THE LADIES’ MAGAZINE OF GARDENING. 
187 
VISITS TO NURSERIES. 
As in my last (p. 158) I gave an account of Mr. Corsten’s hyacinth 
show, I shall now say a few words respecting Mr. Groom’s tulips. On 
first entering Mr. Groom’s garden, a common observer might suppose that 
the tulips in the open beds were those to be exhibited, so rich and 
beautiful do they appear ; but these are only the outcasts, the Parias of 
the tulip genus, while their more select and aristocratic brethren are 
sheltered in a canvas tent 140 feet long, with a raised seat at the upper 
end, from which the gorgeous assemblage can be witnessed. It was some 
time before I could examine them in detail; and when I did, Mr. Groom 
explained to me the comparative merits of the flowers. The best tulip 
in the bed I was told was called Nourii Effendi , and that it belonged to 
the division named Bizzarres y that is, it was one of those tulips, which have 
brown, or some other colour, on a yellow ground. So little, however, do 
I know of Tulip beauty, that this choice flower did not please me half so 
well as a beautiful flower, one of the rose-tulips, that is, one marked with 
red on a white ground, which was called Claudiana; arid the delicacy and 
elegance of which pleased me exceedingly. My readers will perhaps 
faire les grands yeux , at the idea of any tulip being elegant; hut though I 
grant that nothing can, generally speaking, be less graceful than the stiff 
naked stem of a tulip with its cup-shaped flower at the head, the formal 
regularity of which is not broken by a single green leaf near the flower, 
yet I must plead in favour of the beautiful Claudiana. Among the 
Bybloemens , that is the tulips having white grounds marked with different 
shades of purple, I was most pleased with a flower called Rowbotham’s 
Incomparable. Altogether I was delighted with Mr. Groom’s tulips, and I 
think most persons who may visit them will think with me. 
Mr. Chandler’s nursery atVauxhall,and Messrs. Lee’s at Hammersmith, 
are at present resplendent with beauty from their Ghent Azaleas. Both 
also have the beautiful Wistaria (or, as it was formerly called, Glycine') 
sinensis trained down the centre of a span-roofed greenhouse, where it 
produces an uncommonly good effect. At the Hammersmith nursery, the 
space below was filled with very fine specimens of the Tree Peony , so that 
two splendid productions of China are seen in full perfection at one 
glance. Mr. Chandler’s Tree peonies were in the open ground, not 
together, but interspersed with other plants, and had, I think, a better 
effect than they have when planted in rows. 
The Azalea ground at Lee’s, is a mass of beauty, varying from the 
