310. The garden of Baron Hugel at Hietzing, near Vienna, contains one of the finest collections of plants in Europe. Baron Hugel is well known as a celebrated traveller and botanist, and for several years he has spared no expense to collect every rare and beautiful plant that could be obtained. The first thing that is seen on entering the garden is a beautiful terrace in front of the living rooms, the pillars supporting which are covered by climbing plants, while in beds between the pedestals are various kinds of bulbs, so contrived as to produce a succession of flowers in the different seasons. The floor of the terrace is tesselated, and on it are placed stages with various kinds of beautiful lowering plants. Single plants, remarkable for their variety or beauty, stand alone on the terrace before the pillars, and among them may be mentioned the Burchellia capensis, ten feet high, which is every season covered with innumerable flowers. In short, during the whole of the summer this terrace is crowded with the most valuable and beautiful plants, of which some idea may be formed when it is stated that even of the camellias there are more than a thousand varieties, and that one specimen is upwards of twenty-two feet high. On the lawn are beautiful exotic trees and shrubs; and this leads to the hothouses and greenhouses, which are filled with the choicest shrubs, particularly the Latter, the collection being remarkably rich in Australian shrubs. In the orchideous house there was, in 1842, a collection of eighty-three genera, and nearly two hundred species; but the most remarkable object in the whole is what is called the Roccoco garden. (See fig. 75.) In this figure a and b are beds of low shrubs; c is one of a number of circular beds, each separated by a zone of turf, e, from another bed, d; f is a border of turf; and g and h are gravel walks; i is a bed with a pedestal and statue in the centre; k is a small oval bed separated from the larger bed, l, by a zone of turf; and m, n, o, and p are oddly shaped beds on turf, for the reception of greenhouse plants. Nothing can be more perfect of its kind than this Roccoco garden; and, in fact, the whole place, though possessing scarcely any natural advantages, is a perfect gem as regards its floral beauty.
