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r
:y,'
PARKS, PROMENADES & GARDENS
PARIS
DESCRIBED AND CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE WANTS OF OUR OWN CITIES
PPBHC AND PRIVATE GARDENS.
By W. ROBINSON, F.L.S.
/#
\'
WITH nPWABUe op FOtlB HDSDBEJ) ILLUSTRATIONS.
LONDON : JOHN MUBRAT, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1869. • .
ICjI. O. ^2-
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
P1.0B THE CHAMPS ELTSEE8 AKD THE GARDENS 07 THE LOUVaE AND THE
TUILEKIES 1
CHAPTER n.
THE B0I8 DE BOULOGNE AND THE BOIS DE VINCENNE8 18
GABDEN OF ACCLIMATIZATION IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE .... 32 WATERING THE FABKS 37
CHAPTER III.
THE FABC MONCEAU 48
CHAPTER rV.
THE FABC DE8 BUTTES CHAUMONT 59
CHAPTER V.
THE JABDIN DBS FLANTES AND THE GARDENS OF THE LUliLEMBOURG 68
CHAPTER VI.
THE SQUARES, FLACES, CHURCH GARDENS, ETC. 82
THE SQUARE DES BATIGNOLLES 91
THB SQUARE DE MONTROUGE .... * 95
THE SQUARE DU TEMPLE 96
THE SQUARE DES ARTS ET METIERS 98
THE PLACE ROYALE 99
THE SQUARE DES INNOCENTS 100
THE SQUARE DE LA CHAPELLE EXPIATOIRE DE LOUIS XVI 100
THE SQUARE DE BELLEVILLE 100
THE SQUARE MONTHOLON 101
THE SQUARE LOUVOIS 101
THE SQUARE VINTIMILLE 103
CHURCH GARDENS AND CEMETERIES 104i
CHAPTER Vn.
THE BOULEVARDS 112
BATHING 136
b
VI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
P1.0X THE JABDIK FLEUKISTE AND OTHER PUBLIC NURSERIES OF THE CITY
OF PARIS 139
THE PUBLIC NURSERIES FOR TREES, SHRUBS, AND HARDT FLOWERS .155
CHAPTER IX.
TREES FOR CITY PARKS, AVENUES, GARDENS, STREETS, ETC. . . .159 A SELECTION OF THE BEST TREES AND SHRUBS FOR CITIES . . . 1G5
CHAPTER X.
SL'BTROPICAL PLANTS FOR THE FLOWER GARDEN 1S3
A SELECT LIST OF 100 OF THE SUBTROPICAL PLANTS BEST SUITED
FOR USE IN OUR CLIMATE 20S
LIST OF THE BEST TWENTT-FOUR SUBTROPICAL PLANTS 20S
SUBTROPICAL PLANTS THAT KAY BE RAISED FROM SEED 209
CHAPTER XL
HARDT PLANTS FOR THE SUBTROPICAL GARDEN 210
LIST OF HARDY HERBACEOUS AND ANNUAL PLANTS, ETC., OF FINE HABIT, WORTHY OF EMPLOYMENT IN THE FLOWER GARDEN OR
PLEASURE GROUND 237
LIST OF HARDY PLANTS OF FINE HABIT, THAT MAY BE RAISED FR03I
SEED 23S
CHAPTER XII.
VXBAAILLES 239
FONTAINEBLEAU, AND THE GLADIOLUS GROUNDS OF M. SUUCHET . .251
THE GARDENS OF ST. CLOUD 259
MEUDON 260
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PLANT DECORATION OF APARTMENTS 262
REFORM IN THE CONSERVATORY 2S0
PALMS 296
THE IVT AND ITS USES IN PARISIAN GARDENS 305
CHAPTER XIV.
FRUIT CULTUJBLE: HOW ARE WE TO IMPROVE? 312
CHAPTER XV.
THE CORDON SYSTEM OF FRUIT GROWING 334
THE PARADISE, DOUCIN, AND CRAB STOCKS 355
THE PEAR AS A CORDON 359
THE PEACH AS A CORDON 366
THE SHORT PINCHING SYSTEM APPLIED TO THE PEACH 369
CONTENTS. VU
CHAPTER XVI. TBAnriKG 373
THE PAUCETTB YEBKIEB 373
PTBAXTDAL TRAINING OP THE PKAR TSE£ 378
CHAPTER XVn.
PIG CULTURE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OP PARIS 395
PBESERTIKG GRAPES THROUGH THE WINTER WITHOUT LETTING THEM
HANG ON THE TINES 405
CULTURE OP THE VINE AT THO^ERT 418
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE IVPERIAL PRX7IT AND PORCING GARDENS AT VERSAILLES . . . 424 THE NEW PRUIT GARDEN OP THE CITT OP PARIS IN THE BOIS DE
TINCENNES 433
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PEACH GARDENS OP MONTREUIL . 440
CHAPTER XX.
THE MARKET GARDENS OP PARIS 462
CHAPTER XXI.
MUSHROOM CULTURE 472
„ „ IN CELLARS AND IN THE OPEN AIR .... 484
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CULTURE OP SALADS 489
CHAPTER XXIII.
ASPARAGUS CULTURE 501
PREPARATION OP THE GROUND 506
CHAPTER XXIV.
OBSERVATIONS ON SOME OP THE VEGETABLES OF THE PARIS MAKKET . 515
CULTURE OP THE SMALL CARROT 520
THE CARDOON 522
PORCING THE CAULIPLOWER 524
THE SWEET POTATO 525
EARLY POTATOES 527
OLEANDER CULTURE 528
CULTURE OP THE ORANGE 531
SHOWING ROSES IN PRANCE 535
PORCING THE WHITE LILAC 537
b2
Vlll CONTENTS*
CHAPTER XXV.
PAOB
7L0WZB, FBUIT, AND VEGETABLE MARKETS 539
LIST OF FLACES IN WUICU THE KORE INSTBUCTIVE FEATURES OF
FRACTICAL HORTICULTURE HAY BE SEEN 545
THE CLIMATES OF PARIS AND LONDON COMPARED 548
CHAPTER XXVI.
HORTICULTURAL MACHINES, IMPLEMENTS, APPUANCES, ETC. . . .551
TRANSPLANTING LARGE TREES 551
CARRIAGE FOR TRANSPORTING ORANGE TREES 561
TRUCK FOR TUBS OR VERY LARGE POTS 562
TUBS FOR ORAKGE TREES, ETC 563
GARDEN CHAIRS AND SEATS 563
GRAFTING MASTIC 565
IMPROVED FRUIT SHELVES 566
DRYING FRUIT ROOMS 566
THE FANIER 567
FLOUGH-HOE 568
THE BINETTE 568
FRAMES FOR FORCING 568
MATS FOR COVERING PITS AND FRAMES . 569
THE NUMEROTEUR 572
THE SECATEUR 574
THE RAIDISSEUR 576
MATERIAL FOR TYING PLANTS 579
PROTECTION FOR WALL AND ESPALIER TREES 582
SHADING FOR CONSERVATORIES 586
ATTACHING WIRE TO GARDEN-WALLS, TRELLISING, ETC 587
EDGINGS FOR PARKS, PUBLIC GABDENS, SQUARES, DRIVES, ETC. . . 593 THE CLOCHE 596
CHAPTER XXVII.
NOTES OF A HORTICULTURAL TOUR THROUGH PARTS OF FRANCE . . . 600 LYONS 600
l'ecole regionale de la saulsaie 604
DUON 609
ANGERS 610
MANTES 613
ROUEN 614
TROYES 619
BOURG-LA-REINE 623
8CBAUX 628
CHATILLON, FONTENAY AUX ROSES 628
SUI8NE8 628
BRUNOY 633
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
na. riox
1. EvENiiiG oovcEBT in the
Champs Elys^es ... 6
2. Circus in the gardens of the
Champs Elys^ ... 7
3. Ayenaes radiating from the
Place de r:^toile ... 8
4. L'Arc de Triomphe du Car-
rousel 9
5. Plan of small gardens in the
Place Napoleon III. . . 10
6. Statue of Winter in the
Tuileries gardens . . . 12
7. The Bhone and the Saone in
the Tuileries gardens . . 14
8. Group in the Tuileries gar-
dens 15
9. One of the small lakes in
the Bois de Boulogne . . 19
10. Grand Cascade in the Bois
de Boulogne .... 20
11. Winter scene on the lake in
the Bois de Boulogne . . 21
12. Cisterns for receiving heavy
rains from the drives of the Bois de Boulogne ... 30
13. Ostriches in the Jardind'Ac-
climatHlion 32
14. Streamlet in the Jardind' Ac-
climatation 33
15. Conservatory in the Jardin
d^Acclimatation ... 84
16. Restaurant in the Bois de
Vincennes 35
17- Section of perforated self- acting hose on virheels . . 39
18. Hose on wheeb with double
rovir of perforations ... 39
19. Hose on wheels for watering
roads, etc 41
20. Details of the preceding
figwe 42
21. Hose, allowed to play on the
grass, eta 46
22. Plants isolated on the grass 62
no. TAiam
23. Plants isoUted on the grass 58
24. „ „ „ 54
25. Plan of garden .... 64
26. Conservatories and Mu-
seums in the Jardin des Pkntes 68
27. Aquatic birds in the Jardin
des Plantes 69
28. Animals in the Jardin des
Plantes 69
29. Cedar planted by Jussieu in
the Jardin des Plantes . 70
30. Plan of the Jardin des
Pkntes 71
31. The Amphitheatre in the
Jardin des Plantes ... 76
32. Plan of the Luxembourg
garden as recently altered 78
33. Portion of the plan of a
Parisian square .... 82
34. Portion of the plan of a
Paiisian square .... 91
35. llie Square des Batignolles 98
36. The Square du Temple . . 97
37. Children at play in the
Square des Arts et M6tiers 98
38. The Place Royale ... 99
39. Square and Fountain Lou-
vois 101
40. View in the garden of the
Palais des Thermes . . 102
41. The Square and Church of
St. Clothilie 105
42. The Cemetery Montmartre . 109
43. The Catacombs .... 110
44. Paris seven hundred years
ago 118
45. View on the old exterior
Boulevards 119
46. Avenue Victoria, near the
H6teldeVille .... 121
47. End view of the Boulevard
Richard Lenoir . . .122
48. Place duTrdne .... 128
LIST OF ILLT7STRAT10NS.
49. Ayenue de BreteuU: the
artevian well of Grenelle, and the Invalides . . .125
50. iDterior of a floating bath
on the Seine 136
51. GUss-covered corridor be-
tween the plant-houBes in the Jardin Fleariste . .143
52. Plan of glass-houses in the
Jardin Fleuriste . . .144 58. Propagating house in the
Jardin Fleuriste . . .145
54. Propagating pot used in the
Jardin Fleuriste . . .146
55. Small cutting-pots under
bell-glass in the Jardin Fleuriste .146
56. Shelves for storing bedding
plants in the Jardin Fleuriste 147
57. End view of bedding-plant
houses in the Jardin Fleu- riste 149
58. Plan of the bedding'plant
houses in the Jardin Fleu- riste 150
59. Caves under the Jardin
Fleuriste 152
60« Sophora japonica var. pen-
duU 163
61. Variegated Agave . • . 186 .
62. Aralia papyrifera . . .187
68. Aspltniuro nidus-avis . .189
64. Caladium esculentum . .190
65. Colocasia odorata . . .191
66. Can na nigricans . • . .192
67. Can naatro- nigricans . . 193 ^, Ficus elastica 196
69. Monstera deliciosa . . .197
70. Nicotiana wigandioides . . 199
71. Polymnia grandis . . . 200
72. Solanum Warscewiczii . . 203 78. Solanum robustum . . . 204
74. Uhdea bipinnatifida . . . 205
75. Wigandia macrophylla . . 207
76. Acanthus latifolius . . .211
77. Aralia Sieboldi .... 213
78. Bambusa aurea .... 216
79. Centaurea babylonica . .218
80. Chaniserops excelsa . . .219
81. Ferula communis. . . . 222
82. Gynerium argenteum . . 224 88. Heracleum flavescens • . 226
84. Melianthus major . . . 227
85. Nicotiana itaacrophylla . . 228
86. Rheum Eroodi .... 230
87. Anemone japonica alba . . 238
88. Yucca pendula .... 235
89. Tucca filamentoBavariegata 236
VXO. 'AGS
90. SUtice Uitifolia .... 236
91. The Tapis Vert. Verswlles . 246
92. One of the statues on the
upper terrace .... 248
93. Temple de 1' Amour in the
gardens of the Petit Tria- non 249
94. View in the garden of the
Petit Trianon . . . .250
95. Canal in the gardens of
Fontainebleau . . . .251
96. View in the Forest of Fon-
tainebleau 252
97. The Courteli^re .... 254
98. TheVerblanc .... 265
99. A French ideal of tree-
beauty 259
100. Meudon 260
101. Maranta fasclata . . . .268
102. Dracsena terminalis . . . 264
103. Gymnostacbyum Verschaf-
felti 265
104. DiefFenbachia' seguina macu-
late 266
105. Alocasia metallica . . . 267
106. uEchmea fulgens .... 268
107. Caladium argyrites . . . 269
108. Cahulium mirabile . . .270
109. Pteris cretica nlbo-iineata . 271
110. Begonia dsedalia .... 272
111. Maranta rosea-picta . . . 273
112. Dieffeubachia Bai-aquiniana 274
113. Gesnem cinnabarina . . . 275
114. Saxifm-aFortuneivaricgata 276
115. Maraiita vittata .... 277
116. TiUandeiasplendens . . .278
117. Maranta zebrina .... 279
118. Pandanus javanicus varie-
gatus 279
119. Cordyline indivisa . . . 281
120. Tree Fern for conservatory 282
121. Polypodium morbiliosum . 283
122. Blechnum brasiliense . . 284
123. Theophrasta macrophylla . 285
124. Cycas circinalis .... 287
125. AisophiU 289
126. Goniophlebium .... 290
127. Testudinaria elephantipes . 291
128. Maranta micans .... 292
129. Caladium ...... 293
130. Ananassa sativa variegata . 295
131. Chamsedorea latifolia . . . 297
132. Seaforthia elegans . . . 299
133. Carvotasobolifera . . . 302
134. Railings covered with Ivy . 306
185. Ivy edgings in geometrical
^uxien 307
186. Section of circular bower of
Irish Ivy 308
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
XI
187.
138.
139
140.
141. 142.
143.
144.
145. 146.
147. 148.
149. 150. 151.
152. 153.
154.
155.
156.
157.
158.
159.
160.
161.
162.
163.
164.
165. 166.
Yariegated Itj in sospen- aion basket 809
Ivy screen for the drawing- room 810
Young line of self-support- ing Pear Trees. .... 833
The Apple trained as a Simple Horizontal Cordon 884
Tree with horizontal branches 335
The Simple Horizontal Cor- don 336
The Cordon on wall of plant- house 337
Youne Cordon of the Lady Apple 338
The Bilateral Cordon . . 339
Beinette dn Canada trained as a Cordon 340
Edging of simple Cordons . 341
Grafliog by approach to unite Uie points of horizon- tal Cordons 342
Another mode of grafting to unite the Cordons . . .343
The horizontal Cordon train- ed as an edging .... 344
Border in front of fruit wall with two lines of horizontal Cordons 353
Peach wall and border with five lines of Cordons . . 353
Doable espalier of Pears with three lines of Cordon Apples on each side . . 353
Simple wooden support for Cordon 354
Iron support for Cordon with ratchet wheel at top . 354
Iron support for Cordon let into stone 354
Pear Tree trained as a ver- tical Cordon 359
The Pear as a simple oblique Cordon, 1st year . . . 360
Oblique Cordon Pear, 2nd year 360
Oblique Cordon Pear, 3rd year 361
Oblique Cordon Pear, 4th year 362
The Pear as an oblique Cordon 363
Pear tree trained in U form 364
The spiral Cordon against walls 365
The spiral Cordon . . .366
Peach tree trained as an ob- lique Cordon, 1st year . . -367
VIA. PiAB
167. Peach tree trained as an ob-
lique Cordon, 2nd year . 867
168. Peach tree with three
branches, a different va- riety grafted on each . . 869
169. Peach shoot of the current
year bearing a number of secondary shoots . . . 870
170. Portion of shoot of Peach
tree .871
171. Besult of pinching the sti-
pulary leaves 872
172. The Palmetto Yerrier, 2nd
pruning 875
173. The Palmette Yerrier, 3rd
pruning 875
174. The Pahnette Yerrier, 4th
pruning 875
175. The Palmette Yerrier, 5th
pruning 876
176. Palmette Yerrier with
weakly outer branch com- pleted by grafting . . . 877
177. Pyramidal Pear tree . . .379
178. Pyramidal Pear tree, first
pruning 380
179. Top of young Pear tree . . 880
180. Pyramidal Pear tree, second
pruning 881
181. Leading shoot of Pear tree . 881
182. Old leading shoot barked
and used as a stake . . . 382
183. Pruning to obtain properly
placed leading shout . . 382
184. Incisions made to regulate
shoots 882
185. Pyramidal Pear tree, third
pruning 383
186. Grafting by approach, to
cover bare spaces on pyra- midal trees 384
187. Grafting by approach as ap-
plied to wail and Espalier trees 884
188. Pyramidal Pear tree, fourth
pruning 385
189. Pyramidal Pear tree, fifth
pruning 386
190. Figure theoretically indi-
cating the mode of form- ing a pyramidal Pear tree 387
191. Young pyramidal Pear tree 387
192. Pyramidal Pear tree with
bent branches .... 388
193. Pyramidal Pear tree, re-
grafted 389
194. Wail Pear tree regraf ted . 390
195. Pear tree trained in the
columnar form .... 391
xu
LIST OP ILLUSTRATIONS.
vie. PAOB
196. Pendolous training of wall
Pear tree 892
197. Grafting of fruit buds and
ehoots 893
198. Grafting of fruit buds and
shoots 893
199. Grafting of fruit buds and
shoots 893
200. Grafting of fruit buds and
shoots 893
201. Grafting of fruit buds and
shoots 393
202. Proper mode of cutting shoot 394
203. Shoot cut too long . . .394
204. Shoot cut too low . . . . 394
205. Pear shoot properly pinched 394
206. Pear shoot pinched too short 894
207. Besult of over-piuching . . 394
208. Another result of over-
pinching 394
209. Pinching of the bourgeon
anticipe 894
210. Stipulary buds forced to
stort 394
211. Branch of Fig tree . . .396
212. Fig tree growing on level
ground 397
218. Section showing Fig tree
growing on level ground . 398
214. Mode of burying Fig trees
cultivated on level ground 399
215. Fig tree planted on sloping
ground 400
216. Section showing Fig tree
planted on inclined ground 401
217. Fig tree planted on sloping
ground, buried for the winter mouths .... 401
218. Stem of Fig the sixth year
after planting .... 402
219. Fig branch with young fruit 402
220. Branch of Fig tree after the
gathering of the crop . . 403
221. Branch of Fig tree after the
gathering of the crop . . 404
222. Tbomery mode of fixing
bottles for preserving Grapes through winter . 407
223. Ferri<^res mode of fixing
bottles for preserving Grapes through winter . 407
224. Portion of upri>;ht used in
Grape-room at Ferri^res . 407
225. Interior of Grape-room . , 409
226. WallofChasselasatThomery 413
227. Bose-Charmeux's system of
vertical training .... 414
228. Vines trained vertically with
alternated spurs . . • .414
VIO. PAOS
229. Low double Espalier . . .415
230. Sections of top of wall at
Thomery 415
231. Sulphur distributor em-
ployed at Thomery . . .416
232. Pruning to obtain the two
arms of the Cordon . . .416
233. Low £spalier of Vines
trained vertically . . .417
234. Layer of Vine raised and
planted in basket . . .417
235. Moveable scaffold used for
thinning the Grapes . .413
236. Shade to protect Grape-
thinners from strong sun . 419
237. Frame for carrying baskets
of Grapes to store-rooms . 419
238. Mode of Grafting the Vine
at Thomery 420
239. Mode of Grafting the Vine
by approach at Thomery . 420
240. Gouge used in grafting the
Vine 420
241. Small pit used for forcing
the Vine 421
242. Small span-roofed house for
forcing the Vine . . . 422
243. Trellis for Pear trees . . 427
244. Double trellis for Pear
trees 429
245. Section of protection used
for Espalier trees at Ver- sailles 431
246. Side view of protection to
double line of Espaliers . 431
247. Border of superimposed
Cordons at Versailles . .432
248. Section of preceding . . . 433
249. Plan of fruit garden ... 434
250. Galvanized iron bracket
for supporting temporary coping 436
251. Fruit tree in the vase
form 437
252. Pear trained in vase fonn . 438
253. Early spring aspect of Peach
wall in the garden of M. Chevallier 441
254. Leaf of Peach tree attacked
by the Cloque . . . .442
255. Peach shoot attacked by
the Cloque 442
256. Small wooden coping to pro-
tect young Peach trees in spring 443
257. Second pruning of fruiting
Peach branch . . . .444
258. Mode of shading the stems
of fruit trees 445
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
XIU
vie. tjlqm
259. Fraitioflf bnuich of Peach
submitted to the third yeai's pruning .... 446
260. Pruning to replace old fruit-
spur 447
261. R^ult of preceding opera-
tion 447
262. The Napoleon Peach tree . 448
263. Peach trees trained to form
their owner's name . .449
264. Spring aspect of fruit garden
formed by M. Lep^re . . 451
265. Mode of pruning to cover
bare spaces on the branches
of Peach trees, Ist year . 452
266. Result of preceding opera-
tion, 2nd year .... 452
267. Summer management of the
Peach 453
268. Shoot of Peach .... 453
269. Peach tree trained horizon-
tally 454
270. Disbudding of the Peach,
second year 455
271. Disbudding of the Peach,
second year ..... 455
272. Graftinsf by approach to
furnish bare spaces on branches of the Peach tree 456 278. Multiple grafting by ap- proach to furitish bare spacer on the stems of Peach trees 457
274. DeUils of Figs. 272 and
273 458
275. NaU basket 458
276. Peach trained in the double
Ufomi 459
277. Peach trained in the double
Uform 460
278. Pump used in the market
gardens of Paris . . . 463
279. "Water pot used by the
market gardeners of Paris 464
280. Mouth of Mushroom Cave
at Montrouge .... 473
281. View in Mushroom Cave . 475
282. Entrance to subterranean
quarry 478
283. Plan of large subterranean
quarry 479
284. SecUon following the line
C D in preceding figure . 480
285. Extracting the stone in sub-
terranean quarries . . . 482
286. View in old subterranean
quarries devoted to Mush- room culture .... 483
287. Newly made Mushroom beds 484
ne. PASS
288. Mushroom bed on shelf
against wall of cellar . . 485
289. Pyramidal Mushroom bed
on floor of cellar . . . 485
290. Mushrooms grown in bottom
of old cstsk 48d
291. Four plants of the Lettuce
Petite Noire under the Cloche 490
292. Sloping bed for three rows
of Cloches 491
293. Diagram showing the dif-
ferent stages of Lettuce culture under the Cloche . 493
294. Figure showing annual
earthings given to Aspa- ragus -. . 503
295. Figure showing mode of
planting Asparagus . . 507
296. Common mode of forming
an Asparagus plantation . 508
297. Preparation for forcing As-
paragus 518
298. Mode of tying-up the Car-
doon for blanching . . . 523
299. Early Potatoes arranged for
** sprouting** indoors . , 527
300. The flower market at the
Madeleine 548
301. Tree-lifting machine : side
elevation 552
302. Plan of tree-lifting machine 558
303. Tree-lifiing machine : back
view , 55i
304. Tree-lifting machine : front
view 555
305. Trunk of large tree recently
planted enveloped in moss and canvas 557
306. Small machineforliftingspe-
cimen shrubs and Conifers 559
307. Screw used in preparing
specimens for removal as shown in preceding figure 560
308. Par of carriage for trans-
porting Orange trees . .561
309. Carriage for transporting
Orange trees .... 562
310. Truck for moving plants . 562
311. Tub for Orange trees . . 563
312. Garden chair 563
313. Seat with box for climbing
plants 564
314. Seat with tent-like shade . 564
315. Portion of Pear stand at
Ferri^res 566
316. Upri^rht for Pear stands . 566 817. Position of fruit on Pear
stand 566
XIV
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
TIG. PAOB
818. Arrangement for using chlo-
ride of calcium .... 567
819. Panier 567
820. The plough hoe . . . .568
821. The £inette 568
2^22. Narrow frames used hy the
market gardeuers of Paris 569 828. Frame for making straw- mats 570
824. Frame covered with neat
straw mat 571
325. The Num^roteur . . . .573
826. The S^ateur Yauthier . . 575
827. The Secateur Lecointe . . 576
828. The common Secateur . . 576
829. The Kaidisseur .... 577 880. Key of Baidiflseur . . .577 831. GoUignon's Kaidisseur . . 577 382. Side yiew of preceding . . 578 333. Kaidisseur used in the gar- den of the Exhibition . . 578
384. The simplest and best form
of Kaidisseur 579
885. Spai*ganium ramosum . . 581
886. Mode of protecting walls . 582
887. If fy If . 583
888. Double Espalier .... 584
839. Wall protected with wide
temporary coping and can- vas curtains 585
840. Mode of fixing iron support 586
841. Lath shade for Conservatory 586
842. „ „ ' 587 848. ft jf . 588 844. Mode of arranging wires on
walls 588
345. Wall with galvanized wires . 589
346. Galvanized wire on walls for
training Cordons . . . 590 847. Wall wired for Cordon
training 591
848. Trellis for young trees in
nurseries 592
349. Edgings for parks and public
gM^dens 594
350. Edgings for parks and public
gardens 595
351. Edgings for parks and public
gardens .... . . 595
852. The Cloche 596
358. „ 59T
354. „ 59V
355. The Cloche in the propa-
gating house 598
356. Winged Pear tree ... 617
357. Plan of preceding figure . 618
358. Name formed by Pear trees 621 859. Pear induced to emit its
own roots 622
360. Kesultof preceding operation 622 861. Plan of &uit garden . . . 626
362. Pear tree shown at the
Exhibition 627
363. Walk arched over with
fruit trees 628
364. Simple mode of supporting
Espalier tree 629
365. Details of the preceding . .629
366. „ „ . . 629 867. View in fruit garden . . 630
368. Plan of Espalier . . . 630
369. Monogram formed by fruit
trees 631
370. Self-supporting Espaliers . 632
371. ,1 ff . 633
372. „ „ . 633 378. Pear tree from Espalier
trained to form the name Nallet 634
374. Pear tree in crinoline form 635
375. „ „ „ 636
376. Plan of preceding . . .636
LIST OF PLATES.
FIG. PAOS
1. The Place de U Concorde 2
3. The Ayenae dee Champa Elys^ 4
3. Scene in the Champs EljB^es 6
4« The Champs Elys^ near the Palais de Tlndustrie 8
ff. The Place du Carrousel 10
6. The Gardens of the Tuileries 14
7. Island and Restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne 26
8. Cascades in the Bois de Boulogne 22
9. Lake and islands in the Bois de Boulogne 18.
10. Stream and rocks bear Longchamps 24
11. View in the Bois de Vincennes 35
12. Mode of watering the grass in the parks 40
18. „ ,, roads, drives, &c 44
14. The Pare Monoean 50
15. Fine-leaved plants in the Pare Monceau 56
16. Lake and cliffs in the Pare des Buttes Chaumont 60
17. Bird's- eye View in the Pare des Buttes Chaumont 62
18. The Gardens and Palace of the Luxembourg 76
19. Woodwardias in the Conservatories of the Luxembourg Garden . . 81
20. "View of the Square and Tour St Jacques 82
21. The Square and Tour St. Jacques 84
22. „ „ Fountain des Innocents S6
23. View of the Palais des Thermes from the garden 103
24. Church of the Trinity, with garden and fountain in front 106
25. The Gardens of the Palais Royal 88
26. The Cemetery of Pbre La Chaise 108
27. The Place du Chfttelet 116
28. View on the Boulevards near the Ch&teau d'Eau 114
29. The Boulevard du Temple 120
80. „ ,, Montmartre 124
31. „ „ St. Michel 126
32. The Louvre, Institut, and Quais 137
33. Bambusa falcata 215
34. The Palace and Gardens of Versailles 239
35. View from the Tapis Vert 240
36. Fountains of the basin of Neptune 242
37. La ToUette d'Apollon 244
XVI LIST OF PLATES.
38. The ColoDDiide at VenaiUes 247
39. View in the GardenB of the Petit TriaDon 250
40. The Parterre at FontaiDebleau 353
41. View from the Parterre at Fontainebleaa 254
42. GardeDS and Palace of St. Cloud 259
43. The Peach trained as an obliqne cordon 368
44. Pear tree trained as a Palmetto Yerrier 374
45. View in Mushroom Caves under Montrouge 477
46. The Halles Centrales 540
47. Interior of the Halles Centrales 542
48. The Place St. Sulpice 544
MAPS:-
Bois de Boulogne 28
„ Vinoennes 36
Yenailles et les Trianons 248
BY TSB 8AMB AUTHOR, In Preparation, and will be Published during tbe present Year,
This book will contain an explanation of tbe principles on which the exqoisite flora of Alpine countries may be gn^wn in all parts of the British Islands; illustrations of properly formed rockwork for theee plants, with sections showing the wrong as well as the right modes of constmctinpr it ; riews of the natoral homes of the plants, Ulustrating the Author*s tour in the Alps, and a description, deroid of all technicalities, of a choice selection of tbe more beautiful snd interesting kindn, and their successftd cnltfTation.
INTRODUCTION.
" And let it appeare that he doth not change his Country Manners for those of Forraigne Parts: But only prick in some Flowers of that he hath Learned abroad into the Customes of his own country."
Bacon's Esjay on Travel,
The success met with by my little book on French horticul- ture led me to hope that a work describing the progress of our neighbours in city improvements, and giving a detailed account of the production of the more important fruits and vegetables for the Paris market, might prove useful. Hence the present volume. In my "Gleanings from French Grardens/' the question of public gardening was scarcely alluded to ; in this book nearly one half is devoted to parks, wide tree-planted roads, public gardens, squares, and similar means of rendering great, ugly, gloomy, filthy human hives fitter dwelling-places for vast hosts of men. A belief that London may, without great sacrifice on our part, be made the noblest city in the world — as fair and clean as wide-spreading and wealthy — and the knowledge that the system of public gardening now pursued by us is not the one calculated to lead to this end, have induced me to give the stay-at-home public, and especially that section of it interested in city improvement, an idea of the efforts that are being made in the capital of France to ameliorate the conditions of life.
There is no need to expatiate on the necessity of a thoroughly good system of public gardening in the great cities of a wealthy and civilized race; nor to describe the want of it in our own case — ^this is painted but too plainly on the faces of thousands in our densely-packed cities, in
c
XVIU INTaODUCnON.
TThich the active brain and heart of the conntry are con- tinually being concentrated. That London is no longer a city^ but a nation gathered together in one spot^ is a tnusm : our other great cities are almost keeping pace "with it in growth; but in none of them can we see a trace of any attempt to open up their closely peopled quarters in a way that is calculated to produce a really beneficial efiect on the lives and health of their workers. Parks we have, it is true ; yet they but partially supply the necessities of large cities. They would serve all our wants if the population breathed only as often as they put on holiday attire or have time to walk, it may be several miles, to a park ; but, as we are constituted, room for locomotion, room for the ever- cleansing breeze to search out impurities, room for a few trees to steal away the dark and unlovely aspect of our streets — in a word, room for breathing — ^is a more pressing necessity than parks. The French have their parks and public gardens, and very extensive and well- managed ones, though, like some of our own, embellished in a wasteful and unnecessary manner with costly and tender plants; but their noble tree-planted roads, small public squares and places, are doing more for them than parks and pelargoniums — saving them from pestilential over- crowding, and making their city something besides a place for all to live out of who can afford it.
A great many of us Britons are apt to connect real city improvement with autocratic government. One has only to speak of our backwardness, when he is instantly re- minded that it is all in consequence of not being blessed with a Napoleon, and that there is for us no chance of amelioration except we can secure a ruler who, after puri- fying and putting our cities into decent nineteenth century order, will good-humouredly take a month's notice to quit. If the logic of such reasoncrs were at all in pro- portion to their abundance, we should move onward but little more progressively than the man-like apes. There is no natural human want or wrong that cannot be remedied by human wisdom and energy ; and the most crying evil of this period of change, when the mass of workers are steadilv
INTBODUCnON. XIX
the countrjr for the city, is that our towns are ■till built upon a plan worthy of the dark ages, and barely justifiable where the breath of the meadow sweeps through the high street. Another notion is that the expense of such improvements must always prevent them from being carried out. '^No labour/' says Emerson — ^'no labour, pains, temperance, poverty, nor exercise, that can gain health must be grudged; for sickness is a cannibal which eats up all the life and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs its own sons and daughters.'^ And shall we spare even less in the attempt to provide for the bodily health and happi- ness of three millions of men closely packed in a city grow- ing fiister than the giant bamboo ?
The real want is a want of plan ; and that it is to be hoped Parliament will soon give us power to obtain. At present this want is glaringly apparent not only in the central and more crowded parts, but all round London, where admirable pre- parations may be seen for the formation of a mighty cordon of suburban St. Gileses twenty years hence. Next comes the question of expense, and from that neither autocrats nor parliaments can so readily relieve us. Is it too much to hope that a portion of our vast expenditure for arsenals, armies, fleets, and fortifications may some day be diverted to making such alterations in our cities as will render possible in them the rearing of worthy representatives of the English race ? Let us hope not ; but supposing that we should never see even the dawn of so desirable an era, and that money should still be profusely spent in every way but that of rendering our cities worthy of our time, our knowledge, our civilization, and our race, there yet remains a course by which we may effect some good without in- creasing the expenditure we bestow on parks and public gardens generally, and that is by a complete alteration in the direction of the outlay.
Our public gardening differs chiefiy from that of Paris and other continental cities by keeping itself away from the very parts where its presence is most wanted. We have parks almost prairie-like in their roominess, yet locomotion is scarcely possible in those parts of the city
e2
XX INTEODUCTION.
where the chief commerce of this great empire is carried on, and square miles of densely packed r^ons are no more benefited by them than if they never existed. I believe that^ by the diversion of all needless expenditure from the parks, and by converting this and all the future money that can be spared, to the improvement of the densely crowded parts, we may efiect an admirable change for the better. The parks are now managed on a scale which is quite un- justifiable, if we take into consideration the many miserable quarters of London which are utterly neglected. It must be understood, however, that no imputation is here made against their practical management; but the system of richly embellishing them whilst paying no attention to im- provements better calculated to humanize our existence in towns, is unwise in every way.
Everybody conversant with the London parks must have noticed the great display of tender flowers and costly garden- ing which has been presented in them for some years back. This decoration is of such a nature that it has to be renewed every year ; andinevery case a set of glass-houses, with all their consequent expense for fuel and labour, must be maintained for each park. On this principle a spot of ground not larger than a table may annually cost several pounds for its embel- lishment. There is nothing about the system more notice- able and objectionable than its growth. Each park is ap- proaching more and more the character of a costly garden, while for the want of a few hardy trees, a patch of green sward, and a spread of gravel to act as a playground for children instead of the gutter, many close districts of London are so foul and cheerless as to be a byeword all over the world. It is perfectly natural that the superintendents of our parks should each wish to make the one under his charge as attractive as the others, from a mere gardening point of view ; and it is even more natural that the authorities should accept the opinions of those officials as the most trustworthy on such matters ; but it should be the duty of both to consult the public interest above all things, and that interest points to a complete alteration. It is always unpleasant to reduce an establishment^ and doubtless it would be hard for the gar-
INTRODUCTION. XXI
deners to part with their hundreds of thousands of tender flowers or to endure a eheck in their career of converting our parks into sumptuous gardens ; but if they saw that this reduction of expenditure would lead to a more wholesome outlay elsewhere, they would willingly help out its adoption.
No objection could be urged against the costly system alluded to were it not for its expense, which, as anybody may see, is growing under our eyes every day. It is a very good and worthy thing to display much of the beauty of exotic vegetation in our parks and public gardens, pro« vided we can afford it without doing injustice to those who cannot snatch as much time from toil as suffices for an airing in the parks. Span a piece of ornamental park water with a crystal palace, if you will ; convert it into a home for the Great Amazonian Water Lily, and fringe it with Palms and the richest tropical vegetation ; but first be assured that you are able to afford it, and ask yourself whether the amount required would not do twenty times the good if expended in green grass, and trees, and flowers that endure the open air of Britain. Make, if you will, another ridi- culous parterre of stone and water squirts like that at the head of the Serpentine ; but first consider whether it would not be wiser to establish a little verdure and freshness in some of the more tumid parts of what Cobbett used to call the "great wen.^^ The new avenue gardens in the Regent^s Park, with their griffins and artificial stonework, have cer- tainly cost as much as would have created an oasis in some pestilential part of the East-end. Even tlie annual expense of keeping up one of these park gardens is equivalent to what would suffice to form and plant a little square like those so freely dotted about Paris during the past dozen years ; while the mere conversion of a strip of breezy park into an elaborate garden effects no good whatever from a sanitary point of view.
Let us illustrate the matter in a less general way. Last year a niunber of Bay-trees in tubs were placed in Trafalgar Square ; and it need hardly be added that these require fre- quent attention both in summer and winter — a storehouse during the latter season — ^while the wooden tubs in which
XXII INTRODUCTION.
they are placed insure by rottmg a perpetual^ if triflings expense. These proved that any kind of tree may be placed in the streets of London as safely as in any other city; but they also showed the very short-sighted, dis- heartening nature of the whole scheme of our public gar- dening. Not one single thing could these costly green toys do for our streets or open spaces that could not be effected infinitely better by hardy trees, requiring no atten- tion after planting ; and when one thinks of the vast areas of this world of London, that are almost impenetrable, mise- rable is the only term that can be applied to such remedies as this ! It is simply doctoring a wart while a horrid abscess is sapping away the life of the patient. And ascend- ing from contemptible things of this tree-in-tub sort, the same reasoning holds good with much of our higher public gardening.
Who would not forego the trifling gratification of seeing large portions of our parks so elaborately decorated as to require almost as much attention as a drawing-room, if the small sacrifice were accompanied by the knowledge that tenfold greater good was being carried out where the want of it was the blackest spot on our social condition ? Are not the materials of nature in our own latitudes good enough for us ? See what is done by a few materials in her own gardens; reflect what privileges we have in being able to cull her varied riches from the plains and mountains all over the temperate and cold and alpine regions of both hemispheres; and then consider whether it is wise to spend the public money for glass-houses and the annual propagation and preservation of multitudes of costly exotics. A better and a nobler system than that which is at present the rule in our parks I have endeavoured to point out at pages 22 to 29.
The purposes to which the greater portion of our future expenditure in city gardening ought chiefly to be devoted are the making of wide tree-bordered roads and small simple squares, open to the public at all reasonable hours. The squares should not be embellished in a costly way ; but if the persons to whose care their design may be entrusted
INTBODUCmOK. XXUl
could not make them beautiful and grateful to the eye of taste by the use of hardy materials which require no costly annual attention after planting, they should be considered unworthy of their posts. Where space could not be afforded for a little expanse of the ever-welcome turf, even a spot of gravelled earth with trees overhead, and a few seats around, would be a real improvement. The Parisian system of managing squares, described in Chapter VI., is infinitely superior to ours, and must sooner or later be adopted with us. Of course its adoption need not necessarily interfere with the private squares, but it should be tried on a small scale at the earliest opportunity.
In connexion with small squares, we may consider the city graveyards ; and nothing can be more ill-considered than the mutilations that have in several cases been con- sidered necessary before making gardens of them. Every churchyard can be embellished, without uprooting bones, removing headstones, or anything of the kind.
In the creation of tree-planted streets in the more crowded parts both of London proper and the suburbs, they should not as a rule be formed on the site of old and much frequented streets, but, so far as possible, pierced between them, leaving the largest and most pop ulcus thorough- fares of the present day to become the secondary ones of the future. As is pointed out in the chapter on trees suitable for cities, properly selected kinds grow perfectly well in all parts of London. Indeed I know of no city where I could find finer examples of old trees, chiefly in ancient private gardens and half-hidden squares, where they never received any attention after planting. The excellent system of plant- ing trees on every available spot practised to such a great extent in Paris, should be commenced and carried out as far as possible in our cities. It must be long before we can attempt anything like the magnificent boulevards of our neigh- bours, but let us insert the thin end of the wedge here and there, and perhaps some day we shall have streets to be proud of. In beginning, it is of the highest importance that we avoid as far as possible the meanness and narrowness charac- teristic of our style of making street, road, and footway.
INTEODUCTION.
even in places where want of room is not a drawback. If I am not misinformed, the footway on the land side of the road that is to run alongside the Thames Embankment^ near the Houses of Parliament, is to be sixteen feet wide, and probably some of that will be taken up with the proposed line of trees. In this magnificent position, to which any in Paris is insignificant, we are to have a footway that would be considered half a dozen feet too narrow for a second-class boulevard or avenue in Paris !
Whether our general scheme of city gardening be changed or not, we may carry it on with greater economy and much improvement by the adoption of a system re- sembling that of the public nurseries of Paris — as pointed out in the chapter on these. It is impossible to have greater need for economy than exists in this matter of public gardening; yet the public, in supplying its great London parks, does what hundreds of landed proprietors would be foolish to do, in buying its own evergreens and common nursery stuff! Our parks are already so vast that the sums required for planting must alone form a heavy item, nearly all of which could be saved by a judicious system of public nurseries. At present, too, there is growing up in each park a nursery of glass, an expensive affair — certain to annually increase in cost if a check be not applied. All this is really unnecessary. With a sensible reduction of our expensive system of bedding out, or even as matters are at present arranged, great saving might be effected by having all the tender plants for the park gardens raised in one establishment. K the true and great principle of variety — the advantages of which as applicable to public gardening are treated of at p. 28 — were adopted in earnest, this concentration of the expensive glass-house work would be all the more convenient and advantageous.
Another great improvement might be effected by a rigid exclusion from the plantings of every subject that is not likely to thrive healthfully under the influences of London smut. Many specimens of fine evergreen trees and shrubs have been planted in our parks during the last few years, though the only fate that awaits them therein is a lingering
INTRODUCTION. XXY
death. When it is stated that each of these costs many times more than wonld suffice for the purchase of a score of de- ciduous trees which succeed perfectly in London^ the neces- sity for watchfuhxess in this respect will be apparent. I am satisfied that by adopting these reforms we could annually save as much as would suffice for the creation of a small suburban park or fresh and charming public square or garden in some overpacked region of London, into which the children could venture without rendering themselves guilty of trespassing, or making a hazardous climb over a sharp-spiked railing, as they frequently do in our amusing if unlovely Leicester Square.
We now come to practical matters relating to fruit cul- ture, market gardening, etc., in Paris and its environs. On these matters there have recently been prolonged discus- sions, but many readers and disputants have been misled by confounding the comparative state of horticulture in France and England with the real point at issue — i.e., the supe- riority of the French in certain special and most important branches of garden culture. I have never asserted, as has been assumed, that the French are our superiors in general horticulture, for I know right well that we are as far before them in horticulture, agriculture, and rural affairs generally, as we are in journalistic and magazine literature ; but I do assert that in certain points of fruit and vegetable culture they are equally as far in advance of us. I am convinced, too, that more than one of their modes ot culture will prove of far greater value to ourselves than ever they have been to the French. To avoid these points, and utter commonplaces about our general superiority, is com- pletely to beg the question. Arc we to ignore their good practices because we happen to be more luxurious in our gardening establishments than they are ? If I were to find in use in the backwoods of America some handy tool or implement effective in saving human labour, should I be wise in refusing to adopt it because the rude inventor had not attained to the simplest luxuries of existence ? If we affirm that the honey of the bee is sweet, the statement that bees are not so beautiful as butterflies is no reply. I do
XXVI INTRODUCTION.
not write to praise the French^ but to point out in wliat way we may learn from them. That they, too, may learn from us will be apparent when I state that intelligent Frenchmen have pointed doubtfully at plants of Rhubarb and Seakale — two of our most excellent vegetable products — and asked if it were true that we eat them in England ! The general introduction into Prance of these two vegetables, with constitutions as vigorous as the most rampant weeds, and never failing to furnish abundant yields, would not merely be a gain to the gardens and markets of a great vegetable and fruit-eating people like the -French, but a material addition to the true riches and food supplies of the country.
Of the practices which we may with advantage, and which indeed we must adopt from the French — ^for the fittest win the day, no matter how long the struggle — ^those of fruit culture command our first attention, because good fruit culture combines the beautiful and the useful in a very high degree.
There are at least six important ways in which we may highly improve and enrich our fruit gardens and fruit stores.
^i^tf by planting against walls, with a warm southern exposure and a white surface, the very finest kinds of winter Pears — the Pears that keep, the Pears that bring a return, the Pears that cost the consumer a shilling or more each in the London markets after Christmas — the Pears of which the French now send us thousands of pounds worth annually. By doing this we shall in less than ten years have a magnificent stock of these noble fruits all over the country, and be able to export the fruit we now import so largely. Varieties of winter Pears are frequently planted in the open, in all parts of these islands, that an experienced fruit grower in the neighbourhood of Paris or even ftirther south would never plant away from a warm sunny wall, knowing well that it would be wasteful ignorance to do so.
Secondly, by the general adoption of the cordon system of apple growing in gardens. This will enable us to produce a finer class of fruit than that grown in orchards. It may
INTBODUCnON. XXVU
be carried out in spots Idtherto useless or unemployed^ and will enable us to do away with the ugly Apple trees that now shade and occupy the surface of our gardens. The system will be found the greatest improvement our garden Apple culture has ever witnessed. It should be thoroughly understood, however, that I do not recommend this system for orchard culture, or for the production of the kinds and qualities of fruits that may be gathered profusely from naturally developed standard trees.
Thirdly, by the general introduction of the true French Paradise stodc into the gardens of the British Isles. Its merits are that it is dwarfer in growth than any other, and that in wet, cold soils it keeps its roots in a wig-like tuft near the surface — a most valuable quality on many of our cold^ heavy soils. When well known it will be found an inestimable boon in every class of garden except those on very dry and poor soils, being wonderfully efficacious in inducing early fertility, and affording a better result without root pruning than either the Crab or English Paradise do with that attention. The knowledge that the Doucin of the French is an admirable stock for all forms of tree between the standard of the orchard and the very dwarf cordon or bush, will also be very useful. The Apple should not be worked on the Crab unless where it is desired to form laj^ standard trees in orchards — ^by far the best method, if properly carried out, for market and general supplies.
Fourthly, by the practice of the French method of close pruning and training the Peach tree, as described in Chapter XIX. The system adopted in this country is an entirely diffe- rent one — a loose, irregular style, the shoots not being suffi- ciently cut back. The Peach tree is quite as amenable to exact training as any other ; and when the regular system of the French is understood among us, it will be adopted as the best for wall culture. Preference should also be given to some of the smaller forms of tree adopted by the French, as they will enable us to cover our walls with fruit- ful handsome trees in a few seasons instead of waiting many years, as has hitherto been the case, and then perhaps never seeing them well covered. These forms are particularly
XXVIU INTRODUCTION.
desirable where the soil is too light and poor for the health and full development of large wide-spreading trees. In the last edition of the book of our most popular English teacher of fruit culture are these words : — " A wall covered with healthy Peach or Nectarine trees of a good ripe age is rarely to be seen ; failing crops and blighted trees are the rule^ healthy and fertile trees the exception V* We can alter this by the adoption of the compact cordon^ U or double U forms figured in this book^ by a better system of pruning^ and by thoroughly protecting the trees in spring.
Fifthly, by adopting for every kind of fruit tree grown against walls a more efficient and simple mode of protection than we now use. In speaking of fruit culture, nothing is more common than to hear our climate spoken of as the cause of all our deficiencies — the fine climate of northern France being supposed to do everything for the cultivator. The value of this view of the case is well illustrated by the fact that all good practical fruit growers about Paris take care to protect their fruit walls in spring by means of wide temporary copings. In this country I have never anywhere seen a really efficient temporary coping, though endless time is wasted in placing on boughs, nets, &;c., none of which are in the least effective in protecting the trees from the cold sleety rains, which, if they do not destroy or enfeeble the fertilizing power of the blossoms, prepare them to become an easy prey to the frost.
Sixthly, by the acquirement and diffusion among every class of gardeners and even garden-labourers of a know- ledge of budding, grafting, pruning, and training equal to that now possessed by the French. Many of the illu- strations in this book show the mastery they possess over each detail of training — the branches of every kind of tree being conducted in any way the trainer may desire, and with the greatest case. This knowledge is quite com- mon amongst small amateurs and workmen whose fellows in this country would not know where to put a knife in a tree. There are numerous professors who teach it in France ; it is not taught at all or in the most imperfect manner in this country, where it is really of far greater
INTEODUCTION. XXIX
importance. We require walls for our fruit trees more tiian the Frencli do, and there is no way in which we need improvement more than in the matter of the proper covering and development of wall trees. With standard trees, pruning may be dispensed with to a great extent ; but so long as we are obliged to devote walls to the production of our finer fruits, such knowledge as is now possessed by good French firoit growers must prove a great aid. With this knowledge, and the adoption of one of the two economical modes of wdl- making described, aided by the general introduction of the mechanical aids to successful garden fruit culture now becoming so general in France, and which I have described and figured at length, we might look forward to a vast improvement in our fruit gardens both as regards their beauty and utility.
In the vegetable departmentwe have also several important things to learn from the French, and not the least among these is the winter and spring culture of Salads — ^inasmuch as enormous quantities of these are sent from Paris to our markets during the spring months. During the last days of April, 1868, 1 saw fine specimens of the green Cos Lettuce of the Paris market gardeners selling at a high price in Nottingham, and doubtless it is the same in many of our great cities and towns far removed from London. As I write this (April 19th) the market gardens near London are fidntly traced with light green lines of weak young Lettuce plants, that have been for weeks barely existing under the influences of our harsh spring. Around Paris at the same season, in consequence of the adoption of the cloche and a careful system of culture, it is a pleasure to see the size and perfect health of the crops of Lettuces — the diflTerence in culture, and not the imaginary difference in climate, solely producing the result. Some have remarked that we are not a Salad-eating race; but the fact that large quantities of Parisian Lettuces are imported every week and every day for many weeks in spring, proves that we are so in so far as we can afibrd it. K the restaurants and houses of all classes in Paris had to be supplied from another coimtry, and at about four times the price
INTRODUCnOK.
they now -pnj, the FarisianB would use even less than we do.
For many years the London market gardeners^ who have long seen these beautiful Lettuces selling at high prices in the markets — at as much as 9s. per dozen wholesale — ^have quietly concluded that they came from some Eden-like spot in the south of France^ and have apparently never taken the trouble to see how they are produced. The truth is^ that by the adoption of the French system they may be grown to fully as great perfection near London and in the home counties as near Paris. The fact that we have to be sup- plied by our neighbours with articles that coidd be so easily produced in this country is almost ridiculous. It is im- possible to exaggerate the importance of this culture for a nation of gardeners like the British; and if it were the only hint that we could take from the French cultivators with advantage^ it would be well worth consideration. " Enormous^' was the term which was made use of by a Paris market gardener in describing to me the quantities of Lettuces sent from his garden^ and the numbers of the traders who came in search of them. The French system will have the first diflSculty to get over — ^that of people becoming used to it^ and slightly changing their habits of culture to accommodate it; but it must ere long be uni- versally adopted with us^ and nothing can prevent a great benefit being reaped from it by the horticulturists of the United Kingdom.
The French are also far before us in the culture and appreciation of Asparagus^ pursuing a system quite op- posed to ours^ and growing it so abundantly that for many weeks in spring it is an article of popular use with all classes. Some among us affect to ridicule French Asparagus in consequence of its being blanched nearly to the top of the shoot ; but they forget, or ignore the fact, that to remove this imperfection, if it be one, the grower has merely to save himself the trouble of causing it, and that he may adopt the superior mode of culture and root- treatment pursued by the French without blanching the stem if he desires it in a green state. Apart from this, their
INTEODUCnOK. XXXI
experience of French Asparagus is fireqnenily limited to samples that may have been cut in France a fortnight before they reach the table in England, having passed the intermediate time in travelling and losing quality in market or shop.
Having treated of Parisian market gardening generally in a special chapter, little need be said of it here except that the ground is often more than twice as dear as round London ; that in consequence of close rotation and deep and rich culture a great deal more is got off the ground in the small market gardens of Paris than is ever the case in oar larger ones; and that by reason of the general prac- tice of a thorough system of watering the markets are as well supplied during the hottest summer and autumn as if the climate were a perpetual moist and genial June, whereas when we have an exceptionally warm summer supplies become scarce and dear almost immediately, as was the case during the past year. The whole system of culture of the Paris market gardens is interesting and suggestive in a high degree — especially to a people who take so much pleasure and spend so much money in their gardens as we do. There can be no doubt that the intro- duction of the same system of very close cropping and good culture would be a great public advantage near all our large cities, where ground is always scarce and dear. It would enable us to get at least double the quantity of vegetables off the same space of ground, and better still, tend to furnish dwellers in cities with something like the propor- tion of fresh vegetables that is necessary for health. Our working people do not at present use in a suflBcient degree any vegetable except the universal Potato. I think I am well within the mark in stating that the poorer classes in Paris use three times as much of fresh vegetable food as the same classes in London. But improvements of our vege- table and firuit markets must precede all amelioration in this direction.
Parisian Mushroom culture is interesting and curious in a degree of which till lately we have had no conception, as will be seen by a perusal of the chapter devoted to it.
XXXll INTRODUCTION.
The sketches and plan that illustrate it — obtained with some diflBculty — are the first that have been published on the subject, so far as I am aware^ and will help the reader to obtain a fair idea of places that have been seen by very few English people, and of which most Frenchmen have only a mysterious notion. The perusal of this chapter will doubtless suggest trials of the culture to owners of mines and cavernous burrowings of any kind ; and perhaps in time to come Mushrooms may be a readily obtainable commodity in our markets, even in winter and spring, when they are usually very high priced and dear with us.
In conclusion, I may allude to a subject that is familiar to those of my readers who peruse the horticultural pub- lications of the day — ^viz., the fierce attacks that have been made upon me for my advocacy of some of the practices herein described. These attacks have chiefly come from certain horticulturists who boast of having traversed France many times during the past thirty years, and who, naturally perhaps, hold that a " tyro,'' a " young traveller,'' &c. &c., who first visited France in 1867, cannot possibly have seen anything good or instructive that has escaped their expe- rienced and sagacious eyes. The only reply I shall now or in future make to these gentlemen is in the form of a request to the horticultural public. Test such matters as interest you ; surrender not your judgment either to young or old — to the self-sufBcient sage or the presumptuous student — ^but ascertain for yourselves who is right.
THE
PARKS, PROMENADES,
AND
GAEDENS OF PAEIS.
The city swims in verdare, beautiful
As Venice on the waters, the sea-swan.
What bosky gardens dropped in close-walled courts
Like plums in ladies* laps, who start and laugh !
What miles of streets that nm on after trees,
Still carrying all the necessary shops.
Those open caskets with the jewels seen !
And traae is art, and art*s plulosophy,
In Paris. Auboba Leioh.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHAMPS ELTSEES AND THE GARDENS OF THE LOUVRE
AND THE TUILERIES.
Lf not already the brightest, airiest, and most beautiful of all cities, Paris is in a fair way to become so ; and the greatest part of her beauty is due to her gardens and her trees. A city of palaces indeed; but which is the most attractive — the view up that splendid avenue and garden stretching from the heart of the city to the Arc dc Triomphe, or that of the finest architectural features of Paris ? What would the new boulevards of white stone be without the softening and refreshing aid of those long lines of wcll- cared-for trees that everywhere rise around the buildings, helping them somewhat as the grass does the buttercups ? The makers of new Paris — who deserve the thanks of the inhabitants of all the filthy cities of the world for setting such an example — answer these questions for us by pulling down close and filthy quarters, where the influences of sweet air and green trees were never felt, and the sun could
B
2 THE CHAMPS ELTSJ^ES.
scarcely penetrate, and turning them into gems of bosky verdure and sweetness ; by piercing them with long wide streets, flanked with lines of green trees ; and, in a word, by relieving in every possible direction man^s work in stone with the changefiil and therefore everpleasing beauty of vegetable life.
In Paris, public gardening assumes an importance which it does not possess with us ; it is not confined to parks in one end of the town, and absent from the places where it is most wanted. It follows the street builders with trees, turns the little squares into gardens unsurpassed for good taste and beauty, drops down graceful fountains here and there, and margins them with flowers ; it presents to the eye of the poorest workman every charm of vegetation; it brings him pure air, and aims directly and eflectively at the recrea- tion and benefit of the people. The result is so good, that it is well worthy our attention. To understand and discuss it with advantage we cannot do better than commence in the Place dc la Concorde, and afterwards walk up the Avenue des Champs Elysecs, and into the gardens of the Louvre and the Tuileries — the chain of gardens about here forming a vast open space in the very heart of Paris.
The Place de la Concorde is not a garden, but a noble open space, admirable from its breadth and boldness, a worthy centre to the fine streets and avenue that diverge from it, embellished by fine fountains and some statues, and with a terrible history. By looking to the east the Palace of the Tuileries may be seen through the opening made in the wood of chestnuts by the central walk, and to the west is the Avenue des Champs Elysecs. If the reader who has not visited Paris will suppose a wide pleasure ground flanking the lower part of Regent-street, and having a grand tree-bordered avenue passing through its centre straight away to the highest point of the broad walk in the Regent's Park, and there crested by an immense triumphal arch — ^the largest in the world, 161 feet high and 145 wide — he may be able to form some idea of what the scene is, immediately after passing from the Place de la Concorde.
THE CHAMPS ELYS^ES. 3
The Ayenne des Champs Elys^es leads from it straight to the Arc ; and what it is and how it is laid out we have next to see. First there is the road, well macadamized^ slightly convex, so level and easy for horses that those of London could never again find courage to grind down angular lumps of broken rock if they passed a few weeks in rolling over it, and nearly 100 feet wide. There is a line of horse-chestnuts and other trees immediately within the footway that borders this on each side, and then more than fifty feet clear — for the greater part a gravelled walk, but with a well-laid footway of asphalte about seven feet wide in the centre, which is most agreeable to walk upon at all times, and particularly in wet weather. Then come four rows of elm and chestnut trees, under them about fifty feet more of gravel walks — the other side of the central avenue being laid out in a similar manner.
Then commences the garden, which is truly worthy of its position. Walking up the avenue on the left side we are in a wide and noble pleasure-ground, of which the farther- most parts that can be seen arc backed by belts of slirubs and specimen trees. But what are these little structures one sees quite in front? "Well, simply neat little sheds for gingerbread, cigars, and such commodities. To the British eye this kind of thing does not seem in what is called " keeping /' but if people will have their cigars and ginger- bread they may as well be sold to them where they are strolling or playing. Besides, you have in this case got the gingerbread-keepers under control, and they look as thoroughly subdued and dutiful as the sergent de ville, who is a model of gravity and dutifulness. Talk about the gaiety of the French ! Why, you never see one of these men smile, and yet they look thoroughly French. I once saw a London policeman, in sheer overflow of spirits, and probably slightly influenced by beer, throw his hat across the street after a cat, on a bright moonlight night, and then laugh at the fun of it ; but who ever saw so much hilarity or want of dignity as that in a Parisian policeman ? They, however, are a thoroughly eflBcient set of men —
B 2
4 THE CHAMPS ELYSl^ES.
earnest and alert in duty^ and apparently witli many shades more of self-respect than their London brethren. They keep the strictest order in these public gardens, the whole of which are as open and unprotected by fencing as the beds on the lawn of a country seat. There are no railing's higher than six inches ; and yet no flowers at Kew or the Crystal Palace are more valuable than these suflSce to protect day and night. No doubt this results to some extent from the prompt measures of the grave policemen when occasions for their interference do occur. It is in- structive and amusing to reflect that some years ago, when it was first proposed to green the heart of Paris with such beautiful open gardens as this, most ^vise French people considered it a foolish idea, saying : '^ Squares, &c., are possible in London, but not in the midst of our rough excitable people V^
Most of the stems of the trees are covered with ivy ; the wide belts of varied shrubs are encircled with the choicest flowers ; the grass, cver-welcomest of carpets, spreads out widely here and there ; great clumps of Rhododendrons and trees shroud buildings, not completely to hide them, but to prevent them from staring forth nakedly in the midst of the quiet sweetness of the garden. These buildings are chiefly for concerts, cafes, &c., and presently we come to a restaurant very agreeably situated. The plan of having restaurants in like places might be extended to London with great advantage — in such places as Kew or any of our great parks or gardens. Some captious individuals may object to such places being turned into tea-gardens ; but tea-gardens must exist somewhere, and why not have them respectably conducted imder control, and well arranged to meet the public wants? By so doing you might prevent the people from resorting to musty, and perhaps not very elevating, eating and drinking-places, and perhaps take from the charms of the lower type of music- hall entertainments now not considered so edifying as popular. On first consideration, the introduction of com- fortable restaurants in a place like Kew might seem to interfere with the quietness, which is one of the best features
THE CHAMPS KLTSEES.
of like places ; but it need not be so. There is no need for placing them in competition with the glass-houses^ or along a main walk^ or in any position where they may in the least interfere with the beauty and peace of the scene. They might be placed in isolated yet easily accessible spots^ shrouded with trees and shrubs from the garden or park^ yet. commanding peeps of it here and there ; they might have naturally disposed groups of low spreading trees near them^ under which people could sit to dine^ or take tea in the summer months; they might have open-sided bowers with zinc roofs, the pillars supporting them being draped with Virginian creepers, flowering roses, and the like, and the roofs also densely covered with them. They would have all the attractiveness of open trellis-work creeper-clad bowers, and .be at the same time quite impervious to showers.
As we proceed, fountains, weeping willows, and not less beautiful weeping Sophoras are seen, and so many isolated specimens of the noblest trees and plants, such as Welling- tonia, pampas grass, line-foliaged plants, &c., that we must not mention them all ; but arriving at the Palace of Industry, we make a considerable detour to the left to see a garden devoted to music — the Concert of the Champs Elysees, con- ducted by Musard. I draw attention to this to show that it is possible to introduce amusements into our public gardens without originating anything like the Jardin Bullier or Cremorne. I know of no place more creditably con- ducted than this, and any of the many English who have spent a summer evening in it will be of the same opinion. It is as quiet and free from objectionable features as a flower-show in the Regent^s Park, and very tastefully ar- ranged. In the centre a band-stand, around it a bed of flowers, then about ninety feet of gravel planted with circles of trees. Between each two of the outer line of horse- chestnuts there 13 a lamp-post with seven lights, standing in a mass of flowers. Between this and the enclosing fence there are belts of grass, trees, and of the choicest shrubs ; in one part a little lawn with its cedars and maiden-hair trees, bamboos, Irish yews, ivy-clad stems, and flower-beds ;
6 THE CHAMPS ELTS^ES.
in another spot n noble group of Indian-shot plants, with bronzy, finely-formed leaves j an equally telling one of the great edible Caladium springing from among mignonette ; here a pampas grass, there a broad-leaved Acanthus, with a mass of the handsome Chinese rice<paper plant in the distance. In its design and management it is aa different from the Cremome type as could be desired. To compare it with the places where the stupid and ugly cancan is performed, and of which there are specimens near at hand, is quite out of the question. How the yoimg men of France, so ready
Evening Concert in Ibe C'linmps Elj'nicii.
to detect the b6te iu others, can go night after night to see this performed, is beyond comprehension. I see no reason why we should not have places managed as is this evening concert-garden, even if it were only to counteract the evil influences of the numerous jilaces which cater simply for the lowest tastes. In any case this garden will repay a visit to those who take interest iu these matters. ^^cUi^i It was only in 1860 that the garden of the Champs Elys^es was laid out, and yet it looks an ancient aifair, has many respectable specimens of conifers, Magnolias, &c..
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THE CHAMPS ELT&^S. 7
nnmexoiu lai^ and well-made banks and beds of Rliodo* dendrons. Azaleas, hollies, and the best shrubs and trees generally, with abundant Toom for planting anmmer flowers, chiefly, howerer, as margins to the clumps of shrubs. The gardens end at the Bond Point, a circular open space, in vhich there are lai^e beds for flowers, fountains, frc., disfigured, however, by the undulations Tvhich some poor little bits of grass are made to assume. Useless and mmatural diversification of the ground in some small spaces^ and the lumping together of too many things in one mass, are the weak points in the gardening of Paris. Above tluB Bond Point, a very wide footway of about sixty feet, shaded by two rows of trees, divides the avenue from the hoosea which here approach its sides. Instead of following the arenne np towards the Arc side we stop at the Rond Point, glance at the masses of Hibiscus, Caladium, and Papyrus of the Nile which embellish it, and then descend the garden by the side of the Rue du Fauboui^ St. Honore.
Here we presently meet with a circus, a neat little
Fin. 2.
Circiu ia the Gardons of tbo CbampB EljBuei.
theatre, concert halls. Sec., all dropped down in the quietest way amidst the choicest trees ^and flowers, and many veri-
8 THE CBAHFS ELTS^tS.
table permauentlj establislied Fanch and Judy shows ! I hope tbis will ebock no well reflated mind. They are not like fugitive exbibitions tolerated at tbe end of obscure streets branching off from the Strand or Oidbrd-street, but have rights as ffell-established as those of the Opera. If we consider wb:it a perennial source of amusement this Punch and Judy fun has been for children, perhaps it deserves a place as well as other more fashionable amuse- ments. And then we have revolving circuses, on which the children of the period take their choice to ride on elephant or steed, various kinds of juvenile amusements, cafes, summer music halU, dahlia beds, fountains, Abys- sinian musas, and too many similar objects to enumerate. On fine days the wide tree-shaded walks are crowded with pedestrians ; all the little games are in full swing, and though it may seem a qtieer jumble to many, the whole thing is as orderly as could be wished.
At the top of the long avenue, the great arch is sur- rounded by an immense circular Place, from which straight boulevards and avenues radiate in all directions. The guide-books advise the visitor to !faris to see the lamps lit at night in the Champs Elysees, but if he should want to see the finest effect of that kind, he must go to this arch on a dark night, and standing in tbe centre look at their effect in the long wide avenues, which fall from where he stands, and afterwards walk around its base to sec them better still. The I H^^H^ whole scene here is magnificent, and I ^^BBp if Paris had nothing worth seeing hut I ^|nflS, ^bat may be seen from hence, it msBt^SM would well repay a visit to all persons ^^^/§ interested in the improvements of
PH^ towns and cities. 3B^kI "^^ ^iace de I'Etoile, with itssuj- ^|9Bh' roundings, is precisely the reverse of !,_^- I-l^""S; , our own efforts in like positions — its , , , ' breadth, dignity, and airiness con- Avennee and bouicTarilB ra- . . . -T ■ i - i ..
dUting riom iho Place da trastiog strikingly With the narrow- rEtoile. nesSj meanness, and closeness of the
GABSBNS OF TUE LODVRE AND THE TUTLERIKS. V
best attempts in our so Tciy mncli lai^r and busier London.
The Gardens of the Louvre and the Tutleries.
The Place du Carrousel, stretching between the Palaces of the Louvre and the Tuileries, is a large open paved square by no means attractive, hut at its eastern end it merges into the narrower Place Napoleon III., to which I wish more par- ticularly to direct attention. The Kace is inclosed on three sides by the splendid buildings of the new Louvre, and is embellished with two little gardens surrounded by railings with gilt spears. The Place du Carrousel, surrounded by Palaces, is perfectly bare and without ornament, except the triumphal arch that stands at the main entrance of the court of the Tuileries, but looking to- wards the Louvre the eye is in- stantly refreshed by these little gardens, veritable oases in a wil- derness of paving stone. I know of no spot more capable of teach- ing some of the most valuable les- sons in city-gardening than this. Viewed externally from their immediate surroundings, or from , the more distant Tuileries square,
the gardens have a verv pretty
_ , , , . ' . L Arc do Tnumubc du Carroasel,
effect, and show at once the
utility of such, not only for their own sakes, but also as an aid to architecture. On the one hand you have a space as devoid of vegetation as the desert — on the other by the creation of the simplest types of garden, you relieve the sculptor'a work in stone and the changeless lines of the great buildings by the living grace of vegetation, so as to make the scene of the most refreshing kind, and all by merely encroaching a little on the space that would other- wise be monopolized by paring stones. The gardens are very small and most simple in plan, a circle of grass, a walk, and a belt of hardy trees and shrubs around the
10 OAEDKNS OF THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES.
whole, and an edging of ivy. No gaudy colouring of F.a. 5. *^« gnjund-no expensive temporary
I, decoration with tender costly flowers,
V^jj^ ^ but eyerything as green and quiet as
could be desired. There are four outlets always open, so that visitors can go in and view the little gardens and the rich pavilions riising behind ^mm^g^^ ^ their small but sufficient foregrounds ^^IKSHolS^ of verdure. Gronnd plan of the small ^t is quite commou amongst land- ^"^^1^ TTT ^^ ^^^^ scape gardeners and others to lay down
as a sort of law, that when we make a garden very near to any kind of ornamental building it is above all things necessary to make it " associate^^ with them — ^to carry the lines of the building as much as possible into the garden, to make it as angular, and it may be, as brick- dusty as possible, like some recent examples with us ; but these gardens prove the fallacy of this reasoning as regards city gardens and open spaces. There are numbers of men professing taste in designing gardens who would never think of putting anything in this position, surrounded as it is, but some miserable prettinesses, expensive gewgaws in the way of trees in tubs, squirting water, vases, coloured broken gravels, &c. &c., things which in their opinion would harmonize with the work of the architect. But from the simplest materials the most satisfactory results may be obtained, as we see here ; and economical reasons also demand simplicity and permanence in all similar attempts. Ten times the amount might be spent on the space occupied, and perhaps with a far less satisfactory result, while there would of course be so much less force to expend on the ventilation and improvement of the many close and sunless quarters that still remain. The small patches of grass in these gardens are like that everywhere in Paris, deep and vividly green, and firesh at all seasons. They usually give it a top dressing of fine and thoroughly decomposed manure in April, but the secret is, dense and repeated waterings at all seasons when the natural rainfall does not serve to keep it as fresh as June leaves.
GARDENS OF TU£ LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES. 11
Passing through the great court of the Louvre, and out on the eastern side, we see the garden of the Louvre, which is simply a rail-surrounded space, laid out with the usual very green and well-kept grass, round-headed bushes of lilac, ivy edgings, evergreen shrubs here and there, flowers at all seasons, and the best, cheapest, prettiest, and most lasting edgings in use in any garden, made of cast-iron in imitation of bent sticks. Much of this garden was once covered with old buildings and streets — even the great square just spoken of was once packed with alleys ; but the recent improvements of Paris have swept all those things away, and on every side the buildings stand as free as could be desired — unlike our London ones, some of which can hardly be discovered, and which when they have an enclosed space aroimd them, it is merely a receptacle for dead cats, &c. Against the waUs of the palace numerous seats are placed, and the gardens, though not large, offer a very agreeable retreat at all seasons ; for even during the colder months the old men and invalids improve the shining hours by gathering on the seats close imder the great walls when the sun is out.
The main feature of the flower gardening here is a modi- fication of the mixed border system, pretty, and also capable of infinite change. It is a combination of circle, and mix- ture, and ribbon, quite unpractised with us. Along the middle of the borders we have a line of permanent and rather large-growing things — ^roses, dahlias, neat bushes of Althsea frutex, and small Persian lilacs. Tlie lilacs might be thought to grow too gross for such a position, but by cutting them in to the heart as soon as they have done flowering the bedding plants start with them on equal terms, and the lilacs do not hurt them by pushing out again, and make neat round heads prepared to bloom well again the following spring. Thus they have along the centre of each border a line of green and pointed subjects, which always save it from over-colouring, and then underneath they lay on the tones as thick as need be. Around each bush or tall plant in these borders are placed rings of bedding plants — Fuchsia, Veronica, Heliotropum, Chrysanthemum
12
GARDENS OF THE LOUVRE AND THE TDILEEIES.
grandifloniDij and foenicnlaceam, the outer spaces be- tween the TiDgs being filled with plants of other sorts. Then follows a straight line of Pelargoniums — scarlet, white, And rose mixed plant for plant, and forming a very pretty line. Outside of that a band of Irish ivy, pegged close to the earth, and pinched two or three times a year ; and finally, on the walk side, an edging of the rustic irons else- where described.
As soon as they get beyond the very primitive idea, that because one border is of a certain pattern the others ought to follow it, this will be found a really good plan, and it is worth attention with us ; by ita means we may enjoy great variety in a border without any of the raggedneas of the old mixed border system. Around most of the rose trees they place a small ring of gladioli — a good plan where the plant grows well. Any person with a knowledge of bedding plants may vary this plan ad infinitum, and produce a most happy result with it wherever borders have to be dealt with. Let us next go to the west end of the p.alacea to see the gardens of the Tuilcries, which stretch from the western face of that palace to the Place de la Concorde, bounded on one side by the Rue de Rivoli, on the other by the river. Being nearly in the centre of Paris these gardens are as frequented as any. The garden is very large, and laid out in the plain geometrical style by Le Notre, with wide straight walks, borders round grass plots dotted with little lilac bushes, and flowers below them. About one-fourth of it near the palace is cut off for the Emperor's private use, but this part is merely divided from the public one by a sunk fence and low railing, so that the view
GARDENS OF THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES. 13
of the private garden is enjoyed by all. In it they simply plant good evergreens and plenty of deciduous flowering shrubs^ while the grass plots are belted by borders^ one of which runsiright along under the palace windows with the usual round bushes of lUac ; but these borders are kept pretty gay all the year round. The private garden of the Emperor is quite open to the public when he is not at the Toileries. It is well worth visiting shoidd an opportunity occur^ if only to see the way the ivy edgings are used. There are no beds, only borders — these touching the gravel walk, and being edged with box. Then on the bright gravel itself, or apparently so, they lay down a beautiful dark green band of ivy, of course allowing in the laying down of the walk for the space .thus occupied. The effect of the rich green band adds much to the beauty of the borders. The mode of making them is elsewhere described. The flowers are kept a good deal subdued, and some trouble is taken to develope the shrubs and stronger vegetation dis- tinctly and well. The effect is very good firom the windows and the interior. Cannas are used to produce a very charming effect in mixed borders, and altogether this por- tion is tastefully and inexpensively planted. It is noticeable that hardy shrubs and trees predominate — I believe, by the Emperor^s wish — and that, instead of the usual crowding, care is taken to give even the commonest kinds room to grow and become respectable specimens.
A very wide walk crosses the garden just outside the private division ; at about its centre are a large basin and fountain, from which another wide walk goes straight to- wards the Place de la Concorde, and by looking in that direction we see the whole length of the magnificent Avenue des Champs Elysees, terminated on the crest of the hill by the Arc de Triomphe. This walk cuts the garden into two portions chiefly planted with chestnuts and other forest trees, which have not been suflScientiy thinned, but are allowed to run up very tall, and thus afford a high arched shade in summer, the ground being gravelled underneath, so that it is comfortable to walk or play upon. There is a alight narrow terrace on both sides, an orangery, the con-
14 QAKDEHS OP THE LOCVKE AND THE TVn.ERlES.
tents of which are placed out in summer, an alley arched over with lime trees by the side of the Rue de Bivolij and at the western end there are terraces which aflbrd a capital view of the bright and busy scene around and the noble avenue towards the west. There is a great deal of sculp- ture, both copies of celebrated works and original ones, but as for fresh horticultural interest there is little or none to be seen ; and a passing glance is all the visitor need be- stow on the public part of the garden of the Tuileries, though it is only fair to add that its general effect is very
Tbo Rhone and Iho Sftone, liy G. Couatou, in tbo Tiiilcrii-s Ganli
good, and that it in all respects answers its purpose as a play and promenading ground and a " lung " to the city.
A few words must be devoted to those long lines of large orange trees in tubs — they are so very conspicuons that they force themselves upon our attention. There are many ignorant and hopeless ways of spending money iu gardens, but few more ao than this,^ — indeed it is one of the moat fami- liar instances of unworthy outlay that is known. Consider for a moment the enormous expense incurred by those lines of finely-grown old orange trees in the gardens of the TuilerieSj at Versaillesj the Luxembourg, and in other gar-
GABDKH8 OF THE IXIUVRE AND THE TUILBRIE8. 15
dena, public and private I Every one of them has cost more to rear to a condition that is presentable than the education of a surgeon or barrister, and all in order to pro- duce a deep round tuft of not very healthy green leaves at the end of a black stem seven feet high or thereabouts. Coetly tubs that rot periodically ; costiy storing in iai^ conservatories in winter; costly carriage &om the house to ^"J- ^■
open garden, and from open gar- den to house, and all to no good purpose whatever. The foliage differs not at all, or in but a trifling degree, from evergreens common in our shrubberies ; the clipped head of green is far inferior to that afforded by the hardy and elegant spineless Ro- binia, the flowers are few or none, the whole thing is a relic of barbarism, and as such should be excluded from the tasteful and well-arranged garden. The kind of effect they produce is afforded in a far higher degree by perfectly hardy subjects.
But an orange ia an orange : and sui)pose we wish to have a little grove of tlicm ? Then make the grove at once, and, by planting them in an elegant conservatory, grow them ten times as well and ten times as cheaply as you can by this absurd process of carrying in and out, and never withal seeing them in good condition. What a potato is without tubers, an orange is minus flowers and fruit. By planting them in a conservatory you may enjoy all the beauty of leaves, flowers, and fruit — by carrying out of doors, hoping thereby to embellish what you only disfigure, you enjoy nothing but imperfectly healthy leaves. Tlie conservatory must exist to hold them in any case, and one only big enough to contain, say half those in this garden, would, if planted with orange trees, aflbrd the Parisians
] in the Tuilcriea Gardens.
16 GARDENS OF THE L0I3VRE AND THE TUILEBBSS.
more gratification by showing them what orange trees really are^ than all they have ever enjoyed through the vast sums that have been spent upon orange trees for several hundred years past. They were all very well in an age when exotics^ and above all such attractive exotics as the orange^ were rare^ and when good glass-houses were unknown^ and bad ones impossibly dear ; but now^ when we have thousands of choice exotics grown in perfection everywhere around us, the present condition of these fine old trees should not be tole- rated. They should be planted out in a conservatory worthy of the city, or be done away with.
There are, however, some circumstances in which the culture of plants in tubs for placing in the open air in summer may not only be tolerable, but desirable. At (Geneva I once saw, opposite a restaurant, the finest specimen of the fragrant Pittosporum Tobira that I ever met with, and was informed it had been in a cellar all the winter. Such as the orange trees are, however, they have admirers, most of whom believe that they cannot be grown to such per- fection by the same method in England. This is not the case : the method pursued in northern France (which is described in another chapter) will succeed almost equally well in the south of England and Ireland.
Let us wait a moment to look at these people feeding the birds, so much to their own amusement and also that of the lookers-on. It is a pretty sight, and seems to afford great pleasure to many people, and doubtless much more to the successful feeders. It is quite a little scene in the gardens every day, and on fine days it attracts numbers of people, though it is an every-day occurrence there. The Jardin des Tuileries is inhabited by a great number of the common ringdove, or " quesf^ — those wild pigeons which in Britain and elsewhere, when in a wild state, flash away from man like an arrow from the bow. In these and other gardens in Paris they seem perfectly at home, and perch at ease in the trees over the heads of the multitudes of children who play, and of people who walk on fine days. Their in- timacy does not extend further, except with their friends who come to feed them now and then. Here is an instance.
GARDENS OF THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES. 17
A man, evidently a respectable mechanic, comes to a certain spot, near the private garden of the Emperor. Presently some of the pigeons fly to their friend. He is an old acquaintance, and a bird alighting on his left arm gets a morsel of bread to begin with ; others follow. He has previously put a few crumbs of bread into his mouth, of which the birds are well aware, and, arching their exqui- sitely graceful necks, they put their bills between his lips and take out a bit turn about. Perhaps one alights on his head, and he may accommodate two or three on his right arm. There are others perched on the railings near at hand, and they come in for their turn by-and-by. A dense ring of people stand a few yards off, looking on, especially if it be a fine day, but they must not frighten the birds, and this persistent feeder looks daggers at a small boy who allows an audible yell of delight to escape. Presently the sparrows gather roimd the feeder^s feet, and pick up any crombs that may fall while he is transferring the bread from his pocket to his mouth. The sparrows, sagacious creatures, do not as a rule light upon the arm, and never even think of putting their heads in the mouth of the man, but flutter gently so as to poise themselves in one spot about fifteen inches or so from the hand of the feeder. He throws up bits among them, and they invariably catch them with slight deviation from their fluttering position, or at most with a little curl. Sometimes the sparrows pluckily alight on the hand, and root out crumbs held between the finger and thumb, but this only in the case of very old friends.
c
18
CHAPTER II.
THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE AND THE BOIS DE VINCENNES.
The Bois de Boulogne.
This park illustrates how we improve by friction, so to speak. Till 1852 the Bois was a forest ; but Napoleon III., in his admiration for English parks, determined to add their charms to Paris, or rather to improve upon them, and the Bois is one result. In concert i;\'ith the municipality, the Emperor dug out the lakes, and made the waterfalls. As a combination of wild wood and noble pleasure garden, it is magnificent. The deer are placed in an enclosed space. The Bois is splendid too as regards size — containing more than 2000 acres, of which nearly half is wood, a quarter grass, one-eighth roads, and more than seventy acres water. Though with large expectations in other directions, the reader will hardly be prepared for the statement that the French beat us in parks. When first entered this may not be much liked, the numerous Scotch pines around one part of the water giving it a somewhat barren look, but a few miles' walk through it soon dispels this idea. It has more than the beauty and finish of any London park in some spots, but, on the other hand, vast spreads of it are covered with a thick, small, and somewhat scrub-like wood, in which wild flowers grow abundantly, unlike the prim London parks. There are plenty of wild cowslips dotted over even the best kept parts of it in spring, while the planting on and near the islands is far superior to anything to be witnessed in our own parks. To see what the Bois de Boulogne really is, the visitor should keep to the left when he enters from Passy or the Arc de Triomphe, and go right to the end of the two pieces of ornamental water. Then, standing with his back to the water, he will notice an
I ,' 11^
THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE. Id
elevated spot, and by going to that spot he will enjoy one of the finest views he has ever seen in a public park — the ■water in one direction looking like an interminable inletj beautifully fringed with green and trees, irhile in the other several charming views are opened up, showing the hilly suburban country towards Boulogae, St, Cloud, and that neighbourhood. Then, by turning to the right and returning to Paris by the west side of the water, he will have a pretty
One of tlie amail lakes ia (he Uois i]c Boulogne.
good idea of what a noble promenade, drive, and garden this is.
It is in all respects worthy of its grand approaches, of the width and boldness of which those who have not seen Paris can have no conception. There is some bold rock- work attempted and well done about the artificial water; and very creditable pains are taken to make the vegetation along it diversified in character, so that at one place you meet conifers, at another rock shrubs, in another Magnolias, and so on ; without the eternal repetition of common things which one too often sees at home. At Longchamps, near the racecourse, which attracts half Paris to this part of the wood on fine Sundays, there is a large and ambitious cas-
30 THE BOIS D£ BOOLOONE.
cade. Above the spring or shoot of the cascade is an arch of rustic rocks, over which fall ivy and rock shrubs, the whole being hacked with a healthy rising plantation. Although made at great expense, this cascade cannot be pronounced a happy one ; to me it is less pleasing than the less pretentious ones at the head of the large lakes.
The fault of the most frequented part of the Bois de Boulogne is that the bauks which fall to the water are in some parts a little too suggestive of a railway embankment, and display but little of that indefiniteness of gradation and
Grand catcade in the Bois de Boulogno.
outline which we find in the true examples of the real " English style " of laying out grounds. But you do not notice this irom the position above described, from whence indeed the scene is charming. The fault just hinted at is common to ahnost every example of this style to be seen about Paris ; and in most of their walks, mounds, and the turnings of their streams, you can detect a family likeness and a style of curvature which is certainly never exhibited by nature, so far as we are acquainted with her in these latitudes. But it is only justice to say that, taking the park as a whole, it is far before our London ones in point of design.
THE BOIS BB BODLOOKE. 21
Apart from the perfect keeping of the wholcj the chief lesson to be learnt here by the English planter is the Tilne of paying far greater attention than we at present do to artistic planting of choice hardy trees and shrubs. The islands seen irom the margin of the lakes are at all timea beantifiil, in conseqaence of the presence of a varied collec- tion of the finest shmbs and trees tastefully disposed. They show at a glance the immense superiority of perinanent embellishment over fleeting aooual display. The planting of these islands was expensive at first, and required a good
Winter aceQe on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne- knowledge of trees and shrubs, besides a large amount of taste in the designer ; but it is so done that were the hand of man to be removed &om them for half a century they would not suffer in the least. Nothing could be easier than to find examples of gardens quite as costly in the first instance, which, while involving a yearly expenditure, wonld be ruined by a year's neglect. It is summer, and along the mai^ns of these islands you see the fresh pyramids of the decidoons cypress starting from graceful surroundings of hardy bamboos and pampas grass, and far beyond a group of bright silvery Negundo in the midst of dark-green vegeta-
22 THE BOIS D£ BOULOGNE.
tion^ with scores of tints and types of tree-form around. It is springs and the whole scene is animated by the cheerful flush of bloom of the many shrubs that burst into blossom with the strengthening snn, and while the oaks are yet leaf- less the large swollen flower-buds of the splendid deciduous Magnolias may be seen conspicuous at long distances through the other trees. In autumn the variety and richness of the tints of the foliage offer a varied picture from week to week ; and in winter the many picturesque and gracefol forms of the deciduous trees among the evergreen shrubs and pines offer the observant eye as much interest as at any other season.
Looking deeper than the immediate results, we may see how the adoption of the system of careful permanent plant- ing enables us to secure what I consider the most important point in the whole art of gardening — ^variety, and that of the noblest kind. Mr. Buskin tells us that ''change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart in build- ings as in books ; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit firom an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a uni- verse in which the clouds were all of one shape and the trees all of one size." These words apply to public gardens with even greater force. In them we need not be tied by the formalism which comfort, convenience, and economy require the architect to bear in mind, no matter how widely he diverges from the commonplace in general design. In garden or in park there is practically no noticeable tie ; in buildings there are many. Vegetation varies every day in the year. In buildings more than on any other things unchangeableness is stamped. In the tree and plant world we deal with things by no means remotely allied to our- selves— their lives, from the unfolding bud to the tottering trunk, are as the lives of men. In the building we deal with things much less mutable, which have a beginning and ending like all others, but their changes are much less apparent to our narrow vision. Therefore the opportunity
THE BOIS BE BOULOGNE. 23
for yariety is beyond comparison greater in public or private gardening than in the building art^ or indeed in any other art whatever.
Without the garden^ Lord Bacon tells us^ '^ Buildings and pallaces are but grosse handy works : and a man shall ever see that when ages grow to civility and elegancie^ men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely : as if gardening were the greater perfection/' As yet we are far &om perfection as builders^ and the garden holds still the relationship to the building art which is described by Bacon. Indeed, it is more backward; for in a day when building has eloquent champions to put in some such pleas as that quoted, and, moreover, give us practical illustrations of their meaning, we can find no proof that any knowledge of the all-important necessity for variety exists in the minds of those who arrange or manage our gardens, public or private. And yet this unrecognised variety is the life and soul of high gardening. If people generally could see this clearly, it would lead to the greatest improvement our gardening has ever witnessed. Considering the variety of vegetation, soil, climate, and position which we can com- mand, it is impossible to doubt that our power to produce variety is unlimited.
The necessity for it is great. What is the broadly marked bane of the public as well as private gardening of the present ' day ? The want of variety. What is it that causes us to take little more interest in the ordinary display of "bedding out,^' fostered with so much care, than we do in the bricks that go to make up the face of a house ? Simply the want of that variety of beauty which a walk along a flowery lane or over a wild heath shows us may be aflForded by even the indigenous vegetation of one spot in a northern and unfavourable clime. But in our parks we can, if we will, have an endless variety of form, from the fern to the grisly oak and Gothic pine — inex- haustible charms of colour and fragrance, from that of the little Alpine plant near the snows on the great chains of mountains, to the lilies of Japan and Siberia. And yet out of all these riches the fashion for a long time has been
24 THE BOIS BE BOULOGNE.
to select a few kinds which have the property of producing dense masses of their particular colours on the ground^ to the almost entire neglect of the nobler and hardier vegeta- tion. The expense of the present system is greats and must be renewed annually^ while the gratification is of the poorest kind. To a person with no perception of the higher charms of vegetation the thing may prove interesting, and to the professional gardener it is often so ; but to anybody of taste and intelligence, busy in this world of beauty and interest, the result attained by the above method is almost a blank. There can be little doubt that numbers are, un- known to themselves, deterred from taking any interest in the garden ; in fact, it is a blank to them. They in conse- quence may talk or boast of having a " good display,'' Sec., but the satisfaction from that is very poor indeed, compared with the real enjoyment of a garden.
The one thing we want to do to alter this is to break the chains of monotony with which we are at present bound, and show the world that the ^^ purest of humane pleasures'' is for humanity, and not for a class, and a narrow one. Eyes everywhere among us are hungering after novelty and beauty ; but in our public gardens they look for it in vain as a rule, for the presence of a few things that they are already as familiar with as with the texture of a gravel walk, must tend to impress them with an opinion that our art is the most inane of all. In books they everywhere find variety, and some interest, if high merit is rare ; the same is the case in painting, in sculpture, in music, and indeed in all the arts ; but in that which should possess it more than any other, and is more capable of it than any other, there is as a rule none to be found. This is not merely the case with the flower-garden and its adjuncts ; it prevails in wood, grove, shrubbery, and in everything connected with the garden. What attempt is made in our parks and pleasure grounds to give an idea of the rich beauty of which our hardy trees are capable, although these places afibrd the fullest opportunity to do so ? How rare it is to see one-tenth of the floral beauty afibrded by deciduous shrubs even suggested ! Hitherto our gardening has been marked by two schools —
THE BOIS liE BOULOGNE. 25
one in which a few, or comparatively few, " good things^' are grown; the other, the botanic garden school, in which every obtainable thing is grown, be it ugly or handsome. What we want for the ornamental public garden is the mean between these two; we want the variety of the botanic garden without its scientific but very unnatural and ugly arrangement; we want its interest without its weediness and monotony.
There is no way in which the deadening formalism of our gardens may be more efiectually destroyed than by the system of naturally grouping hardy plants. It may afibrd the most pleasing results, and impress on others the amount of variety and loveliness to be obtained from many families now ahnost unused. To suggest in how many directions we may produce the most satisfactory efiects, I have merely to give a few instances. Suppose that in a case where the chief labour and expense now go for an annual display, or what some might call an annual muddle, the system is given up for one in which all the taste and skill and expense go to the making of features that do not perish with the first frosts. Let us begin, then, with a carefully selected collec- tion of trees and shrubs distinguished for their fine foliage — by noble leaf beauty, selecting a quiet glade in which to develope it. I should by no means confine the scene to this tfpe alone, as it would be desirable to show what the leaves were by contrast, and to vary it in other ways — with bright beds of flowers if you like. It would make a feature in itself attractive, and show many that it is not quite neces- sary to resort to things that require the climate of Rio before you find marked leaf beauty and character. It would teach, too, how valuable such things would prove for the mixed collection. Many kinds of leaf might be therein developed, from the great simple-leaved species of the rhubarb type to the divided ones of Lindley's spirsea, and the taller Ailantus, Kolreuteria, Gymnocladus, &c. The fringes of such a group might well be lit up with beds of lilies, irises, or any showy flowers ; or better still, by hardy flowering shrubs. An irregularly but artistically planted group of this kind would prove an everlasting source of
26 THE BOIS D£ BOULOGNE.
interest ; it might be improved and added to from time to time^ but the original expense would be nearly all.
Pass by this rather sheltered nook^ and come to a gentle knoll in an open spot. Here we will make a group from that wonderful rosaceous family which does so much to beautify all northern and temperate climes. And what a glorious bouquet it might be made^ with American and European hawthorns, double cherries, plums, almonds, pears, double peaches, &c., need hardly be suggested. You would here have a marked family likeness prevailing in the groups, quite unlike the monotony resulting from planting, say, five or six thousand plants of Rhododendron in one spot, as is the fashion with some ; for each tree would difier conside- rably from its neighbour in flower and fruit. Then, having arranged the groups in a picturesque and natural way, we might finish off* with a new feature. It is the custom to margin our shrubberies and ornamental plantings with a rather well-marked line. Strong-growing things come near the edge as a rule, and many of the dwarfest and prettiest spring-flowering shrubs are lost in the shade or crowding of more robust subjects. They are often overshadowed, often deprived of food, often injui:ed by the rough digging which people usually think wholesome for the shrubbery. Now I should take the very best of these, and extend them as neat low groups, or isolated well-grown specimens, not far from, and quite clear of the shade of, the medium-sized or low trees of the central groupings. The result would be that choice dwarf shrubs like Ononis fruticosus, Prunus triloba, the dwarf peach and almond, Spirsea prunifolia fl. pi., the double Chinese plum, and any others of the numerous fine dwarf shrubs that taste might select, would display a perfection to which they are usually strangers. It would be putting them as far in advatice of their ordinary appear- ance, as the stove and greenhouse plants at our great flower shows are to the ordinary stock in a nursery or neglected private garden. It would teach people that there are many unnoticed little hardy plants which merely want growing in some open spot to appear as beautiful as any admired New Holland plant. The system might be varied as much as
THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE. 27
the plants themselves^ while one garden or pleasure ground need no more resemble another than the clouds of to-morrow do those of to-day.
In the rich alluvial soil in level spots, near water or in some open break in a wood, we might have numbers of the fine herbaceous families of Northern Asia, America, and Europe. These, if well selected, would furnish a type of vegetation now very rarely seen in this country, and flourish without the slightest attention after once being planted. In rocky mounds quite free from shade we might well display true Alpine vegetation, selecting dwarf shrubs and the many free-growing, hardy Alpines which flourish every- where. To turn from the somewhat natural arrangements, as the years rolled on, occasional plantings might be made to show in greatest abundance the subjects of greatest novelty or interest at the time of planting. In one select spot, for example, we might enjoy our plantation of Japanese ever- greens, many of them valuable in the ornamental garden; in another the Califomian pines; in another a picturesque group of wild roses ; and so on without end. Were this the place to do any more than suggest what may be done in this way in the splendid positions offered by our public gardens and parks, I could mention scores of arrangements of equal interest and value to the above. If the principle of annually planting a portion of a great park or garden of this kind were adopted instead of giving all the same routine attention after the first laying out, I am certain it would prove the greatest improvement ever introduced into our system of gardening. The embellishment of the islands in the Bois de Boulogne is very successful, but it is merely one of many fine results that artistic planting would secure. Plantations as full of interest and beauty might be made in other portions, and the fact is the vegetable kingdom is so wide that, although the combination of plant knowledge and taste necessary to success might not often be found in the designer, the materials for any number of varied pictures in vegetation could never fail.
The principle here advocated should not only be applied to the details of one garden, but on a greater scale, and
28 THE B0J8 BE BOULOGNE.
with even more satisfactory results^ to all the gardens of any great city.
Take a city with half a dozen parks^ a score of squares, and perhaps numerous avenues and open places where trees or flowers might be grown — take^ in fact, the public gardening of Paris or London at the present day. Now, in the ordinary course of things, several kinds of trees and plants, or several dozen kinds, will be found to do best in all these places, and under the usual management the same subjects will predominate in each. To the people who live in the neighbourhood of each the effect will be perhaps agreeable ; but it must become monotonous. To prevent people endeavouring to see any life or interest in vegeta- tion, the true way is to make a few things predominate everywhere. It is also a simple and easy way for the superintendents ; there is no " bother with it,'' but there is also little pleasure, and little of that enthusiastic effort which is the highest of pleasures, and one only enjoyed by those who work at things for their own sakes. Innumerable beds of Cannas and Pelargoniimis are better than nothing, no doubt^ but are bad where the opportunity for a higher kind of embellishment exists. For the credit and encouragement of our city gardening, it is necessary that we confine cursives to the better kind of trees, as many good kinds do not grow well in streets ; but when it comes to the parks and open gardens, it is a very different matter. If each park and square in a city were arranged entirely different from every other, the enjoyment of those in the immediate neighbour- hood of each would be none the less, while the gardening treasures of the town would be greater in proportion to the number of parks or squares. A walk in any direction would reveal new charms to those having the slightest sympathy with nature, and help to sow the seed of love for it, were the ground ever so barren. A walk to distant parks or squares would furnish an object to the many, who might be expected to take an interest in gardens under such management; and objects for walks in towns and cities cannot be too numerous.
One park might display minute floral interest in all its
i
THE BOIS BE BOULOGNE. 29
variations^ with the larger subjects only used as the neces- sary setting, shelter, and greenery. Another, with a good soil and favourable exposition, might be made to show the dignity and variety of the forest trees of northern and temperate Europe, Asia, and America. One square might, like Berkeley-square in London, or the little squares in the Place Napoleon III. in Paris, be made very tasteful and efiTective from simple inexpensive materials — such as green grass, hardy shrubs, and trees. Another might display leaf- beauty so as to remind one of the vegetation of the South Sea Islands ; another, chiefly the dwarf prairie and hill flora of cold and temperate countries; and so on — each class of vegetation to be considerately adapted to soil, conditions, and surroundings of the place as regards shelter, liability to foul vapours, position in relation to other gardens and avenues, and so on. In fact, this great principle of variety is capable of doing so much for public gardens, that it should be made compulsory on the heads of these establish- ments to make each as different from its brother as it possibly could be made. Carried out, then, as I have slightly indicated, both in the private and public place, gardening would be nearer to proving the " greatest re- freshment to the spirits of man^^ than it has ever been in any age.
There is one feature in the Bois de Boulogne which cannot be too strongly condemned — the practice of laying down here and there on some of its freshest sweeps of doping grass enormous beds containing one kind of flower only. In several instances, near the very creditable planta- tions on the islands and margins of the lake, may be seen hundreds of one kind of tender plant in a great unmeaning mass, just in the positions where the turf ought to have been left free for a little repose between the very successful per- manent plantations. This is done to secure a paltry un- natural and sensational effect, which spoils some of the prettiest spots. Let us hope that some winter^s day, when the great beds are empty, they may be neatly covered with green turf.
The Bois being rather level, heavy rains used to lie a
30 TDE BOIS DE BOULOGNE.
THE BOIS Dlfi BOULOGNE. 31
long time on the surface of the roads^ &c., before bein? absorbed ; to have remedied this by means of sewers voald have cost about 160^000/.^ so the plan was adopted of con- structing a number of tanks at intervals, on an averj^e. of 200 metres, and capable of containing from ten to twenty cubic metres of water each. These tanks are «reneralir cbrcular in form and crowned by a truncated cone — a fyrr. irhich of course requires less mason's work than the rec- tangular, the latter being adopted only when large treci h- terfere with the plan. These tanks are shown in fi^. 12, The rectangular cisterns measure from four to six me^a h length, one to two metres in width, and two toxhneioezrts in depth; they are arched at the top, and, like thecfr:iar ic-*?. provided with a trapped hole, which serves, S:k. Zj r:zi^ draw the centrings, and afterwards to clean ou: lie ifscinj if they become choked with refuse carried cin '?r -—. irater ; the floor is uncovered, and barbicans ar? ii :^ -.. botwalls to aid the escape of the water. T^eK !ac^^ lie placed eitlicr under the footpaths or in air Lstn. r. • - Hot to interfere with the grass or the floTg? '-ji;-^ '^. , water is convcvcd to the cisterns bv means n •-n —. 4in. exterior diameter, the first joint bein? tzi'j-xrr - mouthpiece of Portland cement, shown iz zzt - -— .- These mouthpieces are nearly 20in. in le^rl zjt" -^ in wooden moulds, and cost 2f. 90c. per ijsti
Not far from the lower hike, and at ixnr 2* — — *. the Bois, occurs the Pre Catulan — an ei<:^^ rjp, aionally the scene of fetes, having sevtnl rsaoair - an open-air theatre, and a peculiar laza jj - jl.^ " a cow-liousc, containing about eiztZTmft ^ *"- milk is sold to those who frequent ii horsemen who ride out from Paris be morning, and call here on their wit ^ new milk. These features, hovere. as -— background, and the place geooxlT j^ - "* of an ornamental garden, well v^isr v inspection from any horticoltanl the Bois or on ti^ fashionable dBi» ,
Gardeners '^'^ '^ intererad a ' ^ ^^"^ "'
• ^--1.:.:
J ■:-
82 THE GAEOEN OF ACCLIMATIZATION.
on the 30th day of August, the fSte of their order ia held here, the patron saints being St. I^acre and St. Bose. Here the gardeners of Paris and their friends assemble to the number of three or four thousand, and amuse them- selves with dancing, games, and the usual accompaniments of a Parisian fSte, including fireworks, of course. As a garden, the Pre Catalan is distinguished by good spetnmena of standard Magnolias, both the evergreen grandiflora and the deciduous kinds, and lai'ge masses of flowers and fine- leaved plants.
Apart from these, which are well known and extensively employed elsewhere about Paris, I noticed that fine aquatic, Thalia dealbata — usually grown in stoves in England — in robust condition in the midst of a shallow running stream, the canna-Iike leaves large, handsome, and 2S inches long by 13 broad, and the flower stems 7 and 8 feet high (17th September). It is one of the handsomest and most distinct of all aquatic plants, quite difietent from the normal type, and should be much used with us. Erianthus Bavennte, an ornamental grass, was in flower at the same date, and 10 or 11 feet high. Lantana delicatissima was used aa margining carpeting to some beds here. Simple and inconspicuous thing as it is, it is multiplied to the extent of from 12,000 to 20,000 every year, which may serve to give another idea of the way in which ornamental garden- ing is carried on by the mu- FW' 13- nicipality of Paris.
Garden of Acclimatiza- tion in the Boia de Bou- logne. — This is a pretty garden and a most iuterest- iug place. In it you may study many things, from the culture of the oyster to the numerons breeds of domes- tic fowls, from ostriches to the diSerent plants used for bee feeding. There is here Oitricbes b tha JardiD d'Acclimatation. an interesting hybrid ass — a
THK QARDBM OF ACCUMATIZAnOH.
neat cross between the domesHc and vild varietieB, vbich prored useless for the carriage, and kicked it and the hamen into " Bmithereena" vhen yoked, in cooBcqnence of the rims, or irhat an Irishman irould call the " dirilmenf ' of the exotic parent predominating. I was not insensible to the claims of a Bossian dog, with a coat like a superannoated door-mat ; I landed at a duck which had a velvet-looking head remark- ably like a hnnting'Cap, and nearly aa big, bnt with a body no lai^er than a debilitated blackbird ; and was amazed to aee a Chinese dog having no hair except on the top of his head ; Imt we most let all such curiositieB pass, and confine our- ■elves exclusively to vegetable life, now as always of great importance, since Man first regaled himarlf upon fruits and gceeot-meat.
Doubtless one of the first things that sagacious creature {itched upon was the grape — at least, the best varieties of grapes and the best varieties of men are supposed to have originated in much the same ^ ^^
place. To-day thevinels more important than ever, and the garden here has a magnifi- cent collection of 2000 varie- ties I This collection is the fiunons one formed in the gardens of the Luxembourg, and fortunately saved fix>m jdeatxuction by M. Drouyn d^ Lbuys, acting upon the Q^ent request of a iiriend of horticulture. The vines were actually about to be thrown away when the recent muti- lation of the Luxembourg garden took place. So by anthority they were ordered to the gardens in the Bois de Boulogne, where, let as hope, they will be well looked after, as it would be a great pity if a collection embracing, as far aa could be gathered, nearly all the varieties cultivated in
Streamlet in tba Jardiu d'AcclimaUtion.
u
THE GABDEN OF ACCLIMATIZATION.
the world, should be lost to horticulture and to science. I sav a man carrying manure on his back to the yines, and sat dovu and contemplated him going through the inte- resting task ; the basket (panier) was placed on a slightly ele- vated board supported by three sticks, from which be could readily hook on to it when it was filled. I looked at bim with req)ect and some sympathy, just as ve should at a living specimen of the Dodo or any other animal supposed to be extinct. It occurred to me at the time that the acclimati- zation of a bandy useful species of wheelbarrow would not
CoBMrTStorj' in tlio Jardin d'Acclimttfttion.
be unworthy of the Society. However, it is only fair to add that this kind of basket would prove iiseful in town garden- ing, where soil has often to be taken through the house, also for carrying vegetables, and for conveyance of manure between close rows of vines, and like uses.
Although the glass-houses in the garden afford but little interest, rockwork and the planting out of fine foliage plants tend to make the conservatory very pleasant and refreshing.
T
THE BOIS DE VIHCBNNES.
TBE B0I5 D£ VINCSHNEB. 35
The Lycopodium is used vitli cliamui^ effect to form a tnrf in the conservatory, and noUiing can look better than the New Zealand flax, and several palms and tree ferns, planted near the mai^in of a vioding piece of vater in that Btmctnre. Musa Ensete too looked nobly in the same poaition. Those who visit it during the winter, cannot fail to be much stmck with the effect produced by beds cut in the rich green of Lycopodiom denticulatum, and filled with Primulas, Cinerarias, and spring flowers generally. The whole floor of the house, walks excepted, was effectually covered by the Lycopodium.
Fto.is.
The Bins de Vincennes.
The west end of Paris has its Bois de Boulogne for drives, promenades, quiet walks, fStes, races, &;c. ; it has, in fact, its Kensington-gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park, and St. James's Park, and more than all these in one ; but the east end is equally well off in having the extensive and noble Bois de Vincennes, which in some respects is quite equal to the Bois de Boulogne, and in one or two even superior. D %
86 THE B0I8 DE YINCENNES.
It contains well designed sheets of water about forty acres in extent; a wide^ open plain^ about 755 acres^ and of which about 284 are devoted to a drill-ground; between 700 and 800 acres of forest; 110 of shrub* bery and select plantation; 110 of roads; — ^in all nearly 1800 acres. The same care in keepings the fine roads and walks^ and the breadth of design^ which are seen in the Bois de Boulogne^ are also seen here^ though this is entirely distinct firom that as regards plan. But as there is no feature in it that we have not discussed or shall not discuss with more profit elsewhere^ a detailed description of it is not given. Opening up the city by means of airy^ open roads^ little squares^ &c.^ is of far greater importance than the creation of vast domains outside a city^ where people may enjoy a little fresh air once a week or so.
It has quite a novel feature^ in the fruit-garden of the city of Paris^ recently formed. This is described at length in another chapter.
The lake nearest to the fruit-garden and the Avenue Daumesnil entrance is beautifrdly disposed^ and its margins and islands are well planted. To walk completely round it^ starting from the neighbourhood of the fruit-garden and re- turning to the same position^ will well repay the visitor; few public parks offering anything so refreshing and agree- able of a warm summer evening.
A restaurant near one of the lakes illustrates admirably how like conveniences may be introduced into public parks without in the least rendering them objectionable. It com- mands excellent views of the park and water from the groups of trees by which it is hidden^ and which perfectly prevent it from obtruding upon the quietness of the park. It would be well if like care were alwavs taken to veil such structures. The restaurant figured on the preceding page is not quite so happily placed^ but nevertheless forms a not objectionable feature in the park.
The Bois de Yincennes contains also the city nursery for herbaceous plants^ &c.^ alluded to in the chapter on the Public Nurseries.
Cercis australis and Planera acuminata have been tried
WATERING THE PARKS. 37
as boulevard trees in and near the Bois de Vincennes^ and promise well The Planera, it is hoped^ will replace the elm in places where that is destroyed by the Scolytus ; and the Cercis looked very fresh and well about the middle of September, and at the end of the very trying season of 1868.
A plantation of about seven acres of Wellingtonias was made here about three years ago, and the plants are strong and good. Were it not for the ver blanc this would even now be a fine feature ; but imfortunately very few speci- mens remain uninjured by this most terrible of pests. Some of the trees had formed good specimens, and showed what a noble wood of Wellingtonias would have been seen here were it not for this grub. Hares are rather plentiful here^ and may be seen scampering over the open parts — quite an uncommon occurrence in a public park.
To connect the Bois with the promenades in the neigh- bourhood, the plains of Bercy and St. Mande, lying between the old boundaries of the wood and the walls of the fortifica- tions of Paris, were bought up, so that the new promenade, like the Bois de Boulogne, now begins at the very gates of the city. The pieces of water in the Bois de Vincennes, as well as the pipes by which the gardens are watered, are sup- pUed from the river Mame. Here, as in other parks and gardens, the hottest and most arid weather merely makes the grass and plants greener and healthier, in consequence of the admirable arrangements for watering both turf, trees, and flowers.
Watering the Parks.
The climate of Paris being dryer than that of London, and the soil less conducive to the growth of grasses, the verdure maintained in the more ornamental parts of the Paris parks is naturally a source of some surprise to visi- tors. It is difficult to give the reader, who has not seen it himself, an idea of how perfectly the watering is done. The contrast between the parks and gardens of London and Paris is in this way by no means flattering to our way of managing them. It will be better to quote one of our jour- nals to represent our own side of the question. " We have re-
88 WATERING THE PARKS.
peatedly called the attention of the authorities during the summer to the melancholy state into which the parks were falling. The mischief we desired to guard against is now done. The grass is of the colour of hay, and the little of it that remains is being so rapidly trodden down that in many parts what used to be greensward is now nothing better than hard road.'' So wrote the Pall Mall Gazette, one day last summer; and really, about the end of July and the beginning of August, nothing could look more unat- tractive than the London parks. These parks are supported at heavy public cost; and it is a great mistake to let them be rendered as brown and uninviting as the desert by an exceptional drought, which of course will happen at the very season when the grounds ought to be in per- fect beauty and attractiveness. The French system of watering gardens, &c., is excellent, or at least the generally adopted system; for at the Jardin des Plantes there are yet watering-pots made of thick copper, which are worthy of the days of Tubal Cain, but a disgrace to any more recent manufacturer, and a curse to the poor men who have to water with them. Generally Parisian lawns and gardens are watered every evening with the hose, and most eflfectively. It is so perfectly and thoroughly done, that they move trees in the middle of summer with impunity ; keep the grass in the driest and dustiest parts of Paris as green as an emerald, the softest and thirstiest of bedding plants in the healthiest state; and as for the roads, the way they are watered cannot be surpassed. They are kept agreeably moist without being muddy, while firm and crisp as could be desired. Of course all this is effected in the first instance by having abundance of water laid on ; but that is not all. With us, even where we have the water laid on, we too often spend an immense amount of labour in distributing it. In Paris generally it is applied with vari- ous modifications of the hose, which pours a vigorous stream, divided and made coarse or fine either by turning a cock, by the finger, or even by the force of the water.
This is the way they apply it to roads, the smaller bits of grass about the Louvre, and other places ; but when water-
WATERING THE PARKS.
39
ing large spreads of grass in the parks the system is dif- ferent. One day in passing by the racecourse at Long- champs I saw it carried out in perfection. The space had become very much cut up by reviews and races; but in any case it is watered to keep it as green as possible in summer. At first sight it would appear a difficult thing to water a racecourse, but two men were employed in doing it eflPec- tually. Right across the whole open space from east to west stretched an enormous hose of metal^ but in joints of say about six feet each. The whole was rendered flexible by these portions being joined to each other by short strong bits of leathern hose, each metal joint or pipe being sup- ported upon two pairs of little wheels. Fig. 17 shows a section of the appa- ratus at work. By ^'®* ^^• means of these the whole may be readily
moved about without ^ o ** \n \\\\v\\:\
the slightest injury to - «•-»^...*»»r>*^^-.
tne nose in any part. Section of perforated self-acting hose on wheels.
At about a yard or so
apart along this pipe jets of water came forth all in one direction, and at an angle of about 45 deg., and spread out so as to fully sprinkle the ground on one side ; and thus four feet or so of the breadth of the whole plain of Lougchamps was being watered from one hose. There were two of these hoses at work, one man attending to each of them; the only at- tention required be- ^^®- ^^• ing to pass from one end of the line to the other, and push for- ward the hose as each portion became suffi- ciently watered. The
simplest thing of all is the way they make the perforations for the jets along the pipe. They are simply little longitudinal holes driven in the pipe with a bit of steel. They must be made across the pipe^ or the water will not spread in the
/
^\^^>>^^.
Hose on wheels with double row of perforations.
40 WATERING THE PARKS.
desired direction. The wind causes the water to fall in the most divided form possible. With an apparatus thirty metres long a man can easily water 1500 square metres per hour^ moving the hose three times. Of course the quantity of water depends on the force in the conduits and the length of the tubes. With a pressure of 22 metres and hose 320 metres long the quantity of water per metre and per minute is nearly two litres. The hydrants in the grass are placed about fifty metres apart^ and the wheels of the tracks are of wood, in* order not to cut the grass. There are many modes of spreading water in use about Paris, but none of them hfdf as good as this simple method. More than a mile of this kind of hose may be seen at work at one time and with hundreds of jets playing.
The hose for watering the roads is arranged on wheels also, but, as it must be at all times under command when carriages pass by, it has only one rose or jet, which is di- rected by a man who moves about among the carriages with the greatest ease, and keeps his portion of the road in capital condition. Of course it is a much cheaper way than carry- ing the water about as we do, as then we must have horse and cart, wear and tear, and man also ; whereas, by having the water laid on, all the men have to do in watering is to attach the hose and commence immediately. In the same way as much work can be done in a garden in a day as vrith ten men by the ordinary mode ; so that in the end it is much cheaper to have the water laid on. There can be no doubt that to the efficient watering much of the success of the fine foliaged plants in Paris gardens is to be attributed.
As a good system of watering is of the highest importance to cities and towns in every region of the earth a more de- tailed and technical account of the watering of Paris gardens may prove useful to some. The article first appeared in the Engineer, and refers chiefiy to the arrangements for the Bois de Boulogne, but the system is the same for all other places.
The watering is performed chiefly by means of long hose with a copper branch, the latter being provided with a stop- cock, so that the delivery of the water may be arrested instantly, without having to turn off at the plug. The hose
WATERING THE PARKS.
41
is generally twelve metres long and 2in. in diameter; it is constructed either of leather^ vulcanized india-rubber or canvas ; the first and second costing from 6^. to 6*. 8d, per yard, and the last only lOd. or lid. The screw connecting pieces, which are made of gun metal, cost about 6s. The leather hose, losing the oily matters from its pores, through the pressure of the water^ soon becomes brittle, but it lasts on an average two years; the rubber is light and has no other fault but that of wearing out in twelve months, while the canvas hose soon cuts to pieces on the gravel. A sys- tem of mounting such tubes on small trucks so as to keep them from trail- ing on the ground, and consequently making them lighter to handle and more durable, was tried for a long time, but this has been superseded by a very simple and inexpensive inven- tion, that of tubes made of sheet iron, lined with lead and bitumen, and con- nected together by means of leather joint pieces, the whole being mounted on small wooden trucks. The cost of this apparatus complete, with the sin- gle exception of the branch, is only 70f., or 5f. 20c. per metre, and it will last on the average four years, while the old hose on trucks costs 127f., or nearly double.
The cost of that now in use is made up as follows : — Eleven metres of iron tubes, 19f. 25c. ; leather junction pieces, 25f. 60c. ; ten trucks 20f.; ligatures, 5f. 15c.; total, 70f. The appa- ratus in use at the present moment in Paris consists of five tubes, each about 6fk. long, and a shorter one to which the
C5
•ft
-3
faO
c
•c t
1
o
s
o
42
WATERINO THE PARKS.
o d
mm
branch is attached^ so that only five trucks are required ; the trucks also in practice consist of a piece of plain wood, a little more than a foot in lengthy the tube being bolted
on to the upper side and the run- ners fixed to the lower. As regards the connexion of the joints, this is made sometimes with brass flanges, but a joint which answers equally well, and is much cheaper and lighter, is that made with copper wire ; for the branch joint, however, brass flanges are always used, as the branch itself is removed and carried away when not in use, while the tubes are simply folded toge- ther, fastened with a piece of cord, and left in any conve- nient comer.
It is found in practice that a man cannot manage an apparatus of this kind, which is more than about 40ft. long ; but for watering grass, in which case the hose is left stationary in one place for some time and then moved to another, several apparatus are, if necessary, screwed on to
a to ca
to
c
• mm
g
e
o 00
WATERING THE PARKS.
43
each other. The effects of these tubes or hose have been carefully studied. The following is a table of results with a twelve metre apparatus^ the inner diameter of the nozzle of the branch being 0*012 metres, or rather less than half an inch, and the branch itself being held at an angle of 45 deg.: —
|
Presiure at the Borface. |
Quantity of water ! given per second. | |
Extent of the jet. |
Quantity of water given when the branch is nut on. |
|
Metres. |
Litres. |
Metres. |
Litres. |
|
8 |
0-90 |
10 |
1-80 |
|
12 |
1-25 |
12 |
2 40 |
|
15 |
1-40 |
14 |
2-75 |
|
20 |
1-60 ; |
15 |
310 |
|
25 |
180 |
15 |
3-40 |
|
30 |
1-90 |
15 |
8 60 |
|
35 |
200 I |
16 |
3-80 |
|
46 |
2 10 |
16 |
400 |
These results, it is stated, are averages, for some appa- ratus give superior or different results, although all the conditions appear the same. Experience shows that with the same amount of pressure in the pipes the extent of the jet is enormously reduced by the lengthening of the hose. Of course the diameter of the nozzle of the branch depends on the pressure within the tubes, but it was thought neces- sary to have a uniform model, and 0*012 metres was adopted as distributing the water most advantageously with a pres- sure of eight to fifteen metres. An apparatus twelve metres long, with a branch one metre in length, and gi\^ng an average jet of twelve metres, is effective over a radius of twenty-five metres. The plugs or hydrants are placed at intervals of thirty metres on roads twenty metres wide, and forty metres apart in narrower roads, when they are all on one side of the road.
Formerly all the roads in and about Paris were watered by means of carts which held one ton of water. It required twenty-four tons to water the Avenue de Tlmperatricc properly, the road round the lakes, and some few others. The whole of the roads in the Bois de Boulogne, as they now stand, would require ninety tons of water, which would cost, men, horses, and carts included, 13f. per ton, or 200,000f. (8000/.) for the
44 WATERING THE PARKS.
six summer months. The new system of watering by hose costs for the whole of the Bois but 55^000f.^ or little more than a quarter of the expense under the old system. In this estimate, however, no account is taken either of the cost of the water itself or of the capital expended for its con- veyance. Finally, it is remarked, as regards the Bois de Boulogne, that the cost is, in fact, little more than that of the maintenance of the apparatus in repair, or about 250/. a year, the work being done by the body of men called cantonniers, who have little else to do during the summer months.
A water cart drawn by one horse, in cases where the hydrants are 400 metres apart, will water 1800 metres an hour over a width of four and a half metres — ^that is to say, a cart will water about 6000 square metres, using in the operation three tons of water. But in the parks it was found that the cart should pass over every spot once in the hour, and this gives, with an average of seven hours' effec- tive work, an expenditure of three and a half litres, or more than seven pints per day per square metre. The cost of labour, cart, and horse is given at about lOf. per day, so that the actual expense per ton and per square metre stands thus, j^=0'00165f. In calculating the cost of watering by means of hose and branch, the hydrants or plugs must necessarily be much more numerous, the intervals between them being in the case of watering by cart 400 metres, while in the case of the hose the intervals are on an average only thirty-five metres. The total length of the roads to be watered in the Bois de Boulogne is 53,000 metres, and the number of hydrants 1500, whereas under the old system 132 would have sufficed, a difference of 1880 hydrants, costing 41, each, or 4s. a year for interest, and, in addition, 4s. for repairs, &c. Hie latter is con- tracted for at the following rate — ^namely, eight centimes per metre, or about three farthings a yard run of conduit, and 48. per hydrant.
A hundred and twenty men are required for watering the 640,000 square metres of road in the Bois; in five hours a man waters 4500 metres of road three times over^
WATBRING THB PARKS. 45
besides watering the side paths once^ which the carts of course did not touch. The cost is given as follows : —
Francs. Interest and Maintenance of hydrants . . . 13,800
Cost and repair of hose, &c. 6,200
Wages of 120 men at half a daj for six months . . 35,000
Total 55,000
The surface watered being, in round numbers, 600,000 square metres, and the average number of days 180, the cost per square metre and per day is
550,000 ^^^,,
=000051,
180 X 600,000 '
showing a great economy as compared with the expense of watering by cart. The hose and branch dispense (making allowance for interruptions caused by traflSc and by moving the apparatus) a litre of water per second, or 18,000 litres in five hours ; the quantity is therefore about the same as that dispensed by cart, only it is eflfected in five instead of seven hours. Previous to the general adoption of the hose and branch, experiments were tried with small handcarts con- taining a quarter of a ton, and drawn by two men, but these were found to cost more than the old carts.
Another method of keeping roads and pathways in order, namely, by the application of deliquescent salts, is inte- resting from its novelty. The salts used are chloride of magnesium or of calcium. The former salt does not exist in commerce, but large quantities have been obtained from the residue of the manufacture of carbonate of soda, at a cost of 15f. the 100 kilogrammes ; it may, however, be produced for less than a third of that rate. The salt is well calcined (in order to make it lose as much of its water as possible), and then coarsely pulverized; it is sprinkled over the road by hand. The efiects of this deliquescent salt, as compared with those of water, are not uniform ; in the case of roads with much trafiQc the salt is twice as dear as water, because of the necessity of constant renewal, but in side paths and roads with little traffic the salt was found far more economical. The use of deliquescent salts has this
46 WATERING THE FAEK8.
great adTantagc, namely, that it does not interfere in any iray Tith the circulation, and maintains tbe pathways clear of dust or mud, while of course in places where there is no grass to be watered the whole of the cost of water-pipes and hydrants would he saved.
The surface of grass which has to be watered with Seine water in the Boia de Boulogne is about 250 acres, and the quantity of water required to keep it in good condition averages ten litres, or more than two gallons, per square metre, every third day. To water this surface in the same manner as the roads would require more than a hundred
Hose sllowcd lo play on the st&bs and shifted from lime to lime.
hose working ten hours a day, and this would entail a very heavy cost. But as the grass does not require to be treated with the same regularity aa the roads one system adopted is to place a branch on a stand at an angle of 45 deg., and allow it to play over the grass for a certain time, when it is removed to another spot : in this way one man can manage ten apparatus.
The total amount of water taken from the Seine for the purposes of the Bois never exceeds 240 litres, or about fifty-four gallons, per second. The natural meadows by the side of the Seine form about 4O0 acres, but the soil here is
WATERING THE PARKS. 47
aUavial^ and therefore irrigation is only necessary in very hot weather^ whereas the soil upon which the artificial grass is planted is nearly all sand^ and the greatest care is required to keep the turf in order. The total cost of the arrangements of conduits and pipes for the supply of water to the Bois and the avenues leading to it is given at l,520,000f., or 60,800/. ; the number of stop-cocks is 885, and of hydrants 1600; and the length of the conduit is 66^00 metres. It results from these figures that the cost of the whole has amounted to 22f. 97c., or about 18s. 5d. per metre.
48
CHAPTER III.
THE FAKC MONCEAU.
This is on the whole the most beautiful garden in Pans, and well shows the characteristics of the system of horticultural decoration so energetically adopted in that city. It is not large, but exceedingly well stored, and usually displays a vast wealth of handsome exotic plants in summer. In spring it is radiant with the sweet bloom of early-flowering shrubs and trees, every bed and bank being covered with pansies, Alyssum, Aubrietia, and all the best known of the spring flowers, while thrushes and blackbirds are whistling in the adjacent bushes, as if they were miles in the country, instead of only a few minutes' walk from the Rue du Eau- boui^ St. Honor^. This park was laid out so long ago as 1778 for Philip Egalit^ as an '^ English garden,^' and passed through various changes, till it at last fell into the hands of the Municipality of Paris, a very astute corporation, who have converted it into a charming garden, and are not likely to part with it in a hurry.
The system of planting adopted here as well as in the other gardens of the dty is often striking, often beautifrd, and not unfrequently bad. It is striking when you see a number of that fine showy tree, Acer Negundo variegata, arranged in one great oval mass, silvery and bright ; it is beautiful when you see some spots with single specimens and tasteful beds, every one differing from its neighbour ; and bad when you meet with about a thousand plants of one variety stretched around a collection of shrubs, or flopped down in one large mass, or when a number of plants too tender for the climate are put out for the summer months amidst those that grow with the greatest luxuriance. The subtropical system will never do for England V* say
it
THE PARC MONCEAU. 49
some practical men. The truth is^ that it requires to be done Ycry carefully in Faris^and there is a great mistake made by putting out a host of tender plants merely because they are exotics^ unless indeed you wish to contrast healthy beauty with ragged ugliness. In the Fare Monceau there is usually a group of Musa Ensete worth making a journey to sec^ and masses of Wigandia, Canna^ and such Solanums as Warce- wiczii, that are worthy of association with it ; but I have also seen there beds of Begonias without a good leaf or a particle of beauty — scraggy stove plants, with long crooked legs, and a few tattered leaves at the top, and poor standard plants of the sweet-verbena at the same time. If it were an experimental ground, one would not mind, of course; but this, in a garden where its omission would leave almost nothing to be desired, is too bad. In some respects this park is really unequalled, and therefore one regrets the more to see these blemishes, which let us hope will not be repeated. What first excites the admiration of the visitor used to the monotonous and highly-toned type of garden now seen so much with us is the variety, beauty of form, and refresh- ing verdure which characterize this garden — good qualities that are so often absent in too many of our own. The true garden is a scene which should be so delightfully varied in all its parts — so bright, so green, so freely adorned with the majesty of the tree, the beauty of the shrub, the noble lines of the fine-leaved plant, the minute beauty of the dwarfer plants of this world ; so perpetually interesting, with vegeta- tion that changes with the days and seasons, rather than puts the stamp of monotony on the scene for months ; and so stored with new or rare, neglected or forgotten, curious or interesting plants — that the simplest observer may feel that indefinable joy which lovers of nature derive from her charms amidst such scenes, but which few, except those of a high degree of sensitiveness and power of expres- sion, like Shelley, can give utterance to. It would be teaching him to use the words of Goethe —
" To recognise and love His brothers in still groTe, Or air or stream."
E
50 THE PAEC MONCEAU.
If any good at all is to be done by means of flowers and gar- dens^ you must give men a living interest^ a lasting curiosity in them^ and some other objects than those which can be taken in by the eye in a moment. Numbers are occupied and delighted with gardening as it stands at present^ but it can hardly be doubted that a system with something like an aim at true art would be sure to attract many more ; and it is patent that there are numbers even among the educated classes who take no interest whatever in the garden^ simply because they can in few places find any real beauty or interest in it. To confine ourselves to a single phase of the subject, it is certain that if all interested in flower gar- dening had an opportunity of seeing the charming efiects produced by judiciously intermingling fine-leaved plants with brilliant flowers^ and of which there are such handsome examples in this park^ there would be an immediate revolu- tion in our flower-gardenings and verdant grace and beauty of fom would be introduced, and all the brilliancy of colour that could be desired might be seen at the same time. The beauty and finish of many of the finer beds here, are of the highest order, in consequence of the adoption of the prin- ciple of variety. Here is a bed of Erythrinas not yet in flower : but what afibrds that brilliant and singular mass of colour beneath them, a display which makes the visitor pause when he comes near the bed ? Simply a mixture of the lighter varieties of Lobelia speciosa with variously coloured and brilliant Fortulaccas. The beautiful surfacings that may thus be made with annual, biennial, or ordinary bedding plants, &om mignonette to Altemanthera, are infinite. At the risk of driving off the general reader we must now begin to use hard names, and go deeper into purely technical and horticultural matters, for we shall not else- where meet an opportunity of doing so with so much advantage. It is only fair to warn the reader that this is a purely horticultural chapter.
The following are a few examples of these graceful mixtures seen in this garden during the past year : — A bed of Anmdo Donax versicolor, springing from Lobelia speciosa; a bed of Ficus elastica, the ground beneath perfectly hidden by
THE PARC MONCEAU. 51
loxnriant mignonette ; Wigandia^ springing from the little cdlvery sea produced by the mixture of the blue and white yarieties of Brachycome iberidifolia ; Caladium esculentum^ from a rich sur£Bu;e of flowering Petunias ; glowing Hibiscus^ from Gnaphalium; graceful dwarf Dracsenas^ ;from very dwarf Altemantheras ; Aralias^ from Cuphea; taller Dra- caenaSy from a deep and richly-toned mass of Coleus Yer- schafieltii ; Erythrina^ from a sweet low carpet of soft purple Lantana ; tall Solanums^ on mats of that most finished little plant Mierembergia ; sea-green Bocconias^ from the dwarf dark-toned Oxalis comiculata var.^ and so on. Reflect for a moment how consistent is all this with the best garden- ing^ and the purest taste. Yoiir bare earth is covered quickly with these free-growing dwarfs ; there is an imme- diate and a charming contrast between the dwarf-flowering and the fine-foliaged plants; and should the last at any time put their heads too high for the more valuable things above^ they can be cut in for a second bloom^ as was the case with some Petunias here which had got a little too high for their slow-growing superiors. In the case of using foliage plants that are eventually to cover the bed com- pletely^ annual plants may be sown^ and they in many cases will pass out of bloom and may be cleared away just as the large leaves begin to cover the ground. Where this is not the case, but the larger plants are placed thin enough to always allow of the lower ones being seen, two or even more kinds of dwarf plants may be employed, so that the one may succeed the other, and that there may be a mingling of bloom.
It may be thought that this kind of mixture would in- terfere with what is called the unity of effect that we attempt to attain in our flower-gardens. This need not be so by any means ; the system could be grandly used in the most formal of gardens laid out on the massing system piire and simple ; besides, are there not positions in every place where such arrangements could be made without inter- fering with what is sometimes called the ^^ flower garden proper*^ ? Some may say we cannot grow the fine-leaved plants in England. But this is not so. The most beautiful
e2
63 THE PABC UONCBAO.
bed of those above enomerated was that compoBed of varie- gated Arundo and Lobelia — the former a plant that may be readily groim on good soils in Britain, and merely requiring the protection of a little ashes, refuse, or an old mat over the crown in winter, even in soils that are not particularly favourable, while the Lobelia is one of the many fragile and delicately pretty little plants that do perhaps best of all in England. The fact is, we can find numbers of plants among the hardy and free-growing kinds, which will enable ns to enjoy all the desired variety and diversity, even if we cannot wisely venture to plant out Wigandias and coloured Dracfenas except in the more favoured districts of southern England and Ireland.
One of the moat useful and natural ways of diversifying and dignifying a garden, and one that we rarely or never take advantage of, is abundantly illustrated here, and as it is perhaps the most important lesson to be learnt in the garden, we will' discuss it at some length. It simply con- sists in placing really distinct and handsome plants alone upon the grass, to break the monotony of clump maigins and of everything else. They may be placed singly or in open groups, near the margins of a bold clump of shrubs or in the open grass ; and the system is applicable to all kinds of hardy, ornamental subjects, from trees downwards, though in our case the want is for the fine-leaved plants and the more distinct hardy subjects. Nothing, for in- stance, can look better than a well -developed tuft of the broad-leaved Acanthus latifolius, springing from the turf not far from the mai^in of the walk through a pleasure ground ; and the same is true of the Yuccas, Tritomas, and other things of bke character and hardiness. We may make attractive groups of one family, as the hardiest Yuccas ; or splendid groups of one species like the Pampas grass — not by any means repeating the indivi- dual, for there are about twenty va- GfooiMKidnDglo^pocimeM ricties of this plant known on the pi^" ' " Continent, and from these half a
THE PARC MONCEAV. 53
dozen really distinct and charming kinds might be selected to form a group. The same applies to the Tritomas^ which we usually manage to drill into straight lines : in an isolated group in a verdant glade^ they are seen for the first time to best advantage ; and what might not be done with these and their like by making mixed groups, or letting each plant stand distinct upon the grass^ perfectly isolated in its beauty !
Let us again try to simply illustrate the idea. Take an important spot in a pleasure ground — a sweep of grass in face of a shrubbery^ and see what can be done with it by means of these isolated plants. IS, instead of leaving it in the bald state in which it is often found, we try to place distinct things in an isolated way upon the grass, the margin of shrubbery will be quite softened, and a new and charming feature added to the garden.
Fio. 23.
*
Yucca flaccida.
Arundo Donax variegata. .
Ketinospora, sps. \^i
Acanthus Lusitanicus. * ^v^4
Pampas grass.
* «
Canna nigricans. Group of Tritoma grandis-
« » »
Statice latifolia. Eheum Eraodi. Ferula glauca.
Fine herbaceous and other plants isolated on the grass.
K one who knew many plants were arranging them on the ground, and had a large stock to select from, he might make no end of striking effects. In the case of the smaller things^ as the Yucca and variegated Arundo, groups of four or five good plants should be used to form one mass^ and everything should be perfectly distinct and isolated, so that a person could freely move about amongst the plants without touching them. In addition to such arrangements^ two or three individuals of a species might be placed here
54 THB FABC KONCSAD.
and there upon the grass vith the best effect. For example,
there ia at present in oar nurseries (I once saw quantities
of it preparing for game covert at
Fia 2t Mr. StandUh's, of Bagshot) a great
^'"^ Japanese Folygonum, which has never
as yet been used with much effect in
the garden. If anybody will select
some open grassy spot in a pleasure
ground, or grassy glade near a wood
— some spot considered unworthy of
attention as regards ornamenting it —
and plant a gronp of three plants of
it, leaving fifteen feet or so between
the stools, a distinct aspect of vege-
Portion of plan showing tation will be the result. The plant is
YnccaB, graoefal dwtxt herbaceouB, and will spring up every
{■oUted OD the gniu. year to a height of aom six feet to
eight feet if planted well ; it has a
graceful arching habit in the upper branches, and is covered
with a profusion of small pale bnncheB of flowers in
autumn. It is needless to multiply examples — ^the plan is
capable of infinite variation, and on that account alone
should be welcome to all true gardeners. The diagram with
the names is far too formal, and merely given to more
fully explun the system. The little plans show better the
irregular way in which the plants ought to be disposed.
The preceding part of this chapter was written in 1867; but as tills park is so full of interest and instruction for all practically interested in the decoration of the fiower-garden, the following description, written on the spot during the early part of last September, may be of some interest to the horticultural reader : —
Entering the park &om the Boulevard Malesherbes we pass along an avenue of plane trees that leads &om the high and ornamental gates. The walk on each side is bordered with roses in lines of different colours — the front row well p^ged down. They form long borders on each side, and are very ornamental in early summer. A carriage road leads through the park, so that it may be seen by those
THE PAEC MONCEAU. 55
wlio drive tlirough — ^but imperfectly^ as the more interesting objects are along the shady side and boundary walks. On each side of the central drives glimpses are caught of very diversified and graceful foliage and flowers^ but conspicuous on the margin is a great mass of Caladium^ with leaves three feet long and two and a half feet wide, springing from a groundwork of blue Lobelia.
You can have no real beauty in an ornamental garden without the aid of full grown trees, their majesty producing an effect which cannot be dispensed with. Here they approach the drive in groups, sometimes overshading plan- tations of dense shrubs, at others springing clean from the grass. In some places they are so crowded as to make one wish for a little breath, in others they disappear, and spreads of grass and dwarfer plants permit the eye to range. On one side of the route may be noticed a hardy bamboo with black polished stems, and rods ten, twelve, and fourteen feet high ; on the other, one with yellow stems of about the same height. An old specimen of the Abyssinian Musa is Tigorously pushing up a maasive flower shoot scarcely yet fleen through the leaves, and in consequence they are by no means so ornamental as those of younger plants which devote all their energy to foliage. Tree ferns, and the curious and graceful Beaucarnea with the great swollen base, are seen here and there, the Beaucarnea apparently not a first-rate subject for placing in the open air. Next to the great Musa Ensete, the best Banana is the well-known edible Musa Cavendishii : it is in perfect health, emerging £rom a mass of Tradescantia zebrina ; the leaves twenty-four to thirty inches long, and not often lacerated. A great mass of the variegated Acer — several hundred trees — is margined with rose-coloured geraniums, and all the space between filled with Dahlias, Salvias, and the like : a good plan, inasmuch as it prevents a naked base. Groups of palms, single specimens of birch (as graceful as any exotic), and fine out-arching specimens of the hardy Polygonum Sieboldi form the most notable features of the central drive. Palms from regions comparatively temperate, like the dwarf fan palm of the south of Europe, the Palmetto of the Southern
56 THE PARC MONCEAU.
United States^ the Seaforthia^ and some others^ bear the open air of summer without injury^ and add a very striking and valuable aid to the scene. From the cross- drive groups of Yuccas, rather thinly placed in masses of dwarf flowers and plants, a large specimen of the Angelica tree in flower, a mass of the Papyrus of the Nile, and tall specimens of Colocasia odorata, are the most conspicuous of the objects that approach the margin.
Again, commencing at the Boulevard Malesherbes en- trance, and this time turning to the left, we meet with masses of Musa rosacea, Blechnum, Lomaria magellanica, the older specimens with stems two feet high ; Nicotiana wigandioides ; a telling, dark bronzy mass of Canna atro- nigricans, with some of the larger leaves two feet long, and the stems nearly seven feet high ; groups of Latania plunged in the grass ; and large leaved Begonias dotted amongst dense masses of Tradescantia zebrina. These Begonias do not grow well enough to warrant their being put out in our latitudes except under the most favourable conditions. Next come masses of Hibiscus, rather sparing of their great red flowers ; numerous specimens of handsome plants isolated on the grass, from double scarlet Pomegranates to Thuja aurea and Clianthus Dampieri ; masses of india-rubber plants with groundwork of mignonette, of Wigandia macrophylla with groundwork of Coleus, of silvery Solanum marginatum with groundwork of dwarf herbaceous Aster, of Tupidanthus in carpet of Cuphea, and of variegated Arundo in one of German Aster. A mass of Caladium bataviense, with leaves three and a half feet long and dark stems, is very imposing. As a foliage plant, it is second to no other employed in Parisian gardens, though hitherto C. escu- lentum has generally been considered to be the best. Here there are large masses of both it and bataviense. Usually C. bataviense makes leaves larger than C. esculentum, and as a rule its leaves are the largest this year, but the biggest specimens of the year were of esculentum, of which the largest measured four feet seven inches long, bataviense reaching four feet one inch. C. esculentum best withstands the winds, the leaves of C. bataviense often getting broken
THE PARC MONCEAU. 57
by them^ so that many of the finer leaves made during the season were lost before September^ their great stumps showing how vigorous they had been. It is usually and firom the same cause denuded of leaves about the base ; C. esculentum retaining them. The leaf-stalks of bataviense are of a dark hiie^ by which it is easily distinguished from esculentum with its pale green leaf-stalks. The stems of bataviense are also much larger than those of the escu- lentum^ a few of those growing here being ten inches in diameter.
Of the Ficuses grown here, the best is yet the old F. elastica ; but Chauvieri is also good, and Forteana has done well this season, though the Parisian summers are usually too cold for it ; its leaves were fifteen inches long. Yucca aloifolia is hardy here. A fine old plant of it, ten feet high, and with a considerable portion of the stem naked, was in perfect health. Every winter the stem is protected as far as the leaves, and the snow prevented firom remaining on these. Melia Azederach is also hardy here — at least, it has stood out during the past winter; and as its large compound leaves would prove so useful in the flower-garden, it should be tried out in favourable parts of England. Andropogon formosimi does well here, and a group of Dasylirions are plunged in the grass. The Erythrinas are a fine feature, the old E. crista-galli being considered the best on the whole ; but E. ruberrima is very fine firom its hue of scarlet and crimson. Bocconia frutescens is five and a half feet high, with leaves two and a half feet long ; and an Eucephalartos is fine as an isolated specimen. Agave americana is left in the garden during winter and protected, but with more trouble and cost than would be incurred by taking it indoors. A mode of train- ing various flowering climbers up the stems of trees is worthy of special notice. Clematises, honeysuckles, various kinds of ivy, everlasting peas, and many other kinds of climbing plants may be used in this way with good ef- fect. There is one plant grown here in quantity, which is rarely seen in England, but which should be in every English garden — Funkia subcordata, a dwarf, hardy
58 THE PARC MONCEAU.
plant with snowy white flowers sweeter than orange- blossom.
Two large carriage drives, laid ont so as to interfere as little as possible with the old plantations, run through the park from one end to the other, and form a continua- tion of the boulevards leading to it. These drives are closed by iron gates of a highly ornamental character. The area^of the park is about twenty-two English acres, of which thirteen are in turf, and five planted with flowers, shrubs, and trees, the remainder being devoted to walks and the small and unhappy piece of water. The total cost of alteration was over 48,000/. The work was begun in the month of January, 1861, and finished in August of the same year.
59
CHAPTER IV.
THE PARC DBS BUTTES CHAUMONT.
This is the boldest attempt at what is called the picturesque style that has been attempted either in Paris or London. It is hardly wise to attempt expensive and extraordinary works in places of this sort^ at least till all the densely populous parts of a city are provided with open^ well-planted spaces. Thus in London it is a mistake to devote great expense to a few parks^ and leave so many square miles of population without a green spot. But in this instance an unusual attempt was to some extent invited by the peculiar nature of the ground. The whole park may be described as a sort of diversified Primrose Hill with two or three ^' peaks and valleys/^ and an immense pile of rock seen here and there. At its hollow or lower end there was a quarry^ and this has been taken advantage of to produce a grand feature. They have cut all round three sides of this quarry, smoothed it down, leaving intact the great side of stone^ and adding to it here and there masses of artificial rock.
This forms a very^dde and imposing cliff, 164 feet high, or thereabouts, in its highest parts, and from these you may gradually descend to its base by a rough stair, exceed- ingly well constructed, and winding in and out of the huge rocky face. At the base of the clifi^, and widely spreading round it, there is a lake. This ponderous cliff has several wings/ so to speak, and in one bay has been constructed a lai^e stalactite cave, about sixty feet high firom its floor to the ceiling, and wide and imposing in proportion. At its back part the light is let in through a wide opening, show- ing a gorge reminding one of some of those in the very tops of the Cumberland mountains, and down this trickles the
60 THE PARC DES BUTTE8 CHAUMONT.
water into the cave, ivy and suitable shrubs being planted along its course above the roof of the cave.
The effect is remarkably striking, though it is hardly the kind of thing to be recommended for a public park. By all means let us leave the luxuries of gardening out of the question, till we have provided the necessaries for the popu- lation of great towns, and these are green lawns, trees, and wide open streets and ways, with their necessaiy conse- quence, pure air. On one of the buttes, or great mounds here, they have planted 500 or 600 deodars — ^forming it a hill of deodars in fact. This is a mistake, for though Paris is not as foggy as Spitalfields, it is a great city, as may be seen from this park, and with many a vomiting chimney too, so that the better plan would be to pay double atten- tion to deciduous trees, using only such evergreens as are certain to grow. In one wide nook, perfectly sheltered on the three coldest sides, M. Andre planted a collection of subjects mostly tender in the neighbourhood of Paris.
From this park, the surroundings of which are by no means attractive, you can look over nearly all Paris. The approach to it firom the central parts is shabby for Paris, and on the way some idea of what the city was before the splendid improvements of the past ten years may be caught ; but this approach, like most objectionable things there, is simply tolerated till more important ones are finished. Of the quick way in which they proceed with them, the reader can scarcely have a notion. I have seen acres of land removed to a depth of several yards without any fuss, and in a few weeks ; miles of trees planted in the course of a single week ; old suburbs blown up by hundreds of mines a day, and levelled into commanding terraces fit for princely mansions. One June day, bright, dry, and very warm, they were planting trees in this park, and large ones too — ^trees that required great machines to lift them — while they were marking the ground for firesh plantings. Do you plant after this date? I asked. Every day in the year ! Of the larger trees some seem not to take well, and doubtless in consequence of summer-planting, for which there seems little excuse.
THE PARC DES BUTTES CHAUMONT. 61
The entrance is not promising — a hard-looking porter's lodge^ and a mass of badly-made rockwork face a mound^ and from the rockwork springs an apparently quite un- necessary bridge. The rockwork is bad because, although superior in general design to the masses of burnt bricks that sometimes pass for it with us, it shows radical faults — presumption and unnaturalness. Instead of a true rock- work, something like a very puny attempt at reproducing the more insignificant ribs of Monte Campione is the result of plastering over a heap of stones. A hole is left here and there in this mass from which may spring a small pine or an ivy, but the whole thing is incapable of being di- vested of its bald artificial character. One-fourth the quantity of natural blocks of stone, visible through the breaks in a mass of evergreens, would have been far better. By this means one could get the necessary elevation, con- cealing the basis of the stones with evergreens and trailing plants, and not sealing up the thing with cement in any part. The plastering of the joints merely makes the " rocks '^ look truly artificial, especially when it begins to drop out.
Bold high green mounds meet us immediately after pass- ing under the ugly bridge at the entrance — here and there patched with very presentable shrubs — as is not rarely the case in Paris gardens. One girdle seems to bind both French and English, however, as regards the compact and formal outlines of these shrubberies and plantings. We know very well that in nature nothing of the kind ever occurs; that away from the wood strays the clump of low shrubs which do not seem to be gregarious like their pillared fellows of the forest; that indeed anything like straitlacing is unseen. Why then should we draw a cordon of regularity and sameness round our shrubberies in the shape of a line of some showy flower, making the whole thing change- less as possible? What caUs for this definiteness? I know not unless it be that the mowing machine may have the less trouble in cutting the grass around. Imagine the British Museum or the Louvre arranged chiefly for the con- venience of the dusters I The sooner everybody having the
62 THE PAKC D£S BUTTES CHAUMONT.
interests of &:ardenin&: in mind proclaims that variety and not fonnaUl^ should'be the aJof aU high gardening, the better for tibe progress of the art. In their clumps the French seem as straitlaced as ourselves^ but in the newer gardens they have adopted a system of dotting about single specimens of individual beauty, which is very successful in bLking up fonnalism, and is ;eU worthy oTindtation.
The chief feature of the place^ as previously indicated^ is the great cliffy and unhappily the chief feature of the rock is plaster. You can hardly approach it in any place with- out perceiving the seams of plaster giving out^ and where this is not the case it is all palpably plastered. And why ? Perhaps the plasterer who made it could supply a reason ; but^ whether he can or not^ the sooner plasterers are dis- pensed with as imitators of nature in her grandest workings the better. There never was in a garden such a chance of presenting walls of rock-plants almost as striking and inte- resting as those one meets with in the pass over the Simplon ; yet it is entirely lost. By leaving the chinks and filling them here and there with turf, by chopping back or leaving the face of the high rocks sloping in some places so that they would be well exposed to the rainfall, by trickling a little streamlet over the face of the cliiSs here and there, and by scattering a few packets of seeds over the face of the cliffs in spring, they would have given rise to an alpine vegetation of great beauty. The great long-leaved Saxi- frage of the Pyrenees might have spread forth its silvery rosettes here, so might its smaller relatives, its big brother of the Piedmontese valleys, and little Campanulas, ThymeSj Erinuses, Brooms, Stonecrops, Houseleeks of many kinds, with hundreds of the prettiest plants of northern and tem- perate climes might have been grown here. Now aU is daubed over and plantless, save a bit of ivy and wiry grass in some few spots ; and the face of the high rocks is suggestive of little but suicide.
One of the few attempts to cultivate alpine plants out of pots that I have ever seen made in France is here, but it has been done on a mistaken principle. A tasteful and desirable practice in some of the newer gardens and parks
THE PAEC DES BUTTES CHAUMONT. 63
of Paris^ is that of conducting a tiny streamlet irregularly through the grass^ and bordering it with water and marsh plants ; here there are a few examples of it for the most part creditable. In one case^ however^ the streamlet in- stead of coming from any probable source of higher rock or brushwood^ starts out of a plastered hole in the grass^ in a way one cannot admire. By the side of this and a neigh- bouring streamlet alpine plants are placed^ to grow here and there in little beds along the stream^ and indeed now and then on a plastered spot in the middle. They are associated with such lowland marsh plants as the loose- strife; and in one instance a willow had started up and shaded some choice dwarf Saxifrages and Rhododendrons. It is creditable to attempt the cultivation of these plants here^ but alpine plants can never be grown thus. If they could^ it would be difficult to enjoy their native beauty or their tiny character alternated with such things as the bullrush and the flag ! With the supply of water that these parks command^ nothing coidd be easier than the creation of a rocky mound healthfully covered with true alpine plants. However^ as no English landscape gardener has yet pre- sented us with a rockwork well covered with its proper ornaments^ instead of merely ivy, Virginian creeper, &c., it would be captious to find fault with the French for failing in a branch which requires so much taste and knowledge of plants. Not a few of the minor masses of rock — and there are many of them — are in better taste ; and being less pon- derous, they will some day no doubt display the plant life with- out which a rockwork is a poor affair. A piece of very bad taste is shown in bringing a cafe right to the edge of the walk commanding one of the best views of the rocks and water. Restaurants Vnd refreshment places are wanted, but they should not be thrust in face of the most impor- tant spots. People should never go to such places for the sake of the cafe, however interesting it might be as an accessory. There are unobtrusive and readily accessible positions where they may be situated.
One feature deserves denunciation — ^the glaring way in which the walks are exposed. There can hardly be two
64
THE PAEC DE8 BDTTK8 CBAUHONT.
opmions about the desirability of concealtng the valka of a naturally disposed garden as much as may be conTeuient. A marked feature iu many uew French gardeus is the war they are exposed. In the plans of the best French landscape-
gardeners it is quite ridiculoiu to sec the way the walks wind about in symmetrical twirliugSj and, when they have entwined themselves through every sweep of torf in the place, seem to long for more spaces to writhe about in. Most glaring instances of this are seen here, and parti- cularly on the top, the highest rock, where a small temple is seated.
Near one of the entrances, here ia a mixture of Indigo- fera Bosua and the holly-leaved Mahonia, the first pre- dominating and full of flower in summer, having the delicate beauty and profusion of flowers characteristic oF
THK PARC DBS BUTTES CHAUMONT. 65
New Holland^ and greenhonse plants : it is worthy of being extensively used with us^ and Indigofera floribunda should be everywhere used as a flower-garden wall plant. There is not much in the summer decoration of the place that is worthy of note. Some kinds of Cannas in flower look almost as showy as beds of Gladioli^ but their real value will always be greatest as fine-leaved ornaments. The common artichoke was very effective in one spot as an isolated specimen of a '^ foliage plant/' nothing being finer than the nobly formed silvery leaves of this plant. Indeed^ there is nothing to surpass it among sub- jects suited for single specimens on the green grass. A well-developed example would be suflScient in a private garden ; and if nobody else plants it^ schools of art would find it to their advantage to have a specimen of it some- where near at hand.
The Pare des Buttes Chaumont was made on the site of old and abandoned plaster quarries. It forms a curvilinear triangle^ having an area of nearly forty-five acres included between the Rue de Crimee and two boulevards running between Belleville and Puebla. Before the park was made^ the ground^ which was divided by the Chemin de Fer de Ceinture and the Rue Fessard, was an arid wilderness of clay mounds and of excavations left by the quarrymen, many of which were so deep as to form miniature pre- cipices. It was proposed to turn this waste into a public promenade by taking advantage of the natural irregularities of the ground, by forming paths, laying turf, and making a piece of water. To obtain this result, the natural hollows of the ground in the part nearest to Paris were deepened, paths leading to the top of the hills and mounds were laid down, the general surface was made more regular and covered with garden earth and flower-beds, and plantations were formed where necessary. The improvements made were of an important character only as far as it was necessary to bring the boundary of the park into harmony with the Boulevard de Ceinture, which runs through a trench nearly sixty feet deep. The other portion of the park, in which are situated the cutting through which the Chemin de Fer de
66 THE PARC DES BUTTES CHAUMONT.
Ceinture passes^ and the old plaster quarries^ wliicli now forms the most picturesque part^ necessitated works of a much more considerable cost.
The line of rocks, which in some places are much over 100 feet in perpendicular height, was luckily terminated by a craggy promontory looking down into the old excavations. This promontory was separated from the general mass in such a way as to form an isolated rock rising out of the lake which surrounded it on all sides. The lake is supplied by two rivulets which run through the two valleys of the park. One of them flows out of the lower wall of the upper boulevard, and falls down into a large cavern forming a cascade over 100 feet in height. The wall and grotto were formed to support the neighbouring land towards Belleville which was gradually falling into the excavations left in the quarries. The marly soil which lies above the gypsum in a layer of forty-eight feet thick, the slightly sloping surface of which was gradually crumbling away under the action of the air, has been dug out so as to allow the slopes to sustain the mould forming the plantations. At the highest point of the promontory, however, where it was necessary to have a bold mass of rock hanging over the water, an embankment of masonry built in imitation of the rocks at the base has been found necessary to support the crumbling soil. A suspension bridge more than 200 feet long thrown over the lake and the path surrounding it joins this portion of the park to the other, and obviates the necessity of a long walk round. A large number of carriage roads twenty-two feet wide, the inclines rarely reaching 6 in 100, allow carriages to drive all over the park in spite of the great difference of level existing in various parts.
The paths, whose inclination seldom exceeds 10 in J 00, but which are sometimes cut into steps, afford foot-passengers the means of making short cuts between the carriage-drives in order to reach the heights of the park more expeditiously. Four bridges have been built over some of the deeper hollows, also a wire bridge has been thrown across the railway, a stone bridge, forty feet in span and sixty feet high, above a road and a small arm of the lake, the suspension bridge
THE PARC DES BUTTES CHAUMONT. 67
already mentioned^ and a skew bridge fifty-six feet in span, made of iron resting on stone piers.
The park being surrounded by large roads is enclosed with an open iron railing, so that the view is never ob- structed. Besides this, wherever it has been possible, the garden has been so arranged as to be looked down upon firom the boulevards above. The boulevard itself is supported by a wall forming a terrace over one part of the park, upon which it looks down almost perpendicularly over an escarp- ment 120 feet high. The water which supplies the cascades and the pipes by which the garden is watered is pumped by a special engine belonging to the Canal de TOurcq into a reservoir situated at the side of the upper boulevard which surrounds the park. As for the end of the park nearest to Paris, it is, on the contrary, much higher than the boule- vards. It has therefore been laid out in such a way as not to interfere with the panorama of Paris seen above the tops of the houses which will be built in the intervening thoroughfares. The works, which were commenced early in 1864, are now finished. The cost of the bridges, roads, and gardens amounted to something near 120,000/. The archi- tectural work, including a first-class and two second-class restaurants, one double and eight single park-keeper's lodges, a rotunda, and the surrounding railing, will amount to nearly 20,000/., making the entire cost close upon 140,000/.
f2
CHAPTER V.
THE lABDIK OES PLANTEB AND THE GAKDENS OF THE LUXEHBOVBG.
We bave nothing in the Britinh Isles like the Jardin des Plantes. It is half zoological, half hotanical, and nearly surrounded by museanu containing vast zoological, bo- tanical, and mineralogical collections. The portion entirely devoted to botany is laid out in the straigbt, regular style, vhile the part ^°- 'S. in which are
the numerous i buildings for I the vild ani< I nial8,has wind- I iog walks, and le trifling I diTersity here I and there. The I place is really an important school of sci- ence, and as
CoDBerratorieB and Htueumi in th« J&rdin des Fl&atea. Slich it IS great and useful. In addition to able lecturers on botany, culture, and allied matters, there are, 1 believe, a dozen on vsrions other scien< tific subjects, some of these gentlemen being among the ablest and most famous naturalists in Europe. Here Buffon, Cuvier, Jussieu, and other great men have worked j and here at the present day, even in minor departments, are many men of veil known ability.
Although the Jardin dea Plantes is quite inferior in point
TBB JAEDIN DES PLANTES.
of beauty to any of our large BritislL botanic gardens^ it coq- tsins some features vtucb migbt be introduced to them with the greatest adTantage. Its chief merits are that its planu ^"'- ^'■
are better named than in any British garden ; it possesses several arrangements vhich enable the student to see con- veniently, and most correctly, all obtainable useful plants infinitely better than in any British botanic garden ; and it displays very fully the vegeta- tion of temperate and northern dimes, and consequently, that in irfaich we are the most interested, and which is the most important for us. Its chief faults are that it has a
bad position in an out-of-tbe-way part of the town ; the greater part of its surface is covered with plants scien< tifically disposed ; the houses are poor and badly arranged compared to those in our own good botanic gardens ; and there is no green turf to be seen in its open and impor- tant parts. It has, in addi- tion, a very bad atmosphere for pines and evergreens, and there is a ridiculous kind of maze on the top of an other- wise not objectionable mound. Half way up this elevation stands a tolerably good Cedar of Lebanon, the first ever planted in France. It was planted by Jussieu, to whom it was given by Gie English botanist Collinson. Beyond this there is not much tree-beauty in the Jardin des
the Jardin del FbolM.
THE JARDIN DE8 FLANTE8.
PlaDteB. There are fine collections of palms and oAer subjects of mudi importance for a botanic garden, and the house collections are on the whole good, but the plants - in a great many cases are very
diminutive and poorly deve- loped, therefore ne will pass them by.
There is one admirable feature which must not be forgotten, and that is the fine collection of pear trees. M. Cappe has had charge of this section for about thirty-five years, and is DOW a very old man, but still he attends to his trees, and has them in fine condi- tion, though contending with much difficulty, because the space upon which the trees stand is really not enongh for one-half the number, and thus he is obliged to keep lines of little trees between and under big ones, and so on. There are few things in the horticidtural way about Paris better worth notice than this collection of pears.
Kemarking that they have a graceful way of comme- morating great naturalists by naming after them the streets in the immediate neighbourhood of the garden, I will pass OQ to the more important feature of the garden ; that is, its very extensive and well named collection of hardy plants. The only species of Pelai^onium that ventures into Europe (P. Endlicherianum) is grown here, and it is quite hardy. The first of the principal arrangements of hardy herbaceous plants, &c., is a curious and distinct one. It is simply two large and wide spaces planted with masses of ornamental species ; and looks pretty well> though far from being arranged in a way to develope fully the beauty of its contents. Edgings composed of the sevend
Jtrdio dei PUntea.
THE JARDIK DKS PLANTE8.
71
rarieties of Iris pumila look well ia early spring, and many plants are nsed for edging Trhicli we are not accus- tomed to see so employed in England. Thus the good double variety of Lychnis Viscaria has been very pretty as
an edging, and so has the neat, bright, and pnre white Silene alpestris — an alpine plant not half so popnlar as it ought to be, though I observe that some seedsmen, while not offering it, sell a pretty Cur proportion of the weeds
72 THE JARDIN BBS PLAKTES.
that belong to the genus. Then there is a large space de- voted to plants used for the decoration of the parterre^ all or chiefly tender plants or annuals. This is not so suc- cessful or useful as some of the other arrangements^ though it displays numbers of popular ornamental subjects.
Let us pass on to a large division devoted to the culture of plants used as food^ and in commerce. It is at once successful^ useful^ and complete. The chief varieties of all garden crops^ from Radishes to Kidney Beans^ are to be seen ; the various species of Rhubarb^ all important varie- ties of Lettuce — ^in a word, everything that the learner could desire to see in this way. It is not merely the plan of the thing that is sensible and good, but its carrying out. The annuals are regularly raised and put out ; the ground is kept perfectly clean, and it is, in fact, the best place I have ever seen in which to become acquainted with usdful plants. Such arrangements well carried out, and cut oflF by judicious planting from the general verdure and chief area of any of our great public gardens, would be of the greatest service. The ground is thrown into beds about six feet wide, and each kind is allotted six feet run of the bed. The sweet potato is grown here, as indeed are all interesting plants that may be grown in the open air.
Below this arrangement, and near the river end of the garden, is another very interesting division. It is chiefly devoted to medicinal and useful plants of all kinds, arranged in a distinct way. First we have the Sorghums, Millets, Wheats, and Cereals generally — all plants cultivated for their grains or seeds. Then come plants cultivated for their stems, from Polymnia edulis to UUucus tuberosum. Next we have the chief species and varieties of Onion, such plants as Urtica utilis, the Dahnatian Pyrethrum rigidum, and in a word almost everything likely to interest in this way, from Lactuca perennis to the esculent Hibiscus. Here again the plants are well named and kept clear and distinct, each having full room to devdope, the general space devoted to the subject being sufficiently large ; and the practice of giving each plant a certain portion of the whole breadth of each bed to itself is better than the more
THE JABDIN DES PLANTES. 73
ax)wded arrangements adopted in our British botanic gar- dens. All these divisions we have just passed through cover an oblong expanse of ground^ the effect of which is of course anything but beautiful from an ornamental