Chapter Five

 THE VICTORIAN FLORA

The Victorian flora was unique. It was unique in its richness, as well as for its newness. The most amazing welter of extraordinary plants poured into Britain from all over the world, whether orchids, waterlilies, or calceolarias (many from the jungles and prairies of South America), exquisite alpine plants from the mountains of Africa or Northern India, and wonderful garden plants that had already been cultivated for centuries in China and, even more especially, Japan. The speed of introduction was entirely new, too, though occasional new garden plants had been arriving at least since Roman times. There was a major burst of new introductions with the discovery of the Americas in the fifiteenth century, and minor bursts following the development of trade links with the Orient in the sixteenth century, and China and India in the seventeenth. As European explorers, merchants and collectors began to move inland from the coasts on which they had established themselves, the interest in new garden plants expanded throughout the eighteenth century. However, introductions of all these centuries were mostly restricted to plants with the toughest imaginable seeds; the technology of seed transportation was extremely primitive, even deleterious (seeds were often stored in honey, in wax, or in sealed barrels of soil)Seeds that did survive their bizarre journeys were then germinated into the ignorant gardening world of the day. Only rarely did living plant survive the crossing of an ocean, with rats, seawater and ignorant sailors, making sure that the journey was almost always fatal. With the discovery, in the late eighteenth century, that most seeds lasted perfectly well if dried off and stored in simple packets of brown paper, and the early nineteenth century invention of the Wardian case (a device we shall meet again), which ensured that safe journey of entire young plants, the scene was set for a monstrous invasion of exotic plants from every exotic strand in the world. All this would have been in vain, of course, had there not been also thousands upon thousands of avid gardeners wanting to grow all this new material, as well as hundreds of nurseries, metropolitan and provincial, happy to grow it on, propagate, advertise, overwinter, show, and sell it. As we shall see, for the whole of the Victorian period, it was not in the least surprising to find some obscure nursery in Musselburgh or Finchley almost as well stocked with some of the latest plants from Brazil or Java, as the great London nurseries like Veitch or Jackman or Waterer's. Thousands of amateurs made astonishing collections of all sorts of novelties; orchids, cactuses, new varieties of oriental chrysanthemums, florists tulips, citrus varieties, bankrupting themselves frequently enough to make auctions of their abandoned plants one of the features of the social calendar, almost as if Sothebys or Christies were to auction a neighbours' house plants. Meanwhile, in the jungles and deserts worldwide, all sorts and conditions of men collected plants from the wild, and sent seeds or plants home to friends, employers, or the great botanic gardens. They varied from colonial officials, merchants hunting for new markets and new merchandise, to failed gardeners emigrating to new countries in the hope of work and advancement. Some of the professional plant collectors became garden stars in their own right, and published memoirs of their exciting travels (other perished in sometimes terrible circumstances, even with rare flowers still stuffed in a crushed vasculum). Such was the impact of the floral deluge that the Victorian flora developed its own power to affect the progress of garden design. This was entirely new. All previous garden styles, from the knot gardens of medieval Europe, to the landscapes of eighteenth century England, had progressed according to the dictates of fashionable gardeners and their advisors. The plants had occupied an entirely secondary place. Now, much of the enthusiasm for the new-fangled parterres advocated by Paxton in the 1830's, and which were found in almost every garden in the country twenty years later, was based on the brilliance of the flowers of plants like the verbenas, calceolarias, and the showier geraniums and so on. Most of the basic species of these enormously important genera only arrived on these shores in the early years of the nineteenth century. They made all sorts of new garden things possible. The ones taken up enough to dominate the whole Victorian period were subtropical weeds that, seasonless, flowered for the entire time that the plant was growing. These, in Europe, therefore were in brilliant flower right up to the first frosts of October or November. For most gardeners, this was an enormously exciting phenomenon, for the old garden flora was virtually over by the end of August, and the gardens half dead; now they could have colour until they themselves no longer wanted to be outdoors. While some of the old sort of flowers had been brilliantly colourful (things like the cross-of-Jerusalem - Lychnis chalcedonica), most were in flower for just a few weeks, so the old mixed borders were a continual sequence of different colours, some of great softness and subtlety, but evanescent. Except for brief seasons, like the flush of bulbs in early spring, this made planning colour schemes difficult (though it was certainly done in late Georgian gardens). Plant height was always a problem; the weedy nature of many of the new South American and Australian introductions, ensured that they were either naturally low-growing, or could be clipped or pegged to the ground, so that they remained low. Thus, the new plants could be treated as areas of brilliant colour, constant for the whole growing season, as rich in effect as any gardener could desire (and too rich for some) Even the later developments of the new parterres, like the so-called picturesque bedding, subtropical bedding, and even the subtle splendours of carpet bedding, were mostly based on plants which were all Victorian introductions. Oddly, in spite of the astonishing richness of the Victorian garden flora, taken as a whole, the number of genera developed by breeders and nurserymen and which became the key genera for the entire period, were rather few. Verbenas, calceolarias, geraniums, lobelias constitute the main four genera (only the last two are much used for bedding today), and as an outer ring are petunias, dahlias, ferns, chrysanthemums, camellias, rhododendrons, roses and azaleas, then beyond these, vast ranks of marvellous, but almost unexploited, vegetation. However, on top of all this, was a quite astonishing burst of activity on the part of plant breeders. The old florists had been working away on their traditional genera for several centuries, and so the idea of breeding plants was widely disseminated, as were the techniques for doing it. Now, the wild enthusiasm for the new, especially for new species, poured over into a widespread passion for new varieties of plants. Consequently, almost as soon as new species appeared in commerce, often only a season of two after they had first flowered, hybrids were being hailed in the gardening press, being advertised by raisers or nurserymen (often at remarkably high prices), and even being auctioned at salerooms up and down the country. Correspondingly, last season's varieties were sold off cheaply, and soon vanished from view. The enthusiasm for breeding was not in the least confined to new genera. The notion spread into many genera that had been in the garden for centuries. Sometimes the new passion simply took old garden flowers in remarkable new directions, as with hollÍyhocks, say, or roses. More often, newly introduced species were hybridised with ones familiar here for hundreds of years, to produce entirely new groups of plants. The pansy, the gladiolus, and Malmaison carnations, are all important examples (the first really exciting pansies, used to sell for five or six shilling each, the wages of a gardener for a week or more). While most of this multi-layered flora was based on wealth (all flower gardening, and even some kitchen gardening is, after all, only conspicuous consumption), it did represent a sort of wealth of its own, as part of a whole culture and aspirations of an age. Rather little of it is left. The underlying economic wealth has gone, and the fleets of gardeners, the myriads of conservatories, frames, stove houses, the tens of thousands of miles of box hedging, the terraces on which to stand the tubs of agapanthus, canna, and hedychium, vanished. What of all this marvellous wealth is left? There are almost no early pansies left, and only a few violas. A few of Mr Chater's hollyhocks are still available, a few Sutton's strains (like the apricot foxglove) are in circulation in keen amateur's gardens, some of Perry's chrysanthemums are being collected, and a handful of bedding geraniums are still in commerce. Only a fraction of the 'old roses' survive, and almost all the double wallflowers, double antirrhinums, bedding verbenas, and so on, are gone for good. Some of the shrubs have fared better, and it's not difficult to find plenty of fine Victorian lilacs, rhododendrons and camellias. Of course, if you ask most people what plants they associated with the Victorian period, many will think of aspidistras, the spotted laurels, monkey puzzle trees, other trees like Wellingtonia, perhaps the ivy found carved on almost every Victorian tombstone, perhaps even, more remarkably, the gigantic waterlily named for the period Victoria regia. Certainly, all these were important, though some were introduced so late in the period that they've scarcely gone out of fashion. For instance, the spotted laurel (Aucuba japonica) first appeared from Japan in 1783, though it was fifty years before it became widely grown. Plants are either male or female, and as only one plant had arrived in Europe,the scarlet berries, one of the delights of the plant when associated with an attractively variegated leaf, had to wait until the other sex arrived. By 1838, they were used as screens to give privacy to urban gardens, often planted below standard holly trees Once breeding could begin, new and more heavily speckled variants began to appear in the late 1860's, making the plants popular all over again. New sorts were soon planted in shrubberies (where they can still often be found), were pruned into fancy shapes for tubs, and dwarf sorts were used in winter bedding schemes. Many were used, in the 1840's and 1850's, as balcony plants, for which they are still especially useful. They became so popular, and so associated with unimaginative park planting, that they, like the aspidistra, must have been burnt by the thousands during the upheavals of this century. They are now making an entirely justified comeback, being both decorative and easy to grow. On the other hand, there may be now hope, at least in Britain, for the aspidistra - though that's perhaps not too important while every courtyard and patio in southern Europe is still packed with them. However, the aspidistra is quite a late introduction, appearing first in France in the 1850's, and still being described here in 1861 as 'a little known plant'. One article goes on that 'Aspidistra elatior is strongly recommended for the decoration of sitting rooms. It is capable... of living there for any length of time without suffering in the smallest degree... ' Certainly, the conditions in Victorian drawing room, halls, and even parlours, were quite dreadful. Sadly, the plant's tolerance of all this, its cast-iron invincibility led ultimately to its downfall. A shame, for a well grown plants, glossy-leaved, and with perhaps some of its odd purple velvet flowers (at ground level to allow snails to cross-pollinate them) have undeniable charm. Of the trees, both wellingtonia and the monkey puzzle date almost any piece of planting where they are at all mature. In spite of its Regency name Wellingtonia is a high-Victorian plant, first discovered in the Californian Sierra Nevada by William Lobb of the vastly important nursery of Messrs Veitch. Lobb sent home first a little seed, some dried branches, and drawings of mature trees. Every gardener was immediately excited. In 1854, the Cottage Gardeners Magazine announced that the 'THE PLANT OF THE YEAR is Wellingtonia gigantea', though it was hardly a cottagers plant. The nursery itself announced proudly that "Messrs Veitch of Exeter and Chelsea, have much pleasure in stating that their seeds of the above magnificent Tree are vegetating satisfactorily. They therefore hope to be able to send out well-established seedling plants during the ensuing summer and autumn..." The price would not have suited cottagers either. However, wellingtonias at once became the tree for country house gardens and places like Biddulph soon had avenues of it wherever they could be squeezed in. The fad for the tree lasted throughout the period, and many remain, gradually darkening the gardens in which they continue to grow. The first to get chopped down were owned by Robinson, who cut down the ones at Gravetye Manor in 1911. On the other hand, the monkey puzzle (Araucaria), was first introduced in the previous century, arriving in 1796.It was first planted in the grounds of Castle Kennedy, the seat of the Earls of Stair, and as might be expected in the less grand gardens of Dropmore. At Castle Kennedy, the vast arrangement of early eighteenth century formal avenues, once planted with suitably native species, were replanted in exactly the same pattern but with this remarkable tree with rather odd-looking effect. However, by 1847, Dropmore was claiming to have the largest specimen in the British Isles. Commercial quantities of seed reached Europe soon after, and by the 1840's German nurseries were exporting young plants to the gardeners of Britain. By 1861, a Mr C J Stevens, who had an influential auction room at King Street, Covent Garden, was auctioning a consignment of ten bushels of seed imported direct from Chile. The tree grew fast on the West coast of Scotland, and by 1872 there were even hopes that it would become a timber crop in suitable parts of the country. Its eventual fate was less grand. Young plants have a remarkably formal arrangement of new branches, and this appealed to the Victorian sense of organisation and tidiness. Thus they were used as centrepieces for bedding schemes, both in summer, but more often when winter bedding was carried out (when they were combined with small potted ivies, aucubas, and other hardy evergreens). It is from such a use that many now full-grown trees spring, for such plants were commonly left in the ground instead of being lifted as they should. Eventually, the plants simply got too large to move, and after a longer period still, overtopped the humble front gardens where they were so often planted. Amongst more exotic things, the vast waterlily was, of course, never a popular plant, requiring large pools in which to grow, and a high temperature. Nevertheless, it caught the popular imagination whenever and wherever if flowered (as it still does), and pictures of its equally large flowers appeared frequently in the magazines of the time. As a status plant, it has never been equalled. It was first discovered in the Amazon valley by Sir Richard Schomburgh in 1837. It took ten years for the seeds to be first germinated, for which honour Kew Gardens took the palm. However, the flowers were first seen at Chatsworth, in the vast conservatories designed by that estate's gardener, Joseph Paxton, where it flowered the following year (1848). Though some slight attempts were made to popularise it, and a London nurseryman got it to flower outdoors at Chelsea, by putting hot water pipes through a large tank, not surprisingly, it didn't catch on. More simply, however enamoured the Victorians may have been of the new and the exotic, one of the central plants of the Victorian period flora was in fact a native, and one which had played a role in human society since very ancient times indeed. The common ivy, which eighteenth century gardeners had used to give romance and spurious age to their newly built ruins and grottos, had become, by the Victorian period, associated with rustic charm and cosiness. 'Rosa' describes, in 1849, a cottage that she thinks should be the model for all, which was so covered"...in this British evergreen as to look like an ivy bush pierced with two lattices and a doorway. Tis the results of her own exertions and her own taste, and forms one of the most beautiful objects - the very perfection of a snuggery - with which the eye can be refreshed." Further, the plant's attractively marbled leaves were used in the posies that were so popular all over Europe at this time, or in the emerging art of flower arrangement. Rules for such things were being propounded as early as 1850, when vases and vegetation had to be matched, for " In every case, whether the vase be an upright Etruscan or of tazza form, it should be very considerably concealed by the flowers... as in the case of the vase being of flat form, by green leaves of the ivy or rose clustering round it. Dark leaves, such as these and of the camellia, always contrast better with the flowers in bouquets..." Bouquets were evanescent, even when ringed in ivy, for "the greatest enemy to endurance of a bouquet is the extreme dryness of the air of our sitting-rooms. The flowers will retain their beauty treble the time if a bell-glass be turned over them, so as to check the excessive evaporation of their leaves and petals. A very elegant mode of effecting this is afforded by a small table, having for its top a marble slab slightly hollowed in the middle to contain a little water, in which the edge of the bell-jar rests... The vitiated air, or, in other words, the large quantity of carbonic acid and carburetted hydrogen gases produced by the combustion of the wax or gas, and the breathing of visitors in well-lighted and crowded assemblies, is also very injurious to the healthy growth of plants. Consequently, on such occasions, bouquets are more than ordinarily in need of glass shades" Outdoors, in less nasty conditions, ivies were also used to drape outdoor baskets, hanging, or supported, to soften the raw rustic look, and usually inexpert construction, of these popular garden accessories. Though the eighteenth century usage lived on, ivy being an essential veil for the bizarre pieces of rock work essential for the gardens of suburban homes of taste, and where it was combined with the gayest of alpines around the mouths of miniature caves, new demands were soon made of it. On the one hand, it was used both as an evergreen bedding plant, in winter as well as summer (for the latter use if was carefully pegged to the ground to give a dark green outer band to over-brilliant bedding schemes), on the other, it moved indoors. Both Irish ivy and some of the new variegated sorts were popular plants for Wardian cases, but also for trailing over metal-work arches to frame sofas or tables (in which case the arch could support hanging baskets planted up with creeping Jenny, Sedum Sieboldii, tradescantias or Saxifraga sarmentosa. By 1850 or so, ivy, thought of as cheerful (as were all Victorian evergreens) was being used to make cemeteries more cheerful places in winter. It became a popular decoration for tombstones, and was rapidly associated with mourning and remembrance. By 1874, there were shaped planting tins available, that could be slipped behind picture frames so that the ivy fronds could be twined around the picture frame itself. This was thought to be especially suitable for pictures of some 'departed' friend. The plants must have been remarkably difficult to water without ruining the wallpaper. Incidentally, another reason for its popularity was the fact that it was impervious to all but the very worst of urban smogs, though soot smeared ivy leaves must be one of the worst of all possible garden sights. Whatever you may feel for these remnants of a lost age whenever you still see them, they have at least survived. For the flowers absolutely central to the whole of the Victorian era, few gardeners will feel anything but a mild sadness for so many plants that were so admired, but which vanished so quickly. In 1836, petunias, dahlias, verbenas, calceolarias, eschscholtzias,and dozens of equally elegant plants were absolutely new. The verbena, for instance had only been in the country since 1826. A Mr Pousette found the first one, at Buenos Aires in that year. The Brazilian name was 'melindres' (hence its Latin one of Verbena melindres), and the plant had good rosy pink flowers, which were seen the following summer at Bignor Park. Other species were soon found. The redoubtable Mr Tweedie sent home the next two, one of which, V. Tweedieana, bore his own name. Tweedie, an only moderately successful gardener, though foreman at Dalkeith in youth, then at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, later worked at Castle Hill in Ayr. After a move to Eglinton, he took the surprising decision, at the age of 50, to leave, in 1825, for Buenos Aires. There, his career took off. He did some important garden designs, and a great deal of collecting throughout Brazil. He sent home almost the first of verbenas, his introductions ultimately going on to produce all the subsequent bedding sorts. He's also remembered for introducing various Bignonia species, many cacti, though nowadays the most famous of his plants is the formidable pampas grass. As an ultimate honour, his journals were published by Hooker in the prestigious 'Journal of Botany'. Gardeners were quick to spot the potential of his verbenas. By 1838, Paxton was suggesting that the species should be crossed by nurserymen as there were already some interesting hybrids around. Tweedie must have kept his Scottish connections, for commercial quantities of many of them were only available for a now-vanished nursery at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh. By 1842, named varieties were on the market, including a handsome white variety called 'The Queen', scented, and costing seven shillings and sixpence. All had immediate impact, being planted in huge quantities by rich and fashionable gardeners. By 1849, the verbena was fast becoming a florists flower, with show classes devoted to it even amongst the Cottage Garden Societies. As with any florists group, all sorts of new traits were soon developed, and streaked flowers, or the sort now most often found in seed packets, ones with white eyes, were soon the rage. Colours ranged from purest white, through an infinite number of pinks, rose and scarlets, to lilacs so deep as to almost seem black. However, reaction was fast. Firstly, gardeners found that some of the plants had disadvantages. Verbenas suffered terribly from mildew, and so they had to be dusted every fortnight with flowers of sulphur - an enormous job if the bedding was at all extensive, and the yellow powder, liberally distributed, must have been uncommonly unsightly (we find greenfly a much worse problem). Worse, in spite of all the new colours, and even new statures, from the minute 'Boule de Feu', to immense and vigorous 'Robinson's Defiance', posh gardeners were beginning to get bored. Some suggested planting three close shades of verbena in one bed to give richer effect (that must have looked startlingly good in skilled hands). However, there was no stopping the verbena amongst the less garden-conscious classes. For these, often without their own means of producing the requisite number of plants needed, the big commercial nurseries started propagating vast quantities of plants. John Scott of Merriott (a firm which still exists, though now well-known for its fruit trees and roses), stocked one hundred varieties of verbena, and took thousands of cutting of each every season. The same year, 1861, other nurseries were selling rooted verbena at two shillings and six pence for a dozen. Another had eighty thousand verbenas for sale to suburban Londoners. The verbena was, even by contemporaries, seen as being central to the whole bedding movement; William Thomson, head gardener at Dalkeith Palace, commented "Looking at Verbenas, I cannot help recording my conviction that the present principle of arranging plants in masses owes them very much... [its introduction] had a very considerable share in the advent of the grouping style, and helped to establish it" Verbenas followed bedding through its ribbon phase, as at Kew in 1862, and then into decline by 1884, when plants were sold as part of mixed lots of bedding plants, either imported from Holland, and sold at '100 for 5/- carriage paid', or as ten shilling collections containing one hundred and twenty plants, with thirty six geraniums in four varieties, eighty four verbenas in a dozen varieties, and so on. It's difficult to know how such assortments can ever have yielded an attractive scheme. Another genus, the calceolaria, had a comparable history to the verbena. Though the species first in were Calceolaria pinnata in 1773, then C. Fothergilla in 1777, nothing much more happened until 1822, when four new sorts suddenly arrived. Discovered in the 1820's in Chile and Peru, they were first taken up in Scotland, where they were collected by a Dr Graham. He produced some fascinating hybrids, and his collection was bought by Mr Young, nurseryman at Epsom, in 1831. With a foothold in the south, they were soon the rage. Blotched and spotted ones were popular 1834-40, and William Lobb was still sending new species to Britain. By 1850 there were 'Numberless' hybrids of greater beauty still, and by 1860 or so, there were such vast numbers of sorts that some were already thought of as old fashioned. As with verbenas, native pests and diseases soon caught up. By 1857 there were warnings that garden calceolarias could collapse with mildew (they do still), but were also equally easily devastated by over-zealous cultivation, as well as the awful triumvirate of red spider, greenfly, and thrips. The plant group that has survived the best is the one that holds most interest for gardeners today. It is the third in the other great triumvirate; that of bedding plants. Almost everyone, even if only with a windowsill, will grow a geranium or two, and although quite a few of these will be modern, it is surprising how many that once played a crucial part in bedding schemes all over the warmer parts of Victorian Britain are still popular (Scotland's summers were often too cool for them to grow properly - though a number bear Scottish names). All the species come from the dryer parts of South Africa, and although many bulb species had come from that country in the sevententh century, only one geranium species had followed them (Pelargonium triste; it too has bulbs). One or two more followed in the eighteenth century, but suddenly quantities began to arrive in the new Regency glasshouses. Hybridisation at once began (some of the most charming early ones having the first introduction as one parent - though all of these lovely striped-flower hybrids have vanished). Soon, almost all the geranium groups now known were in existence; zonals, regals, ivy-leaved and so on. Naturally, they were taken up as bedding plants by the advanced gardeners of the day. By 1838, grand gardens had several varieties of scarlet flowered zonals (one called 'Frogmore'), some with variegated leaves, and even ivy-leaved sorts were making an appearance in fashionable rustic baskets. By the 1840's, there were prize lists for new variates at many local flower shows, though decent new sorts were expensive at two shilling a piece. This seems to have acted as a spur to growers, breeders and collectors alike, and the genus spawned the first of the new florists clubs, the Pelargonium Society being set up on June the 18th.1842. Once it had set up generous funds to support the grand prizes for newly bred varieties, the whole thing took off. By 1852, geraniums were used for every aspect of bedding, with sorts with attractively coloured leaves being used for them alone (leaf colour often clashed nastily with flower colour, so the latter were pinched out as they formed; pinching out even a small piece of bedding must have been a back-breaking task). Some of the leaf designs were exceptionally subtle, and matched the more interesting mid Victorian period colour sense almost exactly; like 'Lass 'O Gowrie' in which a white margin surrounds a jade green leaf with a reddish 'zone', or the lovely 'Crystal Palace Gem', with a green zone on a yellow leaf, and soft pink flowers. Whole new groups appeared, based on different selections of underlying species. Some, like the Unique's, which started out as the old 'Purple Unique' or the white one (which cost fifteen shilling for a single plant when it first appeared), turned out to be completely unsuitable for bedding. The only way that stiff and leggy plants like the Uniques could be bent towards that end was by pegging down each shoot as it appeared. As they were also brittle, this didn't work. The group has virtually vanished, though 'Scarlet Unique' and a few others remain; the flowers are lovely. However, geranium flowers, with their attractive markings, or with brilliant colour, found yet another use as a proper florists' cut flower, used for making posies or decorating tables. Even by 1854, one writer saw "one nosegay quite new in design, and most beautiful and telling a combination, which one might imitate in a circular bed of four or five feet in diameter. First, get nine white Camellias, one in the centre of the circle, then two on the right and two on the left of the centre, in a line... then two in front and two at the back... Now get four azure blue flowers, or four little bunches of the same blue, in Cinerarias, and place them up against the four angles formed by the white Camellias... the scarlet geraniums, [and] you may fringe it with Mignonette". Numbers were as prodigious as for verbenas. Scotts of Merriott, whilst propagating verbenas, also kept going fifty sorts of the latest geranium, and at the vast private garden of Shrubland, the gardener and writer David Beaton regularly overwintered five thousand geranium 'Punch' cuttings, and several other varieties on top of that. With such an important group, it is not surprising that charming legends grew up around the most successful varieties, like the one called 'Tom Thumb', the most widely used of all the bedding geraniums. The story first saw print in 1861;"General Tom Thumb, the history of which is more like romance than reality (in being saved from a dust-bin, where, after the tender mercies of a nursery of children, it was cast to die the death of an un-proved seedling) led the way to improvement" - it was supposed to have been rescued by a sharp eyed nurseryman, whose fortune it made, being the first with a tricolor leaf. Bedding geraniums were quickly taken up in America too, and by 1849, red flowered and variegated sorts, as well as ivy leafed ones were available. Of course, the 'true' geraniums, plants belonging to the genus Geranium, not to Pelargonium, not much can be said here. They all belong to the later phases of Victorian gardening, when William Robinson's campaigns on behalf of the herbaceous flora began to gain ground. Outside the main trio of bedding genera lurked (and still lurk), other good plants. Two, lobelia and petunais, share the same history as verbenas and calceolarias. Lobelias began to arrive from South African the 1800's, and were first used as greenhouse and conservatory plants, their trailing habit and pretty blue flowers suiting them to the front rows of the plant shelves. They were in use for bedding in continental Europe by 1830 (in one published scheme they were combined, alarmingly, with purple leafed amaranthus and scarlet flowered celosia). Various species were introduced, though the most common garden plants had pale blue flowers. By the 1840's colour variants , perhaps hybrids, began to become popular. Ten years later, lobelias were used everywhere; to hang round the edges of the vast urns at the Sydenham Crystal Palace, to edge beds at Kew, or to fill in the blue or white parts of panel beds, coats-of-arms beds, ribbon beds, and the rest. They're still popular wherever bedding is carried out, though some of the nicer colour strains seem to have gone (there were quite large numbers of good greyish heliotrope colours and very smoky blues). They're still sometimes found as chance variants from seed-packet plants, though most gardeners throw them away. As the plants are perfectly perennial in a cool greenhouse, they can easily be overwintered and increased. The petunia has been a lot more successful in the survival stakes and is still undergoing developments. White and purples were widely used in suburban gardens in the late 1830's, were even found in cottagers' gardens twenty years later. They were almost vanquished by the geranium in the 1860's and 1870's as geranium breeding produced more and more colourful types. Even more successful has been the dahlia, which even today occupies pride of place at most flower shows, and is still being developed in new and interesting ways, though it has become associated with a sort of gardening that not all gardeners espouse. The first hybrids of note were introduced from France in 1815, and dahlia mania soon ensued. By the 1850's, they had already almost taken over every September flower show, where the extraordinary blooms were frequently doctored (they still are), to give them perfect shape. There were endless debates about the merits of the different groups, with rival factions proclaiming the death of the double dahlia, of the anemone flowered sorts, of the singles, and so on. More fun, the roots that were not needed for showing the following summer were actually cooked and eaten (they were highly esteemed), and even in the 1850's the leaves were being put in salads. In the garden, they had various uses. Their often subtle colours enlivened the kitchen garden, where their brittle stems were often tied to the espalier rails that also supported apples, pears and greengages. In the flower garden, it was common to use them to disguise the bare shanks of taller herbaceous plants, especially hollyhocks (the colour range is complementary too). A writer in 1842 enthused of a garden she'd just visited "Here the hollyhocks broke the horizon with their obelisks of colour, and the foreground was a mass of dahlias, American marigolds, mallows, asters and mignonette. It was the most gorgeous mass of colouring we ever beheld" Indeed. In the same year, the York Grand Floricultural and Horticultural Society held one of its first Grand Exhibitions, offering a first prize for dahlias of one hundred pounds, then a quite vast sum of money, 'for the best stand of twenty four blooms... of different sorts'. There were certainly plenty of new varieties around. The garden magazines all ran masses of advertisements for new dahlias, often with prize lists of the main shows so that future exhibitors could decide which sorts to try next season. So even organisations like the Newby Wiske Cottagers, the Salt-hill Dahlia Society, the Winchester Polyanthus Society, the Hammersmith or the Ipswich Cucumber Society (whose 'First Grand Show' was 'open to all England') played their part by having a dahlia section to promote the breeding and commercialisation of new flowers. Dahlias were even 'hyped'. Some methods were quite ingenious, though I doubt that such strategems would work today for any garden plant at all. One advert ran 'Appleby's Queen of the Lilacs - By an unforeseen event, the whole remaining stock of GROUND ROOTS of the above Dahlia are destroyed. Fortunately, however, some fine healthy POT ROOTS are saved, a few of which will be supplied to the first applicants at fifty shillings each...' By the 1860's, there were more than one hundred varieties being regularly shown, and perhaps five or six times that number actually in commerce. Only a few seem to remain. A plant associated with one of the major 'aesthetic' vogues of the Victorian period is now in almost every garden. The chrysanthemum, though a garden plant in China and Japan since ancient times, first arrived in Europe in 1689 (these first plants were from Japan). Oddly, for the plants are usually pretty tough, the first introductions were soon lost, only to be reintroduced in 1789. The enthusiasm for them started about 1800, and soon reached 'craze' proportions. By 1808, eight new sorts were imported directly from China by Sir Abraham Hume and a Mr Evans. Between 1816 and 1823, 17 new sorts were added. A year or two later there were more than fifty sorts, mostly new hybrids, comprising singles, doubles, quilled, ranunculus flowered types. A writer of 1835 pointed out that "the Chinese chrysanthemum has been subjected to British improvement, and a number of new and beautiful varieties have lately been raised from seeds saved at Oxford, and other places in England, and in Guernsey" Plants were grown to prodigious sizes, and six inch blooms were common. Some gardeners exhibited plants at the shows that were up to twenty feet in circumference, and six feet high. The famous collector Robert Fortune introduced the first of the pompone sorts from Chusan in the late 1840's, and by 1854 the most enthusiastic of the nurserymen were presenting lists often with seven hundred varieties. Soon show plants had special houses built for them, just as tulips and auriculas had in the past. At the shows themselves the flower shapes were often adjusted by gently removing any petals that spoilt the perfect symmetry. Soon, the magazines were giving lists of varieties by height so that obsessed readers could design a whole border just of chrysanthemums. Of course, the new Victorian flora wasn't all just bedding plants and other garden 'soft furnishings'. There were immense numbers of both trees and shrubs, and while many of these underwent little further development by breeders or nurserymen (or the upmarket variant of the florist -it needed rather more space to be an enthusiast for rhododendrons than for auriculas), quite a number became important areas of new variety making. The camellia, for instance, had been known since the late eighteenth century, and had begun to become popular in Regency gardens, when numbers of elegant camellia houses were built especially for them (early plants were though not to be hardy). By 1847, the redoubtable Robert Fortune was in China busily buying up all the interesting camellias (as well as moutans, paeonies and lots of other 'goodies'). Camellias survived the rigours of the journey and soon helped swell the ranks of lovely flowers, already popular garden plants, and important flowers in the markets of the major cities. Camellia blossoms were wired and used in nosegays (though only a few sorts are at all strongly scented), where "six or seven Camellia flowers were mixed with Geraniums, Pinks, Picotees, Violets and Azaleas, with Mignonette, and Sweet scented leaves, all made up in circles, and wrapped in paper, the size not less than ten inches in diameter, and all for one shilling that very day!" There were soon long lists of varieties available, many with flowers spotted and striped in shades of pink. Imbrication of petals was much admired as was good foliage (still important points in choosing varieties). By 1850, even supposedly cottage gardeners were expected to be growing them, even though "...at the season, when they make their annual growth, and form their flower buds for the succeeding year, they require a higher temperature, and great amounts of atmospheric moisture and shade, than any other greenhouse plants.” There must have been some rather grand cottagers. Camellias have rather lost their power as garden plants for some reason (though they seem to be making a comeback in metropolitan gardens). However, the rhododendron has gone from strength to alarming strength. Amongst the first Oriental types to appear was, unluckily, one of the most gorgeous. Rhododendron arboreum, from Nepal in 1820, was at first thought not to be hardy. Nevertheless, its glamour captured the imagination even of gardeners unable to give it a conservatory, and they had to content themselves with some of the American sorts known to be quite hardy. Loudon's 'Suburban Gardener' of 1838, for instance, gave plans for an astonishing Tudorbethan villa, whose Tudorbethan back garden, with raised terraces all round, had beds with a suggested planting of kalmias and rhododendrons (in effect, a geometrical 'American garden'). By 1842, even provincial nurseries like & C Whalley, St Georges Crescent, Liverpool could advertise lists of 'Choice American Tree and Shrub Seed' which contained many new rhododendrons. Breeding soon began. Within the decade the London Horticultural Society's garden at Turnham Green had an exhibition of American plants being sold by Hosea Waterer, which included new rhododendron and azalea hybrids in which Indian species were newly crossed with American ones. By 1862, Waterer's were showing a vast collection of new rhododendrons at the Royal Horticultural Society, with what was diplomatically called the 'high coloured' seedlings being very much admired (a taste which survives in many country house gardens). Less shatteringly colourful ones were only used for contrast. At the show, plants were displayed in elegant beds, with gravel paths edged with turf between. Amongst the lesser beds were earth mounds planted with single ancient standard rhododendrons, including the marvellous sounding and brown-flowered 'Prince Albert'. A little later in the decade, 'rhodos' had become conventional shrubbery plants, mixed with the dull Portugal laurels, Robinia inermis, roses, and and some species of Cytisus. Azaleas, too were a fashionable group, particularly the Ghent hybrids, raised near that town in the early nineteenth century as crosses between some of the recently introduced North American species and the lovely and heavily perfumed rhododendron luteum (from Turkey). London flower sellers were importing large quantities in the 1830's, and by the 1860's the trade was so considerable that huge consignments were being auctioned regularly in the same city. 'Indian' azaleas, miscalled, for they were in fact Chinese garden plants, first appearing in Europe about 1810, became another popular group found in almost every greenhouse and conservatory in the 1880's. All were so admired that British breeders soon started work on them, and most florists' shows has classes for azaleas by 1870. The hardy American species were also denizens of many 'American' garden, and were also important in the 'fernery' as a means of alleviating the flowerless green. So far, most of these new developments have been of almost entirely new groups of plants; developments of entirely familiar genera were often just as extreme and just as exciting. For many genera, all sorts of new relations had flocked in, adding new genetic possibilities to the breeders palette, and also creating new demands of the older varieties. In any case, what is newly possible is immensely attractive, and many nurserymen must have tried crossing the old with the new as much for the sheer fun of breeding as with the delibarate hope of finding fame and fortune. The old garden flora of course contained such potential-packed groups as the roses (the new Victorian groups like the Ayrshires, Bourbons, Scottish, Teas, and so on we look at below), delphiniums, paeonies, hollyhocks, lupins, sweet peas and tulips. A group like the tulips, almost entirely a florists flower, and therefore rather rarely part of the flower garden proper, continued as a vastly popular fancier's plant, but were also pressed into service for bedding. In spite of all the excitement about garden design, the old fashioned system of planting tulip beds survived, and the flowers remained immensely popular. Nurserymen, like Mr Groom at Walworth, kept trade going by producing expensive and glamorous new sorts. Groom wrote that it was only the patronage of the wealthy looking for such things that made a nursery viable, for the return on cheap varieties was very low. He must have done well, for he bred some quite marvellous tulips, especially a famous but vanished variety called 'Groom's Prince Albert', in which the soft yellow petals had a blue-black feathering. In the 1860's, grand tulips like this were never used as border flowers, though, there were numbers of cheap and colourful border ones. Shirley Hibberd, and many of his readers, liked to see such varieties against evergreen shrubs, where they were planted as a brilliant margin to the shrubbery. He added that "..it is not MERELY the colour which determines the value of a Tulip, but colour is all that ordinary persons require; and, that can be had in extravagant abundance from Tulips of the commonest kinds" As with so many grand flowers, there were auctions of particularly good collections; in 1851 "The most superb bed of Tulips in Europe! Mr R. Lawrence, of Hampton, will sell his unrivalled bed of Tulips... Catalogue forwarded to principal Seedsmen, or available from..." Twenty years later, the prize lists name tulips that were still in commerce until the 1950s, like 'Talisman', 'Sir Joseph Paxton', 'Polyphemus' and so on. Many were bred by the extraordinary Mr Sam Barlow who consistently won almost all the prizes at the London shows of the decade (he's also got one of the most beautiful of all the 'bizarre' tulips named after him, and one which is still to be found). Much the same sort of thing happened with other florists' groups, especially anemones, narcissus, hyacinths, pinks and carnations. However, one genus which had been in gardens for centuries, though it had never yet become a florists flower, suddenly went through some extraordinary developments to become one (and indeed, it so remains). The clematis had been known only as the scented wildling of the hedgerow, and some of the lovely blue-flowered species from Europe. However, in the 1830's, all sorts of interesting things were being introduced from Japan by Dr von Siebold - including C. coerulea, with marvellous blue shaded petals (rather similar to today's 'Lazurstern'). A few early hybrids were available in the 1840's when an anonymous writer had to "have some musk and noisette roses, and jasmine, to run up the mullions of my oriel window, and honeysuckles and clematis, the white, the purple and the blue, to cluster round the top..." The origin of Jackman's clematis hybrids have already been described; by 1870, even William Robinson liked them, for they could be cultivated in so many different ways; pegged down, put up stakes, against walls, down rock faces, or draped over rustic bridges. He thought the best sort called 'Jackmanii', though he also promoted species like the vigorous and perfumed Clematis flammula for clambering over tree stumps and spent plants. Miss Jekyll must have read this carefully, for she used this technique extensively at Munstead Wood. By the 1870's, clematis was thought of as a cottage flower and "To speak of a posy carries us back to quiet country villages where sweet-scented jasmine and Woodbine, purple Clematis and monthly Roses fight longingly for a place beside the rustic porch" Other species like Clematis montana were soon being mixed with honeysuckle and wild vine, to scramble through the branches of picturesque trees, and Miss Hope of Edinburgh was growing a mix of clematis and roses up a wire netting wall as background to a border (still a good idea, especially against a boring boundary fence). By the 1890's, American gardeners were busy growing the new British clematis hybrids recently introduced there, and becoming popular. Other fast developing genera included a whole range of flowers still widely grown today, especially some of the primulas (both hardy and tender), but even more importantly, the pansies and violas. The word 'viola' seems to have been in use at least since the 1830's, and originally applied to almost any hybrid between any species of that vast genus. More modern usages refer to a slightly more precise series of hybrids. The old name, also, for some of" these older hybrids, as well as for Viola bicolor was the heartsease. To make things difficult, the name heartsease was also taken up for some of the Regency hybrids too, so that even by 1840, one writer could say "I really liked heartsease till the florists called them pansies - a pretty name though, and shakespearean too, - and put a thousand and one varieties in their catalogues, advertising flowers "as big as a penny piece"' Following the sudden burst of hybrids that started in the 1820's, the flower was rapidly taken up by florists, by gardeners grand and humble, and by nurserymen. Societies for its promotion started forming in the 1840's, the first being the 'Heartsease Society' of 1842 in the rather unlikely location of Falkirk. In other parts of the country, too, breeding was marching forward with speed. Black pansies were being produced by J. Pearson, at the Chilwell nurseries, near Nottingham (similar plants still excite gardeners today). New varieties were quite extraordinarily expensive, and something like 'Shepherd's Laura' cost the enormous sum of seven shillings and six pence each, and even the pansy 'Maid of Athens', an Edinburgh variety, was successfully sold to local gardeners by Thomas Handasyde at five shillings each. By the end of the 1840's, viola hybrids had already become part of the cottage garden fantasy, as if they'd been as long there as long as the other denizens. They suited country cottage gardens rather better than urban ones, for none of the new hybrids liked heavy smoke, and so needed to be grown beneath bell jars in city gardens. Naturally, there were soon various classes of the flower, like 'show' and 'fancy' sorts (often now difficult to distinguish). A contemporary writer gave their history thus:"It is exactly forty years since three florists instituted the first pansy society, and held the first Exhibition of these at Falkirk, Scotland. At that show the blooms staged were all show kinds, not one of which would be looked at today" He goes on to say that the show sorts were older and more refined than fancy ones. The 'fancy' ones ('fancies' have a larger black central blotch and larger size), had been developed over the last ten years by Mr Salter (a Frenchman) in London [ie. from 1840], a separate florist in Lille producing the even larger Belgian types. Mr John Downie in Scotland (now mostly remembered in an attractive sort of crab apple) went on to produce innumerable gorgeous things. In the 1860's, with the increasing number of new varieties coming forward (some were already thought of as old, though they'd been in the garden for less than thirty years), gardeners began to see the bedding possibilities of the group. After all, though they were short of anything resembling red, there were endless numbers of stunning blues, violets, yellows, some perfect whites and even a 'bronze' sort. Bedding violas were almost the democrats of the flower garden, being cheap and hardy. The disadvantage with the show and fancy pansies was that they were not reliably perennial, and very apt to grow scrawny. Also, the black markings on the flowers detracted from the purity of the ground colours, making beds look too 'busy' when seen from a distance. Pansies were therefore soon being crossed with the horned violet (Viola. cornuta), a slightly variable species which shot to favour after 1860, and which is still an important garden plant. The new hybrids, often without any markings whatever, were soon to be found in some sumptuously grand colours, from rich smoky grey or amethyst, to gold and velvety purple. Soon there were hundreds of named varieties, like 'Perfection', 'Lavender Queen', 'Enchantress' and so on. Some of the loveliest were in shades of soft mauve, all looking well, it was thought, with some of the new silver variegated geraniums (that's a combination that is still easy to make; try the lovely pale violet 'Lorna' with the geranium 'Mrs Parker' or 'Caroline Schmidt', though don't let the first of these flower). Even the new railway companies took to getting their station masters to grow violas, using the company colours. Station gardens, for which competitions were held, were soon dazzling with crocuses in yellow teamed with purple violas (or vice versa), or white or yellow variegated geraniums with yellow violas, or green leaved red-flowered geraniums teamed with purple violas. Few other species of the genus were taken up. The ancient garden forms of Viola odorata were further developed into a wonderful range of new colours (the litmus paper so essential for all Victorian chemists was derived from the same flowers). Parma violets began to be seen in the flower markets of London, and by the end of the Victorian period, garden conoisseurs were beginning to grow Americans like Viola cucullata and V. pedata. Lastly, two quintessentially Victorian groups remain, one really part of the long cultivated developed flora, the second of initially wild-collected species, dependant on tropic trade links abroad, and highly developed technology at home, which suddenly burst into a vast flora of hybrids. The first group went on to become contaminated with the whole bedding idea, and survived to be seen today in almost every single garden in the hemisphere. The second has dwindled into a long obscurity, though with developments in today's new sorts of garden and garden prosperity, it may perhaps make a comeback. The first group is the roses, the second the orchids. Orchids of the tropical kind, mostly needing both jungle heat and humidity, were considerable status symbols from the moment of their introduction. To grow them needed 'stove' houses, kept constantly warm by the heat of fermenting horse dung, or of some of the myriad sorts of boiler system developed from the 1800's onwards. The flowers, waxen, exotically coloured and sometimes equally perfumed, were an irresistable draw to the rich of the age. By 1839, for example, the glasshouses as Chatsworth were packed with orchids, many collected specifically for the Duke of Devonshire. In that year, Paxton published a magnificent plate of the gorgeous Dendrobium paxtonii, supposedly the most magnificent one of the genus that existed. It had only just flowered, the immense plant having been shipped whole from the Amazon. By 1850-1851, even cheap part-works began to include pictures of only slightly less glamorous orchids amongst the moutans, passion flowers, new species of Ceanothus, Viburnum and caladiums. In 1852, there was even a ticket-only sale of Guatemalan orchids to benefit the Gardeners Benevolent Society, and a few years later the 'Cottage Gardener' ran a series on plant collectors to encourage its readers to greater efforts.The longest article was on Thomas Lobb's collecting trips, particularly one to Java, where he collected vast numbers of new orchids. By 1861, florists classes for orchids appeared at provincial flower shows, and even the 'Garden Oracle' began to list new varieties and the many new species of orchids. They were big business; in 1877 a report on British horticulture said that "A visit to any large nursery, say that of Messers Veitch and Sons, in the Kings Road, Chelsea, for example, will be amply sufficient to show that the trade industry of gardening is a most important one. In many of our leading metropolitan nurseries, the capital employed varies from £10,000 to £50,000 or even more, and it is a matter of some surprise to find that these large sums are invested in plants and seeds... one of the most profitable branches of the nurserymans' business of late years has been the collection and importation of the Indian and South American orchids, lily bulbs from America and Japan, and seeds of various kinds..." A year or two later it was common for orchids to be used to decorate the drawing-room. Naturally, interest slipped over to include the wild orchids of the countryside, and early in the period, native orchids were often to be found growing in fashionable 'rootworks'; later, even humble cottagers included them in the bowlfuls of wildflowers exhibited at the local cottage garden flower shows. But queen of the garden was the rose; indeed roses are almost the Victorian flower, for the great development which started in the latest part of the eighteenth century really took off from 1820 or so onwards, and by the 1840's was in fullest flight. Immense numbers of new varieties appeared, mostly in France, with some breeding taking place in Britain and America. New species were introduced to Europe from all over the world, and many of these were incorporated into existing types. The results were extraordinary, ranging from the tiny, spiky, creeping but deliciously perfumed Scots roses, to vast sprawling things like the Ayrshire hybrids, the huge multiflora roses, the beginnings of the bedding roses like the 'teas', the first appearance of large numbers of pure yellow roses, and so on. Every garden that could (that was all except the most centrally urban ones) had roses, from the humblest cottages to the very grandest mansions. The powerful National Rose Society was started up in 1858, and rose books began to appear to cater for all social levels of the reading public. The period opened in 1831, with the colossal 'General System of Gardening and Botany' by David Don. Though this listed every species of rose known, and gave enormous lists of all known rose cultivars (though, alas, without the tiniest descriptive phrase), the project collapsed because, not unexpectedly, no-one would read it. It perished after four immense volumes. However, it is of interest because it shows exactly the state of the rose in 1831, when there were two hundred and eleven Scotch roses, fifty four damasks, sixty eight centifolias (provins), and seven hundred and six other roses belonging to centifolia group - almost all with French names. However, things were soon to alter, for with the gathering interest in flower shows and exhibitions, more gardeners became rose-conscious, if not yet potential rose breeders. By 1835 a letter to the Botanical Magazine could suggest that "One of the effects produced by the great number of flower shows established throughout the country is, the great demand which they have created for new plants. This has been met in two ways: first, by occasioning large importations of herbaceous flowers and flowering shrubs from the Continent, such as the Dutch anemones, the German asters, the Ghent azaleas, and French roses...' However, in the following decade,`while the fabulous garden at Dropmore had its borders decorated with myriads of roses, mostly still French, and the walls embowered with thousands of Boursalt and de Lisle roses, through which, to quote a contemporary admirer 'the sunbeams shed a ruddy and broken glow', and cottars mostly seemed to live in "a cottage covered with woodbines, roses and jessamines", the British collector Robert Fortune was finding plants that were to alter forever the direction that rose breeding was eventually to take. By 1847, he seems to have collected many new sorts of China rose, in yellow (soon to be important), doubles, and even reds and whites on one plant. Two years later, he found the now immensely popular Rosa rugosa in Shanghai. Throughout the 1850's new things appeared; the architect Nesfield had at his Muswell Hill garden a baroque ramp, topped with an eighteen inch high hedge of dwarf china roses, jasmine and sweetbriers. Kemp's 'Landscape Gardening' gives plan of a rose bed that he'd designed for a garden in Dulwich, basically circular, but with sausage-shaped beds of provins roses, the new hybrid perpetuals, damasks and so on. Soon there were roses that still survive, like many of the moss roses,and wonderful things like 'Souvenir de Malmaison' (which was widely grown as a potted rose - it grew well under those circumstances, and still does), 'Gloire de Dijon', 'Louise Odier', and others (all good for pots, though 'Gloire de Dijon' is now more often seen on the walls of country rectories. All the Scots roses were widely thought to be excellent. Many of those have lost their names, though there still seem to be thirty or forty left of the vast numbers available at the beginning of the period. They're so tough that it seems likely that many remain to be rediscovered. New were the posh Hybrid Perpetuals, which included the marvellous 'Souvenir de la Reine d'Angleterre', many new bourbons, new mosses (some of the nicest from the firm of Shailer), new tea roses like 'Isabella Grey' (a close relative to the still wildly popular and similarly coloured Alister Stella Grey). By the 1850's, as well as to drape walls, swamp borders, and be crammed into rosariums, standard roses were being used for vertical emphasis in the parterre. At The Priory, in windy Argyll, a simple 8-part square had each plot filled with different bedding plants in single colour, the corners of each being marked with standard roses (the description doesn't say if these were all of the same variety). If the arrangement there may have looked rather odd, perhaps with a motley collection of roses failing to unify a motley collection of bedding annuals, it may have looked even odder. There was a popular protection device for standard roses, particularly where they were likely to get damaged by bad weather, or coated with soot, called 'SANGSTER'S FLORUMBRA'. This was a sort of small umbrella on a universal joint atop a pole, intended to shade the flowers. There was even a bag to go over whole thing that could be tied in, and used with 'Brown's Patent Fumigator', and so get rid of Victorian greenfly and earwigs. Everyone in London wanted standard roses, and these were often sold potted, having been imported in vast quantities from France. Presumably, their being potted meant that they could be used where there was no suitable garden for their planting, or be stood on balconies or terraces, or taken into the drawing room. However, potted standards were much more difficult to manage than potted bushes. Writers of the day suggested that short standards were better than tall ones, and even those should be bought from a country nursery, where the roots might have been less badly hacked to get them into the pot. London rose gardeners had worse problems than unscrupulous nurserymen, for the 'smokes' even of summer were so bad that within a mile of St Pauls, only old cabbage roses, the York and Lancaster, 'Maidens blush', and the charming 'rose de Meaux' would survive. A few miles further out, and the list was a little longer, including some of the newish hybrid perpetuals. Beyond three miles, hybrid Chinas and noisettes became possible. However, there had to be no smoke at all for all of the moss roses or any of the new and fashionable teas. Bearing all that in mind, a design for a Victorian town garden rose bed of 1855 suggests a something twelve feet in diameter, centred with a standard 'Aimee Vibert' (available), and a ground of 'Jules Margottin' (available) and 'The General' (lost) alternated. Failing those, the gardener could once have planted 'Geant des Batailles', surrounded with 'Duchess of Sutherland'. However, some districts of the city, especially the poorer ones, were so polluted that all roses had to be grown under bell jars. These could be removed at weekends - when the air was less polluted (much of it must have been caused by industry). On a good summer Sunday morning in the city, with the bells ringing, attic dwellers in even the most central areas could just smell the hay of the countryside. Ten years later, roses were twined through all sorts of artistic wirework, baskets, stages, rose arches, and the rest (incidentally, if you have a suitable set of garden railings, the rose 'Aimee Vibert' was thought to be the best for twining round them). Soon, at least some breeding was being carried out in London and the Midlands, though this doesn't seem to have helped Mr Shailer, whose Battersea nursery was sold up in the early 1860's. In 1862, the editor of the 'Gardeners Chronicle' was sent a batch of English seedling roses, and is delighted that anyone here is trying to develop new things, but he was not enthused by results. He wrote, dishearteningly for the sender of the flowers, that the French 'Duc de Rohan' (probably lost) is still most gorgeous rose of all. Britain's 'Beauty of Waltham' was also superb (new in 1861, it too now seems lost). He was even sent one called 'Robert Fortune', but something ate the buds. Ironically, the same editor, at the Rose Show at Royal Horticultural Society's site at Kensington of the same year, writes 'Both among old and new varieties, the exhibition of the 26th inst, offered unmistakable evidence that the race of Hybrid Perpetuals is the dominant one, if it be not destined indeed to become almost the exclusive occupant of our Rosariums. The Teas, in fact, were the only rose besides them that made any figure in the assemblage. Another observable and notable point was that the varieties of cupped or globular form, which present the very perfect BEAU IDEAL of a perfect Rose, are gradually but certainly expelling the flat hard-looking ungainly varieties which were once so numerous...' He goes on to suggest that all the boring old flat ones be ditched, and almost every gardener seems to have followed his advice; that is until recent times, when rose connoisseurs have been busily hunting out every old flat one that they can find. A few years later the influential prize lists of flower shows contained two hundred hybrid perpetuals, thirty teas, and only one hundred drawn from all the other groups. These new sorts soon came into their own, being grown by gardeners all over the country, and drawn (as rose admirers still are) from all social classes. Dean Reynolds Hole describes the growth of the enthusiasm in his 'Book about Roses', dating the wildest part of this for just the last twenty years (from 1865 or so). He describes, too, visits he made to the allotments of Nottingham, where minute glasshouses produced some of the best March roses he'd seen. Commenting that, though roses have now been taken up by everyone, not one in a thousand is well grown. In Nottingham they were grown, using his charming phrase, 'De l'abondance du Coeur'. One of the growers told him that "It's more nor a mile from my house to my garden but I've been here for weeks, in the winter months, every morning before I went to my work, and every evening when I came from it, and not seldom at noon as well, here and back, and my dinner to get, between twelve and one o'clock." "How do you afford," Dean Hole enquired from another, "to buy these new and expensive varieties?". He goes on; " and I would that every employer, that everyone who cares for the labouring poor, would remember the answer, reflect, and act on it. "I tell you," the workman said, "how I managed to buy 'em - by keeping away from the beer shops". In the same book, he began to express a nostalgia that we shall meet in more detail later in this book. He wrote 'Sixty years later [after 1772] in my own childhood, there were in the garden before me as I write,-and now little more than a subdivided flower bed,- those bowers and meandering walks, many a pleasant nook, where the aged might rest, young men and maidens sigh their love, and happy children play... But what do I see, as the mist clears? A garden, which like a thousand others, has obeyed the command of imperious fashion..." He bemoaned his vanished grottoes, walks of laburnum, lilac and the rest. In, of course, came geometrical bedding; "Do you require examples? Copy your carpet, or the ornaments on your pork pie". For his new rose garden, in which he hoped to recreate some of the qualities of the past, he got Marnock, Robinson and a Mr Ingram of Belvoir to help him recreate a 'real' garden. That may perhaps have looked like a committee garden; however, all rose enthusiasts are indebted to him. Though he was a very prolix writer (indeed some of his publications have no discernible material whatever) he did assemble an extraordinary collection of roses. In his day, the Tea roses, a new and treasured group, were pampered quite as much as the valuable tulips and auriculas of seventeenth century florists; they were grown under a framework, so that they could be sheltered from inclement weather and strong sunshine. He had three thousand sorts in cultivation, wrote vast amounts on them, and won more prizes than any other grower. In 'The Florist' of April 1857, he first suggests a Grand National Rose Show. There was no initial response. By no means deterred, he then wrote to Mr Rivers, Mr Charles Turner and Mr Wm Paul, outlining his ideas. They, all good businessmen, saw what potential the idea had, both for the general public, as well as for themselves. Great excitement followed. The first show proved excellent. The second was a more splendid affair than ever. The third was held in the Crystal Palace, and thereafter became a fixture at Kensington. Oddly, the pressure of the new is well illustrated in some of the prize lists for the early rose shows; by the late 1850's, there are no variety names in common with the roses listed in the Loddiges catalogue of 1830, and yet just as many are of French origin. Everything 'old' had gone. By now the use of the rose as a large bedding plant had become part of every gardener's baggage, and the rose beds, together with the rockery, part of what every garden had to have. Robinson, as ever, inveighed against the conventional belief that no rose looks good in association with other plants (which was why they were so often confined to a particular area). He wanted a rich underplanting of rose groups or beds, using bulbs, saxifrages and periwinkles, and wanted the roses not to be pruned, but left to grow into handsome and floriferous bushes. Soon, while advanced gardeners were sighing for the past, most other gardeners were in frantic pursuit of the new. Even in Japan, the inhabitants had just gone through a craze for the rose, which fetched vast prices for a couple of years. So many were soon being imported that the price crashed, and everyone lost interest. By 1900 and after, country houses, town house, and anything in between, all had gardens filled with roses; at Bowood, photographs of the empty parterres of winter show the central diamonds still with standard roses. Hatfield, for all its seventeenth century design, still had central standard roses or yuccas in the parterre's beds; Broughton Castle had (and still has) a lovely rose garden, complete with rustic chairs and too much gravel. Arley, Belton, the list of great Victorian rose collections goes on and on. The rose garden had become the most popular of all garden elements.

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