792 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
August 14, 1886. 
LONDON GARDENING-.—Y. 
Experientia docet. 
Experience does teach, certainly, and it is often 
taken for granted that all its pupils learn,—but in the 
great school of this great teacher there are many dunces 
who remain dunces to the end. So far as gardening, 
however, is concerned, its lessons are so simple and 
direct, and the penalties attending their neglect are so 
impressive, that they cannot well be disregarded. The 
lesson-books in which experience has taught me have 
been five ; first, an old garden iji which I found myself 
as a child,—then three new gardens made by me, in 
succession, where never garden had been before,— 
lastly, the little old London garden which is mine still. 
And a sixth volume, as yet unopened, awaits me in 
the shape of a country garden to be made, I hope this 
autumn, out of-an old farm-yard ! 
Distance I daresay lends some enchantment to the 
view, but no garden that I ever see looks to me like 
the first I knew, the big-walled garden in the old 
country town, the garden of my childhood, my spelling- 
book of flowers, as it were; no Boses, howsoever 
globular and grand, seem so sweet as the Moss Eose on 
my mother’s plate, and the Eose de Meaux on mine, 
which used to be laid there just before breakfast on 
summer mornings, by my father’s hand :—no Pear- 
blossom looks so snowy as the clusters round the nursery 
window which the setting sun used to flush in Aprils 
long ago. I shall reproduce “phrases” of that old 
garden, as far as I can, ill laying out the ex-farmyard ; 
I am bent upon having a Solomon’s Seal just where my 
mother’s bushy fellow grew,—not an inch nearer or 
farther from the path ! There must be Everlasting 
Peas clasping the stem of an Apple tree just as they 
did there,—and Tree Fuchsias with shade from the 
north just near enough to keep their blooms back till 
September, like the big specimens of “gracilis” whose 
flowers were always wet and heavy with dew on the 
morning of the 16th, when I used to gather great 
bunches for my mother on her birthday. 
But my business now is neither with the past nor the 
future, but with the present—the London—garden, and 
with a few of the plants which will consent to live 
happily in it. Of the three new gardens, made by me 
at different times, of which I have cursorily spoken, 
the first was six, the second ten, the third four miles 
from London ; the first was on gravel, the second on 
yellow loam with a sub-soil of chalky shingle, the 
third on London clay. (The sixth or coming garden, 
I may mention, is on sand pure and simple.) I have 
thus enjoyed the acquaintance not only of various soils, 
but also of London smoke at various distances. Ten 
miles off I just knew it by sight, and that was all,—six 
miles off I was obliged to acknowledge it as a more than 
occasional visitor to the neighbourhood,—four miles 
off we became more intimate than I liked,—and now, 
in a real London garden, our intimacy has deepened 
into a familiarity which belies the proverb, unhappily, 
in that it breeds no contempt ! Here it is no visitor, it 
is a quasi bailiff-in-possession, blighting by its offensive 
presence what does not belong to it, and if out of sight 
for a brief season it is sure to be here again directly ; 
such officials, I have understood, are warmly disliked 
by the unfortunate householders on whom they fasten 
themselves, but as to contempt,—that I should imagine 
is scarcely the emotion they inspire. 
It must not be forgotten that I treat only of what is 
practicable in the ordinary little oblong London garden, 
not by any means of gardening possibilities in London 
at large, including the public Parks and gardens north 
and south of the river, and the spacious gardens belong¬ 
ing to a few favoured houses—“mansions,” as the 
agents love to call them—here and there. There 
scarcely any limits need be set, except such as fog and 
fog’s offspring can impose ; no frowning houses can rob 
so wide a space of light, no walls check the flow of 
ground-currents of reviving air, or provide our friends 
the cats with the esplanade and staircases which help 
so handsomely to develop the social side of life as they 
view itthe soil can be just what you please when you 
have a public purse to draw upon, and as to the water, 
—can the owner of a poor little dry-as-dust garden, 
which has never in its life had as much water as it 
could drink, be expected to dwell dispassionately on the 
quantity always at the service of Park flowers ? Ho • 
piles of buns are not the things to look at when one is 
hungry ; let us call in all roving glances, and con- 
entrate our attention on the narrow possibilities in 
the narrow enclosures owned by people of more or less 
narrow means, and perhaps—if we look close enough, 
and long enough, and with really wide-open eyes,— 
these poor little possibilities may widen enough to give 
us quite a little shock of pleasure. 
Suppose, my would-be London gardener, we consider 
the plants within the radius of your modest ambition 
in three groups,—Perennials or “Herbaceous” subjects, 
Bulbs, and Annuals. 
The first remark I would make about the Perennials 
is this: the smooth-leaved sorts are the best for you. I 
shall have something to say presently about Alpine 
Auriculas in pots, but I will refer to them passingly 
here as border plants because they furnish a convenient 
example of the smooth-leaved tribe. There cannot be 
a more beautiful flower than the Auricula, and its 
temper is as sweet as its face ; it smiles at all the dis¬ 
advantages of the London garden and flourishes in spite 
of them, and for this complaisance the smoothness of 
its leaves in no small measure accounts. The “blacks” 
do not cling to a smooth surface,—they are easily 
washed off, and if the rain that sweeps them away is 
black rain, yet a liquid preparation does not choke the 
pores of a plant like powder administered dry or 
moistened into a tenacious paste. Eough-leaved plants 
are very apt to flag and fail (I do not say die outright) 
in the London garden, and especially those that flower 
in the spring. The Hollyhock and Foxglove, and some 
of the Lychnis family, all rough-leaved summer 
bloomers, succeed fairly in some parts of London, though 
not in all; the winter soot-laden rains are succeeded by 
somewhat cleaner ones as fires and fogs grow fewer and 
the sun gains power, so that the summer flowerers have 
time to put forth their strength after they are partly 
freed from the granular impurity which has inlaid and 
overlaid them through all the dark days. But Prim¬ 
roses, to take a familiar instance, have no such chance ; 
their rugged leaves catch and keep the blacks as Utrecht 
velvet would, and then blooming-time comes before 
washing-time. I have large Primrose-roots in my 
garden which are now in a most thriving state, the 
leaves richly green, erect, and healthy, and the whole 
habit vigorous. But not a single flower did they 
produce, and when they should have been flowering 
they were poor miserable looking objects, brown and 
shrivelled and stunted,—out of heart, in fact, in the not 
yet relaxed grip of the arch-enemy. In choosing spring¬ 
flowering occupants for your garden, then, remember 
that plants (as well as indoor appointments) that will 
wash are the best for winter wear in London. 
Now let us turn to our list, and give the Perennials ; 
we enter upon it the names by which they are most 
commonly known. I look out of the window to make 
it:—there they are,—Tree Lupins, Tree Fuchsias, 
Double and Perennial Sunflowers, Snapdragons, Sweet 
Williams, Pinks, Sweet Woodruff, Perennial Corn¬ 
flowers, Lilies of the Valley, Michaelmas Daisies, 
Potentillas, Saxifragas in variety, Chrysanthemums, 
(Enotheras, Pentstemons, Funkias, Phloxes, Ane¬ 
mones (“Honorine Jobert”), Hepaticas, — Alpine 
Auriculas by the dozen, clumps of Arabis, of Yellow 
Alyssum, of Aubrietia. There is the Globe Ranun¬ 
culus or “Batchelors’ Buttons,” and there the little 
Campanula muralis. Ah ! that reminds me :—I must 
mention a few plants separately from those whose 
names I have just dotted down in the sweet confusion 
in which they grow ; a few which do not prosper with 
me here, but ought to prosper, according to the reports 
of other London experimentalists. Such are Campa¬ 
nulas ( ‘ Muralis excepted), Violets Heartseases, 
Double Daisies, Wallflowers, Larkspurs, and Carnations. 
Campanulas yield nothing but a bunch of leaves, 
Violets refuse to flower, Heartseases dwindle, Daisies— 
and often Wallflowers—die in the winter, Carnations 
wither and turn yellow before a bud is ready to open. 
The failure of Campanulas and Larkspurs (Delphiniums) 
I cannot explain Violets, I am inclined to think, 
pine for ground-ventilation, for the further they are 
from a wall the more healthy they look, and we know 
that their favourite home is a -warm slope backed by a 
hedge, where they are at the same time partly screened 
and abundantly ventilated ; in summer mine are as 
prodigal of leafy promises as the Primroses, but spring 
finds them indisposed to waste their purple sweetness 
on such air as I can get for them. Heartseases are 
only too apt to degenerate everywhere, and I ascribe 
their speedy relapse here into barbaric poverty to the 
dry and rapidly exhausted soil; in my garden on the 
clay they flourish luxuriantly, and with less attention 
than they have received in this one. As to Daisies 
and V allflowers, popularly considered so easy of culture, 
all mine succumbed to last winter’s frosts, which were 
the deadlier for the floods of autumn rain that preceded 
them : such wholesale slaughter surprised me, for I 
should have thought that in so dry and sheltered a spot 
the Daisies, at all events, which can bear a good deal 
of moisture, would have an excellent chance of escape. 
Doubtless the stagnant air of a very “shut-in” garden, 
the worst of all my antagonists, is at the bottom of 
this mischief too ; it covertly lowers the “tone” of 
many plants, and robs them of their power to resist 
the onslaught of overt foes. Carnations refuse to be 
wooed here—and indeed Pinks too often make them¬ 
selves disagreeable—because of this brooding enemy ; 
in more open situations in London, where trees are 
fewer and walls lower, I have seen very fine specimens, 
so nobody need be deterred from growing them because 
I cannot grow them successfully. 
After all, the malcontents are but a small group, far 
too insignificant to be a serious discouragement. Be¬ 
sides, some of them, at least, as I have said, would not 
be malcontents in London gardens with more favour¬ 
able entourages: —high above my high walls rise my 
neighbouis trees, and as my garden is at the bottom of 
a slope, the one behind it is on a considerably higher 
level, and the shrubs there have a start of 2 ft. or 3°ft., 
even at the lower end, which converts them into giants 
from my poor plants’ standpoint. My 8 ft. Sunflowers, 
even on tip-toes, cannot get near enough to their 
boastful arms to worry them, and we all know how far 
heads are above arms ! So much for the look of things 
northward ; and east and west are two large old Pear 
trees, both in other people’s gardens, which effectually 
screen the middle of mine from the morning and the 
evening sun. The house blocks out amenities from the 
south, excepting a 5 ft. strip at the western side ;_ 
but suiely I need say no more ? If I can grow flowers 
here successfully enough to give me (and my children) 
pleasure and healthy employment all the year round, 
what may not be done by this, that, and the other 
feminine Londoner, more fortunately circumstanced 
than I ?— C. A. G. 
-—- 
DENDROBIUM SUPERBIENS. 
This beautiful Dendrobe, introduced from Torres 
Straits in 1877 by Mr. B. S. Williams, is unquestion¬ 
ably one of the best of the many good things sent out 
from the Victoria and Paradise Nurseries. It is an 
amateur’s Orchid par excellence, being always in bloom, 
and so beautiful withal that no amateur’s stove, how¬ 
ever small, should be without it. It blooms from 
old stems as freely as from young ones; and as 
shown in the accompanying illustration, bears long 
racemes with from a dozen to twenty-five flowers on 
each. The sepals are dark purple and beautifully 
reticulated, the petals longer than the sepals, and of a 
soft shade of purple, and the lip purple with five keels 
on the disk. Under good cultivation the stems grow 
from 2 ft. to 3 ft. high, and are furnished with thick 
oblong-acute leaves. Mr. Williams grows the plant in 
pans or baskets suspended from the roof, and an ordi¬ 
nary stove temperature suits it admirably. 
-—- 
BATTERSEA PARK. 
Thirty-three years ago there stretched along the 
south side of the Thames, at Battersea, what might 
literally be described as a waste and howling wilder¬ 
ness. Most of the howling, by the way, was heard on 
the day when sober and order-loving people seek rest 
and quiet, and attend the services of church or chapel. 
The river, in those days, seemed to have its “own,” 
but not “sweet, way. By the smooth, slimy banks 
was a wide margin of No Man’s Land, dotted here and 
there with stagnant pools, and furrowed with noisome 
water-courses, half hidden under rank grasses, reeds, 
and nettles. Beyond were the shanties and tumble- 
down cottages of outer Battersea ; and then a zone of 
market gardens, from which, in spring-time, when the 
south wind blew, came the scent of Wallflowers and 
blossoming fruit trees. Along the margin of the 
dismal swamp were the tents of gipsies, the caravans of 
travelling slioivmen, the booths of bruisers, and an in¬ 
discriminate assemblage of the rascaldom of the greatest 
city in the w'orld. Hither flocked, on Sunday morn¬ 
ings especially, by road and river, pugilists, pigeon- 
shooters, gamblers, dog and cock-fighters, and a host 
