206 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



among whom were the late Miss Owen, Mr. H. J. Elwes, 

 Miss Jekyll, and Sir W. T. Thistelton Dyer of Kew, and 

 many others. Among the plants which I grew here with 

 some success were the fine blue, purple, and yellow Hima- 

 layan poppies, the curious Periploca grcsca, which produced 

 masses of its strange blossoms, the beautiful Akebia quinata 

 with its wire-coloured flowers, a very large Solatium crispus^ 

 and the strange Chilian climber, Mutisia decurrens, which we 

 called the "glory dandelion," from its very large stellate 

 flowers of intense orange. Even Sir Thomas Hanbury, who 

 paid me a visit here, had not before seen this plant in flower. 

 An unusually clear blue hydrangea on a shady bank was 

 also one of th€ glories of my Parkstone garden. 



As already stated, from my very schoolboy days and my 

 early youth orchids had a fascination for me, from the 

 strangeness of their growth and habits and their fantastic 

 and beautiful flowers. In the parts of the tropics I visited 

 they were comparatively few in number, while their limited 

 flowering period made the finding of any of the more showy 

 species in flower a rare event. It was only after my return 

 home that at flower shows, and especially at Mr. William 

 Bull's annual exhibition of orchids at Chelsea, I became 

 really acquainted with their inexhaustible variety, extreme 

 interest, and marvellous beauty. There was no exhibition in 

 London that was at once so enjoyable and satisfying as these 

 orchid shows, which I generally managed to visit every 

 year. 



Being, as I thought, settled for life at Parkstone, I deter- 

 mined at last that I would try and grow some orchids myself, 

 and accordingly built a small house in three divisions so as to 

 get different temperatures, and for about four or five years 

 persevered in the attempt, with a great deal of labour and 

 enjoyment to myself, though with only a limited amount of 

 success. As I was always longing for new species, I did not 

 content myself with a few of the most showy and most easily 

 managed, but endeavoured to get examples of almost all the 

 chief forms. Some I bought at sales, a few from dealers, and 

 I had a nice lot of Jamaica orchids sent me by Mr. W. 



