STATE AND PROSPERITY OF HORTICULTURE. 



number mainly by selections from the numerous good native varieties now springing 

 into existence. 



The greatest acquisition to the amateur's fruit garden, within the last few years, 

 has been the cold vinery, — a cheap glass structure by the aid of which, without 

 any fire heat, the finest foreign grapes can be fully ripened, almost to the extreme 

 northern parts of the union. These vineries have astonishingly multiplied within the 

 last four years, so that instead of being confined to the gardens of the very wealthy, they 

 are now to be found in the environs of all our larger towns — and a necessary ac- 

 companiment to every considerable country place. As a matter of luxury, in fruit gar- 

 dening, they perhaps afford more satisfaction and enjoyment than any other single fea- 

 ture whatever, and the annual value of the grapes, even to the market-gardener, is a 

 very satisfactorj- interest on the outlay made in the necessary building. 



Now that the point is well settled that the foreign grapes cannot be successfully 

 grown without the aid of glass, our most enterprising experimentalists are busy with the 

 production of new hybrid varieties — the product of a cross between the former and our 

 native varieties — which shall give us fine flavor and adaptation to open air culture, 

 and some results lately made public, would lead us to the belief that the desidera- 

 tum may soon be attained. In the mean time the native grapes, or at least one va- 

 riety — the Catawba — has taken its rank — no longer disputed — as a fine wine grape — 

 and the hundreds of acres of vineyards which now line the banks of the Ohio, and the 

 rapid sale of their vintages, show conclusively that we can at least make the finest 

 light wines on this side of the Atlantic. 



The progress of the art of gardening in this country, considered merely in a useful 

 point of view, is greatly retarded by the want of some school in which native, or at 

 any rate naturalised ability, could be developed. Almost all the practical gardeners 

 in America, are foreigners — generally either Irish, Scotch, or German. They bring 

 with them much experience from the mother country ; but much of it is of little va- 

 lue in this climate — partly from its great difference to that of the climate of the north 

 of Europe, and partly because they have only learned the routine of practice, and not 

 the principles of the art. Hence we see every day, gardeners, in this country, where 

 the great want is shade from the burning sun — pruning trees and plants to let the sun 

 in, just as they have been used to do in a moist and foggy climate, where the trouble 

 is to get sun enough to ripen either the wood or fruit. It may be safely said, that 

 half the disappointments in our nicer operations of gardening, arise from this cause. 

 It is, of course, only to be remedied in the main, by the dissemination of sufiicient 

 knowledge among the owners of gardens, to enable them to enforce upon the gardener 

 the absolute necessity of remembering that he must change his practice with his coun- 

 try. If, as we have before suggested, some one of our large Horticultural Societies 

 would establish an experimental garden, where emigrant gardeners could labor for a 

 certain time, at a nominal sum, where they could learn the necessary changes demand- 

 ed in the practice by the change of climate, and then go out for higher wages, with 

 the certificate of the society in their pockets, a new era in practical gardening would 

 soon arise. But as yet the Horticultural Societies expend all their energies on annual 



