REGENT’S PARK 
103 
very short time inside the building, and after three 
weeks’ visit return to hospital. 
Of late years a considerable alteration has been 
made in the arrangement of the beds in the flower- 
garden of the Park, chiefly with a view to reducing 
the bedding and yet obtaining a better effect. Long 
herbaceous borders have been substituted for one of the 
rows of formal beds, requiring a constant succession 
of plants. This has necessitated the removal of some 
of the flowers shown in the view of this garden taken 
in the spring. The loss of these is compensated by 
the new arrangement of beds, separated from the Park 
by a hedge and flowering shrubs. 
Very few of the old trees remain in Regent’s Park; 
what became of them between the time when only a 
portion were marked for the navy by Cromwell, and 
the present day, there is no record as yet forthcoming. 
Two elms near the flower-garden are, however, remark¬ 
ably fine specimens, as the branches feather on to the 
ground all round. A Paulownia tomentosa is well worthy 
of notice. It must have been one of the earliest to 
be planted in this country, and is a large spreading tree. 
It stands on what is known as the Mound, near Chester 
Gate. Nineteen years ago it flowered, and in the un¬ 
usually warm autumn of 1906 it was covered with buds 
of blossom, all ready to expand, when, alas ! the long- 
delayed frost arrived in October, just too soon for 
them to come to perfection. Not far from it is a 
large tree of Cotoneaster frigida , which has masses of 
red berries every year. 
The railings of Regent’s Park have always been of 
timber, but it is now threatened to alter this survival 
of the days when it first changed from Marylebone Farm. 
