The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1899-09-02
KING LOVES FLOWERS
LEOPOLD III, is DEVOTED TO
CONSERVATORIES.
Mile and q Half of GIass-Fetes at
Laeken Occur Amid Towering Palms
and Rare Blossoms and Are Unsur-
passed In Brilliance,
Especial Letter1

Especial letter.
IL has often been said thai If Leo
pold II of Belgium were not king of
the Belgians he would be king among
architects or among landscape garden
ers, SO strongly and well are his ar
tistlc tastes developed in these two di-
rectlons. 1t is well known that he
oetests ceremonial and etiquette. and
mat nothing gives him greater pleas
ure than to inspect and correct designs
Tor a new building or to plan and Law
out an estate. He is now a III
THIS favorite occupation on his new
property at Villefranche, on the French
Riviera. His summer palace is at
Laeken, a suburb of Brussels, and the
park and grounds which surround it
show the influence of his great love of
horticulture and Horticulture, for they
nave been laid out in a way that makes
them a pride to his subjects and a de-
light to the traveller permitted to visit
them.
10 his estate the king has added
greatly since he first bought it, and 1t
now covers about 300 acres. His ma
Jesty has interested himself immensely
IN the arrangements of the grounds,
experimenting the opening up of every
glade and directing the preservation or
destruction of every group of trees. 1t
is TO this keenness of the royal eye for
the beautiful in landscape that the
Town Of RrUCca1c 0nao CO ,,o~x, 80 49,
nne open spaces, from which such de-
l1ghtful views of the surrounding coun-
try may be obtained, and which add to
the beauties of an already charming
capital.
The queen shares with the king an
extreme fondness for flowers, so it is
not surprising hat the royal couple
should have gratifed their tastes by
building fine Conservatives at Laeken,
where the queen prefers to reside. To
these, begun in 1874, they have added
from time to time, until now they pos
sess the finest private Conservatives,
1t Is said, in the world. These con-
servatories are purely decorative (the
greenhouses for raising and growing
the plants being, of course, entirely
apart, and some idea of their size may
be gained when it is known that they
extend continuously for over a mile
and a half, reaching from the chapel
royal, which stands just within the
grounds of the private park, to the pal
ace itself. They have, indeed. been
compared to Kew, England, for size.
though even there the stretch of glass
is not continuous; but, just as it would
not be fair to compare the park and
grounds at Laeken with those of old
estates, where the trees and gardens
have remained undisturbed for CEN
turtles, SO 1t is out of the question to
consider private property, such as are
these Conservatives, with an establish
ment like Kew, which is supported by
the state and is an educational depart
ment for the cultivation of rare plants.
and not for the qualification of purely
personal pleasure.
When the king went to England last
year he took with him his very clever
head gardener, M. L.. Van Obbergen,
expressly to visit Kew and the botani-
cal gardens. The principal entrance
hall to the Laeken Conservatives con-
sists of a fine flight of marble steps
bordered with banks of flowers and
leading to what is known as the Hall
of the Congo. This is a conservatory
ninety-seven feet square, filled with
palms and other tropical plants and
decorated with azaleas and orchids. It
might have been supposed from the
name that herein would be specially
placed plants obtained from the Congo,
but such is not the case, though it may
be so in the future. The house was
erected at the time of the annexation
of the Congo, and the king, whose
colonial daughter Is very near his heart
(for he only won her in opposition to
the wishes of almost the entire nation,
which has since, by the way, had rea-
son to approve his far-sightedness),
named the conservatory after his new
possession, decorating 1t with the star
which is the especial emblem of the
Belgian Congo State.
At the end Of this large hall begins
the winter garden, consisting of two
fine annexes and a magnificent palm
house, with an entire length of 429
feet. The first annex, 81 feet long by
SO feet wide, is also filled by splendid
palms and other tropical vegetables.
Here a charming coup d'oeil was OBJ
tanned of a most effective arrangement
of rose-colored azaleas (Mme. Van der