200 Gardening Visit to Paris, 



rather than villas themselves. In the grounds of Parisian villas, 

 as compared with those of villas of the same extent in England, 

 there are too many walks ; and in summer every part is too 

 uniformly decorated with flowers in pots, more especially pelar- 

 goniums. In general the house is banked up with these pots, on 

 both the entrance and the lawn fronts ; and not only are m«isses 

 of them placed round the trees, round clumps of shrubs, and in 

 the margins of borders and shrubberies, but the parapets of the 

 houses, the piers of boundary walls, and in short every place on 

 the boundary and within it where a flowerpot can be placed, is 

 covered with them. The effect of this, judging from our own feel- 

 ings, is a sameness which becomes tiresome from its pretence and 

 excitement. In walking through the grounds we find no part 

 which has really the appearance of country, for the continual 

 recurrence of the scarlet of the geraniums, and the petunias or 

 other showy flowers in pots, reminds us of greenhouses, bal- 

 conies, and the displays of flowers in the shops and cafes of Paris. 

 In the distribution of flowers in this manner there can, we should 

 think, be as little satisfliction to the distributer as to the observer; 

 for the former, having no definite object to imitate, can have no 

 limit at which he should stop, and consequently can never feel 

 that his work is complete. The observer, in like manner, seeing 

 that the object is display of quantity, rather than of character, 

 finds nothing either great or touching in the effect produced. 

 He sees an immense number of flowers, which he knows to 

 belonfr to the greenhouse. A taste for that kind of rural sim- 

 pliciiy wl)ich is to be found in the grounds of English villas, is of 

 later growth in the human mind than a taste for a profuse dis- 

 play of flowers ; but it will follow in due time, and then a great 

 portion of that care which is now given to plants in pots will be 

 transferred to gravel, turf, and trees and shrubs. 



Horticulture has made obvious progress in the culture of 

 forced articles and stove fruits. Paris is as well supplied as 

 London, during the winter, with asparagus, sea-kale, kidneybeans, 

 potatoes, &c., and better supplied with salads, including blanched 

 succory. Pine-apples and grapes are to be had in the fruit 

 shops every week in the year; the grapes, except for six weeks 

 of March and April, being preserved from the preceding year ; 

 but in the royal kitchen-garden at Versailles, and that of Baron 

 Rothschild at Surrene, and some others, grapes are cut fresh 

 from the trees throughout the whole of winter and spring. This 

 is in part owing to the clear atmosphere of Paris during the 

 winter season, which enables them to ripen grapes under glass 

 in the beginning of April, and to the dry atmosphere which 

 admits of grapes ripened in November under glass hanging on 

 the vines till April or later. Pine-apples are abundantly supplied 

 throughout the year, and their culture at Versailles, at Baron 



