OPENING OF ' 



ite at 

 lity offered unrivalled 

 arden, and successful 

 negotiations with the Commissioners enabled the Council, with 

 your Royal Highness's sanction, to lay in July, 1859, the plans 

 before the general meeting of Fellows, which received their 



An agreement has since been concluded by us with Her 

 Majesty's Commissioners for leasing a space of 22i acres upon 

 a rent, the amount of which is contingent upon the income of 

 the Society ; part of the conditions being, that the Society should 

 expend on the Garden a sum of not less than 50,000?., Her 

 Majesty's Commissioners binding themselves to enclose it with 

 arcades of an ornamental character, costing at least an equal 

 sum. Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to grant the 

 Society a new Charter of Incorporation, under the name of the 

 Royal Horticultural Society. Our works have not arrived at the 

 state of completion which we had hoped to have attained by 

 this time. Taking into consideration, however, the long continued 

 wet of last summer, the unusual severity of the subsequent 

 winter, and the disturbance in the building trade caused by the 

 unfortunate strike of this spring, we cannot but congratulate 

 ourselves upon what has already been achieved. 



The necessity of pressing forward the works will prevent the 

 Garden being as immediately accessible to the public as is 

 hereafter proposed. But the Council felt that the admission of 

 the Fellows and their friends, who have so zealously come for- 

 ward in support of the undertaking, ought not to be longer 

 delayed. They therefore resolved to hold Exhibitions of Flowers 

 and Fruit in the months of June, July, September, and No- 

 vember of the present year ; to admit Fellows and their friends 

 dailj ; and to allow a certain number of the public to visit 

 the Garden on Saturdays. It is expected that before the ensuing 

 spring all the essential parts of the Garden will be completed. 

 When that time shall have arrived the public will be in posses- 

 sion of a place of resort in which not only may be displayed in 

 the most advantageous way all that horticultural skill can accom- 

 plish, but whatever may most conduce to the improvement of 

 public taste in sculpture and its sister arts. 



Since the period when your Royal Highness condescended, as 

 President of the Society, to take an active part in its proceedings, 



