UK: 1870 – London Gardens on a Rooftops
“Nowhere do little gardens look more fresh than on the roofs of houses.”
Newspaper Archives
The Graphic
09 Apr 1870
Excerpt:
But even in the midst of town the tenants of only a room or two manage, if they are well-ordered persons, to provide themselves with a substitute for pleasure grounds which to some extent answer the purpose. They may manage at least a box on the window-ledge and a few plants in pots, which give them something to see besides brick and mortar, and in tending them a task not associated with toil.
If they live sufficiently high they may have an approach to a real garden – on the tiles – like the gentleman in our illustration, who evidently finds as pleasure among his few flowers as any rich man making a tour through his conservatories. And it is wonderful how flowers flourish among chimney-pots.
The idea that smoke dulls or destroys them is delusion; nowhere do little gardens look more fresh than on the roofs of houses. The plants may want a little dusting occasionally, for “blacks” will be blacks and insist upon settling somewhere; but the smoke itself is surely not injurious. Is it not, in the form of tobacco-smoke recommended in conservatories, where “weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot,” the former in the mouth of young men who nobly sacrifice themselves to the useful end?
The smoke is supposed to keep off insects, and this, it may be supposed, is one reason why vegetation flourishes on roofs. As for the “blacks” they are a little infliction in place of the insects, provided by Nature with her proverbial jealousy of letting anybody get the better of her.
As the law of England will not allow a man to profit by his own wrong, so the law of Nature never permits him to gain an advantage from a visitation which is intended to be a nuisance. Thus it is that the smoke which keeps off the insects brings the “blacks;” in accordance, as we need scarcely remind the intelligent reader, with the great principle of compensation which governs the universe.
From the universe to the “flats” in Victoria Street is but one step. A large number of houses in London are being built upon the same plan; and as these extend, gardens upon the surface of the earth must proportionately disappear. But much is being done in the way of what may be called mural floriculture; and notable in the great “flat” district of Pimlico, gardens upon roofs, gardens in windows, and gardens in glass cases, abound.
Conservatories in particular have become very popular, not only in large but in small houses. Let us hope they will increase and prosper; for they are a social blessing in a large city, and the most luxurious form of a London garden.
