Life of John Claudius Loudon his wife
Early life London
Country Residences Ferm
ornee Russia Loss of
fortune Hothouses France and Italy Gardeners
Magazine Marriage Birmingham Scotland Arboretum Suburban
Gardener Cemeteries Last illness Death Anecdotes Elegy
Gardener's Magazine
In 1826 he established The Gardener's Magazine, the first
periodical devoted exclusively to horticultural subjects. This work
was always Mr. Loudon's favourite, and the organ through which he
communicated his own thoughts and feelings to the public. It was
originally undertaken principally for the benefit of gardeners in
the country, in order to put them "on a footing with those about
the metropolis;" but it soon became the universal means of
communication among gardeners, and was of incalculable benefit to
them. It also became a source of great pleasure to amateurs of
gardening, and was no doubt the means of inspiring a taste for the
pursuit in many who had before been indifferent to it. "In an art
so universally practised as gardening, and one daily undergoing so
much improvement," Mr. Loudon observes, "a great many occurrences
must take place worthy of being recorded, not only for the
entertainment of gardening readers, but for the instruction of
practitioners in the art." (Gardeners Magazine. vol. i. p.
1.) That this work met the wants of a large class of readers is
evident from four thousand copies of the first number having been
sold in a few days; and from the work having continued popular for
nineteen years, and, in fact, till its close at the death of its
conductor.
The Gardener's Magazine first appeared quarterly,
afterwards it was published every two months, and finally every
month. The second number of this work contained an attack on tile
London horticultural Society, the affairs of which were then
notoriously ill managed, though before the publication of The
Gardener's Magazine no one had ventured to complain of them
publicly. In the same number appeared an article on the "
Self-education of Gardeners;" in which Mr. Loudon began those
earnest exhortations to gardeners to improve themselves, and those
efforts to put them in the way of self-improvement, which be
continued almost to the last hour of his life. He also, in this
second number, gave a plan for the improvement of Kensington Gardens, and suggested the erection
of "small stone lodges with fireplaces at the principal garden
gates, for the comfort of the door-keepers in winters" as before
that time the door-keepers had no shelter but the alcoves; and he
proposed that at least once a week a band should play in the
Gardens, and that the public should be able to obtain the
convenience of seats, as in the public gardens on the Continent. In
the third number of the Magazine he began a series of
articles on " Cottage Economy;" and invited young architects
to turn their thoughts to the erection . of cottages, as well for
labourers as for gardeners, which should be not only ornamental
enough to please the gentlemen on whose grounds they were to be
erected, but comfortable to those who were to live in them. These
hints were followed up by many gentlemen: and I think I never saw
Mr. Loudon more pleased than when a highly respectable gardener
once told him that he was living in a new and most comfortable
cottage, which his master had built for him; a noble marques, who
said that he should never have thought of it, but for the
observations in Mr. Loudon's Gardener's Magazine, as they
made him consider whether the cottage was comfortable or not, and
that, as soon as he did so, he perceived its deficiencies. The fact
is, that the greater part of the nobility and landed proprietors
are, I believe, most anxious to make those around them as
comfortable as possible, and only require their attention to be
properly directed to the subject. In the fourth number of the
Gardener's Magazine the subject of the reform of the
Horticultural Society was resumed; and it was continued in the
succeeding numbers till 1830, when the desired result was at length
effected.
Both in the early volumes of The Gardener's Magazine, and
in the Encyclopedia of Gardening, Mr. Loudon had strongly
advocated the necessity of having garden libraries; and in the
second volume of The Gardener's Magazine he gave a list of
books he considered suitable for a garden library, in which he
included the Encyclopedia of Plants and the Hortus
Britannicus; works then written, though they took so long in
printing that they were not published till two or three years
afterwards. It is very gratifying to find that numerous garden
libraries were established in different parts of the country, in
the course of two or three months after they were first suggested
in The Gardener's Magazine; and that several letters
appeared, from working gardeners, on the advantages and improvement
which they had received from the books they thus obtained access
to.
In the year 1827 Mr. London suggested the idea of planting some
public walk according to the natural system, and naming the trees
in the way that has lately been done in Kensington Gardens. The same year the first
notices were inserted of Horticultural Societies offering premiums
for the production of certain vegetables, flowers, and fruits; a
plan which has since been carried to a very great extent.
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