The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-06 00:00:00

Flowers in the Parks,

For the lad two summers an attempt has been
made, and successfully made, to grow flowers in the
London parks. Formerly there seems to have been
an official tradition that the London smoke and soot
would destroy flower life, or that London mobs
would pluckthe flowers and trample down the plants,
or that the London people didn't care for flowers.
All these notions have been dispelled; and now among
the improvements which have been effected under
successive Commissioners of Works, one of the most
pleasant is the pretty garden which you may now
find in most of the parks. The flower walk on the
east side of Hyde Park has been a blaze of colour
during the season. Its glories are now on the wane,
but enough remains to show how very attractive and
beautiful it has been. On the narrow strip of
ground which has been laid out for flower cultiva•
tion there were formerly a few shrubs planted with
no regard to order or effect, and in the hot weather
always looking peculiar dusty and dingy. In
their place are now banks of flowers, disposed
riband fashion, with a setting of smooth•ahaven
turf, so fresh and green that it seems to hate
defied the drought. The beds show a pleasing
variety of arrangement and of colour. In the
longest and moat effective you find a broad band of
scarlet and yellow, of purple and white stretching
without a break far away in the distance. Others,
smaller, but hardly less glittering, are parted by the
graceful Lucombe oak. Some have a central back
of foliage plants or evergreens, and against this
dark background the flowers on either side stand
out more gay and glittering than ever. Geraniums
and calceolarias are the most showy ; but the white
centanria as an edging, and the crimson leaved
pants which of late have given our gardens a new
and striking contrast in colour, are introduced with
excellent effect. Addison thought there were as
many kinds of gardening as of poetry, " Your
makers of parterres and flower-gardens are epi-
grammatists and sonnetteers in their art; contrivers
of bowers and grottces, treillages and cascades, are
romance writers," and Wise and Loudoun he
reckoned our heroic poets. The narrow limits
available for floral arrangement bordering Park-
lane made the adoption of the sonnet stye in e-
vitable,but great pains have been taken to avoid stiff.
ness and formality. The fine plane trees and elms
along the walk are old friends, and their very irre•
gularity is pleasant. Above Grosvenor-gate they
are found more thickly, and here the flower beds
are•necessarily more broken, and gardening becomes
subordinate to forestry. The site of the old re-
servoir is more formally and less successfully laid
out ; but the flower walk has become a most attrac-
tive promenade, and now, when every body is sup-
posed to be out of town, and " society" trembles lest
it should be seen within bow-shot of Hyde Park-
corner, thousands of poor people find pleasure in
the still brilliant colours of the bedding plants, and
in the pretty arrangement by which the flowers here
are made to look their best.

Two years ago the Avenue, Regent's-park, was a
damp, dismal walk, which people who feared ague
and rheumatism carefully avoided. According to the
reports of Dr Lindley and Mr Clutton, the trees
were suffering, as human beings suffer, from over.
crowding and want of air. Some one says of tree-
plaiting that, after all, it is the axe which gives the
finishing touch to the picturesque ; and so it was
here, for when two rows of stunted horse-chestnuts
and limes were felled it was found not only that the
health of the survivors was improved, but that a
fine prospect was opened up. Between the two rows
of tall elms and horse-chestnuts which were left
standing it was decided to form a garden, and this
has accordingly been done after considerable labour,
bat with a result which would have recompensed a far
greater expenditure of time and trouble. For the
clayey subsoil was substituted good mould, and
special care was taken to satisfy the appetites of
the various shrubs by supplying them with the
food they like best. There is hero a more formal
style of garden than in Hyde-park, and that the
beds should be intersected by numerous and ample
walks is a necessity, for on the days when the
band plays close by, some 40,000 or 50,000 people
are assembled here, and it becomes difficult to
keep moving. Here, again, the flowers are grouped
in ribands, arranged with an artist's eye to colour,
the gradations of silver-white, orange, purple, and
scarlet seeming designed to produce a prismatic
effect. instead of being mixed with other colours,
the yellow calceolaria is massed here and there, and
gives warmth and brilliance to !he whole group. The
shrubs and foliage plants present a great variety,
ane grow in great luxuriance. Nearly all the former
are flowering shrubs, these being wisely preferred to
the rarer novelties of late so much in request. The
specimens of yucca recurva and the standard hollies
—green, golden, and silver, on straight stems—are
especially noticeable. The point d'appui of the
gardens is a large tazza filled with flowers and sup-
ported by four griffins. This is plated in the centre
of a large curbed bed, and 30 smaller tazzas and vases
are grouped in different parts of the garden iu hare
mony with its peculiar style. There are fine beds of
foliage
.plants, such as the castor-oil plant, the Fere
dinandta eminens, Canna:), and Centaurea. These

have thriven well in their new homes. ThttsFer.
dinandias that were six inches high when planted
are now six feet high ; some of the castor.oil plants
are five feet high, and the Caladiums, Centaurias,
and Amaranthus have made rapid progress. Blue
and yellow pansies, nasturtiums, blue lobelia, and
bar-mint are planted in long ribands, in a double
row, backed by tall blue larkspur and scarlet pop.
pies, with ribands of aucuba japonica, rhododen-
dron ponticum, and Persian lilac ; and behind those
again stand groups of standard almonds, thorns,
laburnum, the mock orange, sweet briar, and other

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flowering shrubs, all enclosed by a hornbeam hedge
trained as a trellis. A few Lombardy poplars, with
their silvery flicker, break the monotony, and add
greatly to the apparent extent of the narrow strip
of ground. In the summer the flowers and shrubs,
_ _ _

fiinked by the horse chestnuts in full blossom and

the fine elms, made a glorious show; and in another
year or two, if the care and attention hitherto be-
stowed on this garden are continued, it will vie
with any that Paris, with all its advantages of cli-
mate and of soil, has yet produced. We should add
that the Avenue garden was farmed under the direc-
tion of Mr. Markham Nesfield, whose services were
rendered gratuitously, and ought not to be passed
without acknowledgment. At the termination of the
west garden a gardener's cottage is being built
from the deaigns of Mr. W. Eden Nesfield, and wil
form a pretty feature in the landscape. But the
improvement of improvements would be the throw-
ing open of the gardens north of Portland-place.
If this were done, as Nash seems to have designed,
and if a few trees were cut down and a way made
through, the Avenue-garden would form a vista
exactly in line with Regent's-street and Portland-
place, and London would have a line of street and
garden and tree-avenue unsurpassed in any Euro-
pean capital.
Crossing the river we reach Battersea Park,
where the show of flowers has probably supasged
that of both the West-end parks, while the rare

_ .
foliage plants furnish a feast of form and colour,
and shake one's faith in all traditions tending to
prove that the English climate is harsh and un-
g,eniai. The sub-tropical garden is one of the
wonders of London, and shows how much may
be done by careful cultivation. Two years
ago it was a wilderness. Though the park
had long been formed, this particular site re-
mained, in highway phrase, " undedicated."
It was then proposed to Jispossess the snipe, and
make a geometrical garden, with the usual set stiff
walks and beds. Happily this selieme was aban-
doned, and it was determined to form instead a
garden in the English style, combining rare foliage

with flowering plants. In the first place, shelter
was indispensible, so a mound was thrown up and
planted with shrubs and trees, to serve as a screen
and a defence against the nipping under-currents
which, even in an English summer, often strike death
to the tender exotic. All the beds were raised, and
a bottom of dry brick rubbish was given to each to
promote drainage and increase warmth. Then the
mould was placed above, composed of loam, sand,
and decayed leaves, which satisfies the wants of most
of the plants, though occasionally a stimulus is ne-
cessary in the shape of a little well-rotted manure
applied to the surface, so that when rain falls, or
water applied,the washings are conveyed to the roots
The choice tropical plants are stored during the
winter, and as the warm weather approaches they
undergo a gradual process of hardening. First they
are not trusted except under glass ; then they are
allowed to breathe the outer air when the sun is
most powerful; then they are placed under canvas;
and finally, when summer has really come, they
are suffered not to run but to grow alone without
further housing. Soon, in the sheltered recesses
and nooks and on the sloping banks provided for
them, they become, with hardly an exception,
thoroughly at home, and remain perfectly healthy.
Here is a bed of caladium esculentum, from the
West Indies, with big leaves not to be matched in
England, and a root which, when no better food
can be had, is said to make good eating. Austras
lien tree ferns are throwing out their graceful
leaves as luxuriantly as though they were still
under glass. By-and-by they will be Bft. or 101 t.
high. For convenience of moving, each is now in
a sunk pot or tub, so that it can be taken easily
back to its winter quarters. Shade to some plants
is as essential as sunlight to others, so the ferns are
shaded by willow trees which droop down with
something like affection to meet them. The India•
rubber plant is growing in great profusion. So is
the Banana and the curious Indian shot plant.
Further on we come to the variegated Croton, and
the beautiful scarlet foliage of the Dragon's-blood
tree from South America. Here is a tropical plant,
the Canna limbata, which deserves recognition for
bravely contending with the rigours of an Eng-
lish winter. As an experiment it was left out all
the year with a simple covering of dry litter, and
it was a great reward to Mr Gibson, the superin-
tendent of the park, to find it afterwards even more
healthy than plants of the same species which had
been taken up from the ground and nursed through
the winter.

Leaving the foliage plants for a moment the eye
is caught by a fanciful bed of flowers divided into
diamonds by cross belts of a hardy Alpine plant, the
opposite-leaved cedum, while in the diamonds are
gay geraniums of varied hues, with lobelias, the
scarlet amaranthus, a recent Japanese inaporta.
tion, and a central group composed of the silvery-
leafed centuria. In this and other beds geraniums
are kept shorn of their flowers, their chief glory
being in the leaf, which contains three colours at
least, yellow predominatirg, and forms a rich con-
trast to the flowers and shrubs around. More
foliage plants of tropical origin now claim notice,
and especially the Ferdinandia eminens, which here
in its adopted country, and standing now in the open
air, has increased its height by six or seven feet in
a single season. Gardeners of skill have, we believe,
declared this to be an impossibility; but there is the
plant, growing apparently as though to spite them.
Here is a fine bed of Wygandia, which lives, when
at home, in Caraccas, and is remarkable for the
stinging properties of its leaves and the great weight
of its delicately-marked foliage, which renders ne-
cessary some artificial support for the stem. This
plant bears the rough weather up to November
without taking harm. The Canna discolor is grouped
effectively with a background of caster oil plants,
which grow vigorously in the open air and produce
immense leaves till the seed which is now beginning
to set checks their growth_ The English insects
highly appreciate the flavour of the new corners,
especially that most pertinacious of our garden in-
sects—the earwig—which grows as fat upon its new
food as an alderman upon unlimited turtle. The
Wygandia, however, appears to have brought its
own caterpillar, or to have developed a new one,
which commits considerable ravages on the very
succulent leaf of this plant. There are many more
varieties than we can enumerate, but these will
hardly escape notice—the large leaved tobacco
plant; a new variety of the sugarcane from Japan ;
the coral tree, with its beautiful and suggestive
flower; the Dracteaa nutans, a most graceful corn.
bination of drooping with upright leaves; a Southern
emblem, the Palmetto palm; the Date palm; the
Rice-paper plant of China; the Papyrus plant of
Egypt, and the veritable Bulrush of the Nile.
To Mr. Gibson belongs the great merit of having
carried to success and upon a large scale an experi.
ment which proves either that tropical plants
are more hardy or the English climate is less
harsh and ungenial than is generally believed.
Constant vigilance, however, is needed. On the
night of August 23, for example, there was a pretty
sharp frost, and the night watchmen had to protect
one or two of the most delicate plants with cover.
ings. One bed of coleus got slightly nipped, but
the fact that the many other strangers from the
tropics suffered no injury on that occasion seems to
show that they have not hitherto had sufficient
credit for strength of constitution, and that they
have been, in short, unnecessarily coddled. In
another part of the park ,is a rosary, the soil of
which is well suited to the production of the queen
of the English garden.
The reports from all the parks as to the behaviour
of the visitors are equally gratifying. Cases of
flower picking are very rare, and the beds are
hardly ever trampled on. On Sundays 40,000
people may often be found in Battersea Park. They
come from all parts of southern London, and the
pleasure they take in the flowers and the minute
attention which many give to the different varieties,
both of flowers and plants, are proofs that a judi-
cious combination of garden with park, of flowers
with trees, is greatly appreciated by poor and rich.
A cheap descriptive catalogue, kept on sale at the
lodges, would add greatly to the interest of visitors,
and enable those who felt so disposed to make
themselves acquainted with the varieties and quali-
ties of the plants. In Manchester and some other
northern towns the working men have a field-
naturalists' society of their own, and on holidays
' scour the country far and near for specimens. There
are many among the London artisans who have the
same tastes, though they have not the same oppor-
tunities, and who, not being able to collect wild
varieties of home growth, would gladly study the
contents of the "sub-tropical" at Battersea or of
other park-gardens.
Poor people in London can't go to flower shows,
and few can even see the bouquets in Covent-garden.
This new feature in the parks is their only opportu-
nity of "considering the lilies, how they grow,"
and the testimony of park-keeper and superinten-
dent is that such an opportunity is very welcome
to the poor, and often wins both sexes from gross
amusements,—Times.