Every kind of tree is here,—the elm, the lime, the beech, the common ash, the plane, and many besides. No tree flourishes so well in London as the plane, which will grow in little soil, and seems to possess a marvellous capacity for withstanding drought. It attains a great height, has a wide-spreading head, a massive trunk, and sheds the bark, which falls off in large irregular patches every year, giving a striking character to the tree. Not only hardy, the plane is one of the most attractive of all trees.
There are also some fine copper beeches. A young German who was in London was much impressed by all he saw, and one day at his boarding-house he waxed warm on the beautiful vegetation in Hyde Park, which he rightly designated as “the best in the world.”
“The ladies are lovely,” he said. “I do not know which are the most lovely, the ladies or the bloody beeches.”
Naturally everybody looked surprised, until it was explained that copper beeches in German are called blutbuche, which the German had literally translated into bloody beeches.
Shrubs have been planted in endless variety, and—when the tree trunks stand out bare and bleak in winter, and the branches are leafless—give to the walks a pleasant bordering of green. The particular glory of the Park shrubs is to be found in the rhododendrons, which in the weeks when they are in full bloom are alone worth coming to London to see. Rotten Row spreads out a narrow line of tan, bordered with a perfect blaze of colour. One need travel far to find another such gorgeous setting as this. Our Austrian critic hardly does full justice to the Park when writing of it as possessing “only something approaching a garden at its gates.” True, most of the ground retains the character of an English heath; but surely that is a big garden which stretches along Park Lane from Hyde Park Corner to the Marble Arch, and again from the Marble Arch to the Serpentine. Some of the beds are very fine. Fashions change even in gardening, and it is true that we see little nowadays of the elaborate designs in “carpet bedding” which was once so much the vogue. Its stiff formality has gone, and more natural combinations are seen, which give equally pleasant and less gaudy effects. Harmony in form and colour, both in foliage and flowers, is the object sought, and as green is the predominating colour in nature, restful to the eye, refreshing and enlivening, it is chosen as the groundwork to the design.
A typical bed laid out in 1906 in varying shades of green and violet was very effective. As these are matters in which amateurs easily misunderstand, I quote expert descriptions.
This particular bed was composed of verbena venosa, violet-coloured; kochia scoparia, light green foliage plant; gymnothrix latifolia, a broad-leaved grass; salvia argentea, silver white; panicum capillaire, a feathery grass, and carpeted with Harrison’s musk. Another dainty combination consisted of dark heliotrope, nicotiania affinis, a white-flowered tobacco very fragrant in the evening; tall, trained plants of canary creeper, which looked very pretty when in bloom; and an edging of the yellow sanvitalia procumbens. A circular bed in white and gold was made up of the white lilium longiflorum, the golden Helenium pumilum, and a yellow-stemmed fern. A bed of cannas was edged with flower-garden beet, which should have been more bronzy in colour; a round bed in white, scarlet, and gold was composed of hydrangea, scarlet geraniums, and yellow privet. These were but a few of the dainties set out for the admiration of the passing throng, and for the closer study of the enthusiast, who may always find in the parks, ideas to carry away with him for development in the smaller space of his own gardens. I asked Major Hussey, of His Majesty’s Office of Works, what shrubs and plants there were in Hyde Park, and to his courtesy am indebted for the complete list to be found in an Appendix to this volume, the extent of which will no doubt come as a surprise to most people. Who imagined there were anything like the number of varieties?
Fancy poaching game in Hyde Park! But so common was the affair in London four centuries ago, that Henry VIII. made a proclamation, in 1546, “to have the games of Hare, Partridge, Pheasants, and Heron preserved from Westminster Palace to St. Giles’s in the Fields.”
Pigeon shooting was a great sport, and about that time it was estimated that some two thousand pigeon poachers were at work in the metropolis,—Sunday was the great day for setting traps. From two shillings to five shillings was received for each pigeon; so the game seems to have been lucrative.
Nature in Hyde Park, the subject of this chapter, would be but poorly covered without mention of the birds, which any one fond of an outdoor life finds a considerable addition to its delights. Here, again, the variety is likely to astound those who have given little thought to the subject.