GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



skirting the Thames, from the middle of Brentford to Isleworth 

 Ferry, with the once notable gardens, had received little attention 

 since the early days of Capability Brown, when the late Duke of 

 Northumberland caused designs to be prepared for remodelling 

 the whole of the grounds, twenty-five acres in extent." 



Colonel Balfour, who had exceptional opportunities for obtaining 

 accurate information on all such points, speaks of no such efface- 

 ment, which would have been an act of sheer vandalism, for, in 

 their own way, the gardens of Kent and his successor, Capability 

 Brown, are classic. On the contrary, he remarks : " Of its kind, 

 Capability Brown's landscape gardening is here most successful." 



There is nothing in the Sion grounds as they now appear, as 

 far as my amateur knowledge goes, to suggest that they were not 

 planned in the second half of the eighteenth century, though, 

 no doubt, many interesting trees and shrubs have been added, 

 and the magnificent range of plant-houses, four hundred feet long, 

 can scarcely belong to that period, although they have a charmingly 

 old-fashioned air. Here again I have been unable to glean definite 

 information, but probably the construction of these fine con- 

 servatories, with the substitution of metallic framework for the 

 old-time wood-framed roofs and sides, were the principal features 

 in the great improvements referred to by Walford's anonymous 

 authority. ' They consist," he says, " of nine divisions, and are 

 so arranged that each can be kept at its own independent tem- 

 perature, suitable to the health and beauty of its plants ; yet 

 the doors can, upon any special occasion, be thrown open, giving 

 the various climates of the world, with their various inhabitants." 

 They are raised on a terrace two or three feet above the garden 

 level, and built in the form of a crescent, a crystal dome, sixty- 

 five feet high, rising from the centre. The terrace is punctuated, 

 as one might say, at regular intervals by tall and massive stone 

 flower vases. These vases are said to be the work of Grinling 

 Gibbons, and their heavy, florid style and debased ornament, 

 better suited to wood than stone, is little in harmony with the 

 chaste and restrained decoration, the severe and elegant archi- 

 tecture of the Adam entrance-gate before referred to. 



During the absences of the noble owner, the flowering plants are 

 now removed from the conservatories, which have, in consequence, 

 at such times, a rather forlorn and bare aspect, notwithstanding 



no 



