One of the last entertainments at Ranelagh was the Installation Ball of the Knights of the Bath in 1803; and a few years afterwards all trace of Ranelagh House, the Rotunda, and even the Garden was gone. The ground reverted to Chelsea Hospital, and not a vestige of the former glories is left. The pleasant shady walks and undulating lawns on the site, bear no resemblance to the lines of the former gardens, and only some of the older trees can have been there when Lord Chesterfield and Walpole were paying it daily visits.

The most important of Chelsea gardens, and one of the most interesting in England, is the Physic Garden, which lies between the Embankment and Queen’s Road, now called Royal Hospital Road. The Garden, both horticulturally, botanically, and historically, has claims on every Londoner. England was much behind the rest of Europe in starting botanic gardens. That of Padua, begun in 1545, was the first on the Continent, and it was nearly a hundred years later before any were attempted in this country. Oxford led the way in 1632, and the Chelsea one followed in 1673. Its formation was due to the Apothecaries’ Company, and its first object the study of medicinal herbs. In those days botany and medicine were closely entwined. Every botanical and horticultural work was occupied with the virtues and properties of plants, far more than their structural peculiarities, or their beauties of form or growth. Gerard, Johnson, and less well-known botanists, were herbalists and apothecaries, so it was only natural that the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries should be the founders of a garden. It was not the first of its kind in London, but it ranks now as the second oldest in England, as its predecessors in London, such as Gerard’s Garden in Holborn, and the Tradescants in Lambeth, have long since passed away. It probably, moreover, embodies the earlier one at Westminster, which was under the care of Hugh Morgan, said by his contemporaries to be a very skilful botanist. The Westminster Garden seems to have been still flourishing when the Apothecaries started theirs in Chelsea, but three years later it was bought by them, one of the conditions of sale being that the plants might be moved to Chelsea. The land in Chelsea was leased from Lord Cheyne. By the time the lease had expired, Sir Hans Sloane was owner of the property, having purchased it from Lord Cheyne in 1712. He granted the land to the Apothecaries’ Company on a yearly rent of £5, on condition that it should always be maintained as a Physic Garden, and certain other conditions, such as supplying a number of specimens to the Royal Society. The deed of gift further provided that should the Apothecaries not continue to fulfil their obligation, the Garden should be held in trust by the Royal Society, and should they not wish to take it over, by the College of Physicians. It was acting in conformity with these wishes, that, when the Apothecaries ceased to desire to maintain it, the Charity Commissioners, in 1898, established a scheme for the management of the Garden: £800 towards its maintenance was provided by the London Parochial Charities, who became trustees of the Garden, and £150 by the Treasury. A committee was appointed to manage the Garden, and see that it fulfilled the founder’s intentions. The original societies mentioned by Sir Hans Sloane, the Treasury, the London County Council, and other modern bodies each nominate one representative on the board of management, and the trustees appoint nine. It has been worked under this scheme since May 1899. The buildings and green-houses, which were tumbling down, have been rebuilt, and now include up-to-date conveniences for growing and rearing plants, and a well-fitted laboratory and lecture room. The Garden is certainly now fulfilling the purposes for which it was founded. It has proved to be of the greatest use to the students of the Royal College of Science, and members of schools and polytechnics. Cut specimens, for demonstration at lectures, are sent out in quantities during the summer, often as many as 750 in a day. Students and teachers have admission to the Garden, and the numbers who come (nearly 3000 is the average annual attendance) show it is appreciated. Lectures on advanced botany have been attended by an average of seventy students, and research experiments are carried on in the laboratory. Seeds are exchanged with botanical gardens all over the world, to the extent of over a thousand packets in a year. In this it is carrying on a very early tradition, as seeds were exchanged with the University of Leyden in 1682, after Dr. Herman, from that city, had visited Chelsea.

Even in its early days the Apothecaries found the Garden expensive to keep up. When in 1685 it cost them £130, besides the Curator’s salary, they made an arrangement, by which they paid him £100 a year, out of which he had to keep up the Garden, and was allowed to sell the plants. Watt was the first Curator under this new plan, and Doody, a botanist of some standing who succeeded him, was under the same conditions. Philip Miller was appointed Curator, after the land had been given by Sir Hans Sloane, and other well-known men have been connected with it. After 1724, besides the Curator, a “Præfectus Horti,” or Director, was appointed to visit and inspect the Garden, and report on its condition to the Company. Sometimes there was a little rivalry between the two, and at one time this occasioned two lists of the plants contained in the Garden being published, one by Isaac Rand, the other by Philip Miller. Among the famous names in botany or horticulture connected with the Garden are Dr. Dale, Mrs. Elizabeth Blackwell, James Sherard and his brother William, Joseph Millar, William Curtis, Forsyth, Robert Fortune and Dr. Lindley, and Nathaniel Ward, the inventor of “Wardian Cases.” But of all the Curators, Philip Miller was one of the most eminent, and did most for the Garden. His Dictionary was for years the standard work on horticulture, and went through numerous editions and translations. He published a catalogue of plants in the Physic Garden in 1730. The last “Præfectus Horti” was Lindley, who held the office from 1835 to 1853. During that time the expenses were getting too heavy for the Society, and after his death no successor was appointed. Thomas Moore, who was co-editor with Lindley of the well-known “Treasury of Botany,” and author of several works on British ferns, continued alone as Curator. He held the office from 1848 to 1887. During his later years the Garden gradually declined for want of funds, and after his death no new appointment was made by the Apothecaries, and a labourer looked after the grounds. With the advent of the new authority and great expansion of work, the office was once more bestowed on a competent man, William Hales, the present Curator, who ably maintains the old traditions of the garden.

One of the institutions of early days which has had to be discontinued was the “herborising.” Expeditions in search of herbs were undertaken by the students, in company of their teacher, in the neighbourhood. After 1834, owing to the spread of London, these excursions had to be abandoned.

The famous cedars were planted in Watt’s time, and from contemporary references to them, there seems no doubt that they were the first to be grown in England. John Evelyn in his “Sylva” in 1663, writing of the cedar, says, “Why should it not thrive in Old England?” and Ray is astonished in 1684 to see the young trees flourishing at Chelsea without protection. They are shown in a plan of the Garden in 1753 (the year of Sir Hans Sloane’s death) at the four corners of a pond, which no longer remains in the same position. Eighteen years later the two furthest from the river were cut down (1771), “being in a decayed state” (and no wonder) from the rough usage they had been subjected to. The timber, 133¾ feet, was sold at 2s. 8d. a foot, and, together with the branches, the trees fetched £23, 9s. 8d. The two specimens nearest the river were for nearly a hundred years a conspicuous object, although much injured by snow in 1809. By 1871, only one remained, and, in a report of the Garden seven years later, it was said to be in a “dying condition.” At the time the new Management Committee came into office, that one was quite dead. They left the tree standing until the fungi on it became a danger to the rest of the trees in the Garden, when most reluctantly it was felled in March 1904, all the sound parts of the timber being carefully preserved. Miller gives a good account of them in his time. “The four trees,” he writes, “(which as I have been credibly informed) were planted there in the year 1683, and at that time were not above three feet high; two of which Trees are at this time (viz. 1757) upwards of eleven feet and a Half in girt, at two Feet above ground, and thereby afford a goodly shade in the hotest Season of the Year.” He goes on to point out that they were planted so near the pond, which was bricked up to within two feet of them, that the roots could not spread on one side. Whether the water was good for them he is not sure, but feels certain it was injurious to cramp the roots. The two specimens nearest the green-house had had some of their branches lopped off, to prevent their shading the grass, and suffered in consequence. Though one remained for nearly 150 years after Miller gave these measurements, it was only 13 feet round the trunk at the base when it was felled, and was so completely rotten it must soon have fallen. Miller records that three of the trees began producing cones about 1732, and that in his time the seeds ripened, and germinated freely, so it is probable that many plants in England are descendants of the Chelsea trees. That these were actually the first to be grown in England there is not much doubt. Evelyn regrets in his “Sylva” the absence of the cedars in England. The only trees which have put forth rival claims to the Chelsea ones are those of Bretby and Enfield. The Bretby one is undoubtedly very old, but there is no early reference to it in histories which mention the Enfield trees, and the famous one at Hendon, traditionally planted by Queen Elizabeth and blown down in 1779, and a few others; and there is no contemporary evidence of the date of its planting to warrant the assumption that it was before 1683. The Enfield tree in the garden of Robert Uvedale was said, in 1823, by Henry Phillips, to be about 156 years old, therefore older than the Chelsea ones by some six years; but there is no evidence to corroborate this. When Gibson describes the Garden in 1691, he makes no mention of it, and it seems unlikely he would have omitted such an important tree. There exists much correspondence with Uvedale and botanists of his time, but in none of the letters or early notices is the cedar mentioned before Ray’s note of the Chelsea trees, or even referred to as the first planted in England, so it seems the Chelsea trees’ claim to be the first is fairly established.

The oriental plane, which fell just as it was going to be taken down in 1904, was one of the finest in London, planted by Philip Miller, and is quoted by Loudon, in 1837, as then 115 feet high. Some of the other famous trees have also died, such as the cork trees and paper mulberries; but some have been more fortunate, and are among the oldest of their kind in England. The Koelreuteria paniculata is probably the finest in this country, and the other old trees which were noted as being particularly fine specimens in 1813 or 1820, and which are still alive, are Diospyros Virginiana, the Persimmon or Virginian date plum, the Quercus ilex, black walnut, mulberry, and Styrax officinale. Rhus juglandifolia, which grows by the wall, was probably planted when introduced from Nepaul in 1823. The wistaria and pomegranate are old and still flourishing, and young plants of the trees once famous in the Garden are doing well. The amount of attention the novelties in the Physic Garden used to attract is well shown by the spurious translation of De Sorbière’s travels. The little book, published in 1698, purported to be a translation of De Sorbière, but was really an original skit. The writer pretends De Sorbière visited the Garden, and reported a delightful series of imaginary flowers. “I was at Chelsey, where I took particular notice of the plants in the Green House at that time, as Urtica male oleus Japoniæ, the stinking nettle of Japan; Goosberia sterelis Armenia, the Armenian gooseberry bush that bears no fruit (this had been potted thirty years); Brambelia fructificans Laplandiæ, or the Blooming Bramble of Lapland; with a hundred other curious plants, and a particular Collection of Briars and Thorns, which were some part of the curse of the Creation.” That it was worth while laughing at the Garden in a popular skit, shows what an important position it had taken. The green-houses were among the earliest attempted, and many scientific visitors describe their plans and arrangements. They were rebuilt at great cost in 1732. The statue to Sir Hans Sloane, by Michael Rysbrach, stood in a niche in the green-house wall. It was moved to the centre of the Garden in 1751, where it still stands. The Garden was honoured by a visit from the great Linnæus in 1736, and he noted in his diary: “Miller of Chelsea permitted me to collect many plants in the Garden, and gave me several dried specimens collected in South America.” Among the valuable bequests to the Garden were collections of dried plants, now in the British Museum of Natural History, and a library left by Dr. Dale in 1739, on condition that “suitable and proper conveniences” were made for them at the Physic Garden. They should be there still, and the new buildings are eminently suited for their reception; and their use to students would be very great, now that the Garden is well equipped for supplying all the requirements for the modern teaching of botany.

Before quitting these gardens of historic interest, there is one which must not be forgotten, although its former charms have vanished, and it can no longer claim such botanical curiosities as the Chelsea Physic Garden—that is, the remains of John Evelyn’s Garden of Sayes Court. The Garden is now enjoyed by numbers in that crowded district of Deptford, through the kindness of Mr. Evelyn, the descendant of the famous diarist, John Evelyn, who keeps it up as well as opens it to the public. The Manor of Deptford was retained by the Crown in James I.’s time, and Sayes Court was leased to Christopher Browne, the grandfather of Sir Richard Browne, whose only daughter and heiress John Evelyn married. After his wife had succeeded to the property, and they had lived there some years and made the Garden, John Evelyn purchased the freehold land from Charles II. The delight he took in his garden, how he exchanged seeds and plants, imported rare specimens from abroad, through his many friends, and grew them with success, is well known. The ruthless way his treasures were treated by Peter the Great was a sore trial to Evelyn. The Czar amused himself, among other acts of vandalism, by being wheeled about the beds and hedges in a wheelbarrow. The holly hedge, even, he partially destroyed. In writing of the merits of holly in his “Sylva,” Evelyn says of this one: “Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind, than an impregnable Hedge a hundred and sixty feet in length, and seven feet high, and five in diameter, which I can shew in my poor Gardens at any time of the year, glittering with its armed and vernish’d leaves? the taller Standards at orderly distances blushing with their natural Corall. It mocks at the rudest assaults of the Weather, Beasts, and Hedgebreakers.” This hedge has long since departed, but young hollies, planted in groups on the same part of the Garden, keep up the old associations. One wing of the house is standing, and is at present used as a school. The walled garden on the south side is still there, and on the north a wide terrace walk, with a straight grass lawn with large beds, is in keeping with the old place. But instead of the views over the river, and the Garden descending to the water’s edge, there is a high rampart of the buildings of the Foreign Cattle Market, from whence the sounds of lowing oxen mingle with the din of streets which close round the Garden on the three other sides. In spite of these drawbacks, it is delightful to know, that the surviving portion of the once-beautiful Garden is fulfilling a want among the poor in a way that would have appealed to the generous and kind-hearted author.

These are some of the chief gardens of historic interest, but it by no means exhausts the list of the smaller ones rich in associations, green courts attached to schools, almshouses, hospitals, or such-like, which are hidden away in unexpected corners throughout London.