An Environmental History of Wildlife in England 1650-1950

(^130) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
designers like William Andrews Nesfield formal parterres of box became
popular once more. Yet fashions had not quite come full circle: such gardens
were placed, not in walled enclosures, but on low balustraded terraces
affording open views across the park.^91 Their parterres, moreover, were filled
with bedding plants – geraniums, pelargoniums, lobelias, calceolarias and
similar tender exotics, raised in glasshouses or other sheltered locations and
planted out in flamboyant and colourful displays in the summer months.
There were changes, too, in the design of parks. A more diverse planting
pallet was employed, with larger numbers of horse chestnut, lime, and
copper beech and with increasing numbers of exotics like monkey puzzle,
Lombardy poplar, Turkey oak and Wellingtonia.^92
Although Victorian parks and gardens thus boasted large numbers of
introduced aliens, we should not underestimate the importance of these
in the eighteenth century, not so much in the wider parkland as in the
pleasure grounds beside country houses, and in the gardens of fashionable
villas and large suburban houses. Indeed, the eighteenth century saw a
‘positive deluge of new plants’ from America and Asia.^93 This was a period
in which commercial nurseries flourished. In 1700 few had existed outside
the environs of London. By 1800, they were widespread in the provinces,
providing hedging for the new enclosures, trees for the new plantations –
and a wide range of novel ornamentals for gardens.^94 No less than 445
species of tree and shrub are said to have been introduced in the course of
the eighteenth century, including Weymouth pine (1705), Indian bean tree
(1722), weeping willow (1730), pitch pine (1743), ginkgo (1750), tree of
heaven (1751), red maple (1755) and Lombardy poplar (1758).^95 Further
introductions followed in the nineteenth century, as gardens became more
elaborate and diverse and arboretums became popular, including tree fern
(1801), western yellow pine (1826), Douglas fir (1826), grand fir (1830),
noble fir (1831), sitka spruce (1831), lodgepole pine (1831), Monterey pine
(1833), Wellingtonia (1853), Lawson cypress (1854) and Japonica (1869).
In addition, there was a vast range of new herbaceous plants, including
ceanothus, pyrethrum, yarrow, michaelmas daisy, annual and perennial
phlox, the belladonna lily, the arum lily, gypsophilla, as well as the verbenas,
calceolarias, petunias, and pelargoniums destined for parterres, all of which
joined the accumulated ranks of exotic flowers introduced in previous
centuries.^96 We have insufficient evidence to evaluate the environmental
impact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pleasure grounds and gardens,
so filled with exotic plants. Some of the introduced species – like Michaelmas
daisy and Phlox – produced large amounts of nectar, and would thus have
benefited invertebrates. But many probably provided limited sustenance,
while the manicured character of prosperous grounds may have ensured
restricted opportunities for indigenous flora, or fauna, to establish themselves.
This said, as we shall see, the gardens of the later nineteenth and twentieth
centuries unquestionably provided a wealth of niches, so we should perhaps
be cautious here.