October 80. 187S. I 



JOURNAL OF HOKTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEB. 



331 



3 inches of the points to the bottom of the wall, it would sooner 

 Tae covered with good, strong, healthy shoots that would cHng 

 securely ; while long growth nailed to the wall gets blown 

 about by the wind, and never fastens or grows so well as when 

 it starts from the ground. — T. S. 



KEW GARDENS.— No. 1. 

 [We extract this clever popular description of Kew Gardens 

 from the " Edinboi'gh Eeview." Additions we may occasion- 

 ally make will be bracketed.] 



Can we wonder that the citizens of London have for ages 

 been drawn, as if by some irresistible impulse, westward ; 

 beckoned onward, as it were, by the splendid beauty of the 

 setting sun ? In our own time we have seen the famous gar- 

 dens of Vauxhall, where Pepys tells us the nightingales used 

 to sing so sweetly, swallowed up in the advancing tide of brick 

 and mortar ; and Kensington Gardens, where, within the 

 memory of many middle-aged men, squirrels were as plentiful 

 as blackberries, are now caged-in by a suburb, until they are 

 not more retired than a square in Bloomsbury. Westward still 

 the great wave of human life is advancing, until our last open 

 space yet, thank God, open to the pure country fields in the form 

 of a public pleasure ground, is in the Iloyal Gardens at Kew. 

 Like the Hampton Court Palace Gai\lens, they have flourished 

 Duder the favour of the Crown for many reigns, and the forest- 

 like pleasure grounds have had time to form a deep setting of 

 noble trees round the Botanical Gardens, brilliant with flowers 

 and exotic plants gathered from all quarters of the globe. It 

 is true they did not pass into the possession of the Crown until 

 the beginning of the last century, but for a century before a 

 residence known as Kew House, with these grounds, was in the 

 possession of Lord Capel, and from him fell into the hands of 

 Mr. Molyneux, who married his daughter, the Lady Elizabeth 

 Capel ; so that these noble grounds, at least as far as the 

 arboretum or forestial portion is concerned, have been in care- 

 fal cultivation for at least two hundred years. Mr. Molyneux's 

 connection with the Court, as Secretary to the Prince of Wales, 

 son of King George II., and father of George III., appears to 

 have drawn the attention of that Prince to the charming situa- 

 tion of these grounds, and induced him in the year 1730 to 

 take a long lease of them from the Capel family. At that time 

 the estate consisted of about 2.50 acres, bounded, to speak 

 broadly, by the Kichmond Koad, the old Iloyal Deer Park, and 

 the river Thames. In the time of George 11. , when these 

 grounds were first laid out for his son, the Chinese fashion in 

 gardening was in vogue, and the grounds round the present 

 lake by the Palm house were designed after the fashion of the 

 picture in the old-fasliioned willow-pattern plate. In the old 

 lake there was an island crossed by an apparently inaccessible 

 Chinese bridge, not far off a Chinese Tai House, and as if to 

 give a still more cosmopolitan character to the grounds, a 

 Turkish Temple and an Assembly Room, the style of which, as 

 set forth in Sir William Chambers' perspective view of it, it 

 wonld behirl to guess at. The Great Pagoda, however, which 

 still stands in handsome preser\"ation some little distance off, 

 in the midst of the arboretum or pleasure ground, is the only 

 TCBtige of this Sinesian garden folly of the seventeenth century 

 now remaining. The classical foUy still exists. Sir William 

 Chambers, as wo all can see, capped artificial mounts with 

 Temples of the Wind, Temples of the Sun, Temples of Victory 

 and Minden ; now either entirely empty or tenanted by a stray 

 bust or two of departed heroes, which look wonderfully cold 

 and miserable in their deserted shrines. 



These so-called classical temples and buildings in the gar- 

 dens were erected under the direction of the Princess Augusta, 

 the relict of the Prince of Wales, by whom the exotic depart- 

 ment of the garden was commenced. AU vestiges of her glass 

 stoves have, however, given way to new buildings more fitted 

 to the advanced appliances of our day ; one noble building, 

 however, still remains — the old orangery, a lieavy but impos- 

 ing-looking conservatory (marked by the date 17<il over the 

 portal of the building), where once the blooming fruit flourished, 

 but now devoted to specimens of colonial timber. Under the 

 guidance of William Alton, the author of "Hortus Kewensis," 

 published in 1789, the gardens were enriched with a large 

 number of foreign plants. During his time and that of his 

 son, W. Towusend Alton, Esq., who was an especial favourite 

 of George HI., these Gardens were the receptacle of the riches 

 in horticulture collected and brought over by Captain Cook, 

 Sir Joseph Banks, and Captain Flinders, in their voyages 

 round the world. In addition to these Mr. Allan Cunningham 



brought home from Australia many rare plants, and the expe- 

 ditious of Bowie and Masson to Brazil and to the Cape of Good 

 Hope furnished the Gardens with singular products of the 

 southern hemisphere. With the reign of the poor blind king 

 (who, by the way, spent the last years of his life in the quaint 

 old red-brick palace seen from the lawn), the value of Kew Gar- 

 dens as a scientific centre of botanical and horticultural science 

 gradually declined, the two succeeding monarchs taking little 

 interest in the establishment, and spending but little upon it. 

 With the first years of the present Queen's reign, during which 

 such vigour seemed to be infused into the scientific life of the 

 nation, the first movement was made which transformed the 

 Gardens from an effete royal establishment into the noble 

 grounds which, under its able Directors, have become the most 

 famous botanic garden in Europe. In the year 1838, in con- 

 sequence of the general feeling that the Gardens should be 

 placed upon a dilJereut footing, and thrown open to the public 

 as a great popular and scientific institution, at the instigation 

 of Lord John Eussell a Committee was appointed to inquire 

 into their management and condition. In 1840 the inquiry 

 resulted in a report by Dr. Lindley, which recommended that 

 the Koyal Botanic Garden, the pleasure grounds, and the 

 Eichmond Deer Park should be transferred to Her Majesty's 

 Woods and Forests, and this arrangement was immediately 

 carried out ; but subsequently the management has been divided 

 between two departments, the Gardens and pleasure grounds 

 passing to the Works and Public Buildings Department, and 

 the remainder to the Woods, Forests, and LandEevenue Office. 

 The Botanic Gardens in 1841 received as its Director, on the 

 resignation of Mr. Alton, Sir William Hooker, and from the 

 day of the advent of this distinguished botanist the fame of 

 the national establishment immediately began to re-assert 

 itself. The proposal of Dr. Lindley, in his report to Govern- 

 ment, gradually, under the care of this distinguished Director, 

 became an established fact : — " .\ National Garden ought to be 

 the centre round which all minor establishments of the same 

 nature should be arranged : they should all be under the con- 

 trol of the chief of that garden, acting in concert with him, and 

 through him with one another, reporting constantly their pro- 

 ceedings, explaining their wants, receiving their supplies, and 

 aiding the mother country in everything that is useful in the 

 vegetable kingdom. Medicine, commerce, agriculture, horti- 

 culture and many valuable branches of manufacture would 

 derive much benefit from the adoption of such a system. From a 

 garden of this kind Government would be able to obtain authentic 

 and oflioial information on points connected with the founding 

 of new colonies ; it would afford plants there required, without 

 its being necessary as now to apply to the officers of private 

 establishments for advice and assistance." In order to give 

 space for these improvements, however, considerably more 

 room was required than could be found in the original Botanic 

 Gardens, which at the time of the transfer from the Crown 

 consisted of only eleven acres. This portion of the old royal 

 domain was at once opened to the public, together with its 

 plant-houses and museums, as they then existed. These in- 

 adequate limits were soon increased by the grounds im- 

 mediately about the orangery and the conservatory, which gave 

 an additional four acres ; the pinetum was subsequently added 

 by the Queen. This land, which was contiguous with the 

 pleasure ground, afforded room for a collection of plants of the 

 Pine tribe, and for the erection of the Palm stove, which was 

 built in 1848, and for the lake in its modern form — an addition 

 of forty-seven acres. In 184C-7 the royal kitchen and forcing 

 grounds were incorporated with the Botanictl Gardens, making 

 an additional seventy-five acres in all. In 18G1 Decimus 

 Burton commenced the building of the temperate house, which 

 lies in the avenue terminated by the old Pagoda. The arbo- 

 retum or pleasure grounds were, after the death of the late 

 King of Hanover, thrown open to the public. These grounds, 

 which the non-scientific public greatly esteem on account of 

 the beautiful timber they contain, comprise an additional 

 270 acres, and, in addition to this, the old Eoyal Deer Park, of 

 about four hundred acres, now belongs to the Woods and 

 Forest Department, affording almost unlimited space for the 

 extension of the Gardens when more space is required. These 

 beautiful enclosures have, in short, grown-up piece by piece, 

 like the British Constitution, by grants and arrangements with 

 the Crown, and they now form the finest horticultural esta- 

 blishment in the world, without cavil or dispute.^ It is need- 

 less to say that to give a full account of the Gardens in a 

 botanical sense would occupy volumes. As, however, we are 

 writing for the intelligent visitor, and not for the professional 



