November 19, 1886. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
445 
and front together, by 14 inches, and that means a bunch of Grapes 
more per rod if not two, or a Peach per foot of surface gained. Of 
course hollow walls are better than solid, being warmer and drier and 
non-conducting, and which we may still have along with the narrow¬ 
ing of the walls where they receive the wall plates, as for the spaces 
to be of value they must be closed, which the narrowing of the walls 
causes to be done perfectly. 
In timber, there is no objection against red deal, but it must be 
selected and thoroughly seasoned. If it contains sap it will not 
stand wet and soon decays. Any saving in first cost by the employ¬ 
ment of unselected or unseasoned timber is very unsatisfactory and 
expensive in after repairs. A house built of deal containing sap I 
have known to become so decayed in seven years as to be unsafe, and 
I have found it so bad in a dozen as to necessitate their renewal. 
Sound, thoroughly seasoned red deal will last a lifetime if duly 
painted ; indeed, half a century or more if properly put together, 
which has more than some imagine to do with the durability of glass 
houses. It is little use being careful about material if the joints are 
so bad that they will allow wet to enter, as decay is then certain to 
result, and what is the good of a roof with rafters or sashbars rotten 
at the eaves ? 
Pitch pine is better no doubt than red deal for certain purposes— 
i.e., in houses much subjected to moisture, but is more expensive and 
more costly worked ; but the best of all is undoubtedly teak, which, 
however, is still more costly. These three—1, red deal, 2, pitch 
pine, and 3, teak, are, according to my knowledge and experience, 
the only suitable woods for fruit and plant houses. I have, it is true, 
seen some mahogany lights that were little, if indeed auy, worse for 
wear after many years’ use in a conservatory, and where they still are 
in excellent preservation. 
Whatever wood is used, as little of it as is necessary to iusure 
stability only should be used, so as to obstruct as little light as 
possible, and it should be strengthened or stayed in such manner by 
iron, whether in the shape of pillars, tie bars, or brackets, as to still 
further insure its stability against the violence of storms, as well as 
to prevent any departure of the timber at the joints. The joints of 
the wood, whatever they may be, should be perfect ; by perfect I 
mean close-fitting, so that when the jointure is made, the parts to be 
joined being white-leaded no joint will show, only pieces of 
wood joined together without so much as a crevice remaining, 
but contrariwise forcing out the white lead, and there is conse¬ 
quently no joint to putty up before or at painting. There is no 
opening for the wet to get in, and such is as good at the joints as 
in the solid. This is a main point in fruit and plant house con¬ 
struction, for good materials are only wasted by bad workmanship. I 
have had a practical illustration of this. I had a Rose house 54 feet 
by 15 feet put up by a horticultural builder (Messrs. Foster and 
Pearson, Beeston, Notts), into the joints of which a pin could not be 
pushed, and I did not see the painters going over the house before 
painting with the indispensable lump of putty in one hand and the 
putty-knife in the other. I do not think putty to fill up cracks— i.e., 
joints, were used to the extent of the size of a walnut either inside or 
outside the house. I have had other work done by local men, and I 
can push my knife (a Peach pruner) blade through plenty of the 
joints where the rafters join the wall plates. If the work is wanted 
to stand it must be good, otherwise it will be anything but economical. 
There is no cheapness in indifferent material imperfectly manu¬ 
factured, true economy consisting in sound material employed in a 
skilful and thrifty manner.—G. Abbey. 
(To be continued.) 
LONDON’S LESSEE OPEN SPACES—THEIR TREES 
AND PLANTS.—No. 5. 
A SHORT time ago all the world wondered—at least in west London 
—why some individual chose all of a sudden to dislodge, or attempt to 
dislodge, the seemingly inoffensive sellers of milk and cakes near the 
Spring Gardens gate of St. James’s Park. People laid it to the charge of 
George, ranger, but he was exonerated, and Her Majesty forbade the 
removal of the last two persons, who still hold stalls there as representa¬ 
tives of “ Milk Fair,” well-known in Georgian times ; but actually the 
spot, as a place for refreshments, carries its history back to a date before 
the great civil war. when in the reign of James i. there was a bowling 
green here, a pleasant walk, and gardens in which nobles and citizens 
strolled, or they ate and drank under the shade of its trees, the spring, 
from which the place takes its name, being one of its attractions. 
Evelyn, always an observer of trees, alludes to the thickets that once 
existed here, so suitable, he remarks, for the evening wanderings of lovers. 
But not long after the Spring Gardens underwent a change, the fowls 
were removed, the ponds filled up, the green walks closed, and part of the 
ground being absorbed in the Park, upon the remainder a frontage of 
houses was built. I wonder, by the way, since the fashion now is to 
revive antique pastimes, whether keeping pheasants for amusement merely 
will again become as popular as it was in the seventeenth century. 
Gardens there still are at Spring Gardens, though not accessible to 
the public, between St. James’s Park and the houses looking towards 
Charing Cross, and they have both trees and shrubs if the thickets are no 
longer to be seen. One part, indeed, of these gardens is so far overgrown 
that the paths are seldom dry, and some few flowers of a perennial sort 
that are scattered about put forth but feeble blooms. Perhaps, though 
no spring is visible now, there is a natural moisture here, for Poplar3 
flourish, and Lilacs and other shrubs are generally more leafy in autumn 
than is usual about London. According to a local tradition, on the morn¬ 
ing of his execution, as Charles I. took his way to Whitehall attended by 
his escort, he pointed to a tree in the Spring Gardens, and said to one of 
the officers, “ That tree was planted by my brother Henry.” I find there 
now no tree of sufficient age to date back from the period when this 
might have been planted. It is rare to find any tree growing near London 
much more than a century old, and then it would be either an Oak or a 
Yew ; but curiously enough, there are sundry Yew bushes in Spring 
Gardens which may be descended from some Yew that has been 
removed. 
Amongst the evergreens we noticed a few somewhat stunted Spruce 
Firs, a species seldom met with in old London gardens, and across one 
path there hung festoons of Clematis, leafy till November, though not 
displaying those feathery seed heads so familiar to the rural stroller, and 
which are exceptionally abundant along many lanes this autumn. As a 
rule we find the Elder, of all the deciduous shrubs growing in London, 
retains its leaves the longest, which may be one reason why it was 
formerly so much planted, though its appearance is not specially attrac¬ 
tive. In this garden are some of those ancient Hollies that one comes 
across, whose utmost annual effort at growth is the putting forth an in¬ 
significant number of spring leaves, but then they persistently retain their 
old leaves year after year perhaps, until they slowly waste away on the 
branches. Many years ago, it would appear, round one side of the Spring 
Gardens a mound was raised as a screen, upon which various shrubs 
were planted. In course of time much of this earth has washed down, 
leaving the roots of some of the bushes partly exposed, but these are still 
growing and seemingly thriving. Outside the enclosure, and within the 
Park, yet certainly a portion of the original Spring Gardens, is a grassy 
space, of almost triangular shape, which has a large Plane in its 
centre, and a few others of different sizes along its side3; here juveniles 
are occasionally permitted to gambol. This, it has occurred to me, may 
have been the site of the Spring Gardens bowling green, where princes 
once played. 
Standing at the Spring Gardens gate of the Park we overlook Trafalgar 
Square, an open space which has received a large share of unkindly criticism, 
and one hesitates to add thereto, but really its trees are deplorable objects. « 
Flowers the square has none, and its leafy display is limited to the foliage 
of the few Planes placed along three sides, the stems of which have 
a double casing of protective wood and iron. What leaves they have 
droop on branches high upon the lanky stems, and the removal of these 
trees would be no great loss. Doubtless the spot is ill adapted for horti¬ 
culture, but might not something be done with the ponds ? It would be 
no difficult matter to convert one of them into the semblance of a natural 
pond or lake by planting such species as the Flowering Rush (Butomus 
umbellatus), the great Reed Mace (Typha latifolia), the Arrowhead 
(Sagittaria sagittifolia), and others that could easily be selected as likely 
to flourish. Almost as bold in aspect as Trafalgar Square is the open 
spaee or esplanade to the west of the Horse Guards, which serves occasion¬ 
ally for military evolutions, undoubtedly the old tiltyard attached to 
Whitehall Palace, but this is relieved in a measure by the trees and 
shrubs of the adjacent enclosure. Notone in a hundred, perhaps, of those 
who cross this space skirt the side towards the Admiralty, where we come 
upon sundry plots of garden ground and Ivy-shaded walls, positively 
upon one line of wall covered with Vines. I do not suppose they 
would fruit here as once they did about Westminster, for the yet ex¬ 
tant Vine Street was so named from a vineyard or Vine garden belong¬ 
ing to the Palace, and which is referred to in a warrant (temp. 
Charles II.) as if then under cultivation. Well sheltered from the 
north and east winds, shrubs and flowers of the common kinds flourish 
here. There were some large bushes of the ornamental Currant, and 
fine Thujas, also we observed a species not usual in London gardens, 
the Bladder Senna (Colutea arborescens), and beside it the Laburnum 
also displaying its seed pods, seldom plentiful in a town atmosphere, 
which is quite as well, considering their very poisonous character. 
Another Cytisus, the bonnie Broom (C. scoparius) would have been an 
appropriate plant on ground of such historic fame as the precincts of 
Whitehall, and I believe this graceful plant might prove a desirable 
addition to many London gardens where it is now lacking. 
Across Parliament Street, with the Thames once washing its edge, 
but now separated by the Embankment, was the Priory Garden—or 
private garden—of Whitehall, a space of between three or four acre?. 
During the reign of Charles II., when gossipping Pepys was one of its 
visitors, the ground was laid out formally in sixteen square compart¬ 
ments, each having a central statue, and dispersed amongst the grass 
plots were some curious sundials. A high wall shut it off from the 
public gaze, and along one side was a row of tall trees that have long 
disappeared, Oaks or Elms perhaps. The houses of Whitehall Gardens 
and Richmond Terrace occupy part of the ground, part being still 
open and dotted over with flower beds, while on some portions of it 
are banks of evergreens. Of the trees interspersed, the principal are 
some notably large Poplars (Populus nigra) that must have made 
their growth under favourable conditions, also a few Planes and 
Limes. 
