1846.] Window Gardens. 129 



WINDOW GARDENS. 



[We recommend the following measure to the consideration of 

 those who may be confined to narrow apartments, or who may re- 

 quire profitable as well as pleasant recreation: it is extracted from 

 the Gardeners^ Chronicle, a paper whose high standing is ac- 

 knowledged by the first agriculturists and gardeners of this coun- 



Believing that these gardens will prove a valuable acquisition 

 to lovers of flowers in England, I send the following observations 

 and lists of plants, in the hope of facilitating and promoting their 

 general adoption. 



The first published account of window gardens appears to be 

 contained in a little work entitled " Le Jardinier des Fenetres des 

 Apimrtemens et des Petits Jardins,^" printed in Paris in 1823. 

 The author states that one which he describes existed four or five 

 years previously at the house of M. Gilet, Rue du Faubourg de 

 Temple, and he states the interesting fact, as connected with the 

 usefulness of those miniature greenhouses that the Cereus specio- 

 sissimus there flowered for the first time in France. 



But it would appear, although many amateurs visited M. Gilet's 

 house to see the splendid novelty, they were not induced by his 

 success to follow his example, and the window garden seems to 

 have been forgotten; for ten years afterwards an engineer, of Me- 

 zieres, passing through Boulogne, saw one at the house of an 

 English admiral, and was so much struck with it that he made a 

 communication on the subject to the Horticultural Society of Paris, 

 and it was so new to the members that they referred the paper to 

 one of their standing committees, who made the following report 

 upon it: — 



" The committee think this sort of greenhouse must be plea- 

 sing; easily constructed, although rather expensive,* and parti- 

 cularly adapted for a window presenting a disagreeable view." — 

 Annals de la Soc. d'Hort. de Paris, for 1833, p. 260. 



Notwithstanding this public notice, it is only very lately that 

 Parisian amateurs have adopted the plan, which is the more re- 

 markable in a city where the taste or rather the passion for flowers 

 is almost universal; but the fact is proved by M. Paquet having 

 thought it worth while to give a figure of a " Fenetre Serre" in 

 his " Almanack" for the present year. He tells us, however, that 

 they are common in Belgium, probably at Brussels, for at Ghent, 

 the head quarters of horticulture in that country, they have only 



* A sinsular objection to have made to so simple a structure in a country 

 where glass is so cheap as it is in France. 

 No. VII. 9 



