Chapter Six

 NEW ELEMENTS

Victorian gardens were not just about the extraordinary developments of the various styles of bedding or of the garden's flowers. The appearance of Victorian gardens was just as much determined by a whole set of new, or at least further developed, garden elements. Some of these were to provide places to grow some of the new plants being introduced from the furthest corners of the earth, or for some of the myriad new sorts of flower being bred by the nurserymen of Europe, America and the Orient. Some new elements were designed for new classes of gardener, whether simple rustic pergolas or summerhouses (so much cheaper, and so much more 'honest', to build out of fallen timbers from the woodland, than of finely cut ashlar designed by the architect) for simple middle class families, or grand conservatories for the very grandest of people and plants. They varied from the 'Arborets' of Mr Hudspith of Haltwhistle, who was exhibiting and selling 'very tasteful' stands for pot ferns, made from 'skillfully altered' knotted tree trunks at the Great Exhibition of 1851, or real arboretums containing the very latest trees from North America or China, to the myriad newly built rock gardens in which to grow alpines from all over the world, or rosariums, heatheries, and even 'American' gardens. Some of these elements naturally had earlier antecedents. Arboretums, for instance, had existed in one form or another at least since the seventeenth century. They'd become commoner in the following century, especially once new and spectacular species began to be introduced from North America towards the end of the eighteenth century. When the trickle became a flood, the possession of an arboretum became a necessity for those with sufficient land to hold one. The study of botany had become popular all over Europe in the late eighteenth century, and a rage, especially for idle ladies, a few decades later. Having a collection of trees available for instant study was obviously more status-full that having to find weeds from the hedge bottom, or a few flowers from the garden. Some of the grandest arboretums were very handsome indeed; many survive in the grounds of the larger country houses, and quite magnificent examples can now be seen at Scone, Killerton, Westonbirt and elsewhere. By 1839, a writer in Paxton's Magazine of Botany was thinking that "An arboretum, vaguely considered, is merely a collection of indigenous or exotic trees, disposed according to the taste of the proprietor... In modern arboretums, every genus or tribe of plants is grouped together, more or less densely in estates of considerable circuit, or in botanical or other public gardens; such departments create a variation, and sometimes a pleasing one. They also furnish the beholder, at one gaze, with a knowledge of the hardy ligneous species of every genus, tribe or order of plants, and their position in the natural system of botany... the practice of attempting to arrange plants... according to their natural affinity... is radically erroneous. It creates both a dull monotony... [and] paradoxical as this may appear, it is not the less CORRECT". If the lady of the house couldn't have an arboretum, whether correctly planted, or just good to look at, everyone with a garden could have a rockery; they weren't just a feature of grand gardens like those in Chapter 1. Rockeries were beginning to become popular at the very end of the eighteenth century, and were closely related to the grottos of the earlier part of that century, whether as places to excite the senses (the sense, that is, of Gothic horror and awe if the grotto was got up to look like a ruined castle or a rock-strewn and haunted cave, or the sense of classical serenity if the grotto had a statue of a water god or a half-naked spring nymph). The entrances to grottoes of all sorts were commonly planted up, often with saxifrages and alyssums ('ruined castles' were made to look venerable by draping them with ivy). For some gardeners, the planting became more interesting (and less childish) than the associations, and the resulting piece of builder work to support the plants was called 'rockwork'. It became home for various mountain plants, mostly those of Europe. Such rockwork became more and more popular in Regency gardens, and soon became a necessity in even the tiniest urban ones. Standards were soon heavily debased. That process had started by 1838. Paxton's Magazine of Botany suggested some pretty little rockworks thus: 'the turf on which the pedestals stand is to be inclined at an angle of 45", and the pedestals [for vases] are enclosed in small circular borders, on which may be placed fragments of rock, or shells, and by the introduction of a little soil amongst them, alpine plants may be successfully grown" The design is both elaborate and geometrical, consisting of a large rectangle of ground with a guilloche pattern band of planting outside, with grass pyramids in the corners to hold statuary (there's rockwork at the base of these too). Inside all this is an inner parterre, with more beds around four subsidiary fountains (with rockwork margins), and then a pergola over central feature. The whole thing is surrounded by shrubbery. "The introduction of fountains, of chaste and unique structure, and ornamented with every variety of rock and shell, into the central compartments, with jets of water issuing from every crevice, and propelled with diverse and ever-varying degrees of force, would form most delightful and refreshing spectacles during the summer months' Perhaps. However, many gardeners had already gone beyond the idea of merely using 'fragments of rock or shells', and J C Loudon complained that most suburban rockeries were often just a pile of stones around the roots of a tree, or, worse, consisted of a pile of stone, broken bricks, glass debris or old tree roots. He correctly pointed out that to get the construction of such things to look good is exceptionally difficult. Failing inspiration on the part of the owner or gardener, resort could be had to a professional rockery builder, like a certain Mr Gray, who did the Colosseum grotto at Regents Park, as well as a rockery at Clumber, and many in London. Oddly, elsewhere in the book, Loudon (or more likely one of his contributors), suggests that beds in the front garden could well be decorated with 'historic or antique stones' [so easy to come by], shells, ammonites, or lumps of spar. It's difficult to know how rockeries sank so fast, for soon they included even broken cups and saucers, like a medieval midden. Mrs Loudon, writing two years later, confides "Rockwork, though composed of somewhat ponderous materials, is very frequently arranged according to female taste... there are many kinds of rock-work; but they may all be desirable as collections of fragments of rocks, stones, flints, vitrified bricks, scoriae, and similar materials, so arranged as to afford a striking object in the landscape; and, at the same time, so as to form a number of little nests or crevices for the reception of alpine plants" She described several examples of rockwork: the most natural-looking being that at Redleaf, near Tunbridge Wells (an illustration of 1850 shows it was really only a small pile of very large stones). She thought the most unnatural she had seen (which, even by the standards of the time, must really have been quite odd), was that in the Duke of Marlborough's private garden at Blenheim - formed on a scar of natural rock, but hewn into zig-zag paths - with numerous niches on each side to receive plants. It was covered with fragments of spar for a rich and sparkling effect. Syon rockery we have already met. Likewise Hoole, but that really was unsurpassed, even having "fragments of dark stone to absorb the heat, round those that require most warmth, and fragments of white stone to reflect the heat, round those that require to be kept cool". The plants were grown in clearly marked and individual 'cells', usually delimited by four flat stones (an odd-looking way of planting that remained common until late in the century). Hoole remained fashionable at least until 1850. The estate was, at base, a rather grand ferme orne of twenty to thirty acres, with lawns around the house, and an extensive kitchen garden. The rockery "being one of the most remarkable specimens of the kind in England", was vast. Yet, in spite of its scale, and the fact that "it has been the work of many years to complete", it had problems. The worst of these was "the difficulty being to make it stand against the weather... " This suggests that it was only made from painted plaster - which wasn't unusual Although many early writers, like Jane Loudon, suggested that to make naturalistic rockeries, stones should be piled "one upon another so as to imitate the stratification of a rocky outcrop", the advice was rarely followed. Whatever the difficulties, and however improbable most of the results, by 1841 such good picturesque advice persisted; "... rockeries have been make principal features in flower gardens; sometimes by accident, that is, when rocks happen to be about on the spot, but more frequently by design ... [which ] after all... can hardly be called good taste. Rock work, whenever it is intended to be formed, should always be constructed with ONE KIND of stone; not, as usually seen, made up of petrifactions of building bricks from kilns... altogether a rubbish-like assemblage, and as a work of art, quite contemptible. But when stone is used, and laid in horizontal strata, as it probably lay in its native bed, it has an artistical look, and the interstices answer well for the reception of plants" Structural honesty was not always possible or followed. In the 'Book of the Garden' of 1853, artifice was suggested, so that rockeries could be made of "stones, the fused masses of brick procured from brick kilns, of indeed, any coarse material most convenient to be got. These are built up in the most rugged and mis-shapen forms imaginable and afterwards covered over with Roman cement, and formed into recesses, projections, and overhanging crags, according to the taste of the artist. Sufficient apertures are left for receiving soil, in which rock plants are planted. When the whole is perfectly dry and set, it is painted with oil paint to represent veined or stratified granite, or any other kind of natural rockwork that may be desired" The rockery, therefore, became an extension of the interior decorator's art, for when the woodwork and walls of the house were finished being turned into travertine or bird's eye maple, the rockery could be similarly treated. Ironically, the author entirely approves, continuing grandly "Here is no unnatural mixture of shells, fossils, petrifications, architectural remains, and natural masses of stone huddled together, as if it were the omnium-gatherum of the vestiges of creation" However,he did confess to admiring Paxton's rockwork at Chatsworth most of all, which was one of the grandest, most natural and most expensive ever built. Of course, any rockery large enough to inspire any truly alpine excitement was beyond the means of most middle class gardeners. In small gardens, rockeries could only proclaim artifice, never the Sublime. They became inextricably mixed up with the picturesque 'rustic' ideal, which admired trellis-work, plant stands, fences of wirework, together with vases, rustic cascades, and moss houses. There, together with the rosary, the rockery and the heathery, and just beyond the lawns by the drawing room, were crammed all the new garden elements of Victorian Britain. There, according to Shirley Hibberd's splendid work called 'Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste'; "A circular pond of five feet diameter, may be surrounded with a border of rockwork of twelve or fourteen inches, the dark stones being merely loosely laid on an even surface, with no pyramids or ruggedness of surface, and beyond this a ring of turf two feet wide... The rock-work should be wholly formed of dark stones of small size... and the edge next to the pond sloping down towards it. Around this a light fence of wire-work should be placed, and on the turf about eight or ten standard roses should be planted, so as to form a ring. The stones should be planted with one or two junipers... and the pond furnished with a fountain and gold fish". Although he later avers that "Men of taste generally eschew rock-work in a garden; and well they may, considering how, in too many instances, taste is violated by the introduction of oyster pyramids, plaster busts with delapidated noses, conch shells, mineralogical specimens, and even broken crockery, under the general denomination of rock-work..." he thinks that, properly treated, every garden should have one - especially all urban gardens. Next to the house was apparently the standard position for such a garden feature, where it was not so much a rockery, but more a showy raised bed to tease the eye. His illustrations make clear that it was all decidedly artificial, for "Where a considerable elevation can be attained, a dark cave may be constructed, both for general effect, and for the growth of mosses and ferns... Around the cave, ivy and Stauntonia may be thickly twined, and the face of the rockwork and each side of the cave planted with the gayest of alpines, but not too profusely, or they may hide the picturesque blocks of which it is composed. The Scotch thistle will be an appropriate addition if planted in the most elevated spots" This seems a decidedly odd top-knot for such a thing. If anyone carried out such works, they might have been odder still if they'd carried out the next of his suggestions that "A few birds might be domesticated in such a cave; a pair of owls, for instance, whose hooting at night would be no unpleasant music" For town gardens with long narrow sites, he suggests that this garden element (and its owls) should be "at the wall most remote from the house, [where] you may throw up some rockwork, and on one side a mound, to be covered with ivy and surmounted by a good sized shrub. The outside of the rockwork should be built up tastefully with large clinkers, and covered with any large dark masses of rock, and the inside filled with rich mould. It should not be less than two feet six on one side, and should run down in the centre to about ten or twelve inches, and rise again to about two feet on the other side. If this, and a low mound be constructed, and formality of outline studiously avoided, it will add very much to the apparent size and picturesqueness of your ground as viewed from the window. A few years later, in 1864, the author of 'How to Lay Out etc ' could write, in a very superior way, that "...those who would steer clear of the vulgarities and irregularities of mere cockneyism will do well not to permit anything of the kind I have been describing around their houses. When composed of such materials as shells, pieces of old porcelain,scoriae, and other small artificial or manufactured articles, and interspersed with grotesque-looking busts, heads, etc, as is frequently the case, their use in connection with houses is all the more to be deprecated" By that time, the rockery had evolved into a number of different types, suited to particular groups of plants, and the word 'rockery' included both the usual Alpinery, and the Fernery, a place for such ferns as would actually grow on "mountains, rocks and clefts in old walls". Such plantings were usually mixed with small azaleas and other American plants and the soil surface planted with moss. Ferns became, as we shall see, the 'vogue' plants of the later Victorian period. The fernery was usually made of rockwork, for they were "more effectually displayed when their bright green tufts rise out of grey stones or dark burns from the brick kiln" Hibberd, who played a large part in creating the fashion, deleterious as it was to almost any wild population of native fern, could continue" You'll eventually need a grand fernery, with, perhaps, a model of a ruin for the main feature of the scheme... It was deleterious because, as he wrote in 'The Fern Garden: How to make, keep and Enjoy it; or, Fern Culture Made Easy' of 1896, "Allow me to remark, further, that the passion for fern collecting has in many instances been carried to a ridiculous excess by persons who merit the title not of fern collector so much as fern destroyers. Let every genuine fern lover be on his guard to discourage reckless fern collecting... It is not many years since I saw... in the posession of a lady, a sheet of Tunbridge fern nearly a yard square... brought forth as a trophy, and preserved as a memorial of the days "when we went gipsying..." The fern was extinct. London was by then well supplied with itinerant fern vendors, though their plants, pulled up from the wild, rarely survived in town, for the air was too polluted. However, this seems to have deterred no-one, and indeed it was urbanisation that was the driving force behind the fernery, for it had become, in a way, emblematic. Its function was to remind the urban gardener of rocky wastes, mountain glens, wooded waterfalls, indeed all of the lost and romantic world. Some outdoor ferneries were constructed of tree roots and banks of earth, "picturesquely disposed and planted with ferns severally adapted to the sites and positions the scheme affords..." Hibberd's own fernery was illustrated in the 'Floral World' of January 1867, and was a long and winding double wall, made of clinker, with both sides and top planted, using a mix of ferns and alpines. It had only the merest suggestion of a 'ruin'. As with the infatuation with bedding, that for the rock garden swept everything, including sense, before it. William Robinson, sensible even in illness and old age, wrote in 1914 of the rapidly increasing range of rock plants as 'this wondrous flora'. He pointed out that the love for rock gardens was now widespread throughout the gardening world, and that though '... the English were first to take pleasure in it: their first attempts were futile'. Mocking Loudon's awful early Victorian suggestions, he sensibly points out that large numbers of rock plants were (and of course remain) perfectly hardy in the ordinary garden, where even some of the more difficult things are happy in raised beds - easier to manage and better to look at than the usual 'rockery'. As a final irony, he describes a journey to Switzerland to look at a famous alpine collection, where he was astonished to find them grown on a St Johns Wood style rockery, rather than on the natural rocky slopes of their native land. The rockery's early companion, the 'rootery' seems never to have caught the public imagination in the way that its stony cousin did; perhaps the flora for it was too obscure. They were often planted up with orobanches, saprophytes whose flowers should surely have suited some of the period's subtler colour schemes, wild orchids, and woodland plants. Even though there were grand examples, like the one at Biddulph that led to the Chinese garden (which perhaps eclipsed it), or the extraordinary one at Drumlanrig built "in a low and obscure ravine near the splendid flower garden" made of old tree stumps dug from the local peat, they didn't catch on. The 'mossery', too, played a rather minor role, and only one or two survive, though mosses themselves played an important role the the whole rustic movement. Mosshouses were their particular abode, though as dead plants rather than living. They were already popular by 1840, and Jane Loudon gives her lady readers full directions for their construction: they were to have concrete foundations, with rustic pillars stuck in to support the roof - generally trunks of young larches or spruce (both with the bark left on). Then the rafters, laths of hazel rods, were nailed on. Mosses of various sorts were then pushed between the laths with a wooden wedge; different sorts of moss were used to get a pattern (the pattern was chalked on the laths to give a guide - rather like an embroidery plan). She wrote: "a very rich and at the same time original effect, might be produced in a moss house, by arranging the moss in an arabesque pattern, with different colours combined something like those of a Turkey carpet... or the walls might be of some plain colour with only the crest of the family, or the initials of the designers name in white or colours... " The floor was sometimes finished with "...other pine cones, or with small pebbles, some of which are white and are arranged in a kind of pattern; the windows are frequently of coloured glass; and a curious effect might be produced by having those in the back of the building purple, which would make the ground and every object seen through them look as if covered with snow; and those in front of the building filled with yellow glass, which gives every object the rich glow of summer" By 1853, moss houses were still popular: "Structures such as arbours, moss houses etc, should always be placed in positions to command a perfect view some object of interest... "One such, at Dalkeith, was furnished so that "The seats are all portable,and consist of a sofa and six chairs, two of which are representations of arm-chairs, hollowed out of the trunks of two old oak trees, very much covered with excrescences; the others are light chairs, formed of hazel, and the seats cushioned with Polytrichum commune. The sofa is also cushioned with the same, the back being open wickerwork. The table is circular, set on a clawed stand, and is covered with a matting of Polytrichum. "The side walls are covered with moss. In the centre of the back wall is a representation of a ducal coronet, done in fir cones. The roof is of Sphagnum palustre, a white moss; and in the centre is a stag, three fourths of the natural size... done in a very ingenious manner with small rods of young larch. Of all the new Victorian elements, the rockery, though, was only really rivalled by the rosary. This had started life in the early years of the century (it could also be called the rosery, the rosarium, or more simply, the rose garden). By the early part of the Victorian period, all roses were in fact shrubby sorts or climbers. The first needed little in the way of pruning, most eventually making large and romantically sprawling plants. By the end of the Victorian period, the bedding system had even tamed the rose itself, and the Bourbons and early tea roses were adapted for rose 'beds', in which the once grand and untamed rose was treated just like any other Victorian bedding plant - as a patch of colour. Rose gardens varied in style from the Celtic, with interwoven beds around complex arched pergola, surrounding a pool, to the geometric, and to the entirely gardenesque. Bad taste showed itself very early, eventually provoking Dean Hole in his 'A book about Roses' of 1884 to say '...nowhere is the formal, monotonous, artificial system of arrangement more conspicuously rampant...' He wanted informal rose gardens planted up to show the full variation of the rose, with varieties in all heights, growing up pillars, pergolas, baskets, hedges and screens. Many gardeners must by then have agreed, though the Dean's own design suggestions were not of great visual interest. Robinson, too, took up cudgels on behalf of the rose, and lambasted the by then conventional belief that no rose looks good in association with other plants (that's why it had become confined to a particular area of the garden). Naturally, Robinson dislikes this, saying that roses "should be everywhere in the garden where they will grow. We never saw a garden yet where either places or position needed to be invented for roses...At present, we mix summer and autumn flowering sorts and their varieties indiscriminately..." He suggests a rich underplanting of rose groups or beds, using bulbs, saxifrages and so on (still a lovely thing to do), and just leaving them grow into handsome and floriferous bushes. He'd seen some borders that he'd admired which were exactly comparable to the mixed borders and ground cover of today's more fashionable sorts of garden. Rose gardens could be either places for private meditations or public display. If the latter, then they could simply be planted in the front garden, where socially competitive gardening reached new heights. Most garden writers of the age, realising the importance of this new element of domestic life, give suggestions for its planning and planting. Loudon gives large numbers of ideas (useful for any modern gardener with an early Victorian house wanting to have an authentic looking garden), usually in the gardenesque style. His plans often show the pairs of front gardens of semi-detached houses thrown together to give a grand sweep to a carriage entrance, or at least to the walk to the front doors (such arrangements must always have given rise to dissent between the several owners). By the late 1820's, an average sized front garden would be bounded by a narrow shrubbery, and the lawn would have four batswing beds, each bed with a central standard rose, with the rest of the area planted with pansies in two of them and a mix of fuchsias, calceolarias and annuals in the others. By the time of the 'Suburban Gardener', Loudon gives various planting schemes for suburban gardens using shrubs, herbaceous and bulbs. However he also suggests some more advanced ideas for "Planting with bulbs, to be succeeded by showy annuals". Though all the bulbs had been known for several centuries, he adds that "All these annuals are new, and eminently beautiful; and seeds of them may be procured in most of the principal seed shops". He suggests planting them in the manner of the previous decade, using one sort in each bed, though often in a mix of colours. He especially liked 'Lupinus mutabilis', calliopsis, collinsia, and the brand new clarkia. Lower in the social scale, even by the 1830's, front gardens could be planted with edible plants. Marrows, pumpkins, and squashes were suggested by one writer, to provide winter and summer vegetables. The flowers were fried in butter and the young shoots and leaves were thought to be as good as spinach. The walls of house and garden were covered with fruit or beans. It could have looked rather pretty. Twenty years later, middle class front garden design had become so conventionalised that it must have been widely ridiculed; one earnest writer clucked that "It is too much the custom to ridicule those little quadrangular spots of cultivated ground in front of the endless rows of houses in the approaches to London and most other cities, where we find three or four square yards of earth covered in weeds, intersected with bright gravel, white pavement, and brown grass, with rows of box, and a few dingy roots and shrubs, endeavouring to extricate themselves from the tight embrace, forming what is pleasantly called the "front garden", but we hail with fullness of respect this tribute to the God of nature, as being the only approach to the living vegetable world, which stern necessity allows to many sons and daughters of toil and affliction." A few years later, Hibberd wrote that front gardens should show 'high keeping' but no frills. He was particularly against rustic work, rockeries, and summerhouses, all of which were more suitable to the back garden. The front part should have only grand species of trees and shrubs, with nothing that needed close inspection. Things must have been getting out of hand to his mind too, for he insists on a straight path to the front door, with not a single wiggle, adding that one of the nuisances of the age was that "we have winding paths to make butcher-boys giddy, and perplex the stranger, who would find the way if he could, and which compel the visitor to make half a tour of the grounds, when his chief object is to get inside the house, to take off his hat and gloves, and sit at the table punctual to a moment." A little later, by 1877, front gardens of tasteful and aesthetic owners could be filled with old fashioned flowers, enclosed by a whitethorn hedge. One elegant plan showed, within this boundary, that the borders were often only four feet deep. The lawn was scattered with occasional shrubs, box, aucuba, or with ivy up posts and pyramids. The front garden paths were to be bordered with box (hard work to keep in order), tiles (expensive), Arabis albida, or even houseleeks which "will survive the trampling of tiny feet". In the borders stood phlox with plenty of hollyhocks at their back. The spaces between were filled with a tangle of sweet peas, mignonette and other annuals. Stocks and asters were to be squeezed in the interstices, for late colour. Honeysuckle was draped over the Gothic woodwork porch, and more stocks, violets, clove carnations, musk roses and mimulus were planted beneath the cottage windows. The writer, Hobday, says that it is a mistake of cottars (whether real ones, or the sentimental fake kind), to try to have a geometric flower garden. The front garden should only have four small beds at most; after all, "why should one person go to the expense of providing fresh plants for his flower garden annually because his neighbour chooses to do so?" Worse, "in the formation of their flower beds let one and all eschew stars, diamonds,and all fancy patterns. A plain circle or oval or an irregularly shaped bed with easy flowing lines would present a far better appearance than a flower bed in the shape of which sharp angles prevail." That he is not really writing for the agricultural poor is clear when he suggests small shrubs that included aucuba, arbor vitae, catalpas, deutzias, the only recently introduced forsythias, rare retinosporas and so on. The herbaceous flowers he adds to these include Anemone japonica, Zauschneria californica, Dielytra spectabilis, as well as older flowers like Lilium candidum, Campanula persicifolia, Corydalis lutea, daisies and sweet williams. The front garden, except in the poorest examples, became the site of another piece of competitive gardening: the lawn. Of course, the great eighteenth century gardens had had lawns, often vast, though these were either cropped by the park's inhabitants like fallow deer, rare breeds of sheep and beef, or kept scythed by the garden staff. In suburban Regency gardens, lawns were similarly scythed, giving them a textured and shaggy look (one of the great annoyances of Regency middle class life was being woken by the sound of a neighbour's gardener sharpening his scythe). Soon, every Victorian house had a square of lawn, even if this was scarcely large enough to lie upon outstretched, and could be cut with a few sweeps of the scythe. However, Victorian ingenuity was at once set to work on the provision of a mowing machine that would do the work, and could also take care of the numerous flower beds and their complicated shapes cut out of the grass. From at least the 1820's, the minds of inventive gardeners had turned to ways of solving the problem of mowing the lawn. The first machines with rotating barrels of bladed were illustrated in the late 1820's but proved difficult to maintain, and were quite expensive. Even by 1842, a magazine letter by 'AN ODD FELLOW' suggests some of the difficulties; 'A MOWING MACHINE costs from £7-£9, according to its size; it can only be used in dry weather [still a problem with cylinder mowers], and when grass is very short. Where a lawn is to be kept extremely short, this machine is more effectual than a scythe, and it also has the merit of not requiring any dexterity in using it. We, however, prefer a scythe in the hands of a good mower'. It is important to remember that the scythe, in the hands of an adept, could indeed be very effective; a bowling green in Aberdeenshire was kept scythed until the 1970's. However, except in remote areas, the future was clearly with the machine. Every one of the tens of thousands of new houses being built had to have a lawn, and a cheap machine for cutting it clearly had an enormous market. Developments proceeded apace. By 1856, lawns were actually becoming cheap things to own, for the mowing machines made their maintenance so much easier. The most popular model still needed two men to operate it; one to push, one to pull. Large establishments had horse-drawn mowers, and the horses wore large leather shoes to stop their iron-shod hooves ruining the lawn's surface. Greens introduced the first effective one-person lawnmower at a cost of five shilling. A lighter model for ladies, called the 'Parvum Miraculum' was a shilling dearer. The same firm also had a range of two-man machines in various widths, from fourteen inches (costing £6:10:0d) to a twenty four inch model (costing £9:0:0d.) By 1862, controversy raged over rival types, rather as it does today, and gave rise to a massive correspondence in all the garden magazines. There were even competitions to see which machines were the most effective; the largest one produced by Greens often won, doing four to five acres of hilly tree-planted lawn a day, if drawn 'by a steady, active pony'. Defeated, the rival firm of Shanks began to produce an exotic range of highly decorated machines, designed for the ladies' market. Hosepipes, too, were another important market, to water front lawns and bedding schemes. As soon as houses had become commonly supplied with mains water, or had pumps to supply their own tanks, hoses were used to water gardens. At first, these had been made of leather, carefully stitched, but prone to rot and leak. However, with the discovery of gutta-percha, hosepipes began to save hours of gardeners' time and energy. But conservative as ever, many gardeners continued to prefer leather. By 1852, there were arguments between makers of gutta-percha and vulcanised rubber pipes, but the old-fashioned leather sort was still available in 1871, when one advertiser offered 700' of leather hose with a one inch bore at six pence per foot. When the house was semi-detached, or grand enough to be unencumbered on all sides, the conservatory was easily attached to the side of the house, where it could be seen by the passing world, yet still overlook the private garden. They were delightful additions to thousands upon thousands of houses, both of town and country, and could vary in size from a few yards across to ones fit to house a small piece of jungle. The main impetus was given to this new garden element once the tax on glass was repealed. By 1851, many glass companies were setting up, able to produce, and find a ready market for, new and cheap glass. They produced mostly rough plate (used for glasshouses), as well as glass tiles and sheets. Almost all of the new conservatories were heated. In the Georgian age, glass was heated too (producing all sorts of exotic crops and flowers), but mostly by the fermentation of horse dung. Hothouses commonly had a long central pit along their lengths, filled every couple of months during the cold season, with fairly fresh manure. This produced a good heat for several weeks, was dug over to produce a second burst of warmth, and was then discarded. Fermentation produced plenty of water vapour (which made excellent conditions for growing), but also produced a powerful odour. Some orangeries, public spaces for much of the year, were sometimes heated by open fireplaces, or by external stoves, the flue of which wound up through the back wall of the building, so heating the brick or stone. However, the heat was difficult to regulate with much finesse, and was especially intense at the base of the flue. Flue-heating also made the orangery's atmosphere very dry (encouraging red spiders and thrips), and in any case meant that some poor gardener had to remain on duty overnight to check that the fires never burnt out. When techniques of iron casting radically improved in the early nineteenth century, it became possible to produce all sorts of stoves, ones in which the speed of burning could be carefully regulated, and ones which could be used to heat water, or air. Good cast iron pipes could also be made to conduct heat around the building, using the new-found principle of convection. There were long discussions of this in the garden press, some gardeners being reluctant to believe that convection would carry heat for any distance at all. Eventually, they were convinced, and discussion altered to whether water or air was the best method of conveyance. Though there were glasshouses heated by water pipes as early as 1828, it took several decades for this method to be widely adopted. One popular mechanism was the Polmaise system whereby a stove outside the main conservatory heated air in a special chamber which vented hot air into the top of the conservatory, or was piped or boxed (long wooden tubes were made out of planking), to underneath the plant stages. Once the air had cooled, it was sucked bacÌk into the chamber from vents at the bottom of the building. The method was used also to heat main house too, though there were disadvantages. A leaking boiler poured sulphurous fumes straight into the conservatory, killing the plants at once. It was also common for the boiler to set fire to something stored carelessly in the chamber, and then flames leapt up though the ventilation channels. Many houses burnt to the ground when the circulation boxes caught fire. In other systems, the furnace simply heated a big tank of water, or even shallow trays of it. In both, there was some convection of heat, but it was very inefficient, gave poor heat distribution, and soon became used only for giving bottom heat to rooting cuttings. Cast iron pipes, filled with hot water, or even steam, were the dominant heating systems by the 1860's, and were easily used in the main house too. There were few fire risks, the heat was evenly distributed and easily managed. It was also fairly cheap, for by 1854, horse manure was becoming difficult to find in sufficient quantities in the towns as the ratio of humans to horses had vastly altered. However, there were problems, and even by 1850 "If you resolve upon heating with pipes, it will be judicious to have everything settled beforehand. Hot water engineers, though often abused, are just as honest as other people; but frequently after the contract has been made, and work commenced, what seem trifling alterations are insisted upon by the proprietor or gardener, and then there is dissatisfaction when these come to be paid for in the shape of extras. The chief objection to heating by water pipes is their first expense... " Once the conservatory was built and heated, it then needed to be equipped and furnished. Large pots of camellias, oranges, or stephanotis, could be watered and sprayed with 'Read's Garden Engine'. Smaller plants were set out on tiered staging, sunk in compost, so that the plants grew well to make complete pyramids of vegetation. Numerous example layouts were published in the garden press showing the best way of laying out a small conservatory, ususally with each corner, and the piers between doors and windows, piled with vegetation. Elaborate wirework stands for a dozen or two pots of geraniums, orchids and so on, grouped beneath a palm or an aspidistra, can still occasionally be found. Some conservatories were fitted up in the most extravagant way, with statuary, pools, fancily tiled areas for sitting, cast iron columns from which to drape jasmines, fuchsias and streptosolens. One glasshouse at Cragside, Northumberland, the extraordinary mansion of an armaments manufacturer, even had huge tiers of vast stoneware pots for lemons and oranges, every single one on a turntable, so that the plants need never grow lopsided towards the sun. Though orangeries became rare, there were still a few built, though they were rarely the main greenhouse for the mansion, as they had remained on the Continent. Mintons manufactured some very glamorous tiled tubs for citrus plants, with colourful tiles set in frames of gilded iron. As horse manure was becoming valuable, gardeners needed to look elsewhere for manures to benefit plant growth, both under glass and outdoors. By 1881, a substance called 'Poudrette' was popular and often home-made. It was compounded by using the house's nightsoil with coal ash, and was very effective. It had been used since the beginning of the century, and was so popular that it was even sometimes imported from abroad. It was dependent upon the use of earth closets and the chamber pot. Gardens of grand or very modern houses that had water-flushed lavatories were at a disadvantage. For them, tanks were commonly built in the back garden, or in the grounds, (where the lie of the land was suitable) "... so as to receive the drainage from them... [the sinks and the lavatories] In using this liquid manure, great care must be taken never to put it on the leaves of plants, and either to follow it by watering with clear water, so as to prevent the surface of the soil from being disfigured; or, what is preferable, to use it chiefly during or immediately before rain... The liquid manure from a house where a family consists of five or six persons, and where they wash at home, if used as it is produced, so as to allow none of it to run off by the drain, will be quite sufficient for a garden 200' long and 60' in breadth. Liquid manure, however, though powerful in a recent state, is always more efficaceous after being a week or two fermented; but for this purpose two tanks are necessary" All over Europe, the search for nitrogenous material for agricultrure and horticulture were in full swing. By 1842, a long article by Professor Charles Sprengel (translated from his German) was published in the Gardeners Chronicle. After a mass of tables of chemical analyses of flesh, bones and offal, it continues "In Belgium, the flesh of dead animals, or such as have been killed on account of being diseased, is cut immediately into small pieces, which are divided over the field, and soon covered with ploughing them in... 'The animals entrails needed chopping, mixing with 'humous' earth, rolled, and were then applied lightly" or they will make vegetation push much too luxuriantly" Sheep blood was thought to be better than that of oxen, though the horn of the latter was very sought after by florists (calculation proved that three hundred pounds of horn-shavings was worth twelve hundred pounds of dung). Gardeners looked for hair and wool, for the refuse of glue factories (excellent for cabbages), for 'greaves' (the skin and cellular tissue left after suet and fat have been converted to candles and soap). That was very powerful, and needed rotting with earth in pits. In some parts of England, a manure was made with enormous quantities of sticklebacks that were easily caught, and "... it has been calculated that one load of fish is equal to six loads of best stable dung", though the odour must have been stronger too. Elsewhere, in more exotic locations, even things like may-flies were used (in the marshy parts of Carinthia and Hungary). In Southern France, chrysalids of silk worms were dug into the vegetable patch once the silk thread had been boiled off, and if that source was not available, cockchafers could be caught in sufficient quantity to be killed in hot water and composted. In formal gardens even the clippings from the box parterre made excellent compost, and one which was especially popular in France. There too, the dung from the inns of the South of the country was especially strong, perhaps reflecting the quality of the diet. Guano had just been discovered in 1842, and went on to become a major item of international commerce. In Peru, it was sown with the seed itself along the drills. In this country it was merely used in the same way as pigeon dung , a popular 'guano' in Britain and France; The French one was best as the English one was hideously smelly. Human urine was also a popular garden fertiliser, though its quality depended on diet and fluid intake. Naturally, there were soon all sorts of patented artificial manures, some of quality, others more dubious. One, of the 1850's, labelled itself as 'Patented Creosoted Fish for Manure... as good as guano... keeps your potatoes free from disease', though that may have been because the creosote content killed the potatoes. Insects, too, were under new attack. In the past, larger insects had often been picked from plants by hand, or plants were sprayed with warm water to stun them, after which they were gathered up. More difficult creatures, like the scale insects or mealy bugs that so liked pineapple or citrus plants, were attacked with soft soap pounded with mercury, and even more poisonous concoctions. One of the problems was that most gardeners had the comforting idea (comforting insofar as it excused imperfect eradication) that insects appeared either spontaneously, or that they were created by the action of electricity on salt water. Even scientists believed that last theory, though one garden editor smacked the idea firmly on the head; "they [the scientists] may, in their vanity, assert that they have gained the prowess of the Creator, but we are not quite mad or wicked enough to believe that the Almighty has surrendered his power to their galvanic batteries' For some insects, notably greenfly, tobacco smoke, powder or juice, became increasingly popular in the Victorian garden (and it was certainly effective). Innumerable puffers, bellows, spray guns, were designed for its application. There seems to have been no awareness that what might poison the greenfly might also poison the gardener. Tobacco was often most effective under glass; outdoors, until the introduction of pyrethrum in the 1850's, it was not at all uncommon for plants to succumb entirely to insect attack. Fruit trees were especially susceptible. If fruit ripened, especially grapes and peaches, wasps at once attacked. Blocks of sugar were wedged between the branches, and the wasps were bought off. By the 1850's there were so many patented insect destroyers, that some gardeners began to make comparative tests. One such, "Clarke's Preparation for killing Mealy Bug etc" (which was widely advertised) prompted a letter: 'I have tried this mixture, and can confidently declare that far more plants were destroyed by it than bugs. The only really efficaceous ingredient in it is turpentine, which certainly destroys the insects, and the plants also' The writer signed himself 'ANTI-HUMBUG'. By the early 1860's, 'Keatings Persian insect-destroying Powder' was widely available, and its advertisements proclaimed that 'Poultry, Dogs and Plants are effectually freed from fleas, and all other Vermin..." They were, too.

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