HISTORY OF GARDENING. PART I. 



90. The earliest private botanic garden was formed at Padua, by Gaspar de Gabriel, 

 a wealthy Tuscan noble, at considerable expense. It was accomplished in 1525; and 

 though not a public institution, it was open to all the curious. To this garden suc- 

 ceeded, that of Corner at Venice, and Simonetta, at Milan ; those of some convents at 

 Rome, and of Pinella, at Naples, with others enumerated by botanical historians. 

 (C. Spreng. Hist. lib. iii. ; Hatters Bib. Bot. 21.; Tirabosc/ii's Stor. _del Litt. Ital.; Gesner, 

 Hort. German. ; Stcphanus de Re Hortense. ) 



91. The first public botanic garden established in Europe was that of Pisa, begun, accord- 

 ing to Deleuze, in 1543, by Cosmo de Medici ; and of which Ghini, and Cesalpin, cele- 

 brated botanists, were successively the directors. Belon, a French naturalist, who was 

 at Pisa in 1555, was astonished at the beauty of the garden, the quantity of plants it con- 

 tained, and the care taken to make them prosper. In 1591 the number of new plants 

 was found so far accumulated as to render a larger garden necessary, and that space of 

 ground was fixed on which is the present botanic garden ; two borders were destined for 

 ornamental flowers, and a green-house was formed for such as were too tender for the 

 open air. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, a great accession was obtained to 

 the garden by the double flowers of Holland, then introduced in Italy for the first time. 

 (Calvio, Hist. PiSanL) The example of Pisa was soon imitated by other cities and univer- 

 sities in Italy and Germany. In 1545, (not 1533, as stated by Adamson-see Deleuze,) 

 the public botanic garden of Padua was agreed on by the senate of Venice. It contained 

 in 1581 four hundred plants cultivated in the open air, besides a number kept in pots to 

 be taken into houses or sheds during winter. The garden of Bologna was next estab- 

 lished by Pope Pius the Vth ; then that of Florence by the Grand Duke ; and afterwards 

 that of Rome. From that time to the present day, the numbers'of botanic gardens have 

 been continually increasing, so that there is now one belonging to almost every principal 

 city in Italy ; an exertion the more remarkable, as botanic gardens in that country are 

 proportionably more expensive than in England, from the necessity of conveying a stream 

 of water to them, and forming a regular system of irrigation. 



92. A taste for flowers and ornamental plants has thus become general in Italy ; and at the 

 same time the means of gratification afforded, by the superabundant plants and seeds of 

 these gardens being given away, or sold at very moderate prices to the curious. About 

 this time also the Dutch made regular exchanges of their bulbous roots for the orange- 

 trees of Genoa and Leghorn ; and the double night-smelling jessamine was introduced 

 at Pisa from Spain, and so highly prized as to have a centinel placed over it by the 

 governor. (Evelyn.) The use of flowers, it is probable, was never entirely laid aside in 

 Italy as ornaments to female dress ; but in the progress of refinement their application in 

 this way became more general, and more select sorts were chosen ; they became in de- 

 mand, both gathered in bouquets, and with the entire plants in pots ; they were used as 

 household ornaments both internal and external ; and the church, thinking that what 

 pleased man must be pleasing to the gods ; or conforming to the taste of the times, and 

 desirous of rendering religion as attractive as possible to the multitude, introduced flowers 

 as decorations of altars and statues, and more especially in their fetes and processions. 

 Pots and boxes of orange trees, pomegranates, bays, oleanders, myrtles, and other plants, 

 are now let out by the day, for decorating the steps and approaches to altars, or sold for 

 ornamenting roofs, balconies, virandas, courts, yards, passages, halls, staircases, and even 

 shops and warehouses in most of the large towns of Italy. Notwithstanding this there is 

 a recent instance on record of a lady residing in Rome, commencing a law-suit against 

 her neighbour, for filling her court-yard with orange-trees, the smell of the flowers of 

 which was by the other considered as a nuisance. 



For the church the white lily (Lilium candidum) is in great demand, with which the Madona, 'or 

 Madre di Dio, is decorated as an emblem of her virginity. The typha ( T. latifolia) is much used when 

 in seed to put into the hands of statues of Christ, being considered as the reed with which the soldiers 

 handed him a sponge of vinegar. In Poland, where the typha has not been easily procured, we have seen 

 leeks in the flower-stalk used as a substitute. The rose, the stock-gilly-flower, the jessamine, &c. are 

 next in demand, and are used in common with such others as are presented gratis, or offered for sale, as 

 decorations indiscriminately to the crowd of statues and pictures of saints which decorate the churches, 

 to private houses, and as ornaments of female dress. 



On occasions of public rejoicing flowers are also much used in Italy. Favorite princes and generals are 

 received into towns and even villages through triumphal arches decorated with flowers, and the ground is 

 also sometimes strewed with them. The lives of Buonaparte, Murat, and Beauharnois, afford many 

 examples. The Emperor of Austria made a tour of Italy in 1819, and though every where disliked, every 

 where walking on a mine ready to explode, he was in many places so received ; and at the famous cascade 

 of Marmora, near Terni, a slight arcade, 300 yards in length, was formed to guide the steps of the imperial 

 visitor to the best point of view. It was covered with intersecting wreaths of flowers and foliage, and the 

 sides ornamented with festoons of box, myrtle, and bay. At Milan, a very gay city, flowers are greatly 

 prized, and in the winter season are procured from the peculiarly warm and ever verdant gardens between 

 Genoa and Nervi. A louis-d'or, we were informed, is sometimes paid for a single nosegay. During the 

 carnival the demand is great throughout Italy. 



93. Florists' flowers, especially the bulbous kinds, do not succeed well in the dry warm 

 climate of Italy. Fine varieties of the hyacinth, tulip, ranunculus, auricula, polyanthus, 

 &c. are soon lost there, and obliged to be renewed from more temperate countries. 

 They excel, however, in the culture of the tuberose, which forms an article of commerce 



