THE KING’S GARDENS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4015, 1 September 1931, Page 7

THE KING’S GARDENS

FRUITHDUSE WONDERS 1 i have just spent an afternoon in the I Kings’ gardens at Windsor in company 1 with Mr C. H. Cook, who has charge of the immense range of glasshouses and the twenty-three acres of kitchen garden under the spade. It was a very interesting experience (writes P. W. D. Izzard, in the ‘ Daily Mail ’). For the first time 1 had an insight into the great amount of cultivation necessary when Royal palaces must he constantly supplied with flowers, fruit, and vegetables. The gardens run to about seventy acres altogether, but much of this is grass, with a large area of orcharding, which, by the way, is the source of the numerous gifts of daffodils which the Queen sends to hospitals in the spring. The daffodils are naturalised in vast quantities under the trees. | Windsor differs from Sandringham ! not only in extent, but also in purpose. | Sandringham is a country home and its 1 gardens pleasure places complete with i a diverse and homely beauty. Windsor, so far as its gardens are concerned (they are two miles from the castle), is j a great source of general supply, its I flowers even following their Majesties by night train to Scotland, while every I morning now at 6.30 a van leaves for i Buckingham Palace laden with flowers i and edible produce, and also jnilk from the Jersey herd. It is the aim of Mr Cook every year to have ripe peaches, nectarines, figs, strawberries, and both black and white grapes in time for Her Majesty’s birthday (May 26). In the case of strawberries the forced fruits as a rule are ready by Easter Sunday, and I could see that the other fruits are not likely to fail the head gardener this season. 1 went through these wonderful fruit houses, and was much impressed by their beautiful order and the prosperity of their contents. There are fourteen houses of peaches and nectarines, and a similar number occupied by vines. There is also a flourishing fig corridor. They arc managed so that they yield a continuous supply, the grapes, for instance, being available from nine to ten months of the year. Under glass elsewhere there are little forests of fruit trees in pots. Two houses which in King Edward’s time I were given over to palms are now full of dessert plums, peaches, and cherries. Then in the open there is a plantation 120 yds long and 40yds wide of gooseberries, currants, cherries, and other soft fruits—-1,150 trees altogether —which is known as “ the birdcage,” For the whole of it is roofed with wire stretched between its high walls. There can be no fear here of depredations by birds. There are many cordon fruit trees also in the open, and a particularly happy touch, which also one sees at Sandringham, is the training of apples and pears over wires as a background to the herbaceous border.

200 YDS FLORAL BORDER. At Windsor the one and only border is on u very fine scale. It is 200 yds long, and is double. One walks ovei] broad swai’d, always the best kind of walk for a herbaceous border, between graduated flowers running back a deptli of about loft to the trained fruit trees. In the summer the colour is glorious. One other splendid summer vista is afforded by the rose walk beside the range of more than 300 yds length of glasshouses. In this walk there are no fewer than 15,000 rose trees. But so far as flowers are concerned Windsor, in the main, is a huge nursery for the supply of blossoms for table decoration and the adornment of apartments and other uses. There is a long corridor through which one wanders past a foam of blossom of the butterfly flower, and over tiie roof of which fuchsias are growing and blooming profusely, and before long will hang low enough to transform this walk into a floral tunnel. 1 noticed as 1 passed house after house leading off this corridor the preponderance of pink flowers. For this hue and mauve and soft blues, such as one obtains in some of the hydrangeas, are Her Majesty’s favourite colours. Large numbers of carnations, for instance, in pink, white, and shades of red, as well as butterfly flowers in all their many soft tones, are here. One cannot but be impressed with the relatively small amount of heated space in so large an area of glass. But the flowers one sees in such profusion are for the most part simple, homely blooms not requiring great heat in which their Majesties chiefly delight.