conducted, as being among the lions of Guernsey,
that one is charmed with the beauty and variety of
flowers; but in the little plots of garden ground also,
wliich are attached to the smaller country houses, and
even cottages. Noble hydrangeas,—fine varieties of
the pink, and healthy bushy geraniums, all reared in
the open air, overtop the little walls, or grace the
doorway.
I will enumerate a few of the flowers and shrubs
which are successfully reared in Guernsey; and for
this enumeration I am chiefly indebted to the observations
of Dr. M‘Culloch, communicated in a paper
addressed to the Caledonian Horticultural Society.
Dr. M. sets out with saying, “ that the variety and
the splendour of the productions of Guernsey, give a
character to its horticulture which is very impressive
to an English visitor, and which excites surprise, when
compared with the very slight advantages of climate
which this island from its geographical difference of
position, might be supposed to possess.”
The first flower which I shall notice, is the amaryllis,
more commonly known, at least in the Channel
Islands, by the name of the Guernsey lily. This
beautiful plant is cultivated in Jersey, as well as in
Guernsey; but it is in Guernsey that by far the finest
specimens are seen. This flower is a native of Japan;
“ a country,” says Dr. Macullock, “ possessing such
Arariety of climate, that it might well afibrd plants
suited to any latitude.” The same gentleman also
says, “ In Guernsey, every gardener, and almost
every petty farmer who has a bit of garden ground,
appropriates a patch to this favoured root; and the
few hundreds of flowers which are brought to England
in the season, or which are kept for ornament in the
island, are the produce of thousands of roots. The
average rate of flowering is about fifteen or eighteen
in a hundred.” The same frosts that have no effect on
the hardy geraniums, injure the roots of the Guernsey
lily.
The magnolia grandiflora, is another plant which
is very successfully cultivated in Guernsey—flowering
both regularly and luxuriantly ; but which, excepting
in parts of Cornwall, cannot generally be depended
upon in England. To this, may be added, the
hydrangea liortensis, the fuchsia coccinea, the geranium
zonule, the inquinaus radule glutinosum,~all of which,
in the luxuriance of their summer vegetation, bear
testimony alike, to the excellence of the climate, and
the taste of the inhabitants. I have seen splendid
specimens of the fuchsia in the Guernsey gardens,__
some of them, I am certain, from six to eight feet
high, and ten or twelve in circumference, and covered
over with their beautiful pendent blossoms, many of
them an inch and a half long. I had in my own
garden in Jersey, a fuchsia not much inferior to these
in size, which was covered Avith flowers so late as the
month of November.
One of the most successful plants in these islands,
and especially in Guernsey, owing to the superior
pains bestowed there on its cultivation, is the verbena
triphylla: I have seen it almost a tree in Guernsey,
reaching to nearly twenty feet in height, and reminding
me of the gardens of the Alcazar in Seville,
where I saAV it for the first time in perfection. I had
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