms. 
 No dread of " noxious exhalations " deters mammas 
 from decorating their halls and staircases with flowers 
 of every hue and fragrance, nor their daughters from 
 braving the headaches and pale cheeks which are 
 said to arise from such innocent and beautiful causes. 
 We would go one step further, and replace all artifi- 
 cial flowers by natural ones, on the dinner-table and 
 in the hair. Some of the more amaranthine flowers, 
 as the camellia and the hoya, which can bear the heat 
 of crowded rooms, or those of regular shapes, as the 
 dahlia and others, would, we are sure, with a little 
 contrivance in adjusting and preserving them, soon 
 eclipse the most artistical wreaths of Natier or 
 Foster; and we will venture to promise a good 
 partner for a waltz and for life to the first fair 
 debutante who will take courage to adopt the natural 
 flower in her " sunny locks." 
 
THE 
 
 POETRY OF GARDENING: 
 
 Liiia mista rosis." School Exercise. 
 
 '* GOD ALMIGHTY first planted a garden, and indeed it is 
 the purest of all human pleasures." I love Lord Bacon 
 for that saying more than for his being the author of the 
 ' Novum Organon.' Willingly I would give up his four 
 folio volumes of philosophy for his one little book of 
 Essays, and all these for his one little Essay on Garden- 
 ing. It is indeed only by the study of " those fragments 
 of his conceits," as he calls them, that the full compass of 
 that great man's mind can be understood. He did not 
 think it beneath his philosophy to descant on such toys as 
 the ordering of a Masque and the dressing of a Garden. 
 He discusses, with perfect love of the subject, how " the 
 colours that show best by candlelight are white, car- 
 nation, and a kind of sea-water green ;" and how that 
 " ouches or spangs, as they are of no great cost, so are they 
 of most glory," and recommends, with the very refinement 
 of luxury, as " things of great pleasure and refreshment, 
 some sweet odours suddenly coming forth " on the com- 
 pany, in the midst of the entertainment. 
 
 With a still greater love and adoption of his subject, he 
 enters into the description of how royally he would order 
 his Garden. Dear old Evelyn himself never eyed with 
 
 * See p. 55. 
 
 G2 
 
84 THE FLOWER GARDEN". 
 
 more complacency his four hundred feet of holly " blush- 
 ing with its natural coral," than Bacon does his phantastic 
 vision of a " stately arched hedge," and " over every arch 
 a little turret, with belly enough to receive a cage of birds, 
 and over every space between the arches some other little 
 figure, with broad plates of round coloured glass for the 
 sun to play upon." I envy not that man's heart who can 
 view with indifference the great philosopher indulging in 
 his day-dreams of a spacious pleasaunce, where fruits from 
 the orange to the service tree, and flowers from the stately 
 hollyhock to the tuft of wild thyme, are to flourish, each 
 in its proper place ; " there should be the pale daffodil and 
 the clove-gilliflower, and the almond and apple-tree in 
 blossom, and roses of all kinds, * some removed to come 
 in late,' so that you may have * ver perpetuum ' all the year 
 through." 
 
 Lord Bacon has indeed left us little to wish in the 
 Poetry of Gardening. His prince -like design of a de- 
 mesne of thirty acres, containing " a green at the entrance, 
 a heath or desert in the going forth, the main garden in 
 the midst, besides alleys on both sides," combines the 
 natural and artificial styles in their most perfect features ; and 
 if he realized in his retreat at Gorhambury but the outline 
 of his splendid vision, the gardens of the Hesperides, or of 
 Hafiz, could have no greater charm. 
 
 Of all the vain assumptions of these coxcomical times, 
 that which arrogates the pre-eminence in the true science 
 of gardening is the vainest. True, our conservatories are 
 full of the choicest plants from every clime ; we ripen the 
 grape and the pine-apple with an art unknown before, and 
 even the mango, the mangosteen, and the guava, are made 
 to yield their matured fruits; but the real beauty and 
 poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts after rarity, and 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 85 
 
 strangeness, and variety. To be the possessor of a unique 
 pansy, the introducer of a new specimen of the Orchi- 
 dacese, or the cultivator of five hundred choice varieties of 
 the dahlia, is now the only claim to gardening celebrity 
 and Horticultural medals. 
 
 And then our lot has fallen in the evil days of System. 
 We are proud of our natural or English style ; and scores 
 of unmeaning flower-beds, disfiguring the lawn in the 
 shapes of kidneys, and tadpoles, and sausages, and leeches, 
 and commas, are the result. Landscape-gardening has 
 encroached too much upon gardening-proper ; and this has 
 had the same effect upon our gardens that horticultural 
 societies have had on our fruits, to make us entertain the 
 vulgar notion that size is virtue. 
 
 The picturesquians have fortunately had their day, and 
 wholesale manufacturers of by-lanes and dilapidated cot- 
 tages are no longer in vogue in our parks ; but they seem 
 yet to linger about our parterres, though they have far less 
 business here, and indeed should never for a moment have 
 been allowed a footing, for there are no greater extremes 
 in art than a garden and a picture. 
 
 If we review the various styles that have prevailed in 
 England, from the knotted gardens of Elizabeth, the pleach- 
 work and intricate flower-borders of James I., the painted 
 Dutch statues and canals of William and Mary, the wind- 
 ing gravel walks and lake-making of Brown, to poor Shen- 
 stone's sentimental farm, and the landscape-fashion of the 
 present day, we shall have little reason to pride ourselves 
 on the advance which national taste has made upon the 
 earliest efforts in this department. 
 
 If I am to have a system at all, give me the good old 
 system of terraces and angled walks, and dipt yew-hedges, 
 against whose dark and rich verdure the bright old-fashioned 
 
86 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 flowers glittered in the sun. I love the topiary art, with 
 its trimness and primness, and its open avowal of its arti- 
 ficial character. It repudiates at the first glance the 
 sculking and cowardly " celare artem " principle, and, in 
 its vegetable sculpture, is the properest transition from the 
 architecture of the house to the natural beauties of the 
 grove and paddock. 
 
 Who, to whom the elegance, and gentlemanliness, and 
 poetry, the Boccaccio-spirit of a scene of Watteau is 
 familiar, does not regret the devastation made by tasty 
 innovators upon the grounds laid out in the times of the 
 Jameses and Charleses ? As for old Noll, I am certain, 
 though I have not a jot of evidence, that he cared no more 
 for a garden than for an anthem ; he would as lief have 
 sacrificed the verdant sculpture of a yew-peacock as the 
 time-honoured tracery of a cathedral shrine ; and his crop- 
 eared soldiery would have had as great satisfaction in 
 bivouacking in the parterres of a " royal pleasaunce " as in 
 the presence-chamber of a royal palace. It were a sorrow 
 beyond tears to dwell on the destruction of garden-stuff in 
 those king-killing times. Thousands, doubtless, of broad- 
 paced terraces and trim vegetable conceits sunk in the 
 same ruin with their mansions and their masters : and, alas f 
 modern taste has followed in the footsteps of ancient 
 fanaticism. How many old associations have been rooted 
 up with the knotted stumps of yew and hornbeam ! And 
 Oxford too in the van of reform f Beautiful as are St. 
 John's gardens, who would not exchange them for the very 
 walks and alleys along which Laud, in all the pardonable 
 pride of collegiate lionizing, conducted his illustrious guests 
 Charles and Henrietta? Who does not grieve thp.t we 
 must now inquire in vain for the bowling-green in Christ 
 Church, where Cranmer solaced the weariness of his last 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 87 
 
 confinement ? And who lately, in reading Scott's life, but 
 must have mourned in sympathy with the poet over the 
 destruction of " the huge hill of leaves," and the yew and 
 hornbeam hedges of the " Garden " at Kelso ? 
 
 In those days of arbours and bowers, Gardening was 
 an art, not a mystery ; and such an art that the simplest 
 maid could comprehend it. They who loved could learn. 
 The only initiation required was into the arcana of the 
 herb-garden, and the concoction of simples. This was as 
 necessary a part of education then, as to sing Italian now. 
 All the rest was as easy and plain as Nature herself. 
 There was no need to study Monogynia and Icosandria, to 
 pore over the difference of Liliacese and Aristolochiae ; 
 Linngean and Jussieuan factions contorted not pretty 
 mouths with crackjaw words of Aristophanic length and 
 difficulty ; nor did blundering gardeners expose their igno- 
 rance and conceit by barbaric compounds and insufferable 
 misnomers. They had no new plants introduced from 
 Mexico with the euphonic and engaging designation of 
 Iztactepetzacuxochitl Icoliueyo* to be rechristened with some 
 more scientific but scarcely less ponderous synonym. 
 
 In those days ladies were neither botanists nor florists, 
 but simple gardeners, and not landscape-gardeners, with 
 their fifty acres of shrubberies and a gardener to every acre ; 
 but they had their own little garden, where they knew 
 every flower, because they were few, and every name, be- 
 cause they were simple. Their rose-bushes and their 
 gilliflowers were dear to them, because themselves had 
 pruned and watered and watched them had marked from 
 day to day their opening buds, and removed their faded 
 blossoms, and had cherished each choicest specimen for the 
 
 * Vide Bot. Reg., No. 13, and Harrison's Flor. Cab. for April, 
 1838. 
 
THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 posy to be worn on the christening of the squire's heir, or 
 on my lord's birthday. 
 
 They could discourse without pedantry on the collection 
 of simple and native flowers which composed their un- 
 stinted nosegay, and could quiz their partners in pure 
 Saxon anthology, without having studied printed treatises 
 on the Language of Flowers. No Arab girl knew better 
 how to open her heart by love tokens, than did they how 
 to settle a coxcomb cockney with a bunch of " London- 
 pride;" to roast a quizzical anti-Benedict with a dressing 
 of "bachelor's buttons;" or to mystify some aspiring 
 cornet with a "jackanapes-on- horseback." None better 
 knew, as they flirted on the sunny terraces, or strolled, not 
 unaccompanied, along the arched and shaded alleys, 
 
 " By all those token flowers, that tell 
 What words can never speak as well," 
 
 to hint the speechless misery of a broken and deserted 
 heart, as they culled a sprig of " love-lies-bleeding ;" or 
 to encourage the bashful passion of some ingenuous swain, 
 who dared hardly breathe his youthful aspirings, till gifted 
 with the soothing symbol of a bunch of " heartsease." 
 
 " Heureux 1'aimable botaniste 
 Qui salt jouir de ces douceurs ! " 
 
 The " forget-me-not " is the only real flower of senti- 
 ment descended to these degenerate days, and even this is 
 a wild flower, and has been so overwhelmed with the en- 
 comiums of Annual and Album poets, that its bright blue 
 petals and tiny yellow eye have almost ceased to please 
 beyond the precincts of the boarding-school. 
 
 And now that all our old-fashioned flowers and English 
 names are eschewed for our modern exotics and Latin hen- 
 decasyllables, no one must dare to talk of a garden unless 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 89 
 
 he is advertised of the last Orchideous arrival at Loddiges', 
 and can master the 500 pages of the Hortus Britannicus. 
 It was considered the summit of art in Shakspeare's days, 
 as we learn from the ' Winter's Tale,' to streak the gilli- 
 flower ; _, and that garden was accounted rich that could 
 boast a carnation. Rosemary and rue for the old hot 
 lavender, mints, savory, marjoram, and marigolds, for the 
 middle-aged daffodils, dim violets, pale primroses, bold 
 oxlips, the crown-imperial, 
 
 " lilies of all kinds, 
 The flower-de-lis being one," 
 
 for the young; these were flowers that had their place in 
 the earliest associations of the gallants and their lady-loves, 
 and their rank in the brightest page of the poet. 
 
 Unlike the untractable nomenclature of the present day, 
 their familiar names entwined themselves in immortal verse 
 with as easy and natural a grace as they clustered in their 
 native beds, or wreathed themselves round the brow of 
 beauty. The same flowers were at once the property of 
 the poet and the belle ; the " posie " was common to both ; 
 and maidens could cull their May garlands to the minstrel's 
 theme, as they sang 
 
 " When daisies pied, and violets blue, 
 
 And lady-smocks all silver white, 
 And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, 
 
 Do paint the meadows with delight, 
 The cuckoo then, on every tree, 
 Mocks married men, for thus sings he, 
 
 Cuckoo, cuckoo ! " 
 
 " The azurecl harebell," the pale daffodil, the golden crocus, 
 the crisped hyacinth, the columbine, the buglosse, the 
 eglantine, and the primrose, 
 
 " Most musical, most melancholy," 
 
90 THE FLOWER GARDEX. 
 
 breathed poetry from their very birth, and needed not the 
 foreign aid of ornament to attract the homage of the bard. 
 But what poetaster will adventure to sing the glories of a 
 modern ball-room bouquet? Who shall build lofty verse 
 with such materials as " polypodium aspenifolimn," "me- 
 sembryanthemum pinnatifidum," and " cardiospermum hali- 
 cacabum," and other graces of our gardens, 
 
 " quas versu dicere non est" ? 
 
 Even prose will hardly endure such intruders, and I know 
 no author but Miss Mitford who has even attempted, with 
 the least success, to render classic the names of our modem 
 importations. 
 
 Nor is it in names, only that much of the poetry of our 
 garden has departed. In the flowers themselves we have 
 too often made a change for the worse. What shall we 
 say of the taste that has discarded the hollyhock the only 
 landscape-flower we possess ? Do the gaudy hues of the 
 stiff and formal dahlia recompense for the loss of its bold 
 clusters of flowers, breaking the horizon with an obelisk of 
 colour ? Why has the painter been so long in reclaiming 
 his own ? By far the finest effect that combined art and 
 nature ever produced in gardening were those fine masses 
 of many-coloured hollyhocks clustered round a weather- 
 tinted vase, such as Sir Joshua delighted to place in the 
 wings of his pictures. And what more magnificent than 
 a long avenue of these floral giants, the double and the 
 single, not too straightly tied, backed by a dark thick 
 hedge of old-fashioned yew? Yet how seldom, now-a- 
 days, is either of these sights to be seen ! The dahlia has 
 banished the hollyhock, with its old friend, the sunflower, 
 into the cottage garden, where it still flanks the little walk 
 that leads from the wicket to the porch not the only in- 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 91 
 
 stance in which our national taste has been redeemed by 
 the cottager, against the vulgar pretensions of overgrown 
 luxury and wealth. 
 
 We need not deny the dahlia his due, though he is a 
 bit of a coxcomb. Its rich velvety and chiseled petals, 
 and the extraordinary variety and beauty of its colours, 
 claim for it one of the highest ranks among florists' flowers ; 
 but, then, immediately a flower becomes a florist's flower, 
 it loses half its poetry. Who can endure the pedantry that 
 proses over the points of a polyanthus ? 
 
 " The glorious flower which bore the prize away ! " 
 
 And have not horticultural shows and prizes almost 
 removed the dahlia out of our poetical sympathies ? 
 Above all, its odious distinctive names pall upon our 
 senses. Who can care about the " Metropolitan Purple," 
 " Diadem of Perfection," or the ' Suffolk Hero" ? Who 
 can wish to point out in his garden "Lord Lyndhurst" 
 cheek by jowl with " the Quakeress," " Lord Durham " 
 in rivalry with " Yellow Perfection," or " Lovely Anne " 
 escorted by " Sir Isaac Newton " ? to say nothing of such 
 classic designations as " Jim Crow," <; Leonardy," 
 " Summum Bonum," " O'Connell," " King Boy," and 
 " Master Buller," and the thousand other et ceteras with 
 which the nurserymen's lists abound. Besides, one tires 
 of disquisitions on its " showy habit," and " cupped petals," 
 and " extra fine shape," and all the nicely-regulated enthu- 
 siasm of the ultra-florist. 
 
 " This, this is beauty ; cast, I pray, your eyes 
 On this my glory ! see the grace ! the size ! 
 Was ever stem so tall, so stout, so strong, 
 Exact in breadth, in just proportion long ? 
 These brilliant hues are all distinct and clean, 
 No kindred tint, no blending streaks between ; 
 This is no shaded, run-off, pin-eyed thing, 
 A king of flowers, a flower for England's King ! " 
 
92 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 If you are to admire a flower only by rules and canons, you 
 may as well not admire at all. 1 will willingly allow an 
 artist or a connoisseur to point out to me the beauties of 
 a fine painting, because art alone can fully appreciate and 
 explain art, but a fine flower is given to me as much as to 
 you ; you shall not dictate artificial laws by which to judge 
 of Nature's beauty. If it speaks not to my heart at once, 
 no learned lecture will ever make it beautiful to me. I 
 will admire no statute-coloured tulips, nor act-of-parliament 
 polyanthuses. 
 
 I really liked heartsease till florists called them pansies 
 a pretty name though, and Shakspearian too and put 
 a thousand and one varieties in their catalogues, advertising 
 flowers " as big as a penny piece ;" and what, in the name 
 of moderation, is one to do with "four thousand new 
 seedling, shrubby calceolarias, all named varieties," beau- 
 tiful as they doubtless all are ? If we are really called 
 upon to get up this vocabulary, better return to the days 
 when that little bright yellow globule, the first-introduced, 
 and that rare and curious English flower, " my lady's 
 slipper," were the only types of the tribe. When florists 
 drive matters to such extremities as these, there is but one 
 way out of it. We must wait awhile, a reaction will 
 take place ; the less showy sorts will gradually be disre- 
 garded, despite their solemn rules ; we shall select those 
 only that generally please, and Nature will again recover 
 her sway. 
 
 Woe unto the flower that becomes the fashion ! It is 
 as sure to be spoilt as the belle of the season. How well 
 I remember the coming out, the first introduction, of that 
 brilliant little creature the scarlet verbena ! It was engaged 
 a hundred deep the moment it appeared ; the gardening 
 world was utterly infatuated, and fifteen florists, balked in 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 93 
 
 their possession of it, hanged themselves in their own 
 potting-houses. Well, it figured at every horticultural 
 show for the first five years, was petted, caressed, was 
 fted its admirers continued hourly to increase ; but now 
 it has twenty rival sisters and cousins of the same name 
 and family. Each new debutante is sought after more 
 eagerly than the last; and the original, though still as 
 beautiful and as lustrous as ever, stands comparatively un- 
 noticed in its solitary pot a regular w T all-flower ! 
 
 Even to go back very, very far. In one respect the 
 gardens of the ancients surpassed our own. They did not 
 think a beautiful-blossomed tree unfit for the pleasure- 
 ground merely because it produced fruit. Whereas, with 
 us, no sooner is a tree known to be a fruit-bearer, than it 
 is banished to the kitchen-garden. We cultivate, as an 
 ornamental shrub, the barren almond, whose delicate pink 
 flower, 
 
 " That hangs on a leafless bough," 
 
 is one of Spring's earliest harbingers ; but how few care 
 to admire the blushing bloom of the apple-tree ! and who 
 ever planted some of the more handsome-growing sorts 
 for their effect in the shrubbery, or on the lawn ? If it 
 bore no fruit, we should doubtless prize it more. Can 
 anvthing be more elegant in its habit, its blossom, and its 
 fruit, than a standard morella cherry ? and yet how few 
 flower-gardens tolerate it ! Is anything bolder in the out- 
 line of its leaves and fruit than a standard medlar ? But 
 then it is edible. The rich mulberry colour of the foliage 
 of the pear-tree in September is by far the finest of 
 autumnal tints ; but because we might also gather from it 
 some rich juicy fruit, therefore no one dreams of planting it 
 for its beauty. 
 
94 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 Again, the scarlet runner, if it were not one of our best 
 vegetables, would be ranked among our choicest creepers. 
 The cottager alone knows how to turn this beautiful plant 
 to its two-fold purpose of use and ornament. So a straw- 
 berry bed, if rightly managed, might be as grateful to the 
 sight in spring, and to the smell in autumn, as it is to the 
 taste in summer. 
 
 " The gadding vine " must, I fear, to become fruitful, 
 still be trained to our brick walls, but what prevents '^its 
 trailing also over our arbours and trellis-work (the leaf of 
 some of its varieties is peculiarly graceful) but the fear of 
 its utilitarian aspect ? One may venture to prophesy that 
 ere long the " Passiflora edulis " and " Musa Cavendishii " 
 will be transferred from the conservatory to the hothouse 
 for no other reason than their fruitfulness ; just as now the 
 bitter orange is more often cultivated than the sweet one, 
 though the same expense and attention might supply the 
 household with the latter. This is really carrying matters 
 to an absurd extreme. Flora forfend that the Utilitarians 
 should ever seize upon our gardens, and turn our lawns 
 into kaleyards (thank Heaven ! flowers will remain a living 
 argument against their system till the end of time) ; but 
 let us not be driven to the equal barbarism of the other 
 extreme let us not discard a beautiful tree, or shrub, or 
 flower, the moment we know that it will produce fruit, 
 and condemn it forthwith to the dull monotony and formal 
 propriety of the kitchen-garden. Our fruit-trees may com- 
 plain, with like justice, in the verses of Ovid's 'Walnut; 7 
 if not pelted, they are at least snubbed. 
 
 " Nil ego peccavi : nisi si peccare videtur 
 
 Annua cultori porna referre suo, 
 Fructus obest : peperisse nocet : nocet esse feracem." 
 
 Away, then, with this vulgar and cockney dread of use- 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 95 
 
 fulness. It belongs not to the poetry, but to the mock 
 sentimentalism of gardening. Are the gardens of the Hes- 
 perides less beautiful because of their golden fruit ? Did 
 Ulysses less admire the gardens of Alcinous for their pears 
 and pomegranates, their figs and olives ? 
 
 crvKai re yXvuepai, Kal eAoTcu T7jAe0oco<rat. 
 
 Od. i). 115. 
 
 The "brilliant-fruited" trees were rightly reckoned the 
 garden's greatest ornament. 
 
 In the description of the Corycian veteran's reclaimed 
 plot of waste the most exquisite description of an humble 
 garden that poet ever drew .the first apple of autumn is 
 as much his pride as the first rose of spring. Nor was his 
 care of his hyacinths the less because his simple herbs 
 offered him an unbought feast at nightfall. Of all the 
 books that were never written I think D'Israeli has a 
 paper on such a subject surely the one of all others most 
 to be regretted is Virgil's * Garden.' Though the fruit- 
 trees and esculent vegetables were doubtless among the 
 Romans the main object of their gardening, yet it is a great 
 mistake to suppose that flowers were not also cultivated 
 solely for their own sake, and these Virgil would not have 
 forgotten. 
 
 " nee sera comantem 
 Narcissum, aut flexi tacuissem vimen acanthi.' 
 
 The Georgics were the poet's labour of love ; and when 
 we see how, in " wood and fell," he rises above the tame 
 monotony of " arms and the man," we cannot but love to 
 dream over the splendid passages which his * Garden' 
 would have suggested, and picture to ourselves how glori- 
 
96 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 ously his spirit would have revelled among "the rose- 
 gardens of Paestum." 
 
 It cannot be out of place here to insert part of that de- 
 scription I have just alluded to, unsurpassed as it is by 
 ancient or modern poetry. 
 
 " Sub (Ebaliae memini me turribus arcis, 
 
 Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galsesus, 
 Corycium vidisse senem, cui pauca relicti 
 Jugera ruris erant : nee fertilis ilia juvencis 
 Nee pecori opportuna seges, nee commoda Baecho. 
 Hie rarum tamen in dumis olus albaque circum 
 Lilia verbenasque premens, vescumque papaver, 
 Regum aequabat opes animls : seraque revertens 
 Nocte domum dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis. 
 Primus vere rosam, atque auctumno carpere poma ; 
 Et, quum tristis hyems etiarn nunc frigore saxa 
 Rumperet, et glacie cursus frenaret aquarum, 
 Ille comam mollis jam tondebat hyacinthi, 
 /Estatem increpitans seram zephyrosque morantes." 
 
 Georg., iv. 125. 
 
 Most writers on gardening have treated of the Grecian and 
 Roman gardens as if they were simply orchards. They 
 were in fact, what we may hope to restore, a mixture of 
 fruit and flowers. That they loved flowers for their own 
 sake might be witnessed by numberless passages from 
 Aristophanes* and Ovid, both of whom clearly show by 
 
 * Passim, and especially the choruses in the 'Aves/ We learn, 
 too, from him, that there was a flower-market at Athens. For Ovid, 
 see, among many others, the charming description of the aymphs " in 
 the fair field of Enna gathering flowers :" 
 
 " Hsec implet lento calathos e vimine textos : 
 Hsec gremium, laxos degravat ilia sinus. 
 Ilia legit calthas : huic sunt violaria curse : 
 i Ilia papavereas subsecat ungue comas. 
 
 Has, hyacinthe. tenes : illas, amaranthe, moraris : 
 
 Pars thyma, pars casiam, pars meliloton amant. 
 
 Plurima lecta rosa est, et sunt sine nomine flores : 
 
 Ipsa crocos tenues liliaque alba legit." 
 
 Let me add one other picture of a Flower-girl the matchless Murillo 
 in the Dulwich Gallery. 
 
THE POETKY OF GARDENING. 97 
 
 their writings that they were votaries of Flora. The 
 difficulty is in identifying the ancient names with modern 
 specimens, and thus the " violet - crowned " Athenians 
 become as great a mystery to us as the chaplet of " parsley" 
 for the victor at the Olympic games. I am inclined to think 
 that the Greeks understood the poetry of flowers better 
 than the Romans, or how could the latter have endured the 
 licentiousness of the Floralia, and made, oh shame! the 
 obscene Priapus the protecting deity of their gardens ? 
 Perhaps no greater instance could be alleged of the de- 
 pravity of human nature, when given up to the debasing 
 influences of a god-multiplying superstition, than that " the 
 purest of all human pleasures " was made the occasion of 
 their most infamous rites, and that " the lilies of the field," 
 the emblem of simplicity to man, were committed to the 
 tutelage of the god of lust ! 
 
 The formal style which the ancients adopted in their 
 pleasure-grounds as Cicero at his Tusculan villa was 
 perhaps better suited to the introduction of fruit-trees than 
 our more modern system. The very order of their vines, 
 which Virgil compares to the rank and file of a Roman 
 legion, and of their olives, which were under the eye of 
 Morian Jove himself, while they afforded them avenues for 
 shade, were also conducive to the best development of the 
 virtues of the tree. So also, in the Elizabethan and Dutch 
 styles, the espaliers harmonized better with the pleach- 
 work of the rest of the garden than they could be made 
 to do in the Natural style. But still, those who have 
 seen the hanging orchards of Lanark, 
 
 " Clydesdale's apple-bowers," 
 
 in the end of the merry month of May, or the tamer 
 beauties of the cider counties of England, may well regret 
 
98 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 the edict of modern taste, that banishes such beautiful 
 nosegays from the spring, because of their almost equal 
 beauties in autumn. Surely we might, with the best effect, 
 recall from the slovenly orchard, and the four unpoetical 
 walls of the kitchen-garden, some of those fruit-trees which 
 graced the gardens of antiquity. 
 
 At least, about our farm-houses and our villas, the wal- 
 nut and the mulberry would afford as good a shelter, and 
 as pleasing an effect, as the everlasting plantations of firs 
 and larches. I can fancy a fair lawn, mown by the scythe, 
 or cropped by sheep, as the case may be, in which fruit- 
 trees might be so grouped, with reference to their blossom 
 and foliage, as to produce a beautiful garden-scene the 
 whole year round ; if cattle were excluded, there is no 
 reason why honeysuckles and climbing roses should not 
 twine around the stems ; and who would wish for fairer 
 pleasure-ground than this? 
 
 If indeed we would imitate the most perfect specimens 
 of nature's gardening ; if we would realize the most beau- 
 tiful visions of the poets (generally indeed alleged as the fore- 
 shadow ers of the modern style) ; if the fabled regions of 
 the Hesperides and Adonis, the Homeric picture of 
 Calypso's grot, and the gardens of Alcinous and Laertes, 
 Petrarch's Vaucluse, and Tasso's garden of Armida, if 
 Milton's Paradise, if these, or any of them, are to be the 
 types of our pleasure-grounds, we shall not fear to mix our 
 fruits with our flowers ; a new feature will be added to 
 the English style, the garden will be made to rejoice in 
 an ornament that it knew not before : 
 
 " Miraturque novos frondes et non sua poma." 
 
 And I have been writing on, all this long and weary 
 time, and never asked you, reader, " whether you were 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 99 
 
 fond of flowers ? " Yet, if you have borne with me thus far, 
 I may well presume that you love them. Indeed, I say of 
 flowers, as the poet has said of music ; he that hath no love 
 of them in his soul, 
 
 " Let not that man be trusted." 
 
 Nor do I believe that I am singular in my opinion. I 
 remember hearing the health of a very good friend of mine 
 proposed at a public dinner, which was neither a Political 
 nor a Horticultural one, in which, after some other remarks, 
 his merits were summed up in these words, "he is an 
 excellent Conservative, and fond of flowers." The guests 
 fully appreciated this philosophic eulogium, and may be 
 said literally to have stamped their approbation by the 
 enthusiasm of their applause. 
 
 If then a true brother of the trowel and rake, if, 
 in chubby childhood, you ever strung daisy necklaces, 
 " bonnie gems," for your pet sister, if you ever tested 
 your brother's taste for butter by the chin-applied king- 
 cup^ and told nurse what hour it was by the dandelion- 
 clock ; if you ever sowed your own or your sweetheart's 
 initials in mustard-and-cress, frightened the baby with 
 a snap-dragon, mercilessly watered to death an often- 
 potted primrose, soaked your nankeens to the skin in 
 fetching water for mamma, or watched with unavailing 
 assiduity the expected crop of long-sown siugar-plums : if, 
 in boyhood, you ever screamed for joy at the discovery of 
 a bee-orchis, hunted the wortleberry and the pig-nut to 
 their retreats, and returned home from the copse wood 
 loaded with blue-bells and wild anemones for the children's 
 garden : if afterwards, under 
 
 " The lime at eve 
 Diffusing odours," 
 
 you braided the white bind- weed and the glossy leaves 
 
 H2 
 
100 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 and berries of the bryony in the hair of (shall I tell 
 
 her name ?) : if now, grown sober and prosaic, you have 
 yet life enough in you to rise and be stirring 
 
 " When winking mary-buds begin 
 To ope their golden eyes," 
 
 to be the first to view the long-expected blowing of some 
 seedling rhododendron of your own, or some Bengal rose 
 which your Indian brother has sent over 9000 miles of 
 ocean the seed gathered by his own hand in his own 
 garden on the banks of Gunga's stream : if " the pink- 
 eyed pimpernel " in the hedge- row is as dear to you as the 
 choicest oncidium in the conservatory ; and, while you 
 honour " the fruit at once and flower " of the voluptuous 
 orange-tree, you despise not my poor fern, a pilfered me- 
 morial from Kenil worth: if all these "ifs" have not 
 tired you to death, and you are not heartily bothered with 
 my prosing, come, take a stroll with me, while I show you 
 my garden as it is, or is to be. 
 
 My garden should lie to the south of the house ; the 
 ground gradually sloping for some short way till it falls 
 abruptly into the dark and tangled shrubberies that all but 
 hide the winding brook below. A broad terrace, half as 
 wide, at least, as the house is high, should run along the 
 whole southern length of the building, extending to the 
 western side also, whence, over the distant country, I may 
 catch the last red light of the setting sun. I must have 
 some musk and noisette roses, and jasmine, to run up the 
 mullions of my oriel window, and honeysuckles and clematis, 
 the white, the purple, and the blue, to cluster round the 
 top. The upper terrace should be strictly architectural, 
 and no plants are to be harboured there, save such as twine 
 among the balustrades, or fix themselves in the mouldering 
 crevices of the stone. I can endure no plants in pots, a 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 101 
 
 plant in a pot is like a bird in a cage. The gourd alone 
 throws out its vigorous tendrils, and displays its green and 
 golden fruit from the vases that surmount the broad flight 
 of stone steps that lead to the lower terrace ; while a vase 
 of larger dimensions and bolder sculpture at the western 
 corner is backed by the heads of a mass of crimson, rose, 
 and straw-coloured hollyhocks that spring up from the 
 bank below. The lower terrace is twice the width of the 
 one above, of the most velvety turf, laid out in an elaborate 
 pattern of the Italian style. Here are collected the choicest 
 flowers of the garden ; the Dalmatic purple of the gentia- 
 nella, the dazzling scarlet of the verbena, the fulgent lobelia, 
 the bright yellows and rich browns of the calceolaria here 
 luxuriate in their trimly cut parterres, and, with colours as 
 brilliant as the mosaic of an old cathedral painted window, 
 
 " broider the ground 
 
 With rich inlay." * 
 
 But you must leave this mass of gorgeous colouring and 
 the two pretty fountains that play in their basins of native 
 rock, while you descend the flight of steps, simpler than 
 those of the upper terrace, and turn to the left hand, where 
 a broad gravel walk will lead you to the kitchen-garden, 
 through an avenue splendid in autumn with hollyhocks, 
 dahlias, China asters, nasturtians, and African marigolds. 
 
 We will stop short of the walled garden to turn among 
 the clipped hedges of box, and yew, and hornbeam which 
 surround the bowling-green, and lead to a curiously formed 
 labyrinth, in the centre of which, perched up on a triangular 
 mound, is a fanciful old summerhouse, with a gilded roof, 
 that commands the view of the whole surrounding country. 
 Quaint devices of all kinds are found here. Here is a sun- 
 
 * " Tot fuerant illic, quot habet natura, colores : 
 
 Pictaque dissimili flore nitebat humus." Ov. 
 
102 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 dial of flowers, arranged according to the time of day at 
 which, they open and close. Here are peacocks and lions 
 in livery of Lincoln green. Here are berceaux and arbours, 
 and covered alleys, and enclosures containing the primest 
 of the carnations and cloves in set order, and miniature 
 canals that carry down a stream of pure water to the fish- 
 ponds below. Further onwards, and up the south bank, 
 verging towards the house, are espaliers and standards of 
 the choicest fruit-trees ; here are strawberry-beds raised so 
 as to be easy for gathering ; while the round gooseberry 
 and currant bushes and the arched raspberries continue 
 the formal style up the walls of the enclosed garden, whose 
 outer sides are clothed alternately with fruit and flowers, 
 so that the " stranger within the house" may be satisfied, 
 without being tantalized by the rich reserves within the gate 
 of iron tracery of which the head gardener keeps the key. 
 
 Return to the steps of the lower terrace : what a fine 
 slope of green pasture loses itself in the thorn, hazel, and 
 holly thicket below, while the silver thread of the running 
 brook here and there sparkles in the light ; and how 
 happily the miniature prospect, framed by the gnarled 
 branches of those gigantic oaks, discloses the white spire 
 of the village church in the middle distance ! while in the 
 background the smoke, drifting athwart the base of the 
 purple hill, give evidence that the evening fires are just lit 
 in the far-off town. 
 
 At the right-hand corner of the lower terrace the ground 
 falls more abruptly away, and the descent into the lawn, 
 which is overlooked from the high western terrace, is by 
 two or three steps at a time, cut out in the native rock of 
 red sandstone, which also forms the base of the terrace 
 itself. Rock plants of every description freely grow in the 
 crevices of the rustic battlement which flanks the path on 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 103 
 
 either side ; the irregularity of the structure increases as 
 you descend, till, on arriving on the lawn below, large rude 
 masses lie scattered on the turf and along the foundation of 
 the western terrace. 
 
 A profusion of the most exquisite climbing roses of 
 endless variety here clamber up till they bloom over the 
 very balustrades of the higher terrace, or creep over the 
 rough stones at the foot of the descent. Here stretching 
 to the south is the nosegay of the garden. Mignionette, 
 " the Frenchman's darling," and the musk-mimulus spring 
 out of every fissure of the sandstone ; while beds of violets, 
 " That strew the green lap of the new-come spring," 
 
 and lilies of the valley scent the air below. Beds of helio- 
 trope nourish around the isolated blocks of sandstone ; the 
 fuchsia, alone inodorous, claims a place from its elegance ; 
 and honeysuckles and clematis of all kinds trail along the 
 ground, or twine up the stands of rustic baskets, filled 
 with the more choice odoriferous plants of the greenhouse. 
 The scented heath, the tuberose, and the rarer jasmines 
 have each their place, while the sweet-brier and the wall- 
 flower, and the clove and stock gilliflower are not too com- 
 mon to be neglected. To bask upon the dry sunny rock 
 on a bright spring morning in the midst of this " wilder- 
 ness of sweets," or on a dewy summer's eve to lean over 
 the balustrade above, while every breath from beneath 
 wafts up the perfumed air, 
 
 " stealing and giving odour," 
 
 is one of the greatest luxuries I have in life. 
 
 A little further on the lawn are the trunks and stumps 
 of old pollards hollowed out ; and, from the cavities, filled 
 with rich mould, climbers, creepers, trailers, and twiners of 
 every hue and habit form a singular and picturesque group. 
 
104 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 The lophospermum, the eccrymocarpos, the maurandria, the 
 loasa, the rodokiton, verbenas, and petunias in all their 
 varieties, festoon themselves over the rugged bark, and 
 form the gayest and gracefullest garland imaginable ; while 
 the simple and pretty wall-snapdragon weeps over the 
 side, till its tiny pink threads are tangled among the 
 feathery ferns that fringe the base of the stump. 
 
 The lawn now stretches some distance westward, its 
 green and velvet surface uninterrupted by a single shrub 
 (what a space for trap-bat, or " les graces" !) till towards 
 the verge of the shrubberies, into which it falls away, 
 irregular clumps of evergreens and low shrubs break the 
 boundary line of greensward. Here are no borders for 
 flowers, but clusters of the larger and bolder kinds, as 
 hollyhocks and peonies, rise from the turf itself; here too, 
 in spring, golden and purple crocuses, daffodils, aconites, 
 snowdrops, bluebells, cyclamen, wood-anemones, hepaticas, 
 the pink and the blue, chequer the lawn in bold broad 
 strips, the wilder sorts being more distant from the house, 
 and losing themselves under the dark underwood of the 
 adjoining coppice. The ground here becomes more varied 
 and broken ; clumps of double-flowering gorse, 
 
 " the vernal furze 
 
 With golden baskets hung," 
 
 the evergreen barberry, the ilex in all its varieties, and 
 hardy ferns, bordering the green drive which leads to the 
 wilder part of the plantations. Here, in the words of 
 Bacon, " Trees I would have none in it, but some thicket 
 made only of sweet-brier and honeysuckle, and some wild 
 vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, straw- 
 berries, and primroses, for these are sweet, and prosper in 
 the shade, and these are to be in the heath here and there, 
 not in any order. I like also little heaps, in the nature of 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 105 
 
 mole-hills (such as are in wild heaths), to be set with wild 
 thyme." 
 
 Another broad drive of greensward dips from the lawn 
 into the darkest and most tangled part of the wood ; here, 
 through a long vista, you catch a glimpse of the American 
 shrubbery below. Rhododendrons, azaleas, calmias, mag- 
 nolias, andromedas, daphnes, heaths, and bog-plants of 
 every species in their genial soil, form a mass of splendid 
 colouring during the spring months, while, even in winter, 
 their dark foliage forms an evergreen mass for the eye to 
 rest upon. Returning again to the lawn, and inclining to 
 the south, you come to an artificial shrubbery, not dotted 
 about in single plants, but in large and bold clusters of the 
 same species, so that the effect from a distance is as good 
 as upon a nearer approach. Here, as elsewhere, not a sod 
 of turf is broken; but, here and there, a bed of gay 
 shrubby plants rises out of the smoothly-shorn grass, and 
 in the background, amid masses of laburnum, lilac, and 
 guelder-rose, fruit-trees of every kind hang their bright 
 garlands in spring, and their mellow produce in autumn. 
 From thence winds a path, the delicise of the garden, 
 planted with such herbs as yield their perfume when 
 trodden upon and crushed, burnet, wild thyme, and 
 water-mints, according to Bacon's advice, who bids us 
 " set whole alleys of them to have the pleasure when you 
 walk or tread." 
 
 It were tedious to follow up the long shady path, not 
 broad enough for more than two, the " lovers' walk," 
 and the endless winding tracks in the natural wood, till you 
 burst upon a wild common of 
 
 " Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, prickly gorse, and thorns," 
 glowing with heather bloom, and scented with the perfume 
 
106 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 of the furze, just such an English scene as Linnaeus is said to 
 have fallen down and worshipped the first time he beheld it. 
 The heavy dew upon the grass reminds me that we 
 have taken too long a stroll ; and though I could have 
 wished to have shown you my Arboretum, my Thornery, 
 and my Deodara pine, yet the light from the drawingroom 
 windows, which I can see through the trees, calls us 
 homeward, and bids us leave that pleasure for another 
 day, and hark ! the strain of music and " the voice of 
 girls !" Listen ! they sing 
 
 * I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, 
 Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows, 
 Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, 
 With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine." 
 
 To enjoy our garden, however, we want no such expanse 
 as I have just described. The Spitalfields weaver may 
 derive more pleasure from his green box of smoked auri- 
 culas than the Duke of Devonshire from his two acres of 
 conservatory at Chatsworth. Nor if we can tell a foxglove 
 and a corn-flower when we see them, need we be as wise 
 as Solomon, who " spoke of plants from the cedar that is 
 in Lebanon, to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." 
 If we have a good rose-bush on our lawn, we need not 
 torture ourselves to discover that philosopher's-stone of 
 gardening a blue dahlia. 
 
 Some love for flowers, however, we should have, if 
 Cicero, and Shakspeare, and Bacon, and Temple, and 
 Addison, and Scott, be of any authority with us at all. 
 Some care of these things we must have, for One far higher 
 than all has bid us " behold the fig-tree and all the trees," 
 and " consider the lilies of the field." A garden is inwoven 
 in the noblest and most sacred feelings of man's heart. 
 This world, in man's innocence, was a garden, and it was 
 
THE POETRY OF GARDENING. 107 
 
 there that God walked and communed with his creatures. 
 It was to a garden that in his agony our Lord retired. 
 The very word Paradise is only another name for bliss ; 
 and it may be doubted whether it gains this signification 
 so much from our first parents dwelling there before sin 
 and sorrow were known, as from the natural feelings of 
 all nations and creeds to connect the happiness of a future 
 state inseparably with that of a boundless expanse of trees, 
 and fruits, and flowers. The shade of Achilles is described 
 by Homer as retiring over a mead of asphodels 
 
 " KO.T ct<r</)o5eAoj/ Acijuwi/o ; " 
 
 and Virgil knew how to contrast the adamantine walls and 
 iron-bound towers of the guilty, with th,e flowery lawns of 
 
 the blessed : 
 
 " amoena vireta 
 Fortunatorum nemorum ;" 
 
 and Addison, in his Vision of Mirza, had no better way of 
 describing the seats of bliss than as " islets floating in a 
 sunny sea, covered with fruits and flowers." 
 
 What indeed were the Elysian fields, and the Happy 
 isles, and the gardens of the Hesperides, but so many in- 
 corporations of the highest and loftiest flights of man's 
 imaginations and desires, the realizations of the intensest 
 yearnings of the soul after a higher and more glorious state 
 of existence, and which always made a garden the scene 
 of that better and more abiding happiness ? 
 
 Of all the secondary occupations and pursuits of this 
 life, the Garden is the only one we can hope to follow out 
 in the world which is to come. Simple and pure as any 
 other of our enjoyments may be, the best of them are too 
 artificial and too gross to give us the least hope of our ever 
 meeting them again. Even our books, which we have, 
 loved as friends which we have pored over through the 
 
108 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
 
 long summer days till twilight dimmed our eyes, or hugged 
 in our arm-chairs over the huge winter fire that we have 
 viewed with such complacency glittering in their gay eoats 
 along our study wall they must moulder like their master 
 doomed, like him, to be the sport of worms. The 
 precious imprints of Aldus and the gorgeous tooling of 
 Grolier are of the earth, earthy. Our prints, our pictures, 
 and our statues, all our most laboured effigies of ideal 
 beauty, will be as nothing, when the fleeting idea we have 
 endeavoured to embody shall itself be realized, and when we 
 shall cast away all our paltry imitations as " childish things." 
 But our flowers, dear flowers, our trees, our gardens, 
 shall remain. The new earth will be a second Eden, and 
 Paradise and innocence shall be restored. Then shall the 
 feathery palm-tree and lowly snow-drop flourish in the same 
 clime. The wilderness will bloom with the rose of 
 Sharon ; the upas will forget its poison ; the nettle will be 
 stingless, and " without thorn the rose ;" the mango and 
 the guava will ripen under the same sky that will allow the 
 eglantine to bind their branches. And this is no idle dream 
 or heathen myth. What may be fancy to others, to the 
 Christian will be faith. He alone can certainly look for- 
 ward, in " the new heavens and the new earth," to that 
 time when " the mountains and hills shall break forth into 
 singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 
 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead 
 of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree ; the wilderness, 
 and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the 
 desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." 
 
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