Gardens -- England -- London; London (England) -- Description and travel; Parks -- England -- London
The frame-ground in Regent’s Park has to be a spacious one, to produce
all that is required in the way of spring and summer plants. The fogs
are the greatest enemies of the London gardener, and more especially
on the heavier soil of Regent’s Park. Not even the most hardy of the
bedding-out plants will survive the winter, unless in frames. Even
wall-flowers and forget-me-nots will perish with a single bad night of
fog, unless under glass. Although, on the other hand, it is surprising
how some species apparently unsuited to withstand the climate will
survive. Among the rock plants growing in a private rock-garden within
the Park _Azalia procumbens_, that precarious Alpine, is perfectly at
home. Clumps of _Cypripedium spectabele_ come up and flower year after
year, and _Arnebia echioides_, the prophet flower, by no means easy to
grow, seems quite established. But to return to the frame-ground, from
whence all the bedding plants emanate. Violas are a special feature
in the Park, and one which is much to be commended, as their season
of beauty is so protracted. They are all struck in frames, one row of
fifty-three lights being devoted to them, in which 23,750 cuttings are
put annually. The green-houses are used for storing plants not only for
the decoration of the Park but for some fourteen other places outside.
The Tower, the Law Courts, Mint, Audit Office, the Mercantile Marine
in Poplar, are all supplied from Regent’s Park. The Tate Gallery and
Hertford House have to be catered for also. Whether the visitors to the
Wallace Collection even notice the plants it is impossible to say; they
might miss their absence. But the gardeners have to give these few pots
considerable care, as they will only stand for a very short time
inside the building, and after three weeks’ visit return to hospital.
[Illustration: SPRING IN REGENT’S PARK]
Of late years a considerable alteration has been made in the
arrangement of the beds in the flower-garden of the Park, chiefly with
a view to reducing the bedding and yet obtaining a better effect. Long
herbaceous borders have been substituted for one of the rows of formal
beds, requiring a constant succession of plants. This has necessitated
the removal of some of the flowers shown in the view of this garden
taken in the spring. The loss of these is compensated by the new
arrangement of beds, separated from the Park by a hedge and flowering
shrubs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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