THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
113 
May 20. 
Shrubland garden the wonder of the age—there will be l 
nothing like it in England. The Hon. Lady Middleton ; 
showed me the plans that morning at their town house, j 
and explained all the details in full, and I could com¬ 
pare the whole to nothing I had heard of except the j 
Palace gardens at Sans Souci, in Germany. Besides my 
own hearty good wishes for the successful termination i 
of these extensive improvements, I shall here throw out j 
a hint which I hope will be scrupulously acted on, and j 
that is, that strangers should not press too much for 
adinission to see the gardens while these large works are ' 
in progress. Although I shall never lose an interest in 
these beautiful gardens, I would rather sit up all night 
to write about what they are doing round London, than 
that any one should be induced to trespass on Mr. 
Davidson’s valuable time from anything I w/ite, till he 
has got the whole into seeable order, and then I have no 
doubt they will allow me to describe the wonders in 
these pages. 
Meantime, let us stroll through the exhibition tents 
at Chiswick. To say that this was the best show the 
Society ever had in May, would be only one of the old 
dishes over again. Let me give a proof. 1 missed the 
two last May shows, as I have said already; before that, 
for fifteen years, I saw them all, and most of that time 
T was officially engaged in helping to give away at least a 
barrowload of gold and silver medals; and for ten years, 
at least, I could tell the names of the principal exhi¬ 
bitors the moment I saw their plants, and every new 
competitor had his skill strictly weighed by the judges, 
and his stall among the medallers was assigned him at 
once ; iu another year or two, we could predict to a cer¬ 
tainty if lie was ever likely to get a first prize from the 
progress already made; in short, all the plants exhibited 
were as familiar to us, after the first season, as school¬ 
fellows. But now, two years has made such improve¬ 
ments in these plants, that if they were to squeeze my 
poor ribs a second time at that narrow gate 1 could not 
tell to whom one of them belonged, or by whom they 
were grown, and that, I think, justifies me in saying that 
a great stride has been made in the improved growth and 
shapes of these splendid specimens. The plant which 
of all others attracted the most attention at this show, 
and which puzzled most of the gardeners and nursery¬ 
men present, is a native of Mysore, in the East Indies; 
it was exhibited by Mr. Veitch, of Exeter, and I sup¬ 
pose was discovered by Mr. Lob ; it was labelled Hexa- 
centras mgsorensis, but it should have been Hexacentris, 
which means six knobs, spurs, horns, or projections, 
being a compound of hex, six, and kentron, a spur, and 
these projections are to be seen round the edges of this 
most singular flower, which I hardly know how to 
describe in our fire-side way of explaining such things. 
First of all, the plant is a graceful climber, of about the 
same strength as the Clematis ccerulea or Sieboldii, and 
it was trained in the most fascinating way possible, after 
this manner:—Suppose a lady’s parasol was uncovered, 
and the handle stuck in a pot; the ribs out at full 
length, with a ring all round the points; the plant carried 
up and trained all over the ribs and ring; then suppose 
an artificial flower-maker to fasten a row of dark brown 
pieces of string, four or five inches long, and two or 
three inches apart, all round the ring; from the lower 
end of each string, four or five flowers turn up clustered 
together; now let a sylph touch the handle of the pa¬ 
rasol with her little finger, and in her most gentle mood, 
and all these flowers are in motion, like so many fairies 
dancing in the air, and at a short distance you cannot 
tell what sustains them, nothing so bewitching has ever 
yet been done even with artificial flowers. Then, the 
shape and the colours of the flowers are just as curious. 
Their shape is nearly that of the Cardinal Monkey flower 
{Mimulus cardinalis), the size much about the same, 
and the colour, dark brown on the back of the flower, 
and the open front, facing you, a bright lemon yellow, 
something like the colours in Biynonia capreolata. 
“Did you see the fairy ring under the parasol?” was 
everybody’s question. Whole groups of gardeuers and 
nurserymen might be seen staring at this wonder all 
day, D. Beaton amongst the rest, all surmising what 
order of plants could produce such strange forms, and 
at last concluding that it must be a kind of Biynonia. 
Mr. Cole, of Oldford, near Birmingham, an old pupil of 
mine, was the only one I heard dissenting from this 
conclusion, and sure enough he was right, and his 
reason is conclusive. The flower has no calyx, and a 
Bignonia is never seen without one. Mr. Veitch, jun., 
was on the spot, and he kindly allowed us to handle one 
of the flowers, and, presto, it turns out to be a Thun- 
bergia! a full-grown one too. There are the two bracts, 
the ring where the calyx ought to be, the gaping flower, 
the exact form of the old Thunbergia coccinea, without 
the projections formed by the wavy sides, from which 
the plant was 'named, and which, with a feathery pro¬ 
cess on the stamens, distinguishes it from the true 
Thunbergias, according to the most able botanist for 
that class of plants in Europe, Nees von Esenbeck, to 
whom the acanthads in Dr. Wallick’s collections were 
entrusted for examination and arrangement, when the 
great work on the rare plants of India were being pub¬ 
lished, and very likely a dry specimen of this Hexa¬ 
centris was among the lot, for this German professor 
is our authority for the name. 
The next great lion of the day was Medinilla magni¬ 
fied. It is a most magnificent thing, certainly. Any one 
who knows a Melastoma, Rhexia, or Osbeckia will have 
no difficulty in reeonizing the leaf of any plant in this 
extensive order. They have all strong veiny ribs, run¬ 
ning from top to bottom, and they always grow in pairs; 
the half of a leaf of this Medinilla w r ould tell that the 
.plant is a Melastomad; the flowers grow in immense 
clusters, and hang down exactly like large bunches of 
grapes; and if you imagine a large bunch of grapes 
with shoulders all the way down, the berries to be 
turned into flowers, and the colour of the flower, calyx, 
and footstalk, a pale coral, you have this magnified. It 
does not want the flowers to be open to show the charms 
of these congregations of corals, and very few of them 
were open on this plant, only one here and there on a 
bunch, and these seemed like pink stars looking through 
a coral streak in the Aurora Borealis. If envy was allow¬ 
able, who would not envy the Messrs. Veitch for this 
one plant, if they had never introduced another. Then 
they grow their plants so well, and train them so beau¬ 
tifully, that few gardeners can come up to them at all. 
The plants in all the tents were never better arranged 
for effect. Looking down a whole side put one in mind 
of some of the richest views in the Crystal Palace. 
The banks of Orchids were particularly grand and im¬ 
posing. The Rose tents surprised every one. The Chinese 
Azaleas put you in mind of the flowing and flowery 
imageries of the celestials. The Geraniums were few 
and excellent, Calceolarias so and so, and Cinerarias 
execrable, nor worth the pots they were growing in, ex¬ 
cept two —Prince Arthur, the most splendid one I ever 
saw, a fiery crimson, and Amy Robsart, a shade between 
lilac, purple, and puce. There were three or more col¬ 
lections of Pansies exhibited in pots. That by Mr. 
Turner, of Slough, was almost perfect; at any rate, fully 
as good as was the best collection of roses at the first 
trial three or four years ago. The new Belgian Daisies 
are a complete cheat; they are not worth a button as a 
collection; but there are a few nice sorts, and if they 
had the gumption to “send out” four or five, instead of a 
full collection, the public would be pleased; but, I re¬ 
peat it, the whole thing is a cheat, and it is a libel on 
our common nature that any of us should slur over 
such things in print, as well as a disgrace to the whole 
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