268 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



[Vallota purpurea) appeared about this time ; the same kind of 

 story being told of its origin as of that of the Guernsey lily 

 {Nerine sarniensis), which was said to have grown in Guernsey 

 from bulbs washed ashore from a wreck of a ship from Japan 

 about 1659. The camellia or " Japanese rose " {Camellia 

 japonica) was grown by the middle of the eighteenth century. 

 The "gardenia, or the Cape Jasmine" {Gardenia florida), 

 Plumbago {rosea), and other " tender sorts of lead wort," the 

 Gloriosa superba and Allamanda cathartica were among the 

 climbing plants which adorned the stove before the dawn of 

 the nineteenth century. 



The rage for landscape-gardening did not check the progress 

 of fruit-growing. The kitchen garden was removed from sight, 

 and when possible to a considerable distance, yet within it 

 fruit-trees were receiving proper attention, and some of the 

 earlier trials of cross fertilization were made in this direction. 

 " By this process," wrote a well-known gardener, " we have 

 given to the hardy pears of the North all the richness and 

 delicacy of those of the South," and " to watery grapes the 

 perfume of the muscat. "■*• The literature of the orchard was 

 also carried on by able hands. Speechly, gardener to the 

 Duke of Portland, was the author of treatises on the pine and 

 the vine. He describes fifty of the varieties of grapes grown 

 at Welbeck, and mentions many of the fine vines to be seen 

 then in England.^ The Black Hamburgh at Valentine, in 

 Essex, the parent of the Hampton Court one, yielded so much 

 fruit that the gardener frequently made ;fioo a year by selling 

 the bunches. A vine growing at Northallerton outside a house 

 in 1789 covered 137 square yards of wall.^ He notices the 

 vineyards near Bath, also those of Sir William Basset, in 

 Somerset, who made some hogsheads of wine annually, and the 

 Hon. Charles Hamilton, at Pain's Hill (the famous landscape 

 garden), made wine from " Burgundy " and " black cluster " 

 grapes, which sold for 7s. 6d. to los. the bottle. Speechly 

 himself grew a famous bunch of grapes at Welbeck, in 1781, 



* John Frederick Wood, Midland Florist, 1848. 

 ^ Culture of the Vine, by Wm. Speechly. York, 1790. 

 ^ Dr. Fowler has told me that a very large vine covering a house-wall 

 now exists in Northallerton, which may be the one here referred to. 



