AMERICAN VERSl S BRITISH HORTICULTURE. 



great many who have been gardeners, (if we may trust their word for it,) to the Duke 



of , and the Marquis of , but who would make us pity his grace or his lordship, 



if we could believe he ever depended on Paddy for any other exotics than potatoes 

 and cabbages. 



But taking it for granted that our gardeners are wholly foreigners, and mostly 

 British, they all have the disadvantage of coming to us, even the best educated of 

 them, with their practice wholly founded upon a climate the very opposite to ours. 

 Finding how little the "natives" know of their favorite art, and being, therefore, by no 

 means disposed to take advice of them, or unlearn any of their old-world knowledge 

 here, are they not, as a class, placed very much in the condition of the aliens in a for- 

 eign country, we have just alluded to, who refuse, for the most part, either to learn its 

 language, or adapt themselves to the institutions of that country? We think so ; for 

 in fact, no two languages can be more different than the gardening tongues of England 

 and America, The ugly words of English gardening, are damp, ivet, loant of 

 sunshine, canker. Our bugbears are drouth, hot sunshine, great stimulus to 

 growth, and blights and diseases resulting from sudde?i checks. An English gar- 

 dener, therefore, is very naturally taught, as soon as he can lisp, to avoid cool and 

 damp aspects, to nestle like a lizard, on the sunny side of south walls, to be perpetu- 

 ally guarding the roots of plants against wet, and continually opening the heads of 

 his trees and shrubs, by thinning out the branches, to let the light in. He raises even 

 his flower beds, to shed off the too abundant rain ; trains his fruit trees upon trellises, 

 to expose every leaf to the sunshine, and is continually endeavoring to extract " sun- 

 shine from cucumbers," in a climate where nothing grows golden and ripe without coax- 

 ing nature's smiles under glass houses ! 



For theorists, who know little of human nature, it is easy to answer — " well, when 

 British gardeners come to a climate totally different from their own — where sunshine 

 is so plenty that they can raise melons and peaches as eaeily as they once did cauliflow- 

 ers and gooseberries — why, they will open their eyes to such glaring facts, and alter 

 their practice accordingly." Very good reasoning, indeed. But anybody who knows 

 the effect of habit and education on character, knows that it is as difficult for an Irish- 

 man to make due allowance for American sunshine and heat, as for a German to for- 

 get sour-krout, or a Yankee to feel an instinctive reverence for royalty. There is a 

 whole lifetime of education, national habit, daily practice, to overcome, and reason sel- 

 dom has complete sway over the minds of men rather in the habit of practicing a sys- 

 tem, than referring to principles, in their every day labors. 



Rapid as the progress of horticulture is at the present tim.e in the United States, 

 there can be no doubt that it is immensely retarded by this disadvantage, that all our 

 gardeners have been educated in the school of British horticulture. It is their mis- 

 fortune, since they have the constant obstacle to contend,with, of not understanding the 

 necessities of our climate, and therefore endeavoring to carry out a practice admirably 

 well suited where they learned it — but most ill suited to the country where they are to 

 practice it. It is our misfortune, because we suffer doubly by their mistakes — first, in 

 the needless money they spend in their failures — and second, in the discouragement they 



