mn THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S COMPANION.— Eebuuaby 24, 1857. 
Well, I spent a whole day on the premises, and I think 
I have been three times in every house, pit, room, or 
office on the establishment, with the note-book in my 
hand the whole time, and if I missed one turn of the 
screw he must be a better gardener and a more ex¬ 
perienced man than your humble servant to convince 
me of it; and if I make any mis-statement I hope some 
one on the establishment will take the trouble to put me 
right. The reasons I have for being so very exact in 
these things are obvious enough to the trade and to 
most of our best gardeners; but the world at large may 
not know the “ reasons.” 
Mr. John Weeks, like Mr. James Veitch, had the ad¬ 
vantage of having been born with a silver spoon in his 
mouth. His father was a garden architect and engineer, 
and also was the first engineer in London who took up 
an independent plan of his own for heating hothouses 
with hot water. I knew the father very well, and be¬ 
tween 1830 and 1832 I went to him several times to get 
a leaf out of his book on the hot-water system. Now, I 
do not know if it be a fact, or the hard word idiosyncrasy; 
hut some say that one may suck in principles with his 
mother’s milk, and others say, no, that cannot be; but 
they know that certain peculiarities are often trans¬ 
mitted from father to son without sucking—“ it goes in 
the blood; ” and it would seem that what “ goes in the 
blood” is of the very greatest moment to a man in 
business. 
Mr. Weeks is the first London hothouse builder and 
hot-water engineer who has taken up the nursery trade in 
addition to his father’s trade, and on that account there 
is some of that jealousy we hear of as only peculiar to 
the French florists against him; and very likely if a 
nurseryman, after taking to his father’s trade, was to 
take to hothouse building, and to heating all manner of 
buildings in addition, all the hothouse builders, &c., near 
him would sing out against him more or less, that kind of 
singing being one of the things which “ go in the blood;” 
but, as an old observer of all manner of things about 
gardening and the trades alluded to, I have no hesitation 
in saying that it would be a most capital thing for the 
public at large if more hothouse builders would add 
a nursery to their “ establishments,” and if as many 
nurserymen would take to the trade of hothouse building 
in addition to the nursery business; and my reason for 
saying so is the vast improvement I met with here on 
the more usual ways of heating so many houses and 
pits from so many boilers. If a nurseryman could 
make as much improvement on the system of hothouse 
building as Mr. Weeks has done on heating, it would 
be a great gain to our “ interest” in general. 
The best way to show the great extent of glass which 
is here heated by one boiler (and hardly two houses or 
two pits are heated exactly to the same degree, which 
involves a nicety of adjustment), I say, the best way to 
show this is to go over the houses one by one first, 
and then to describe how the heating is applied in detail; 
but, first of all, to say that the sole management of the 
nursery department of the firm is under the able superin¬ 
tendence of Mr. Charles Gruneberg, from Frankfort-on- 
the-Maine, a gentleman who was “ brought up ” to the 
business by his father, a well-known nurseryman in that 
part of Germany, and that he afterwards studied the art 
in almost all the capitals of Europe; that when he was 
first in London, twenty years since, he passed a con¬ 
siderable time as the principal assistant to your humble 
servant in the management of one of the largest private 
collections ot plants, and then one of the most cele¬ 
brated collections round London, and that he is now 
established as a partner with Mr. Weeks, having, as I 
have just said, the entire management and superin¬ 
tendence of the “ horticultural department ” on his own 
shoulders. I need hardly say that for “ auld lang 
syne” I wish him all the success which his skill and 
industry are sure to command in such a firm. Indeed, 
I could see with one eye that his style of plant-growing 
and the healthy, good-looking appearance of the stock 
throughout were the sure test of that success of which 
he spoke himself in terms of high approval; and when 
I say he is a thorough bedding-out-plants man, a lady’s 
man, and a man who can speak and write the principal 
modern languages of Europe, I think I may safely con¬ 
gratulate Mr. Weeks on his good fortune in having 
obtained Mr. Gruneberg for an active partner. 
The nursery fronts the Fling’s Road, with a large 
conservatory, sixty-two feet long by twenty-six feet wide, 
in the centre ; a seed-room on the left of the conservatory 
as you enter, and beyond the seed-room another house, 
forty-five feet by sixteen feet, devoted to Heaths from 
two years old and upwards, and the whole in first-rate 
style of cultivation. On the right of the conservatory 
is a large show-room, to correspond with the opposite 
seed-room; and beyond the show-room a similar house 
to the Heath house, which is filled with Pelargoniums; j 
also Fancy and French Pelargoniums. The new French 
style of this flower seems to carry the day everywhere; | 
and there was no exception here to the rule of selling 
six of them for one of our own raising. So much 
for fashion! They were training these Geraniums when ; 
I called, and I never saw a more uniform, good style of 
low, bushy growth in a house of the kind at that season 
of the year. From this front range the rest of the 
houses shoot backwards from the right and left ex¬ 
tremities. The first pair of houses on either side, with 
the back of the conservatory, form three sides of a 
square, seventy-two feet by sixty-five feet. In this square j 
they wore getting out foundations for a grand new j 
house to cover the whole of the square, and to form a 
“winter garden”—a style of house first “brought 
out” on the Continent, and that style, let me add, which , 
will and must be generally adopted in England before j 
long by all the great gardening families who can afford 
the expense. The rest of the glass beyond this solid j 
block, as it were, consists more or less of detached ranges, 
with the main flow and return pipes under the ground, 
and across breadths of gravel; but, as I have said be¬ 
fore, I shall explain the whole process of heating from 
beginning to end after I have done with the plants. 
No. 1 is the central conservatory, and the principal 
entrance for carriage company. It is entered under a 
glass dome, is the principal show-house, and the arrange¬ 
ment is at once pleasing and unique in this country. 
The edgings all round the beds and sides are perfectly 
original in these islands. They are made of two kinds of 
plants in contrast, and a flower-bed could be edged with 
the same plants in summer; and one of the beds in the 
Experimental Garden will be so edged to begin with, 
but the way must be explained another day. Here it is 
made first by planting out of pots long plants of Irish 
Ivy along the walks, and training the shoots right and 
left, and close to one another to the breadth of nine 
inches, and that breadth or width is kept as close as on 
any Ivyed wall; and immediately behind the Ivy stand 
No. 48-pots full of Isolepis gracilis or pygmcea, so close 
together that the grass-like plants meet all round. I 
never yet saw an edging in-doors which made a better 
impression on my eye than this. Perhaps in bright 
sunshine it might not tell so well, or it might tell better. ! 
At any rate, to keep up for the demand caused, no doubt, 
by this edging, I noticed nearly 2000 plants of Isolepis j 
gracilis in this nursery, and I was told ladies would have 
it for “ furnishing.” It does in heat or cold, and will 
do out of doors in summer, and is the most elegant 
drooping Grass in the world, though not a Grass 
botanically. 
In the beds are planted or plunged some of the finest 
and largest Orange trees on sale in this country, two of 
them, a match pair, having better heads than any of 
