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CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE IMPERIAL FRUIT AND FORCING GARDENS AT VERSAILLES. 



THE NEW FRUIT GARDEN OF THE CITY OF PARIS IN THE 



BOIS DE VINCENNES. 



The imperial fruit and forcing gardens at Versailles form a 

 large establishment, not so costly nor nearly so fine as 

 Frogmore^ but containing a few things novel and instructive 

 to the English visitor. Generally the crops do not display 

 the high cultivation nor the surface the rapid rotation to be 

 seen in the market gardens round Paris, but in the culture 

 of hardy fruits there is something to admire. It is a forcing_, 

 culinary, and fruit garden solely, therefore there are few 

 pot plants to be seen, the houses being nearly all devoted to 

 the pine- apple. Some years ago the culture of this fruit 

 was considered by some of our gardening authorities to be 

 better understood in France than in England ; but though 

 very fine pines are grown in the neighbourhood of Paris, 

 our pine growers are on the whole the best. Such growers 

 of the pine-apple as Mr. James Barnes of Bicton, Mr. 

 David Thompson, Mr. Rose at Frogmore, and many other 

 English gardeners, afford us the best example of how to 

 produce it in the highest degree of perfection. The forcing 

 department is usually well-ordered and neat so far as the 

 more permanent houses go. In them the back walls may 

 be seen very prettily covered with the two well-known 

 Vincas, alba and rossea. To cover the walls of all kinds of 

 glass-houses devoted to ornamental purposes is an object 

 with most people who possess such things. It is very rarely 

 well accomplished, mostly from using a bad selection of 

 vigorous growing plants, which often get covered with insect 

 filth, and become a capital breeding place for it, or perhaps 

 never yield flowers. If anybody possessing a stove, pine- 



