CHAPTER XIII 



NINETEENTH CENTURY 



" Hence through the garden I was drawn, 

 A realm of pleasance, many a mound, 

 And many a shadow-chequered lawn, 

 Full of the city's stilly sound ; 

 And deep myrrh thickets blowing round 

 The stately cedar, tamarisks, 

 Thick rosaries of scented thorn. 

 Tall orient shrubs and obelisks, 

 Graven ^\'ith emblems of the time." 



Lord Tennyson. 



THE progress of gardening during the last hundred years 

 has been so great and so rapid that it would be a well- 

 nigh endless task to take even a very cursory review of it 

 in all its branches. The immense advance in botany and 

 classification, the improved methods of cultivation, the vast 

 hot-houses and stoves, and the countless treasures from 

 tropical climes with which to stock them, the numberless plants 

 collected from all parts of the world to beautify the flower- 

 garden, and the endless florists' varieties, improved and added 

 to year by year — all these combined to enhance the charm of 

 the nineteenth-century garden. Though the gardens of our 

 forefathers may be greatly praised, and the study of them 

 proves how much there was to admire or imitate in them, it is 

 difficult to imagine an English garden deprived of the count- 

 less flowers which have been added to them of late years. Many 

 flowers have become so familiar that it is hard to picture a 

 garden without them, yet numbers of plants to be seen almost 

 everywhere in 1900 had not been brought to our shores one 

 hundred years before. To produce such changes many men 

 have been at work, in every department, each contributing 



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