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JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ February 3, 1863. 



hare kept till the present month have been small and medium- 

 sized. Some of the fruit have been much richer in flavour than 

 others, and most delicious, and when at its best I believe this 

 fine Pear to be beaten by none, and equalled by very few. — E. B. 



PLACES OF PUBLIC EESOET. 



STJNDEBXAND PABK AND WATERTVOItES. 



The great facilities now offered for travelling by the many lines 

 of railway by which the country is intersected, and the oppor- 

 tunities thus afforded being in so many cases taken advantage 

 of, the necessary interchanges of ideas, customs, or habits in the 

 communications of one clas3 with another, are tending fast to 

 remove local peculiarities ; and the customs of remote districts 

 are certainly becoming modified through the instrumentality of 

 the young people, and probably through some of the older ones 

 too, who have travelled for information. True it is, nevertheless, 

 that local circumstances must ever maintain a difference. Corn- 

 wall and Cumberland, though both hilly, differ widely in their 

 vegetation, climate, and other features ; Norfolk and Derbyshire 

 cannot be compared together. There is, however, one thing in 

 which all seem to agree, and that is improvement. Some of the 

 customs of bygone days may still be held up as golden rules, but 

 there are great numbers of them open to improvement ; and one 

 of the best tokens that all the advances in the various depart- 

 ments of industry have not been made under the grovelling spirit 

 of tending to individual gratification, is that the public at large 

 have been thought of; for in most of oar large towns public 

 libraries and reading-rooms have been thrown open to all classes, 

 while museums and other sources of intellectual cultivation have 

 been enriched by many and often well-directed endowments. 



Other and by no means the least useful of all the places 

 of public resort are parks or pleasure grounds of easy access to 

 all. Doubtless the immense advantage of the London parks 

 to the densely populated districts by which they are surrounded 

 led, in the first instance, other large towns to attempt something 

 of the same kind ; but some of the first steps that way were 

 certainly much in advance of the times — such, for instance, as 

 the Arboretum at Derby, which, however worthy, as it doubtless 

 J3, and ever will be, of the munificence of the donor, is nevertheless 

 bordering on a higher standard of arboriculture than the million 

 are yet prepared for. Something equally pleasing to look at and 

 easier to comprehend is what is wanted by the generality of our 

 park-strolling company. But the gratification of the latter is 

 by no means 60 easily accomplished as it was twenty years ago. 

 So many gardens of the very highest class and best keeping 

 having been thrown open to public inspection during that time, 

 the public taste has risen to a degree bordering on fastidious- 

 ness ; and Criticism so rife on public gardens, parks, cemeteries, 

 and such like places, that unless a considerable amount of taste 

 and skill be exercised in the formation of anything fresh, woe be 

 to the unfortunate individual on whom the public displeasure 

 will fall. Nevertheless, with all the vaunted knowledge which 

 is to be attained by existing examples, now and then serious 

 blunders are made. 



The Great Exhibition of 1851, which had no precedent to guide 

 its managers, was nevertheless an acknowledged success in every 

 respect, while there are certainly some very grave errors in the 

 present one of 1862. The building and its fittings cost very little 

 short of three times what the Crystal Palace did, yet everybody 

 admires the cheap one, and condemns the dear one as supremely 

 ugly, i The builder doubtless expected his large domes to attract 

 attention ; but John Bull does not care for glass domes — their 

 inutility is transparent. In truth, it is the fact of being able 

 to see completely through them from the outside that offends 

 the eye and diminishes their size ; and yet from the cost of the 

 building it is only fair to suppose that these two huge glass 

 domes, about which the public do not seem to care a pin, cost 

 as much as the whole building of 1851. 



There are many opinions, too, on the Kensington Horticul- 

 tural Garden ; but cenBure here has certainly in many cases been 

 unjust, for in so small a place, and surrounded as it is by 

 myriads of chimneys, it would have been utterly impossible to 

 have given it the sylvan scenery some writers pant after. Archi- 

 tectural, sculptural, aud other artificial ornaments were almost 

 all that could be adopted : therefore I can find but little fault 

 with it except in name. It is certainly a misnomer to call it a 

 horticultural garden at all, when perhaps not more than fifty 

 or say a hundred species and varieties of plants are cultivated in 



it. Plenty of cottage gardens belonging to humble labourers 

 could furnish a more respectable array of names. Failures, 

 however, are as useful monitors as successes, and tend by com- 

 parison to enhance the value placed on the award of public 

 approbation. 



The course of public opinion on matters of interest in 

 which it is concerned is, nevertheless, sometimes carried on to 

 a mischievous length, and factious opinions instead of con- 

 scientious ones are often enough put forth ; even great societies 

 are sometimes the means of deceiving the public. Fortunately 

 the freedom of opinion is accorded to all, and this in some 

 measure secures us against great mistakes. And, as the will of 

 the mighty public is more potent than that of most mighty men, 

 most of our public undertakings are the subject of more care 

 and anxiety on the part of those who execute them than private 

 undertakings are. Great taste is often shown in buildings and 

 other works that are far from costly, and some public parks or 

 gardens will vie with those of any nobleman or even Royalty 

 itself. "Where is more variety collected into a moderate space 

 than is shown at Birkenhead ? Other places are rising into fame, 

 while some, which from their natural disadvantages can never 

 be expected to occupy a prominent place in cultural matters, are, 

 nevertheless, equally important for other reasons which render 

 them at all times pleasing and agreeable, if not abo instructive 

 objects of interest. Such a place is Sunderland Park, of which 

 the following short description may, perhaps, Buffice, since the 

 general bearings of such places have been more extensively 

 treated of. 



StWDEKlASD Paek, generally so called, occupies an elevated 

 position immediately adjoining the southern edge of the town. 

 Originally it was a quarry, and it was on the waste stone and 

 rubbish that the formation of it had to be carried out. The 

 southern side of the plot showed the face of the rock where the 

 workings had been left off, and this, being some 40 or 50 feet 

 high, forms an excellent feature in it. The high and bleak situa- 

 tion of the whole, and its being only about half a mile from the 

 seashore, precluded all chance of cultivating many of the 

 shrubs and plants often found in more genial situations ; but the 

 formation of the ground, the excellent walks, and the annuals, 

 creepers, and such shrubs and trees as will withstand the chilly 

 blasts of the German Ocean, gave to the whole an air of neatness 

 I was hardly prepared to find in such a place. The ground 

 that had been excavated and been left in irregular heaps, had 

 been in some degree altered, not by levelling but by increasing 

 the size of these mounds and in all cases rounding their tops. 

 Curved walks of a beautifully grey-coloured stone-shatter, hard, 

 firm and smooth, wound along the valleys in various directions ; 

 and what appeared well worth copying in other public gardens 

 was, that in most if not in all cases the walk was in so deep a 

 cutting that the sloping turf edges could not be walked on, 

 while at the same time they were so nicely adjusted to the walk 

 as to leave the latter of a regular and uniform width and a 

 faultless outline. All who have had public walks to deal with, 

 well know the anxiety of so many to walk on the turf and its 

 consequent wearing away, but here I did not see a single gap 

 or blank — in fact, the steep character of the edgings made it 

 difficult to set foot on them. 



Some of the mounds were capped with clumps of Bhrubs, 

 but the ungenial climate was fatal to most of these. In the 

 more sheltered recesses they were a shade better, and some at 

 the base of the rock promised to grow up ; but it was evident 

 only a few of our general garden favourites were able to en- 

 dure the keen sea air. Of the most healthy were Cotoneaster 

 microphylla, some Ivy, Poplar, Vinca, and other things, but I 

 do not remember seeing the Tamarisk, which certainly ought to 

 do in such a place. But the great beauty in summer lies in the 

 annuals, of which there was an excellent assortment and all in a 

 thriving condition ; while in winter the beautiful dryness of the 

 walks, the rock with its perennials and creepers, arid the ex- 

 cellent turf by which the whole of the space not occupied by 

 walks or beds is covered, will give it always a cheering aspect. 

 Amongst the annuals occupying the very highest part of the 

 ground, were excellent French and African Marigolds, Stocks, 

 Delphiniurns, Dianthus, Calliopsis, and other popular annuals ; 

 and hanging from the rock were Sedums, Saxifrages, Wall- 

 flowers, Ivy, Nasturtiums (which by-the-by I also saw in another 

 place not more than a stone's throw from the ocean), VincaB, 

 and, what I believe would do very well, Cineraria maritima. In 

 the bottom and in a more sheltered position were some beds of 

 Scarlet and other Geraniums, Verbenas, Calceolarias and other 



