172 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



found with the selection of plants which, from early 

 spring till late autumn, brighten this romantic little 

 garden. The Solanum jasminoides is none the less 

 graceful because it has only found a home in sheltered 

 corners in England, for the last seventy years. Cob^ea 

 scandens, which festoons very charmingly some of the 

 arches, is certainly an old friend, having been over a 

 hundred years in this country ; but it is a new-comer 

 when compared with the Passion Flower growing in 

 profusion near it, and even that did not appear until 

 after Shakespeare's death. It was unknown to Gerard, 

 but his editor, Thomas Johnson, illustrates it in the 

 appendix to the edition of 1633. It had then arrived 

 from America, " whence it hath been brought into 

 our English gardens, where it growes very well, but 

 floures only in some few places, and in hot and season- 

 able yeares : it is in good plenty growing with Mistresse 

 Tuggy at Westminster, where I have some years seene 

 it beare a great many floures." Mistress Tuggy and 

 her friend would have rejoiced at the sight of the 

 house in the centre of Brockwell Park on a warm 

 October day, thickly covered with the golden fruit as 

 well as star-like flowers of their precious " Maracoc or 

 Passion-floure." 



This delightful walled garden was the old kitchen- 

 garden. Luckily, the fashion for the gardens of a past 

 generation was growing at the time the Park was pur- 

 chased, and the London County Council must be con- 

 gratulated on the good taste displayed in dealing with it. 

 The history of the acquisition of the ground is soon told. 

 The desire for a park in this neighbourhood led those 

 interested to try and arrange to buy Raleigh House in 

 the Brixton Road, with some 10 acres of land, for about 



