Gardenvisit.com The Garden Guide

Book: London Parks and Gardens, 1907
Chapter: Chapter 5 Greenwich Park

Lake and dell

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The lake is prettily planted, and red marliac varieties of water-lilies now float on the surface in the summer. The dell, planted with a large collection of flowering shrubs, is well arranged, and many choice varieties, Solanum crispum, gum cistus, magnolias, Buddlea intermedia, Indigofera gerardiana floribunda, and such-like are doing well. The frame-ground is most unostentatious, and it is satisfactory to see how much can be produced. The climate allows of the spring bedding plants and hardy chrysanthemums for autumn being raised out of doors; and the small amount of glass shelters the standard heliotropes, Streptosolens Famesoni, and the like for bedding. Lilies do well in the open; superbum, tiger, thunbergium, Henryii, &c., and pots of longifolium flower strongly after doing duty for three years. There is now a fair-sized garden, where these plants are displayed, near the Wilderness, adjoining Blackheath; while the rest of the Park, with the deer wandering under the chestnuts, is still left delightfully wild. Under the shady trees on a summer's day it would still be possible to dream of Romans and Danes, of pageants and tournaments, and to people the scene with the heroes and heroines of yore.