Angnst 28, 1S73. ] 



JOURNAL OF HOBTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



147 



BELGIAN HOKTICULTUBE.— No. 5. 



M. VEESCHAFFELT'S, GHENT. 



>T is nearly a year since I spent tlu'ee enjoy- 

 able hours in this renowned horticultural 

 estabhshment, but intervening circumstances 

 have prevented my sending a notice of a 

 place well worthy of note in current garden 

 literature. I remember noticing " Verschaf- 

 feltii " ticked on a plant label when I was 

 little or no taller than my father's spade, 

 and screwing my jaws into all sorts of forms 

 to get it into my mouth. As to what it 

 meant even the " under gardener" could not divine, and 

 I had come to regard him as about the cleverest man 

 alive, being fully converted by him into the bcliei that he 

 knew a gi'eat deal more than the " gaffer " — very pre- 

 sumptive evidence, however, offered only by presumptuous 

 know-alls, and only fitted for children's ears. 



Verschaffelt is an old and universallj'-known name, 

 and is associated with many horticultural triumphs. The 

 representative of it, M. .Jean Verschaffelt, is now in the 

 sere and yellow leaf, and his hair is silvered by the lapse 

 of years. He does little more than enjoy himself by 

 little cultural fancies, the practical management of the 

 estabhshment being relegated to his nephew, M. .Jean 

 Nuytens. To any EngUsh gardener making a pilgi-image 

 to the Belgian plant emporiums, and especially if he 

 knows little beyond liis mother tongue, I say, Do not 

 omit a visit to this not extensive but interesting place, 

 and he will find in M. Nuytens a gentleman who is cer- 

 tain to give him a cordial welcome, and converse in his 

 mother tongue as well as he. I know what it is to hear 

 a houseful of children all crying together, and a bothy- 

 ful of aspiring Paganinnis learning to fiddle, but I never 

 remember experiencing such a surfeit of sound as the 

 daily din of French, Dutch, and Flemish which violated 

 my restricted sense of hearing and understanding. I 

 could get away from the children and fiddling, but a 

 stranger in a strange counti-y cannot get away from the 

 babel of tongues which sm-rounds him, and to fall in with 

 such perfect anglicised Belgians as MM. Nuytens and 

 Van Houtte, jun., is in itself a " find" of the first order, 

 and at once compels an appreciation of the English 

 language in a way not understood before. M. Verchaffelt's 

 is in the Faubourg de Bruxelles, and within ten minutes' 

 walk of Van Houtte's great place, so that both may be 

 seen under one visit, and the heads of each will wiUingly 

 direct to the other. 



The Verschaffelt Nursery is about the only one I visited 

 which shows any sort of effect or symmetry in the matter 

 of laying or planning-out. Its limited size, in comparison 

 with some others, brings a gi-eat portion of it in the scope 

 of vision at once ; but we cannot see at anything like 

 a glance the multitudes of good things — old, new, and 

 rare — with which the establishment teems. The nursery 

 may bo said to be a parallelogram, with an irregular 

 offshoot to the left, and du-ided from the garden proper 

 by a public road. A broad walk runs down the centre 



Ko. MS.-VOL. XXV., New Sebiis. 



of the grounds, and at the time I saw it formed the site 

 of an ornamental avenue of standard Bays, in fi-ont of 

 which were lines of specimen Agaves, Yuccas, Buona- 

 parteas, &c. The Bays were splendid examples in their 

 way : they were the very perfection of health, and as 

 round as an orange. Many were sold at prices varying 

 from twenty to fifty guineas per pair. The sides of the 

 other walks were lined by fine plants, in various stages, 

 of Araucarias, planted in baskets for safe removal, and in 

 luxuriant health and free growth. The plant houses are 

 grouped together near the packing-sheds and dwelling- 

 house. They are long plain structures, devoid of orna- 

 ment, but admu-ably adapted for their purpose, as is 

 evidenced by the remarkably healthy condition of the 

 occupants. Ferns, Palms, Orchids, and the whole para- 

 phernalia of plants seem to grow like weeds, and are as 

 clean as if every leaf had been sponged the day pre- 

 vious. Importations of plants are continually arriving ; 

 a lot of new Cycads and monstrous trunks of Dicksonias 

 were just being potted. A great proportion of these must 

 die ; indeed, how they live is a wonder, but that they do 

 live the many giant stems with green spreading crowns 

 plainly attest. But the dead trunks, I observed, were 

 turned to account by the tops being scooped out, and 

 having Ferns and other things planted in them. 



This place is rich in tree Ferns, the match pairs of 

 Alsophilas and Dicksonias being both magnificent and 

 numerous, and the demand, somewhere, is equal to the 

 supply. Orchids are well represented in number and 

 variety ; they are not grown large, but are mainly con- 

 fined to handy portable specimens. The curious forms 

 of the vegetable world have also in this place numerous 

 representatives, amongst which are noticeable Testudi- 

 naria elephantipes and a fine batch of the Old Man plant, 

 Pilocereus senilis, in striking resemblance to the hoary 

 head of a hale octogenarian. Contiguous is a lot, only a 

 degi-ee less singular, of Pilocereus Hoppenstedlii in strange 

 garb and spiny. 



There are Palms, too — yes, Palms by the thousand, 

 or, as I think " D., Deal," once put it, "Palms for the 

 million." There is only one question more puzzling than 

 the impromptu one of 'Whence come they '? and that is. 

 Whither go they ? Yet they are ever mo^'ing onwards in 

 their decorative coiu'se from tiny seedlings to splendid 

 spreading specimens in all the best old and all the rare 

 new varieties. "Well may Linnjeus attempt to obscure the 

 rest of the order of monocotyledons, to which they be- 

 long, by styUng them " princes of the vegetable kingdom." 

 Few things are more imposing than choice and well- 

 managed collections of Palms. They are plants which 

 one may look and look again at, and ever to admire. 

 They have a histoi-y, too, and a use which cannot bo 

 ignored. How graphically Melville, in his " South Sea 

 Adventures," describes the uses of the Cocoa-nut Palm, 

 Cocos nucifera. The passage is worth reproducing here. 

 He says, " The blessings this Palm confers are incalcu- 

 lable. "Year after year the islander reposes beneath its 

 shade, both eating and drinking of its fruit ; he thatches 

 his hut with its boughs, and weaves them into baskets to 



No.' 1800.— Vol. L., Oi.d SkRIKS. 



