KEW GARDENS IN JANUARY.
DURING the first weeks of January there are not many visitors to the Royal Gardens at Kew. Some few people, for the most part residents in the neighbourhood, may be met with taking their constitutional walks along the gravel paths ; and on sunny afternoons a crowd of holiday children may generally be seen watching the quaint and gorgeously coloured birds which make their home near the ornamental water in front of the Palm House. But away from the gravel paths and the greenhouses and the popular parts of the Gardens one rarely comes across any one but keepers and labourers. And yet at this time of year, for the lover of landscape gardening, and even for the lover of flowers alone, there is much to delightand much to be learnt. To many people, to artists in particular, trees with their bare stems and branches in winter-time are almost more beautiful than in their more showy spring and summer dress. If any one would be convinced of this let him walk at this time of year through the grove of beeches near the rhodo- dendron dell at Kew. They stand there tall and shapely, not gnarled and hollowed and fantastic like those at Burnham Beeches, smooth living pillars, in colour a dull grey which suggests beaten silver or pewter, that most beautiful of the metals, this pewter colour being often picked out with delicate tracings of palest green. Here and there among these smooth beech pillars we find in strangest contrast the rugged netted stems of the Spanish chestnut. (The bark of one great monster of this species near the lake has a veritable spiral of furrows reaching up to thelower branches.)
Another beautiful colour effect in this part of the Gardens is given by the rich warm green of some pines and cedars thrown against the purple distance, with bright gleams at one or two points from the stems of young silver birches. And then if we walk toward the south-west, through the rhododendron dell, turning aside for a moment to look at the bamboos, the feathery grace of which is invaluable in winter, and serves as a welcome relief from the dull, heavy leaves of the rhododendrons, we come suddenly Avon a view of the grey river, on which a tug is spluttering and struggling against the tide with its burden of swaying black barges. To the right, across the water-meadows, is the flat façade of Sion House, which looks as if it had been cut out of card- board, crowned by the pointing lion brought from the old home in Trafalgar Square. From this spot, after passing the grounds of Queen's Cottage, the best of sanctuaries for wild birds, now closed to the public (a restriction which we hope may be maintained for the next few months), we reach the lake, one of the chief beauties of the Gardens. Although by no means large in extent,this lake is so well planted that it forms from every point a very charming picture. Viewed from the western end the trees and shrubs on the banks and islands make a network of blue and brown and grey, with one patch of orange-stemmed willows to brighten the subdued tones, and across this background there floats a veil " of thinnest lawn," in colour quite indescribable, pale and delicate, woven of the bads of another willow well named " fragilis." Further along the bank a group of alders is already tasseled with catkins, those of the Oriental species, four to- five inches long and light green in colour, being especially lovely. And at the eastern end of the lake, near the
alders, is a foregrband of the dark-yellow stems and the burst seed-vessels, in two shades of brown,Of the Siberian iris, inter- mingled with the tall spikes and dead foliage of the plant which the botanists will no longer allow us to call the bul- rush. This harmony of brown and russet and rich yellow with the grey water, the purple islands, and broken reflections of a faint sunset sky is a scene such as Corot would have loved to paint. It is also worth while to look for some of the older specimen conifers at Kew. Of the spruces which have been planted in recent years few seem really to flourish, strangled as they are by the smoke and fog of the ever- growing city. The pines and cypresses thrive fairly well. But of the older trees which reached their prime in cleaner and happier days there are some noteworthy specimens. Besides the great ilex at the Victoria Gate there is a stone pine near the entrance to the Director's Office which is one of the most pictorial trees in the Gardens, and on a little mound by the side of the lake is a Pinus muricata from California, its branches springing from the ground from a hardly perceptible stem, which looks like a dwarf Japanese tree, trained in some Brobdingnagian Japan. And near the curious structure called the Pagoda there are two or three Scotch pines with russet and silver stems and heads of dark unsymmetrical foliage grouped with a fine cedar of Lebanon. While most of these things can no doubt be seen elsewhere in the great parks and pleasure grounds scattered over England, it would be hard to name any other public place where, within an area of two hundred and fifty acres, so many varied effects of forest, lake, river, and wild garden can be found.
Of flowers in the open air there are some even now in bloom which will amply repay any trouble that may be taken in looking for them. In the little heath garden near King William's Temple a bed of Mediterranean heath is bright with crowded flowers, and among the ferns under the trees near the ornamental water are the pure white blossoms of the Christmas rose. In the rockery there are only a few early snowdrops, some rock-cress, a pretty yellow adonis just poking its flowers out of a sort of green fur collar, and a patch of sternbergia from Asia Minor, the clear yellow flowers of which look at first sight like a small and hardy narcissus. For the most part the flowering shrubs still carry in their sleeping buds the secrets of their bloom, though in sheltered borders one comes upon the rich red of a daphne holder than the rest. But the most beautiful thing in flower in the open air—for itself alone well worth a visit on the worst of days— is the group of Japanese witeh-hazel near the entrance to the' Orchid Houses. It is a large shrub, or small tree, too seldom seen in gardens, each branch of which is set with a fringe of ribbon-like yellow flowers with maroon centres hung in little bundles on quaint downward-curving stalks. Standing, as the group does; against a background of pines, one feels that in its grace, its delicate intricacy of spikes, and in the " placing " of the (flowers without overcrowding, this witch- hazel is a true type and epitome of the art of Japan.
So even in January there is a good deal to be seen in Kew Gardens, and it is pleasant to recognise that wherever one turns the keynote of the place is " efficiency." Under the wise rule of Sir William Thiselton-Dyer Kew Gardens have become not only a centre of the highest scientific value for gardeners and botanists, but also a source of true delight and encouragement for all lovers of beautiful things. And we ought to be grateful for it.
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