Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens - With 24 full-page Illustrations in Colour

Kew Gardens contain what seems the completest botanical collection in the world, handicapped as it is by a climate at the antipodes of Eden, and by a soil that owes less to Nature than to patient art. Before being given up to public pleasure and instruction, this demesne was a royal country seat, specially favoured by George III. That homely King had two houses here and began to build a more pretentious palace, a design cut short by his infirmities, but for which Kew might have usurped the place of Windsor. For nearly a century it kept a close connection with the Royal Family, as the author illustrates in his story of the village and the Gardens, while the artist has found most effective subjects in the rich vegetation gathered into this enclosure and in the relics of its former state. [vi] [vii] [viii] [ix] [1] The most conspicuous feature of Kew is its Pagoda, from many points seen towering over the well-wooded flat watered by a winding reach of the Thames. Such an outlandish structure bears up the odd name in giving a suggestion of China, not contradicted by the elaborate cultivation around, where all seems market-garden that is not park, buildings, groves or flower-beds. Yet the name, of old written as Kaihough, Kaiho, Kayhoo, and in other quaint formsfor which quay of the howe or hough has been guessed as originalbelongs to a thoroughly English parish, whose exotic vegetation, nursed upon a poor soil, came to be twined among many national memories. These, indeed, are most closely packed about what may be called[2] the willow-plate pattern period of our history, when a true-blue conservatism had the affectation of letting itself be spangled with foreign amenities and curiosities, jumbled together without much regard for perspective or natural surroundings. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55899
Author: Moncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
Release Date: Nov 7, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Martin, T. Mower (Thomas Mower), 1838-1934