GARDELEGEN, a town of Germany, in Prussian Saxony, on the right bank of the Milde, 20 m. W. from Stendal, on the main line of railway Berlin-Hanover. Pop. (1905) 8193. It has a Roman Catholic and three Evangelical churches, a hospital, founded in 1285, and a high-grade school. There are considerable manufactures, notably agricultural machinery and buttons, and its beer has a great repute. Gardelegen was founded in the 10th century, and was for a long time the seat of a line of counts. It suffered considerably in the Thirty Years’ War, and in 1775 was burned by the French. On the neighbouring heath Margrave Louis I. of Brandenburg gained, in 1343, a victory over Otto the Mild of Brunswick.
GARDEN (from O. Fr. gardin, mod. Fr. jardin; this, like our words “garth,” a paddock attached to a building, and “yard,” comes from a Teutonic word for an enclosure which appears in Gothic as gards and O.H. Ger. gart, cf. Dutch gaarde and Ger. garten), the ground enclosed and cultivated for the growth of fruit, flowers or vegetables (see [Horticulture]). The word is also used for grounds laid out ornamentally, used as places of public entertainment. Such were the famous Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens in London; it is similarly used in zoological gardens, and as a name in towns for squares, terraces or streets. From the fact that Epicurus (q.v.) taught in the gardens at Athens, the disciples of his school of philosophy were known as οἱ ἀπὸ τῶν κήπων (so Diog. Laërtius x. 10); and Cicero (De finibus v. 1. 3, and elsewhere) speaks of the Horti Epicuri. Thus as the “Academy” refers to the Platonic and the “Porch” (στοά) to the Stoic school, so the “Garden” is the name given to the Epicurean school of philosophy. Apollodorus was known as κηποτύραννος, the tyrant of the garden.
GARDENIA, in botany, a genus of the natural order Rubiaceae, containing about sixty species of evergreen trees and shrubs, natives of the warmer parts of the old world. Several are grown in stoves or greenhouses for their handsome, sweet-scented white flowers. The flowers are developed singly at the end of a branch or in the leaf-axils, and are funnel- or salver-shaped with a long tube. The double forms of Gardenia florida (a native of China) and G. radicans (a native of Japan) are amongst the most beautiful and highly perfumed of any in cultivation. Gardenias are grown chiefly for cut flowers, and are readily propagated by cuttings. They require plenty of heat and moisture in the growing season, and must be kept free from insects such as the mealy bug, green fly, red spider and scale-insect.
GARDINER, JAMES (1688-1745), Scottish soldier, was born at Carriden in Linlithgowshire, on the 11th of January 1688. At the age of fourteen he entered a Scottish regiment in the Dutch service, and was afterwards present at the battle of Ramillies, where he was wounded. He subsequently served in different cavalry regiments, and in 1730 was advanced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and in 1743 to that of colonel. He fell at the battle of Prestonpans, the 21st of September 1745. The circumstances of his death are described in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley. In his early years he was distinguished for his recklessness and profligacy, but in 1719 a supernatural vision, as he regarded it, led to his conversion, and from that time he lived a life of great devoutness and of thorough consistency with his Christian profession. Dr Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk, author of an autobiography, says that he was “very ostentatious” about his conversion—speaks of him as weak, and plainly thinks there was a great deal of delusion in Col. Gardiner’s account of his sins.
His life was written by Dr Philip Doddridge and has been often reprinted.