Itir 11, 1876. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICDLTUBE AND COTTAGE GABDENEB. 



sn 



aa was Chelsea, and the young fellowa who had nothing better 

 to do were wont to stroll off hither in tha evening to observe 

 the damsels " takinj^ the air " in prim prooeasiou after school 

 datiea for the day were over. Within the last few months 

 publio attention has been drawn to Hickaey owing to the 

 determined opposition made by some of the inhabitants to the 

 attempted enclosure of Hiokney Fields, much valued as a 

 recreation ground, and which a person who shall be nameless 

 proposed to deal with in a manner which might be legal but 

 scarcely jnst to the neighbourhood. With amateur and pro- 

 fessional gardeners, howover, of the era of Georges III. and IV. 

 Hackney was an interesting spot, chiefly because the nursery 

 of the Messrs. Loddiges was situate there. Even in this good 

 year 1876, Hickney, as compared with other suburbs, cannot be 

 paid to be crowded with houses if we survey the whole of the 

 district; and in 1842, as the chronicler of its history tells u^, 

 it could blast of about 1500 acres of grass land, while the 

 market gardeners and nurserymen had 110 acres or more. A 

 curious silver token, bearing the name J. Milton, exhibiting ou 

 one ►iile a view of Hickney Church and on the other a tigura 

 of Time, with a globe and a pile of books on the right, while on 

 his left is a garden plot wilh plants, and the mott > Memoiia in 

 oitfna, has not its exact history traceable according to thii 

 chronicler. But may it not have had to do with some gardener 

 whose hist iry has vanished ? Let us take it as an allegorical 

 representation. Time, we know, presides over all the gardener's 

 pursuits; the globe fitly shows that all parts of the world 

 yield treasures which Bdtiah horticulture successfully culti- 

 vates; and the books indicate that study is not to be neglected, 

 though the practical part of the pursuit must be attended to, 

 as suggested by the garden on the left. 



Before I speak of Hackney's famous nursery it should be 

 noted that the ancient forest of Middlesex once overspread the 

 district, the lower ground baing much of it marshy and con- 

 sisting of olay and loam, the gravel hills rising above. Mare 

 Street, properly Mere Street, an old street in the hamlet, is a 

 reminiscence of some mere or pond which has long disappeared. 

 Though many oitizsus of London had country houses here in 

 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the place was not 

 without its noble residents, as witness the names of the Earls 

 of Pembroke and Oxford, and of Lords Hunsdon and Brooke. 

 Lord Zoaoh, indeed, son of George Lord Zouoh, a well-known 

 courtier in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, deserves more than a 

 passing mention as an early experimenter iu modes of garden- 

 ing which very slowly crept into uso. This nobleman, friend 

 of Sir Henry Wotton and Ben JohnEoa, was one of Queen 

 Mary's Judges, and well spoken of in his day, but evidently 

 most at home iu his garden. It was on an estate he had at 

 Hackney that he especially devoted himself to horticulture, 

 where he had a nursery, orchards, and a physio garden. We 

 are particularly told that he removed snooessfally Apple and 

 Pear trees of thirty years old, which seems to have excited much 

 astonishment. This worthy amateur died in 1025, escaping 

 tha troublous times that were coming upon the Stuarts ; and 

 being buried in an o'.d manor house in Northamptonshire, 

 where there was a private chapel, with a vault close to the wall 

 of the wine cellar, he was the canae of the following epigram : — 



" WlioQever I die let thin be my fate. 

 To lie by my good Lord Zoucb ; 

 Tliat when I am dry to the tap I may hie. 

 And 60 bick again to my coach." 



Through carelessness or ignorance the author of the " History 

 of Hackney " has given us but a confused account of the 

 nursery of the Messrs. Loddiges, and he leaves it doubtful 

 whether it always occupied the same ground. Probably it did, 

 only some enlargement of the premises was made by the in- 

 creasing demand for space towards the end of last century, 

 when the cultivation of exotics became a marked feature of the 

 establishment. The front of the premises as they were seen by 

 our grandfathers abutted ou Mare Street, covering a plot of 

 ground which in the seventeenth century was called by the odd 

 name of Barbour Berna : no one can say why. It was not to 

 be wondered at that the vulgar afterwards designated the 

 mansion built there " Barbsr'a Biru," and which seems to 

 have been erected in l.JOl. Col. Okey owned it when he was 

 attainted as a regicide and his property was made over to the 

 Duke of York, who in 10G3 transferred his interest therein to 

 Okey's widow — hardly out of pure generosity, one would think. 

 After a gap of about a century we find John Busch, a nursery- 

 man from Holland I presume, acquiring the estate, and culti- 

 vating the ground in a manner which carried his fame to 

 distant lands. The Empress of Bnssia known as Catherine IL, 



dissatisfied with the people iu her employ, having heard of 

 Busch, invited him from England to lay out hnr garden, and 

 he accepted the offer, givifig up his concern at He.'jknBy to the 

 Messrs. Loddiges during 1771. The new owners of the nursery 

 built a number of additional hothouses, steam being tha heat- 

 ing agent, and these gentlemen took credit to themselves for 

 having improved upon the apparatus then in use, though I am 

 not aware that they patented these alterations. In 1787 Mr. 

 Conrad Loddigea purchased some additional land, at that time 

 a grassy meadow belonging to St. Thomas's Hospital, and five 

 years later there were other alterations consuquent upon the 

 large importations from abroad — at least, what were reputed 

 large iu those times. The wars with the French Republic and 

 with Napoleon had a prejudicial influence on horticulture, not 

 only from the check given to free intercourse with continental 

 nations, but from the scarcity of cash occasioned by the enor- 

 mous national outlay ; and Messrs. Loddiges' nursery had its 

 period of stagnation to revive in vigour after Waterloo. As is 

 evident from the account given by one author of this nursery 

 when in its zenith, there must have been a large proportion of 

 the plants under glass. He mentions that the firm enumerated 

 (about thirty years since) two hundred species of Palms and 

 two thousand Orchidaceous plants, while the Heaths were ex- 

 tensively represented iu their houses, as also Ferns and Cdcti. 

 In Cape plants and those from South America they considered 

 they had few rivals amongst London nurserymen. There was 

 a fine arboretum, but the space occupied by the nursery never 

 exceeded 15 acres, which psople thought, as we read, a " con- 

 siderable extent ; " so says the hiatoriau in 1812, when Mossrs. 

 William and George Loddiges were the proprietors. That the 

 land was devoted to other purposes soon after that date I infer 

 from the fact that Cunningham, in his " London," alludes 

 regretfully to the noble nursery of Hackney in the past tense. 

 He wrote in 1849. Loddiges' Road survives as a memorial, and 

 the clinging of that district of Hackney to rural traditions is 

 manifest to me in sundry names still attached to streets there. 

 Thus we have Forest Grove, Lavender Grove, Shrubland Grove, 

 Ash Grove, Laurel Street, Holly Street, and Myrtle Street. 

 Next in importance to Loddiges' nursery was that belonging to 

 Mr. Browning, which was situate near the turnpike at Kings- 

 land Gate ; and a Mr. Smith of Dalston bad also laid out a 

 good deal of ground at Hackney. 



Quaint old Pepys gives a comical yet not very clear account of 

 a garden ha visited at Hackney, which was owned by Sir 

 Thomas Cook. Pepys went there iu the absence of tha owner 

 (possibly by intention), and owns he was disappointed ; there 

 was plenty of space, but few plants. The head gardener gave 

 him some gossip, tolling him amongst other things that Sir 

 Thomas meant to layout £300 on it next year. They had just 

 had an awkward catastrophe, for he writes, " I saw two green- 

 houses, but the greens are not extraordinary, since one of tha 

 roofs being made a receptacle for water, overcharged with 

 weight fell down and made a great destruction amongst the 

 trees and pots." No doubt it would, and it must have taught 

 the gardeners that it was not advisable to store-np rain water 

 on a roof. Presumably it was rain water that caused this 

 accident, but it is a proof of the observant habits of this man 

 that he also notes they had a supply of water brought from a 

 distance in pipes, which he saw stored in small ponds. And 

 JPepys mentions slightly gardens at Hackney belonging to a 

 Mr. Drake and a Mr. Burke, and iu the latter he first saw 

 Oranges grow. — C. 



COLOUR OF HYDRANGEA FLOWERS. 



EEFEERiNa to the observations of correspondents on this 

 subject I may state that here (in the Isle of Man) blue is the 

 usual colour and pink the exception to the rule, and this state 

 of things prevails in districts quite unaffected by the action of 

 iron. We find that the blooms come blue in various kinds of 

 soil, but much deeper in colour and with greater certainty in 

 turfy soil. The plants grow iu many places in this island in 

 wild luxuriance, growing in bushes 8 or 10 feet high and as 

 much in diameter, and covered with a perfect sheet of blue 

 fljwera, without anything whatever being done to protect or 

 assist them. — A. D., /. of Man. 



Living in a neighbourhood where Hydrangeas abound arid 

 flourish, and having carefully observed them both here and in 

 the south of Ireland for some years past, I have come to the 

 conclusion that the colour depends more on the action of light 

 than on the composition of the soil. The plants growing under 



