From: klier@cobra.uni.edu
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: Re: ## Gardens in Europe? ##
Date: 27 Mar 95 19:56:22 -0600

[...]
Well, my pick of the British garden that would be most like
Butchart is Bodnant, in Wales.  Good variety of materials, 
nice attention to detail, and form, and mass and color, and
just a very pleasant day.  I was there  in July, and missed the
Wisteria arbor in flower, much to my regret.

Hidcote and Sissinghurst and some of the Capability Brown gardens
are well worth it from the standpoint of the evolution of
landscape architectural styles.  (do watch out for the ha-has,
though).

In London, you need to go to Kew, an easy trip by tube.  It's the
mecca of the botanical world.  Bring a picnic lunch.  Wear good
shoes.  Prepare to spend at least all day (I've been there 4 times,
and still haven't seen all the houses and plantings).  Wisley,
the Royal Horticultural Society Garden, is a lot of fun, and
it's a day trip out from London.  You can catch a bus from 
Victoria, and it will drop you off about a block from the gate,
and pick you up at the end of your foot-tiring day.

In London itself, the Chelsea Physic Garden is the oldest botanical
garden still in existance, and I enjoyed my trip to this small
garden of great historical significance, but it is perhaps not
of great interest to landscape enthusiasts.  I also *tremendously*
enjoyed my visit to the Tradescant Garden/Museum of Garden History
at St. Mary's Lambeth.  The garden itself is tiny, and rather crammed,
and the exhibits when I was there a couple of years ago were
rather temporary-looking, but it is a very young museum with its
roots in a very old garden.  The Tradescants were a father and
son who were "the King's Gardeners", and made several trips to
Russia and the New World, bringing back new plants for old world
gardens: quite an accomplishment in the 17th-18th century!  The
odds and ends of souveniers they collected were purchased by
Ashmole and donated to Oxford University as the nucleus of The
Ashmolean museum; the remains of their collection is displayed
in a special room of the Ashmolean (Oxford took poor care of the
collections and burned much of it, including most of the only
dodo specimen (we have a foot of that specimen; there are no
others).  Sketches of that particular dodo served as a model for
Tenniel's drawings in Lewis Carroll's _Alice in Wonderland_.)
The Tradescants are buried at St. Mary's Lambeth, a disused
church that houses the museum, just across the Thames from the
houses of Parliament.  Another famous body in the churchyard
is Captain Bligh, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame.  His tomb is
capped with a breadfruit, which, of course, played a major
part in the Bounty mutiny.

And if you're in London on a Sunday morning, go to the street
flower market, if it hasn't been discontinued.  The information
folks at the Tube can provide you with directions.  It's been
a couple of years since I was there, and it was threatened with
being shut down by the local council because it was a traffic nuisance,
but it was a tremendous amount of fun for me.  I nearly cried
because so many nice plants were being sold so cheaply, like
8 6" pots of cyclamen, blooming, for about $4 US.  Wished I
could have smuggled them in under my coat!

The Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh is a must-go, in my opinion.
The plants are very well maintained, and have a good variety
of plants.  The rock gardens are especially beautiful, and,
unlike most gardens in Britain, it is open until dusk.  They do
toss you out then... I've been tossed out of that garden twice,
and still haven't seen it all!  8-)

I've not been to continental gardens, but I have it on good authority
that the Jardins des Plantes (sorry, the spelling is probably 
atrocious) is fun.  In the 1970's they still had a 200+ year
old tree of Robinia pseudo-acacia (black locust), gnarled and propped,
and (if I recall correctly, the product of one of the Tradescant
journeys to North America).  Does anyone know if that tree still
survives?

Kay Klier  klier@cobra.uni.edu


The Oxford Botanical Garden is worth a stroll, and don't
forget to peek in on the private gardens of the colleges there.