A CAFE GARDEN. 



61 



A CAPE GARDEN. 



By Mr. H. M. Arderne, of Cape Town. 



[A Paper read at the Horticultural Club, July 8, 1902.] 



Shortly after my arrival in England I met a gentleman at the Drill 

 Hall who, just as I was leaving, said to me, " You must give us a paper 

 on your garden." I rather demurred to this, as I was on my way to 

 Spain to see something of its trees, and shrubs, and picturesque scenery, 

 and I knew that on my return I should be so immersed in festivities as 

 to leave no time for anything like a set paper worthy of your acceptance. 

 And my anticipation has been fully realised, for, since my arrival in 

 England from my Spanish tour, function after function has succeeded 

 each other in such rapid succession as to leave no time for anything like 

 connected or methodical work, leaving alone the demoralising influence 

 of a round of sight-seeing. So, if my garden talk is rather of a disjointed 

 fragmentary character you must regard it with kind indulgence. I must 

 further ask your indulgence if, in speaking of my garden, I appear to 

 introduce too much of the personal element. It is very difficult to avoid 

 doing so in speaking of one's own possessions and the part one has 

 played in creating them. This is especially true of a garden where one's 

 own handiwork has had to play so important a part, and where, by daily 

 and hourly personal attention, a great result has been achieved. 



As far back as 1840, when Australia opened up golden visions to the 

 youth of England, my father embarked for Adelaide. The vessel was 

 badly found, and put into the port of Cape Town to refit. There were 

 no palatial mail steamers in those days. In Cape Town he found so 

 many openings for enterprise that he determined to abandon his voyage 

 to Australia and to make South Africa his home. As a boy he loved 

 every green leaf, and the South African flora opened up a Vista of 

 delights. Shortly after his arrival he set to work to collect the South 

 African flora, sending his specimens to Sir Joseph Hooker, who was then 

 the Curator at Kew, receiving in exchange plants of a rare character, of 

 which they had duplicates to spare. As soon as he had realised a 

 sufficient competency he bought the property on which I now reside, at the 

 base of Table Mountain. It was then pure veldt, or, as Americans would 

 say, prairie land — rough bush land just as it came from the hands of the 

 Creator. But the luxuriance of the scrub, the gentle slope of the ground, 

 the rich character of the soil, and, last but not least, the lovely wall of 

 green on the verdant slopes and sombre gorges and kloofs of the grand 

 old geological sentinel, Table Mountain, which bounds the property on the 

 north-west, all gave abundant promise of what might be made of an 

 area with such natural advantages in the hands of an enthusiastic expert 

 endowed with the love of landscape gardening. My father's idea was to 

 make a garden which should, as far as possible, be representative of the 

 flora of the whole world. A bold idea, and very difficult of realisation in 

 most of the climates of the world, in which either winter's frost or 



