338 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, September 4, 1860. 
Well, Sir Joseph’s flower-beds are the fullest I have 
seen this season; but as it might seem like crowing on 
one’s own middin to say aught about them, or about 
those in the Experimental, just at this crisis of the season, 
and as an account of the whole place will be sure to be 
acceptable gossip to 10,000 gardeners, and of some use 
and benefit to other classes of our readers, I thought I 
could do nothing better than give it from memory, with¬ 
out notes, especially as I could not get it in among my 
notes on the Crystal Palace. Compared to the size of the 
Crystal Palace estate, that of the honourable member for 
Coventry, on the summit of Sydenham, is what another 
honourable member on the other side would call a mere 
fleabite. But then it is in the very form of a rifled 
musket, with the butt end towards the north end of the 
Palace, and not more than a stone’s throw from it. The 
house is an old, comfortable English mansion, and stands 
where the lock does on the stock ; the garden front, the 
sloping lawn, the terrace, and the boundary in front, 
come in, bay fashion, where the trigger is, and the hand- 
holder. The breech of the barrel is that side of the 
pleasure-ground next the kitchen garden, and the mouth 
end is that garden itself. The part between the lock and 
the butt of the stock is so much out of an ancient forest, 
pierced through with winding walks and accompanying 
masses of evergreens and other shrubs. To say that ail 
were highly artistic, or in good taste, would only raise the 
remark that little short of that could be expected. The 
house stands on the highest part of Sydenham Hill, and 
commands the same wide prospect as the Crystal Palace 
itself, looking over the archery-ground and the principal 
parts of the Crystal Palace gardens. There is a wide- 
paved verandah in front of the garden-entrance, the roof 
of which is covered with glass. The front of the veran¬ 
dah is open, and is supported by trellised pilasters, against 
which choice climbers are planted, and stone steps down 
to the walk in front. Under each of five pilasters is a 
raised circular bed by the side of the gravel-walk, just as 
the marble-base beds are round the crystal fountain inside 
the Palace. Here the climbers have a first start, ere their 
roots extend under the gravel-walk; and here, too, are 
fine masses of pure blue Hydrangeas blooming with un¬ 
wonted luxuriance. Before these come into bloom, and 
after they are over, the gay furnishing plants of the 
season are used in hidden pots to keep up a constant 
succession of bloom in front of the “ big hoose,” as they 
would say at Balmoral. From this large, open verandah 
to the left, extends a narrow verandah, 10 feet or 12 feet 
wide, and 18 yards long, also covered with glass, and is 
supported and furnished in front as the first, with a large 
flower-vase in the centre of each opening in front, filled 
with mixed flowers planted out. The vases are white, 
and on red-marble plinths. Opposite this side-verandah 
to the right, from the front door, is a south wing to the 
house. As the covered verandahs cannot thus extend 
on both sides of the entrance, a huge slab of looking- 
glass against the “ wing ” makes up the difference by 
reflection. For artistic effect this was the most called- 
for instance, to produce the “match pair ” by reflection, 
that I remember to have seen, anywhere. 
Between the front and side-verandahs stands one of the 
oldest-planted Wistaria sinensis in England. It extends 
twenty yards to the right, and twenty yards to the left, 
covering so much of these verandahs, and of that south 
wing of the house, and measures at the surface of the 
ground just thirty-six inches to a fraction ; for I had a sur¬ 
veying commissioner to give all measurements, and he was 
proof to the quarter of an inch in a bed. And against the 
back wall of the side-verandah, and beyond that noble or 
most noble Wistaria, are Camellias, gay-flowering plants 
for summer, and a host of fine climbers, which, like the 
Camellias, will stand the frost. Among them are Staun- 
tonia latifolia, Clematis lanuginosa in splendid bloom, 
other Clematis, Tecoma radicans major, Eugenia apiculata 
in dense masses of Myrtle-bloom, Cherry-pie in plenty 
for summer sweet, Passion-Flowers, Ceanothus rigidus, 
Cotoneaster Simmonsii —quite new to me, a beautiful wall- 
plant, with the habit of microphylla, but different in look 
and leaf, and very different in fruit; Jasminum nudijlorum , 
Forsythia suspensa, one of the most curious in botany of 
all Fortune’s plants from China, and others of more com¬ 
mon run. In front of this side-verandah, and between it 
and the walk, is a green sloping bank, and by a bend in the 
walk it is widest in the middle and narrows to both ends ; 
but as everything here must be first-rate artistic, this shape 
is thrown in a chain pattern, with small circular beds 
inside the chain, the centre bed being the largest, and each 
bed on either side of the centre diminishing in diameter 
to both ends. The chain is eighteen inches wide, and 
filled with one row of Purple King Verbena in front, and 
[ one row of Tropceolum elegans behind it. You never saw 
a better run all round anything before, and with a third 
row in front of the purple of something variegated would 
make an excellent beginning to a ribbon-border. Yards 
and yards are in this chain to prove the said Verbena 
and that elegans to be fit and proper lines in ribbons ; 
but, of course, they would need good handling. The 
; centre bed in the pattern within that chain is of Alma 
variegated Geranium, Sidonia, and Golden Chain —all 
gems, and all the beds on either side are gems also in 
pairs ; the one on the right corresponding to that on the 
left, and diminishing in size to both ends, to suit the run 
of the ground. Beyond this, and still on the left hand 
side, is a long sloping bank of flowers 38 yards from end 
to end, and, perhaps, 20 feet across in the widest part, 
for it was guessed only, as no one with a grain of sense 
would stalk across such a mass of beauty. 
The first 8 feet in depth at the back of this slope were 
of Scarlet Geraniums in one continued mass of bloom, 
the place being much sheltered from “ all the airts the 
wind can blaw,” except that facing the meridian. Then 
three feet of Calceolaria integrifolia, also very good; 
then another breadth of Scarlet Geranium; another of 
large upright plants of Mangles’ Variegated ; and the last 
18 inches at the bottom of the slope, and next the grass, 
were of the best telling mass of Lobelia speciosa I ever 
saw. The outline is both undulated by Nature, as it 
were, and curved artificially, which must have heightened 
the effect considerably. It is astonishing how a few kinds 
of common flowers can give such effect; but the secret 
is in the outline, and in the planting of the exact quantity 
of each simple colour. 
Beyond this bank is a wooded way to the kitchen 
garden. In front of the main walk which passes by the 
front door by these verandahs and flowering banks, is a 
sloping lawn free from beds, except top and bottom. At 
the top are corresponding beds to match the mass of 
blue Hydrangea and vases aforesaid, three circles 10 
feet across, and four large vases in the line of the beds. 
The beds have each a tall, branching Humea in the centre, 
five rows of Palace Scarlet, two rows of Flower of the 
Day, and blue Lobelia outside. All these beds, banks, 
and vases were in their prime when I saw them. At the 
bottom of the lawn are two huge beds of old evergreens, 
chiefly Arbutus, from thirty-five to forty feet in diameter. 
One is on the left, the other to the right of the centre 
view from the house across the lawn; and in the middle 
between them is a low bed of Rhododendrons. 
Round these three great masses of evergreens stands 
the rosery in curved lines ; and below all that, and out of 
sight from the garden-front of the house, is a terrace 
from one end of the garden to the other, with a Crystal 
Palace summer-house at each end of the terrace walk. On 
the lawn side of the terrace, is a row of Araucaria imbri- 
cata, and standard Rhododendrons, just as standards of it 
should be. They are planted 20 feet apart, or 40 feet 
between the Araucarias. From this terrace one looks all 
over the Crystal Palace grounds ; the highest part of the 
rough, rocky ground of the Palace Gardens making the 
foreground to the view to this terrace, and that part is 
