London Gardens in Winter

Southland Times, Issue 11750, 1 June 1891, Page 3

London Gardens in Winter

ByT.W., Jcnr.

The winter of '90 and '91 will long be remembered by English gardeners as most disastrous. For forty days we never saw the sun. The snow lay deep upon the ground and became encrusted with a black greasy substance, a compound of London fog and soot, and the wind being mostly in the east this stuff settled, especially on gardens, to the westward of the city. It was no use trying to avoid it, for even the glass houses got covered with it, and the plants inside suffered from want of light, and the fog itself getting inside caused numerous tender things to damp off, and as to forcing anything, it was well nigh impossible, for even during this month (March) such things as young tomato plants pricked out under glass got killed. There is not much forcing done at any time in London, for most large growers have places in the country and bring in tho plants when ready to sell. Evergreen trees and shrubs of any kind have a bad time of it in London, lor they get choked with the black, greasy deposit, and this winter many so-called hardy shrubs were killed outright by the frost, or if not killed altogether are burned quite brown and will require to be cut in quite close. Some beds of Phormium tenax (N.Z. flax) in the Kew gardens were killed right to the ground but may start again from the roots, and I see from the papers that some New Zealand olearias ana veronicas in the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens have been killed. The winter in Scotland was however not so severe as in London, indeed it was not till this month (March) that they had much frost and snow, and the consequence was that whilst the London market gardeners had a lot of vegetables destroyed in December the Scotch market gardeners have been sending vegetables to London all the winter (a most unusual thing) and getting about four times the price they usually get for them. Evergreen trees are never planted on the streets in London, the sorts used being mostly Platanus oricntali-H (Oriental plane) and Robinia pxuedo acacia (False acacia). These trees are able to get rid of the accumulations of dirt once a year at least, when they cast their leaves. Each tree is protected by a stout iron guard and a wonderfully small space ia allowed for each tree to grow in. It is a wonder how they exist at all ; they have no branches near the ground, but are allowed to Bpread over head. I cannot say I admire the way those near Chiswiek are pruned, but then there are so many systems of pruning. Even in fruit trees the practice is by no means the same in all gardens. In some places the apple trees are pruned so as to produce fruit spurs, in others, spurring is not allowed. The fog was so bad at Chiswiek some days that we could not see to prune. We are this year making trials of a grea,t many varieties of tomatoes, peas, beans, carrots, and leeks. They will all receive the same treatment for comparison, and the result will be published. Every year the Society takes in hand certain kinds of vegetables, the seeds being sent by those in the trade.

The London papers are high in their praises of the New Zealand apples. It is said that they do not look so well as American apples, but the flavour is much better. At the season when the New Zealand apples arrive there is scarcely anything in the market to compete with them except rhubarb.

New Zealand mutton is regularly sold in the shops in Chiswiek at 7d per lb. On one occasion I got a piece of mutton from a butcher who piofessed to sell only English, and on another a piece from one who sold New Zealand, and I believe both were part of the same shipment.