i6o LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
Hall the local exhibition takes place, and there are 
many similar institutions, where monster blooms, grown 
on roofs or in small back gardens, would compete 
creditably at a national show. The popularity of the 
chrysanthemums in Battersea Park is so great, that 
on a fine Sunday there is a string of people waiting 
their turn of walking through, stretching for fifty 
yards at least from the green-house to the entrance to 
the frame-ground. Certainly the arrangement of the 
green-house is prettily done. The stages are removed, 
and a sanded path with a double twist meanders among 
groups of plants sloping up to the rafters, and a few 
long, lanky ones trained to arch under the roof. The 
show is much looked forward to, and the colours and 
arrangements compared with former years, praised or 
criticised, such is the eager interest of those who crowd to 
take their turn for a peep. It is delightful to watch the 
pleasure on all faces, as a whole family out for their Sunday 
walk, press in together. It is only one more instance 
of the joy the London Parks bring to millions of lives. 
The world of fashion has only attacked Battersea 
Park spasmodically. When it was new, and the sub¬ 
tropical garden a rarity, people drove out from May- 
fair or Belgravia to see it. Again Battersea became 
the fashion when the cycling craze began. In the 
summer of 1895 it suddenly became “ the thing” to 
bicycle to breakfast in Battersea Park, and ladies who 
had never before visited this South London Park 
flocked there in the early mornings. It was away 
from the traffic that disturbed the beginner in Hyde 
or St. James’s Park, and perhaps the daring originality 
of cycling seemed to demand that conventions should 
further be violated; and nothing so commonplace as 
