Cultivation of Flowers. 341 



If not accustomed to flowers, the more delicate and tiny may 

 not be as desirable to cultivate as some of the more showy and 

 conspicuous. In fact, we sometimes think that we, who are ac- 

 customed to their cultivation, make a mistake in devoting our- 

 selves t:> the delicate and exquisitely beautiful, and do not give 

 attention enough to tha cultivation of the coarser and larger va- 

 rieties, such as would be more attractive to those not accustomed 

 to notice and admire flowers. There are a great variety of high 

 colored flowers, which, while not very attractive in thetnselves, 

 when planted in masses, combined with other varieties and colors, 

 produce very beautiful effects in the yard. 



My preference for the location of a flower-garden would be to 

 have it face the s~>uth or southeast, and if it is protectei on the 

 north an! pirtidly on the west, by buildings or tre^s, mum bet- 

 ter success may be had in the cultivation of flowers. We have 

 such high winds, and so frequent, that it is almost absolutely 

 necessiry to have some wind break, as it is termed further west. 



Judging from a paper read at the last meeting of the St. Peters- 

 burg Society of Gardening, the Japanese must be allowed to have 

 distanced us altogether in at least one branch of education. M. 

 Grigroneff tells us, they are all taught gardening in their scboo's, 

 and all have their little plots of ground. They are instructed in 

 practical horticulture and in the artistic arrangement of bouquets, 

 and all classes, from the palace to the cottage, manifest a passion- 

 ate love of such humanizing and healthful occupations. No- 

 where in Europe, we are asmred, are gardens so numerous, or the 

 love of floriculture so extensively developed. One very curious 

 art they seem to have brought to great perfection. Their gardens 

 often being small, and their taste leading them to take pride in 

 the possession of trees of the bigger species, they have gradually 

 developed the art of dwarfing them without in any way sacrificing 

 their general shape and proportion. Father and son and grand- 

 son will grow an oak, for instance, for fifty years or more, and 

 will take means of preventing it ever attaining more than eigh- 

 teen inches or two leet in height, though still presenting all the 

 characteristics of the lull-grown tree in trunk, branch and foliage. 

 Among their family treasures to be handed down from one gen 



