PLANTS FOR HOUSE DECORATION. 



85 



of cut Ivy alone was used, to give a castellated effect to the bare 

 walls of an improvised ball-room. A few days afterwards one 

 gentleman gave a magnificent entertainment, the flowers for 

 which cost over £500. Various other similarly decorated enter- 

 tainments followed, the result being that more than £3,000 was 

 paid to one single firm for floral decorations only, in less than 

 one month, and Messrs. Veitch, Turner, Paul, Bull, Lane, and 

 many other great plant-growers were very largely drawn upon, 

 nothing being considered too expensive or too rare. Magnificent 

 Orchids, Eoses by the ten thousand in a single day, as well as in- 

 numerable Ferns and other decorative plants were used. 



On July 21, 1873, the first large public entertainment was 

 given in the conservatory of the Eoyal Horticultural Gardens, in 

 connection with a ball given in honour of H.R.H. the Prince 

 of Wales, Here for the first time ice was largely used for 

 cooling the heated atmosphere of the ball-room, and after this 

 initiative by the Society, as much as forty tons of ice was used 

 on different occasions. At one gentleman's mansion in Belgrave 

 Square the floral decorations more than once cost over £1,500. 

 Many other similar decorations followed in which Orchids and ice 

 were largely used. These few instances are mentioned out of 

 many, in order to show what has caused the enormous increase 

 of late years in the cultivation of plants for house and window 

 decoration. 



In a letter to me, Mr. Assbee, of Covent Garden Market office, 

 says that he roughly estimates the number of vanloads of 

 English-grown plants sent into Covent Garden Market last year 

 (1891) at 20>000, and in addition to this, immense quantities of 

 boxes of flowers were brought into the market by hand, and 

 much larger quantities still were sold by auction in the Floral 

 Hall from all parts of the Continent, the Channel Islands, &c. 

 Mr. Assbee further tells me that the number of growers who 

 attended and sold plants in Covent Garden Market twenty years 

 ago was only about thirty persons, whilst at the present time 

 they number over three hundred. 



As an instance of the immense quantities of plants, &c, 

 supplied by the various growers, I may just mention that the 

 firm with which I am connected has during the past year 

 bought from the market at Covent Garden, and from other 

 sources, over a quarter of a million of plants, consisting of Ferns, 



