285 
January 16.J THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
M 
D 
w 
D 
JANUARY 16—22, 1851. 
Weather 
near London in 1850. 
Sun 
Rises. 
Sun 
Sets. 
Moon 
R. & S. 
Moon’s 
Age. 
Clock 
bef.Sun. 
Day of 
Year. 
Barometer. 
Thermo. Wind. 
Rain in In. 
16 
Tu 
Bat appears. 
29.643—29.443 
33—29 
N.E. 
—. 
1 a. 8 
19 a. 4 
6 34 
14 
9 
59 
16 
17 
F 
Blackbird whistles. 
29 . 944 — 29.793 
36- 28 
N. 
— 
0 
20 
rises. 
© 
10 
20 
17 
18 
S 
Earth-worms lie out. 
29.984—29.615 
35—31 
S.E. 
0.55 
VII 
22 
5 a.40 
16 
10 
39 
18 
19 
Son 
2 SONDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. 
29 .724 — 29.437 
45—27 
W. 
0.02 
68 
24 
7 3 
17 
10 
58 
19 
20 
M 
Helleborus hiemalis flowers. 
30 . 199 — 30.047 
30—27 
N.E. 
— 
57 
25 
8 25 
18 
11 
16 
20 
21 
To 
Sun’s declination 19 ° 55's. 
30.380—30.227 
34—26 
N.E. 
— 
56 
27 
9 46 
19 
11 
33 
21 
22 vv 
Common Dor Beetle seen. 
30.485 —30.48J 
36—31 
S.E. 
— 
55 
29 
11 5 
20 
11 
50 
22 
“ Retired from business, I find my best recreation and exercise in my 
garden,” is the opening sentence of a letter now before us, and that sen¬ 
tence expresses the experience of a large section of every class of mankind, 
from the remotest age to the present time. When Alexander the Great 
inquired of a Sidonian prince how he had endured the poverty which 
compelled him to labour for existence in his garden, the prince replied, 
“ May heaven enable me to bear my prosperity as well! I then had no 
cares, for my own hands supplied all my wants ; ” and when Domitian 
was solicited to resume imperial power, he replied that, if the tempter 
could see the cabbages he had planted with his own hands no urgency 
would be used to induce him to relinquish the enjoyment of happiness 
for the pursuit of power. If from the man who pants for rural pleasures 
exempt from the state drudgery of the crown we pass to the man of the 
desk and the workshop, we find them both yearning for the same “ garden 
of delights ; ” and in the array of flower-pots on the window-sills of city 
attics we hail an evidence of the triumph of the good spirit within, which 
makes us “ all gardeners” to the fullest extent of our opportunities ; and 
emphatically do we reply to a certain querist—“ It is not too much to say 
that the mind which can, with genuine taste, occupy itself with gardening 
must have preserved some portion of youthful purity, and must have 
escaped, during its passage through the active world, its deeper contami¬ 
nations.” 
We have taken a wide bound from the emperor to the artisan, but 
every reader knows that each intermediate class is characterised by a 
love of gardening, and that the evidence is to be found in all degrees of 
residence, from a Brixton villa to Chatsworth. No fairer example could 
be selected to illustrate our universal gardenership than Sir William 
Temple, one of the wisest of politicians, and one of the most accom¬ 
plished of horticulturists. “ This negociator,” said the Abb4 Raynal, 
“ perhaps the most celebrated his country ever produced, appears to have 
been capable of effecting whatever he undertook:” and no other pane¬ 
gyric need be added than this—“ His chief maxim in politics was always 
to speak the truth ; and his sense of honour, that it was the only maxim 
worthy of an honest man.” He was the son of Sir John Temple, and 
born in 16*28 at London. He commenced his education under his mater¬ 
nal uncle, the learned Dr. Hammond, continued his studies at Bishop 
Stortford school, and concluded them under Dr. Cudworth at Emanuel 
College, Cambridge. From the University he proceeded abroad, and at 
the Restoration was chosen a member of the Irish Parliament. In 1665 
he went on a secret mission to Munster, was employed afterwards in 
forming the triple alliance between Sweden, Holland, and this country, 
and became resident minister at the Hague, in which capacity he pro¬ 
moted the union between the Prince of Orange and Princess Mary. In 
1679 he became Secretary of State, but in the following year retired from 
office to his country seat. Sheen in Surrey, where he was repeatedly visited 
by his sovereigns, Charles II., James II., and William III. He died in 
1699 , on the * 27 th of January. His works have been published in 2 vols. 
folio, and 4 vols. 8vo. In the first volume of them is contained his essay 
entitled, The Garden of Epicurus; or of Gardening in the Year 1680 . 
This essay is devoted chiefly to inculcate that taste for formal design in 
gardening which was the prevailing one of his time. When we compare 
it with the plan given by Lord Bacon in a preceding age for a similar 
construction, we find but this difference—that if both plans were reduced 
to practise, Sir William’s would be rather the most mathematical and 
undeviatingly formal. Sir William Temple’s beau ideal of a garden is 
that of a flat or gently sloping plot of an oblong shape, stretching away 
from the front of the house, the descent from which to it was from a 
terrace running the whole length of the house, by means of a flight of 
steps. Such a garden, he says, existed at Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, 
formed by the celebrated Lucy, Countess of Bedford, one of the chief 
wits of her time. It was on the slope of a hill, with two terraces, rising 
one over the other, and united by a magnificent flight of steps. A par¬ 
terre, wilderness, highly ornamented fountains, statues, alcoves, and 
cloisters, were its prominent parts and ornaments. When he descends to 
more practical speculations he is seldom in error, among which we may 
specify his observations upon planting peaches in the north of Britain, 
which experience has demonstrated to be correct, although Switzer seems 
to doubt the possibility above 100 miles from London. Sir William 
improved his knowledge of gardening during his stay at the Hague. He 
introduced several new fruits, especially of grapes. His name still 
attaches to a variety of the nectarine ; and every one knows the Moor 
Park Apricot. He had a garden at his seat at Sheen in Surrey, now 
occupied by Dr. Pinckney, to the good cultivation of which Evelyn bears 
this testimony :—“ The most remarkable things are his orangery and 
gardens, where the wall-fruit trees are most exquisitely nailed and 
trained.” Nothing can demonstrate more fully the delight Sir William 
took in gardening than this direction in his will—“ I desire my body may 
be interred at Westminster Abbey, near those two dear pledges (his wife 
and daughter) gone before me, but with as much privacy and as small 
expense as my executors shall find convenient; and I desire and appoint 
that my heart may be interred six feet underground, on the south-east 
side of the stone dial in my little garden at Moor Park.” Sir W. Temple 
affords another instance of the ruling passion unweakened even in death. 
Nor was this an unphilosophical clinging to that which it is impossible 
to retain; but rather a grateful feeling common to our nature. In 
his garden he had spent the calmest hours of a well-spent life, and 
where his heart had been most peaceful he wished its dust to mingle. He 
survived all his children, and the present Lord Palmerston is his heir- 
male; but two grand-daughters were alive at his death, one of whom 
married Nicholas Bacon, Esq., then proprietor of Shrubland Park, in 
Suffolk. 
Meteorology of the Week. —At Chiswick, from observations during 
the last twenty-four years, the average highest and lowest temperatures 
of these days are 42° and 31-7°, respectively. The greatest heat, 60°, was 
on the 19 th in 1828 ; and the lowest, 4£° below zero, or 36$° below the 
freezing point of water, on the 19 th in 1833. On 75 days rain fell, and 
93 days were fine. 
“We have now cheap glass, cheap timber, and cheap 
bricks; it is, therefore, time to endeavour to neutralize 
the uncertainty of our seasons by glazed structures ; for 
these, without the least addition of artificial heat, will 
give us the climate, in average seasons, of the south-west 
of France.” Thus writes Mr. Rivers in his pamphlet, 
entitled The Orchard House; or the Cultivation of Fruit 
Trees in Pots under Glass; and we need not tell the 
readers of our pages that we have been labouring 
strenuously in the same good field, and we claim pre¬ 
eminence over Mr. Rivers in the ratio of seventeen to 
five; since we have shown how a glazed structure for 
such purposes can be erected for five pounds, whereas 
Mr. Rivers’s orchard house costs seventeen. However, 
the latter is done by workmen, whilst ours must be 
erected chiefly by the amateur’s own hands. 
In whichever way erected, every one having a garden, 
and fond of gardening, should have such a structure; for 
the increase of pleasure and profit which are seemed by 
it is inconceivable by those little cultivators who have 
never had the aid of such a structure. Not only does it 
enable them to protect through the winter hundreds of 
plants which, without such shelter, they could not have 
to brighten and to vary the brightness of their borders 
in summer, but it enables them, if they grow fruit in 
pots according to Mr. Rivers’s plan, to defy the spring 
frosts, those fatal assailants of our fruit blossoms, and to 
bo sure of an early, though not abundant crop, with all 
that additional zest proceeding from the thought—“ These 
my skill promoted and my care preserved.” 
Mr. Rivers thus details the erection of one of his 
orchard houses; 
I will suppose that an orchard house thirty feet long is 
required. A ground plan, thirty feet long and twelve feet 
wide, must be marked out, ten posts or studs of good yellow 
deal, four inches by three, and nine feet in length, or if larch 
poles sixteen inches in girth can be procured, they are quite 
equal in durability; these latter must be cut in two, and the 
flat sides placed outwards; these posts or studs, whether 
larch or deal, must be fixed two feet in the ground firmly, 
and the ground ends must be charred two feet four inches 
from the bottom, which adds much to their durability: it 
No. CXX., Vol. V. 
