The Enrichment of English Gardens.
If some unreasonably patriotic Englishman should be seized with the whim of keeping none but truly British plants in his garden, he might enjoy the shade of the fir, yew, oak, ash, wych-elm, beech, aspen-poplar, hazel, rowan-tree, and the small willows, but he would have to forego the common elm, the larger poplars and willows, the larches, spruces, and cypresses, the rhododendrons, and all the shrubs popularly called laurels. Of fruits he might have the crab-apple, sloe, wild cherry, gooseberry, currants (black and red), the raspberry, strawberry, and blackberry, but none of the improved apples, pears, or plums, and no quinces, peaches, or apricots. His vegetable garden might yield cabbages, turnips, carrots, and celery (all deficient in size, flavour, and variety), but no cauliflowers, Brussels sprouts, parsley, lettuces, peas, beans, leeks, onions, or spinach. The handsomest of his flowers would be dog-roses, mallows, and primroses.
Before Europe was sufficiently enlightened to care about exact records valuable foreign plants had already been introduced. Vines, apples, pears, cherries, and plums, besides improved vegetables, such as the cauliflower, bean, garden-pea, and cucumber, had been brought from temperate Asia or Egypt. Wheat and barley, neither of them native to Europe, had to some extent replaced rye and oats, which may have existed naturally in those European countries which border on Asia. Britain, while yet a Roman province, shared in these benefits, and it is believed that the common elm, besides certain fruit-trees and pot-herbs, have been continuously grown in our island through all the troubled ages which separate us from the Romano-British times. Leek, garlic, and onion are ancient acquisitions. To our Old-English forefathers garlic was the spear-leek, distinguished by its long, narrow leaf from the broad-leaved common leek, just as a garfish was distinguished from other fishes by its long body and pointed head; onion was the enne- or ynne-leek (onion-leek); the most important of the three was probably that which retained the root-word without prefix—the leek proper.
During many centuries, when the rights of small proprietors were little respected and knowledge was scanty, the religious houses were distinguished by the diligence with which they tended their gardens. Flowers, fruits, and simples were cultivated, and plants were now and then imported from foreign monasteries. The English names of the plants, which are often adaptations of Latin words, still testify to the care of gardeners who were in the habit of using Latin.
Much improvement was not to be expected so long as England suffered from frequent and desolating wars within her own borders. When these at last subsided, great English gardens, such as those of Nonsuch, Hatfield, Theobalds, and Hampton Court, began to parade their beauty; strange trees, shrubs, and flowers were brought from the continent, and as early as Queen Elizabeth's time our shrubberies and walks were admired by spectators familiar with the best that Italy and France could show. The new horticulture was, however, long an exotic among us, and John Evelyn, whose Sylva appeared in 1664, was "the first to teach gardening to speak proper English."
In the latter part of the sixteenth century the following new plants among others were brought from central or southern Europe: The poppy and star anemones, the hepatica, the common garden larkspur, the winter aconite, the sweet-William, the laburnum, Rosa centifolia (of eastern origin, the parent of countless varieties and hybrids), the myrtle, the lavender, the cyclamen, the auricula, Iris germanica, and many other Irids, the oriental hyacinth, several species of Narcissus, the white and Martagon lilies, and the absurdly named dog's-tooth-violet (really a lily). The botanist Clusius introduced the jonquil and the Tazetta narcissus from Spain to the Low Countries. The Judas-tree (i.e., tree of Judæa) was brought from the Mediterranean, where the hollows of the hills are filled in April with its pale-purple blooms. The white jasmine was imported from Asia, and the castor-oil plant from Africa.
The great accessions of geographical knowledge made during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were slow to affect horticulture. Ships were then few and small, and the passage from Hispaniola or Calicut to Cadiz or Lisbon occupied weeks or even months. Moreover, the conquests of Spain and Portugal (Goa, the Moluccas, Brazil, the West Indies, Peru, and Mexico) lay mostly within the tropics, and could furnish hardly any plants capable of enduring a European winter. Special pains were, however, taken to bring over some valuable food-plants which were thought likely to thrive in Europe. Before any European landed in America the potato had been cultivated by the Indians of Peru, a country which, though lying almost under the line, rises into cool mountain-districts. Potato-tubers were soon introduced to Spain and Italy, and a little later to other parts of Europe; Raleigh's planting of potatoes on his estate near Cork came a few years later. The edible tomato, which is distinguished from the wild form by its enlarged fruits, was apparently cultivated in Peru before the first landing of the Spaniards. The unusually high proportion of edible plants among the first importations from America and other distant countries is worthy of remark. Early explorers eagerly sought for valuable food-plants, but the number of such as could be cultivated alive in Europe was very limited, and since the sixteenth century the attention of collectors has been fixed upon ornamental species simply because of the dearth of others.
European flower-gardens were enriched during the sixteenth century by the following American species: the so-called French and African marigolds (both from Mexico), sunflowers, the arbor-vitæ (Thuja occidentalis), Yucca gloriosa, and the Agave, misnamed the American Aloe.
About the same time the horse-chestnut, lilac, and syringa, or mock-orange, were first brought to central and western Europe, and with them the tulip, richest and most varied of flowering bulbs. All these reached Vienna from Constantinople, but how and when they were brought to Constantinople, or what were their native countries, are still doubtful questions. The horse-chestnut is believed to be a native of Greece, where it is said to grow wild among the mountains; probably it extends into temperate Asia as well. It is said to have reached Constantinople in 1557. Longstanding tradition derives the lilac from Persia, but botanists say that it is also indigenous to parts of south-eastern Europe. The garden-tulip is believed to be native to temperate Asia and also to Thrace; it is, of course specifically distinct from the wild tulip of northern Europe.
Chief among the travellers to whom we owe the acquisition of these favourite plants was Augier Ghislen de Busbecq, a Fleming, who was twice sent by the emperor as ambassador to the sultan. Busbecq was a keen observer and collector, and during his long and toilsome journeys was ever eager to pick up curiosities or to note new facts. Quackelbeen, a physician in Busbecq's suite, is named as another helper. The botanists Mattioli and Clusius, who presided in succession over the imperial gardens of Vienna, and Gesner of Zurich, described the plants; it is from them that we draw such imperfect knowledge as we possess of the way in which they were brought to central Europe. Clusius relates that Busbecq in 1575 received a parcel of tulip-seed from Constantinople, and being obliged to journey into France, left it with Clusius to be germinated. The tulips which came up were of various colours, an indication of long cultivation. The Turks, like the Persians, took great delight in gardens.
As North America became permanently occupied by the English, facilities for the transport of live plants to Europe steadily increased. Ships began to sail frequently to and fro, for the crossing of the Atlantic was but a small affair in comparison with the voyage round the Cape of Good Hope. Educated men here and there practised the learned professions in the American plantations, and among them a sprinkling of naturalists was found. Hothouses, the amusement of wealthy amateurs in Germany, France, and Holland, made it possible to protect the plants of mild climates from the winter cold of northern Europe. By the end of the seventeenth century our gardens had acquired many beautiful and curious American plants, besides a few from the East Indies, and not long afterwards the gains became so frequent that the botanists of Europe found it hard to name the new species as fast as they came in.
Lovers of horticulture will tolerate a little further information concerning the early use of hothouses. As soon as glass began to be employed in domestic architecture, the construction of warmed and glazed chambers, in which plants could be grown, was attempted. Writers of the first century A.D. mention them, and Seneca explains how the temperature might be kept up by hot water. This and other refinements of the Roman Empire passed into oblivion during the long decline of civilisation, but revived with the revival of the arts. In the sixteenth century William IV., Landgraf of Hesse, who is remembered, among other things, as a patron of the botanist Clusius, built himself a green -house, which could be taken down and put together again. A still more famous orangerie was that of Heidelberg, which served as an example to the kings and nobles of Europe.[39] Henri IV. built one at the Tuileries, and long afterwards Louis XIV. had one at Versailles. Madame de Sévigné describes the orangerie of Clagny as a palace of Armida, and the most enchanting novelty in the world. The pine-apple was brought over from Barbadoes in the seventeenth century, and Evelyn speaks of having tasted the first pine-apple grown in England at the table of Charles the Second. For two hundred years the hothouse yielded no greater dainty, but rapid transit has now made pine-apples so cheap that it is no longer worth while to raise them in England. Fagon, who was during many years first physician to Louis XIV., was a considerable botanist. He was born and died at the Jardin des Plantes, and here, on his retirement from practice, he built hothouses; it would be interesting to know what he grew in them.
In the first half of the seventeenth century the younger Tradescant, who, like his father before him, was gardener to our Charles I., brought over from America the spider-wort, named Tradescantia after him,[40] the false acacia and the tulip-tree. The magnolias, or some of them, the Virginian creeper, and the scarlet Lobelia cardinalis were among the gifts received from North America about the same time. The dwarf Lobelia (L. Erinus) was not brought over from the Cape of Good Hope till 1752, and Lobelia splendens and fulgens (both from Mexico) not till the nineteenth century. One of the passion-flowers, which are all American, came over about this time; but Passiflora cærulea, the favourite ornament of the greenhouse, was only imported from Brazil in 1699. The evening primrose, the "convolvulus major and minor" (Ipomæa purpurea and Convolvulus tricolor), were other acquisitions from North America.
From the second half of the seventeenth century dates the introduction of the garden nasturtium (Tropæolum majus) from Peru; T. minus from Mexico had been brought over nearly a hundred years earlier. The sensitive plants and the pine-apple now became frequent objects in English greenhouses. John Evelyn and Bishop Compton were eminent patrons of English horticulture during this age.
The first half of the eighteenth century brought us the Aubretia and the sweet pea from southern Europe, the first Pelargoniums (scarlet geraniums) from the Cape, the camellia and Kerria japonica from the far east. The West Indian heliotrope was introduced in 1713; the better-known Peruvian species not till 1757. Phloxes began to be imported from North America. Two or three foreign orchids were already known, and the number now began to increase; but it was not till the nineteenth century that they came over in crowds. Our list gives no notion whatever of the number of new species added now and subsequently.
Of the accessions made during the latter half of the eighteenth century we must at least mention the mignonette from North Africa, white arabis from the Caucasus, the common rhododendron from Asia Minor, Rosa indica and Hydrangea hortensis from China, South African gladioli, which now begin to be numerous, and chrysanthemums from China and Japan. The first calceolarias were brought from great heights on the Andes, the first begonias from Jamaica, and the first fuchsia from Chili.
We can make only one remark about the multitudinous accessions of the nineteenth century. It is surprising to note how recently many established favourites have been brought to the knowledge of English gardeners. Anemone japonica (Japan) and Jasminum nudiflorum (China) date from 1844, while the Freesias (Cape Colony) are as recent as 1875. The dahlia, after two unsuccessful attempts, was established here as recently as 1815; Nemophila insignis came over from North America in 1822; the common musk and the monkey-plant a few years later; the chionodoxas (Crete and Asia Minor) in 1877. The first of the foliage-begonias (Begonia rex from Assam) dates only from 1858, and the first of the tuberous species from 1865.
Importation of foreign species has not been the only method by which English gardens have been enriched. New varieties and hybrids have been produced in bewildering numbers by the gardeners of Europe, and many of these far surpass in beauty the wild originals. Botanists and nurserymen could relate in great detail the steps by which our favourite roses, calceolarias, begonias, and cinerarias have been developed from a few natural stocks, sometimes of uninviting appearance.
Horticulture has repaid the debt which it owed to the explorations of botanists by furnishing countless observations and experiments bearing upon inheritance. When these have been properly co-ordinated, they will yield precious knowledge, not only to botanists but to all students of biology.