1 84 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



lawn, with a few large beds, touches the park-like 

 meadows studded with trees. Sheep feeding with their 

 tinkling bells gives a rural appearance. To the large, 

 modern, very red brick house is attached a huge winter 

 garden. This is on a very large scale, with' lofty palms, 

 date, dom, and cocoa-nut growing with tropical luxuri- 

 ance in the central house, with a large camellia house on 

 one side and a fernery with rock-work, pools, and gold- 

 fish on the other. All this requires a good deal of 

 keeping up — nearly ;^3000 a year — and although it has 

 been open now some five years, it has been enjoyed by 

 few. It is greatly to be hoped that it has a much- 

 appreciated future before it. 



Such is a slight sketch of some of London's Parks. 

 No doubt there is much that could be changed for the 

 better, both in design and planting : less sameness and 

 meaningless formality without true lines of beauty in 

 design would be an improvement. In planting, there 

 might be more variety of British trees — alder, oak, ash, 

 and hawthorn ; and a wider range of foreign ones — limes, 

 American or Turkey oaks, and many others ; more 

 climbing plants, such as Virginian creepers, more simple 

 herbaceous borders and fewer clumps of unattractive 

 bushes, and more lilacs, laburnums, thorns, almonds, 

 cherries, and medlars in groups on the grass. If greater 

 originality was displayed and a thorough knowledge of 

 horticulture were shown, especially by the authorities 

 that supervise the largest number of these parks, many 

 improvements in existing ones could be easily achieved, 

 and in forming new parks the same idea need not be so 

 rigidly followed. But, in spite of small defects, the 

 Parks as a whole are extremely beautiful, and Londoners 

 may well be proud of them. 



