London botanic gardens / by Pierre Élie Félix Perrédès.

  • Perrédès, Pierre Élie Félix.
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: London botanic gardens / by Pierre Élie Félix Perrédès. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2 been little more than the ornamental grounds of her residence. Kew is, therefore, in a measure, an offshoot of the Chelsea Physic Garden. The last Botanic Gardens which remain to be considered in de- tail are those of the Royal Botanic Society, in Regent’s Park. These were begun in 1839 by that Society, with the ultimate object of forming “ extensive botanical and ornamental gardens within the immediate vicinity of the metropolis,” the purpose by which the Society was animated in so doing being the “ promotion of Botany in all its branches, and its application to medicine, arts and manu- factures.” Besides these, which constitute the only public Botayiic gardens in London or its environs, mention must also be made of the Gar- dens of the Royal Horticultural Society, formerly at Chiswick, and now at Wisley, in Surrey. The Horticultural Society has, through- out, excluded the cultivation of medicinal plants from its field of operations, and this is a distinction which holds good, broadly, be- tween “ Horticultural ” and “ Botanic ” gardens in this country. In view, however, of the importance of the Horticultural Society’s Gardens from the cultural point of view, a short account of them will be given at the end of this introduction. Before proceeding with the individual accounts of these gardens, it will not be without interest to pass briefly in review the salient features which they have in common, as well as those in which they differ from one another. The arrangement of the plants in the gardens may conveniently be considered first, and affords much that is of interest. The Chel- sea Garden, as we have just seen, was framed, in the main, on the pattern of the herbalists’ gardens; to this we may add that one of the principal aims of its founders was the arrangement of plants in a systematic manner. At the close of the seventeenth century the plants were arranged according to the systems of Ray and Tourne- fort, and, in practice, this scheme is still partly adhered to, as a mat- ter of convenience, in most Botanic Gardens, inasmuch as trees and shrubs are generally grouped apart from herbaceous plants. Towards the end of the eighteenth century we find the Linnean classification supplanting the systems of Ray and Tournefort, to be superseded, in turn, by those of Decandolle and Bindley towards the middle of the last century. Since the re-organization of the Garden in 1902,