£02 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
August 20, 1892. 
MY HOLIDAY ON THE 
CONTINENT. 
I am spending a brief holiday on the Continent in 
visiting some of the chief nurseries there, and I am 
making notes as I go along which may be of some 
interest to jour readers. My starting point was 
Ghent, in the world-known nursery of Van Houtte, 
which has now been formed into a company, though 
under the direction still of Mr. Van Houtte's son. I 
was met there by the foreman of the nursery, who 
in conversation told me that he had been in the 
employ of the Van Houtte’s now for forty-eight 
years, and he certainly did not look more than, fifty- 
eight or sixty. 
At the entrance of the nursery is a nice pond, at 
the side of which was a very large Hydrangea 
panniculata grandiflora in full bloom and a very 
healthy well-grown Banana tree was planted close 
by, while numerous blooms of the white Water Lily, 
the sweet-scented variety, covered the pond itself. 
The firm possess sixty glass houses and three 
thousand frames. In the first house I visited the 
Tillandsia argentea was growing, and apparently 
without roots, though the foreman informed me that 
it required water from time to time. I was much 
struck with the growth of the Alocasia Puccinia with 
its immense leaves. In this house there were three 
kinds of Pavonia growing, and the Centrosolenia 
bullata, the Phyllogathis rotundifolia, and the 
Vriesias in full bloom were well worthy of notice. 
We turned our steps to the young Palm houses 
where I found many thousands of plants, all looking 
very healthy, in pots sunk in flax refuse. I under¬ 
stand that this refuse is very cheap in Ghent and 
that it ferments very freely. I was much amused at 
the length of the spouts (some 4^ ft. long) of the 
water cans used for the Palms which are pretty 
thick together and difficult to get at with an ordinary 
can. Messrs. Van Houtte can boast a show of very 
fine Begonias, some of the finest I have ever seen. 
Some of the flowers measured 6Jin. across. Their 
show of Gloxinias in six houses was also fine, though 
the flowers of many were not of the largest, but the 
plants were seeding. 
The display outside was far from a cheerful one, 
everything being parched up for lack of rain. Be¬ 
sides, as at home, they have suffered from cold nights. 
Only twice since March has any rain fallen, and 
then only slight showers, and there have been no 
thunderstorms. I am told that one hundred and 
twenty-five tons of water per day are used in the 
nurseries. Labour is cheap, much cheaper than with 
us. A labouring man gets twelve shillings a week, in 
summer commencing at six in the morning and 
working till seven with two hours off, and in winter 
he is paid for his work at about the same rate per 
hour I did not quit the establishment without see¬ 
ing the collection of Bertolonias of which there are 
a large variety. Personally 1 think I like best the 
variety with the leaf spotted as with pearls, though 
I understand that the spots become fewer after the 
spring. I was shown a very fine hybrid obtained 
from a plant sent out as a Bertolonia orientalis 
guttata crossed with a Sonerilla, Monsieur Hiba. 
The silver lines on the leaves of this hybrid are 
very delicate. 
Passing on to Brussels I was glad to get to dinner — 
what a splendid slice of squash melon you get as a 
hors d'ceuvre ! We hardly ever get these Melons in 
England. On the side table too w-ere some very 
fine Celery and green Almond Nuts which are also 
very rarely seen with us. The petits pois, are always 
little, and though very good do not compare with 
our Marrowfats, but a Pigeon Hongrois they gave me 
compared singularly with an English partridge. I 
wonder whether it could have been a partridge after 
all, though the date was only the 6th of August! 
Quedlinburg. 
Quedlinburg was my next place to visit. It is some¬ 
what difficult of access, but I was fortunate enough 
to catch an express for Leipzic, stopping at Huller- 
stadt which is the easiest route to go by. For miles 
before Quedlinburg is reached the country is almost 
entirely sown with Beetroot, from which the sugar of 
Germany is made, and as I got nearer I found that 
most of the land was reserved for seed. Quedlinburg 
lies in a basin at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, 
though they seemed to me like hills of the skipping 
and playing order, and it is from here and from 
Erfurt that the chief of the seeds of the world come, 
especially may I mention Asters, Stocks, Wallflowers, 
Balsams, Zinnias and annual Phloxes. The grass 
seeds are grown in and about Darmstadt. 
My first visit was paid to Mr. F. Roemer who, by- 
the-bye, issues a catalogue in English, and whose 
Pansies are, I believe, among the best. Mr. Roemer 
himself was kind enough to take me round his 
garden. Young boys of from ten to twelve were 
gathering the seeds in canvas bags. The first bed 
that I observed, was one of Mignonette Imperialis 
planted 15 in. apart. Then the Pansy beds 
of which the new Canary Bird was a feature but the 
blooms at this time of the year are very small and 
Quedlinburg like Ghent has suffered very much from 
drought. I noticed a very fine bed of Salpiglossis 
grandiflora, flowers of all hues. 
We turned out of the walled garden into the fields 
and walked through an avenue of Mountain Ash in 
full berry. Here the land seemed to be cut up into 
allotments of from one to six acres, belonging to 
different people. In some Barley was growing, then 
came a crop of Potatos, and then a crop of flowers ; 
this time Verbenas belonging to Mr. Roemer. The 
Scarlet Defiance was specially fine, and some of the 
flower heads were so large and round as to resemble 
almost huge Carnations. A further walk through 
the fields brought us to another allotment belonging 
to Mr. Roemer, at a distance of about half a mile 
from the walled garden, cropped with various 
flowers. 
Here a bed of Lobelia, Crystal Palace, particularly 
took may fancy, for the colour was greatly 
enhanced by numbers of white butterflies dancing 
among and over the bloom. Then a bed of small- 
flowered Petunias and beds of Senecios of all colours, 
plants which I think should be much more cultivated 
in the gardens at home than they are. Back again 
to the walled garden, where thousands of Stocks were 
staged against the wall, all singles bearing seeds, which, 
by careful selection of the plants, produce eighty per 
cent, of double-flowering plants next year. A very - 
fine collection of Petunias was located under a glass 
covering, and they were being fecundated with a hair 
brush. The Zinnias were a sight in themselves, and 
the Lilliput variety throwing a quantity of flowers 
especially pleased me. There is a small amount of 
glass in the garden where some Gloxinias were growing 
which compared favourably with any I have seen. I 
measured the breadth of one flower, and from rim to 
rim it was 4 in. The wages paid here are much the 
same as they are in Ghent, and by far the greater 
part of the population of Quedlinburg is engaged in 
garden work. 
The largest establishment at Quedlinburg, and in 
fact in the world, is that of the Brothers Dippe, and 
in speaking of what I saw with them, it is almost im¬ 
possible to go into detail. My good friend, Mr. 
Peter Veitch, of Exeter, had given me a letter of in¬ 
troduction to Mr. Carl Dippe, who received me most 
kindly and was good enough to place a carriage at 
my disposition to drive to the various parts of 
interest. It was here that I first saw' a shifting tent 
for pricking out. It is a square tent of some 14 ft., 
easily handled, and under this the men work, and 
they and the young plants are both shaded from the 
sun. The amount of land under cultivation by the 
Dippes is over 6,200 acres. Their seed warehouses 
are like hugh barracks. They cultivate sixteen acres 
of Pansies alone, through which I walked. Every 
kind, of course, was there, but a semi-double white 
one, which has not yet been sent out, chiefly struck 
me. 130 acres are devoted to Asters, and large or 
small pieces of land to other flowers according to the 
demand. The Swan River Daisies, blue, rose, and 
white, were in full bloom, and have a very charming 
effect, Messrs. Dippe are not only seed growers, but 
must be farmers to a large extent, as they have some 
4,000 sheep stalled to eat some of the leavings after 
the seed is gathered. I was shown a plot of some 
fourteen acres of seed Beet The plants had all 
been planted out in the spring, after undergoing a 
trial of their sugar-growing qualities. Each Beet 
had had a piece scooped out of it as with a cheese 
scoop, and this piece had been subjected to a chemi¬ 
cal trial or analysis, lasting in each case about twenty 
minutes. If the trial showed the Beet was up to 
quality, it was planted out ; if not, it was cast on one 
side. It is claimed by this process that the sugar- 
producing power of the Beet has been raised from 
about 8 per cent, to 17 per cent. 
My next visit was paid to the establishment of 
Messrs. Sattler & Bethge, who have a small seed 
garden, but whose speciality is - seeds and plants 
raised under glass. A large grass plot lies at the 
entrance of the garden laid out with carpet bedding, 
and here the Begonia semperflorens " Vernon ” was 
planted to good effect. The glass extends over about 
ten acres, and in the first house I visited Coleus 
only were growing. A list was handed to me of some 
three hundred and sixty named varieties, of which a 
dozen were of the giant kind. I may specially 
mention one, Carl Abs, named after a strong man 
who used to exhibit in Hamburg, the giant leaves 
and dark red colour of which were particularly 
handsome. The next house contained Tydaeas all 
looking very healthy and well grown. The next, 
Begonias of the Rex type, of which 176 varieties are 
grown. Then several houses of Gloxinias, many of 
the improved type with exquisite tracery on the seg¬ 
ments. Primulas (Chinese) are a speciality of this 
establishment, and I was shown one house, measur¬ 
ing 160 yards long, which was filled for the fifth 
time this year with Primula seedlings. There are 
many other horticultural establishments in Quedlin¬ 
burg which I had not the time to visit. I was every¬ 
where received with great courtesy, and can 
mention mine host of “ The Bear ” as keeping a very 
comfortable house where the cooking is properly at¬ 
tended to. 
Erfurt. 
Erfurt, although a town of 72,000 inhabitants, seems 
to boast of no hotel. At all events the hotel in which 
I stayed, though mentioned as the first in the 
town, was very dirty and the cooking execrable. My 
first visit was paid to the establishment of Mr. 
Benary, a name celebrated throughout the whole 
seed world. I was most courteously received and 
shown everything that I desired to see. The house 
of business itself is very large, and every attention 
has been given for rendering the detail work as easy 
as possible for the employes. The Petunias staged 
here were particularly fine, all ready for fertilization. 
To mention one, the Steel-blue veined variety was 
particularly handsome. A very large show of grand 
Fuchsias in one of the houses, with a particularly 
pretty creeper running along it, Rhodochiton 
volubile. In one of the beds outside Begonia 
Martiana gracilis was growing very freely. 
I expressed a desire to see the Carnations and 
Picotees after seeing the houses, and was taken to a 
garden full of annuals where the Carnations were 
staged, numbering some 13,000 plants. The blooms 
were nearly over, but the flowers that w r ere left were a 
very handsome sight. Amongst others that u'ere in 
good flower were Marie Wilke, Little Ernst Benary, 
Richard Tryan, Frederick Alexander, Alida,Esmarch, 
Gustav Freytag, the latter very floriferous, and at 
the end of each stage there w'ere some two dozen 
pots of Germania, of which the Messrs. Benary are 
very proud. 
In the annual garden itself was a bed of Papaver 
glaucum, or Tulip Poppy, a lovely and dazzling 
sight. As the blooms last well for a whole week I 
think it is one which should find great favour in our 
own gardens. Messrs. Benary were good enough to 
offer to send someone with me during the whole 
afternoon to see their general grounds, including the 
Asters, but I had not time to avail myself of the 
offer.— J. C. Stogdon. 
(To be Continued.) 
-- 
EARLY-FLOWERING 
CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 
Mr. W. Piercy, of Forest Hill, the well-known 
grower of this class of Chrysanthemums has favoured 
us with blooms of two new sorts of great merit. The 
first, Gustave Grunnerwald, was from a plant grown 
in a 32-size pot from a cutting put in on the 3th of 
April. On August 5th it was 19 in. high from the 
soil In the pot. The open flowers were 4 in. across, 
of a pale magenta colour to white. It was grown 
and flowered entirely in the open air, had only two 
small pegs to support it, and had no buds taken off. 
It is, in Mr. Piercy’s opinion, one of the most 
remarkable early sorts ever yet raised. The second 
flower, George Devered, is an early flowering 
Japanese variety, 18 in. high from the soil in the 
pot. The expanded flowers were 4 in. across, of a 
pale yellow colour mingled very slightly with" 
crimson when young It was grown and flowered 
entirely in the open air, and had no buds taken off. 
Both varieties were raised by Mons. Delaux, of 
Toulouse. 
