John Claudius Loudon,

[Dennis Williams]

Re: Some great men of Birmingham..

The Brummie Mummy and the Botanical Gardens

Part One — The Mummy!



In 1827 prominent London bookseller and publisher Henry Colburn brought out an anonymous three-volume novel entitled The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, a satirical and speculative story very much in the vein of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein which had appeared in 1818. The Mummy! happened to attract the attention of a well known landscape gardener and botanical writer named John Claudius Loudon, who reviewed the novel favourably in his widely-read Gardener's Magazine:






Jane and John Loudon

Mr Loudon was more enthusiastic about The Mummy! than the "faint praise" of his review might suggest, and he told his friends that he would dearly like to meet the as yet unknown author — a middle-aged man like himself, he imagined. In February 1830 a "woman friend" granted his wish. At a party she introduced him to Jane Webb, a young woman of just twenty-two summers — the author of the book he so admired. He had found his soul mate, and she her master: they married seven months later. By all accounts they lived happily ever after, though Jane had to give up her promising career as a science fiction writer. For John Loudon converted her to ... gardening.


Kitwell House [courtesy Bill Dargue]


The young bride Jane Webb Loudon turns out to be a Birmingham lass, born at Edgbaston on 19 August 1807. Her mother died when she was twelve: her father Thomas Webb (a Birmingham merchant) was grief-stricken. He took Jane on a tour of Europe, where she "learned several languages". She also began writing poetry about this time. Shortly after their return, they had to move from Edgbaston to Kitwell House (near Bartley Green to the south-west of Birmingham). Mr Webb had taken the loss of his wife badly and his business had suffered. He passed away in 1824, leaving seventeen-year-old Jane an orphan and unprovided for. Ever resourceful, she turned to writing to make ends meet, and published Prose and Verse by Jane Webb the same year. The Mummy! followed in 1827, running to a second edition in 1828, no doubt in response to Mr Loudon's gracious review. Another three-volume novel (Stories of a Bride) followed in 1829, and in 1830 her first non-fiction work for younger readers: Conversations upon Comparative Chronology and General History. When she met her future husband she was a successful writer, albeit anonymous (except for her juvenilia).

Marriage to John Loudon redirected her attention. Gardening (in the widest sense of the word) became her almost exclusive passion. She was her husband's secretary, travelling companion and research assistant, right through the most successful part of his career. The publication of his magnum opus (Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum) in 1838 saddled the family with £10,000 in debts, so Jane set to work in earnest, publishing at least a dozen books in five years on gardening for ladies and natural history for young people. After John Loudon's death in 1843, she edited further editions of his works and kept producing books of her own. Despite the award of a civil list pension of £100 a year in 1846, her debts still required her to work. In 1849-1851 she edited a weekly magazine: The Ladies' Companion at Home and Abroad. Her last book came out in 1855: it was somewhat aptly titled My Own Garden. Jane Webb Loudon died at the family home at 3 Porchester Terrace, Bayswater, London, on 13 July 1858, a month shy of her fifty-first birthday. A grant from the Royal Literary Fund enabled her daughter Agnes to erect a monument at Kensal Green Cemetery.


The Loudon Residence (Bayswater, London)


To be continues....

 

[Dennis Williams]

Re: Some great men of Birmingham..

Part two — The Gardens

Shortly after the marriage of John and Jane Loudon in September 1830, Mr Loudon was commissioned by the Birmingham Horticultural Society to provide a design for the proposed Birmingham Botanical Gardens on land at Edgbaston acquired for the purpose from the Calthorpe Estate. I will let the Loudons themselves tell the story, beginning with Jane Loudon's sole (and somewhat diffident) reference to her birthplace:

• In the beginning of the year 1831 he had an application to lay out a botanic garden at Birmingham, and he agreed to do it merely on the payment of his expenses. On this occasion I accompanied him; and, after spending about six weeks in Birmingham, (which, though it is my native town, I had not seen for several years,) we made a tour through the North of England, visiting the lakes in Cumberland and Westmoreland.
  
  [Jane Loudon "An Account of the Life and Writings of John Claudius Loudon" in John Loudon's Self-Instruction for Young Gardeners (London: Longman & Co, 1845) page xxxvi.]

In the Gardener's Magazine of August 1832 John Loudon describes his design:

• Description of a Design made for the Birmingham Horticultural Society, for laying out a Botanical Horticultural Garden, adapted to a particular Situation
  
  
  
  Before describing this design it will be proper to state shortly, the nature of the situation, the wishes of the Birmingham Horticultural Society, and the other given data on which it was composed.
  
  The situation is at Edgbaston, about two miles to the SW from what is esteemed the centre of Birmingham; the extent is considered to be about sixteen acres, the form of which is irregular; and the surface consists of about an acre, nearly level at one corner, from which the ground spreads out like a fan, in a steep and varied slope; the lower boundary being upwards of 60 feet below the entrance of the garden. ... The aspect of this slope is to the SW and SE. The soil is singularly advantageous: the greater part is a sandy loam; but there is an acre of peat, and three acres of good medium loam. It is highly probable that there is also gravel at a short distance beneath the surface. There are two perpetual springs in the ground, and a small watercourse forms a part of the boundary.
  
  The committee, in mentioning to us the objects they had in view, stated that they wished to combine a scientific with an ornamental garden; and these, to a certain extent, with a nursery and market-garden; so as, by selling superfluous plants, fruits, and culinary vegetables, to lessen the annual expense of keeping. It was further stated, that, whatever plan might be adopted, it could only be executed by degrees; as the funds available for that purpose did not then exceed three thousand pounds, though a considerable addition to this sum was expected to be obtained, when the garden should be commenced, and the public had an opportunity of inspecting it.
  
  With these data and desiderata, we set about devising a suitable design. The first point which we determined on, was that of surrounding the whole sixteen acres with a holly hedge, to be planted immediately within the existing boundary fence of hawthorn: being convinced that, if the ground in the line of the hedge, were trenched and manured, in order to increase the growth of the plants, the holly, in the given soil, situation, and climate, would produce leading shoots, averaging twelve or fourteen inches a year for several years. The next point which we determined on was, to place the hot-houses on the level area which forms the highest part of the surface. As the entrance to the garden must necessarily be from the only road which passes it, and that road is on the north side, it follows, that, if the hot-houses were built in the usual manner against a wall, they would be approached from behind, and the first object that met the eye would be the back sheds: this is the case in the Liverpool Garden, and must necessarily be so in all gardens in which the hot-houses are placed near the main entrance, without there being a space sufficiently ample to admit of making a circuitous approach to their front. As there is neither an ample space in the case of the Birmingham garden, nor a fitting situation for the hot-houses any where else in the given area, than this, which is close on what must necessarily be the main entrance, we determined to form these hot-houses on a circular ground plan, because it is the only one calculated to look equally well on all sides.
  
  A fourth point necessarily resulting from the shape and slope of the grounds, was the zigzag direction of the main walks; in order to descend with ease from the high to the low grounds, and to ascend in like manner from the latter to the former. This point determined on, led to another; viz, the distribution of the arboretum around and through the garden, along one side of the main walk, instead of around the garden only, as is most frequently the case.
  
  [Volume VIII (August 1832).]

The Birmingham Horticultural Society wasn't wealthy enough to implement Mr Loudon's "grand design", and settled for a more conventional glass-house built by local firm John Jones and Company, a decision that rankled with the designer:

• When we contrived the foregoing designs of the Birmingham garden ... we ... thought that we had sufficiently explained these designs to the committee and the curator. To our surprise, however, on returning from Scotland, in September of the same year, we found that a straight range of hot-houses had been determined on; and a plan and elevation of this range have been subsequently shown to us. We entirely disapprove of it, and of its position in the garden; and we have no hesitation whatever in saying that we consider the whole of our design completely spoiled, as the general effect depended entirely on the glass-houses being circular in the plan. We only regret that the committee have adopted our circuitous line of main walk (which, indeed, we staked out when on the spot), because we dislike exceedingly the idea of having our name associated in any degree, however slight, with a garden which, though it might have been one of the most perfect in its kind existing any where, and altogether unique in some of its arrangements, is now bungled, and never likely to reflect credit on any one connected with it.
  
  [Ibid.]
  
  John Loudon's "Grand Design" for the Glass-House

After this damning review, John Loudon did not revisit the Birmingham Botanical Gardens for eight years. Though still seething about the glass-house, he couldn't help but be impressed with the development of the gardens:

• The Birmingham Botanic Garden
  
  Our readers are aware that we made a plan for laying out this garden in 1831 ... The greater part of the plan has been adopted; the parts deviated from being chiefly the range of hot-houses, and the arrangements immediately connected with it. We proposed the hot-houses to be circular in the plan ... but for economy's sake a straight range has been adopted. This range, taking it altogether, is one of the worst in point of taste that we know of. The centre is semicircular in the front part of the plan, with a lofty dome, surmounted by a second small dome, cupola, or glass turret, not unlike in form to those sometimes put up on the roofs of offices for pigeons, and totally unfit for plants; unless we suppose that the spiry top of an Araucària imbricàta could be induced to rise into it; while the two sides or wings, joined to this curvilinear centre are common shed-roofed structures, not half the height of the dome. The want of harmony between the centre and the wings is most conspicuous, from whatever direction the whole may be viewed, and in our eyes it is most offensive. This impression is by no means diminished when entering these houses, by the circumstance that the lofty dome, instead of being filled with large plants, such as bananas, palms, and tropical trees, rising from the free soil, contains a stage covered by small plants in pots.
  
  Having found fault with this range of glass, we have nothing but praise to bestow on the management of the rest of the garden, which does the highest credit to Mr Cameron. The trees and shrubs have thriven in an extraordinary degree, chiefly owing to the soil being deeply trenched, and kept cool and moist; and the plants being placed so far apart as to be clothed with branches from the bottom upwards, and thinned out so as never to be allowed to touch each other. Another cause of their thriving is owing to the situation of the garden; which being on a slope with higher grounds above, the soil is supplied by moisture from these high grounds, and from the porous loamy subsoil, so that nothing in this garden ever suffers from drought in summer. There is also above an acre of natural peat in the Birmingham garden, in which the Ericàceae, and all the American and peat-earth shrubs, and peat-earth herbaceous plants, thrive to admiration. Such masses of the more rare dwarf rhododendrons and azaleas, vacciniums, kalmias, Andrómeda squarròsa, and hypnöìdes, Córnus canadénsis, Gaulthèria Shallon, Linnæ'a boreàlis, and similar plants, we have never seen elsewhere. We also observed Amýgdalus pùmila, and other species of Amýgdalus, Prùnus, and Cérasus, which, compared with the same species in the smoky atmosphere of the London gardens, are like different species. The collection of alpine plants in pots includes many rare species, a number of which are not to be found in any other garden. The pots are quite small, and plunged in sand; under the shade of hedges. The collection of hardy herbaceous plants ... is believed to be the most complete in Britain; and every gardener will allow that no man cultivates herbaceous plants better than Mr Cameron. On the whole, we were highly gratified with this garden, and especially with the growth of the trees and shrubs, as a consequence chiefly of the manner in which they have been managed, though partly also of the excellence of the situation. Mr Cameron has promised us the dimensions of some of the most rapid-growing kinds; and also drawings by his daughter, Miss Cameron, of some of the rare shrubs which we had never before seen in flower.
  
  [Volume XV (August 1839).]

The inaugural curator, Mr David Cameron (circa 1787-1848), had been appointed on the recommendation of Mr Loudon: he had previously worked as gardener for Mr Robert Barclay of the well-known banking family. Mr Cameron submitted to the Gardener's Magazine an account of the early days of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens:

• An Account of the preparatory Operations made in the Birmingham Botanic Garden previously to planting the Arboretum there; with the Dimensions which some of the Trees have attained in Seven Years
  
  Agreeably to your request ... I now send a short account of the preparation made before planting for the arboretum in this garden, and the height of a few of the trees. The whole of the ground was in pasture when we commenced operations, in the spring of 1831. The soil throughout the whole of the garden is of a light sandy nature, upon a subsoil chiefly of a coarse sand mixed with gravel, about from twenty inches to twenty-four inches under the surface. In a few small spots the subsoil is inclined to clay, and in others to white sand. The bottom is very dry in the upper portion of the garden, but wet and springy in several portions of the lower grounds.
  
  The whole of the ground for the arboretum, and also the peat ground for American plants, were regularly trenched over two spits deep, and three shovelings. First, we pared off the turf from the surface, then took off a spit in depth, then a shoveling, then another spit deep and lastly a shoveling to level the bottom, in all about twenty inches deep. This was done during the spring and summer of 1831, and the surface was kept free from weeds during the season. From the inequality of the grounds, the formation of the walks caused some portions of the arboretum ground to be considerably deeper of soil than others; but I cannot observe any improvement in the growth of the trees planted upon those spots where the soil was deepest. The whole was planted in the spring of 1832, with trees and shrubs from Messrs Loddiges. The spring and early part of the summer of that year were rather unfavourable for newly planted trees; but, notwithstanding that circumstance, we lost very few plants out of the whole collection, and scarcely any of the larger free-growing species. This, in my opinion, was owing to a careful pruning and thinning of their tops, so as to make them correspond to the mutilated state of their roots.
  
  In planting, the different natural orders were brought together where the soil and situation were suitable for them; and, where not so, they were detached to a more congenial situation. Single species of some genera were also removed into more suitable soil, until we secured a duplicate plant, which was put in its proper place.
  
  The plants made but little progress in growth the first season, but they have grown freely every year since. The whole arboretum is dug over every spring, and kept deeply hoed during summer. The chief nursery plants intermixed were laurels, spruce firs, and free-growing salixes; and these, whenever they got too close to the specimens, were cut out, so as to allow the specimen plants room, and a free circulation of air on every side.
  
  [There follows a table of "the heights attained by a few of the trees, by actual measurement".]
  
  The American ground was also trenched over in the same manner as the arboretum. It had formerly, judging from appearances, been a drained morass, consisting of a close sour bog-earth, that would have required turning over and separating several times to have sweetened it. It was, however, only turned over once, and afterwards some of the light sandy loam from the banks was dug in, to keep it from settling too close. It now grows most of the bog plants very well.
  
  Birmingham Botanic Garden, July 16 1839.
  
  [Ibid (October 1839).]

The Birmingham Botanical Gardens endure to this day at Westbourne Road, Edgbaston. Often described as a "Victorian garden", it was (as we have seen) actually established in the reigns of Kings George IV and William IV. It is still owned and operated by the successor to the original Birmingham Horticultural Society, and is well worth a visit by all accounts. So get your dancing pumps on and get down there — you might bump into the "Brummie Mummy"!

Researched and written by my dear friend the Thylacine...published with his love, and fondness for exiled Brummies everywhere...