214 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



COMMONPLACE NOTES. 



1»\ THE SeCBETABY AND SUPERINTENDENT. 



New Hall and New Garden. 



W B place this among Commonplace Notes for the Irishman's reason 

 that there is nothing at all commonplace about it, but very much the 

 opposite. 



When, in 1887, the Society took the first step of its new departure, 

 or rather of a return to its old lines of a strictly horticultural policy, 

 abandoning all side issues which have such a tendency to obscure and 

 eventually to swallow up the main one, who ever thought that in 1903 it 

 would be within actual sight of a New 7 Hall and Offices, and a New Garden, 

 of its own ? In that critical year of 1887 there were only 773 subscribing 

 Fellows, yielding an income of £ 1,938 ; the expenditure was £2,894 and 

 the floating debt £ 1,152. The new policy, or the return to the old one, 

 of sticking to gardening pure and simple has, up to December 1902, 

 increased the number of subscribing Fellows to 6,228, yielding a sub- 

 scription income of t6,982 ; the debt has been paid off; and investments 

 accumulated yielding a further income of £437 a year ! 



Over and above all this, w T hich one may call the natural outcome of 

 a gardening policy, there has arisen among the Fellows a double demand 

 and want, one for a New and satisfactory Hall and Offices of our own, the 

 other for a New and satisfactory Garden of our own. At one time it 

 seemed as if these two great and acknowledged wants would rend the 

 Society asunder and destroy each other, like the birth of twins struggling 

 for primogeniture. Each side acknowledged the legitimate aims and 

 objects of the other ; each at heart felt kindly disposed toward the other, 

 but neither was willing to yield precedence, fearing that if it did so its own 

 enesis would be postponed until the Greek calends, for each appeared to 

 involve so large an outlay as to bid fair to cripple the power of the 

 Society, as regards the other, almost indefinitely. 



In fchifl condition of things two noble benefactors have come forward 

 the rescue. Bari □ Sir Henry Schroder, Bart., has taken up the cause 

 of the new hall witli his accustomed energy, starting the building fund 

 witli a donation of £5,000, and Sir Thomas Hanbury, K.C.V.O., has 

 purchased th. famous garden of the late Mr. (1. F. Wilson at Wisley at 

 • < t £6,000 and given it in trust for the use of the Society as long 

 11 it oan utilise H and cares to retain it. And thus it comes to pass that 

 the completion of the S« ciety's one hundredth year in March 1904 will 

 P»cti©ally Bee it in possession of a magnificent Hall and Offices of its 

 own and of a freehold Garden, <>/ its kind equal, if not superior, to any in 

 Europe. 



'I'h" Fellows of tli. Society cannot be too grateful to Baron Schroder 

 and to Sir Thomas Hunbury f< r their munificent and timely liberality, 

 but it i- uniuTMilly acl<nowledg< d that great privileges entail corresponding 



