December 23, 1911 



HORTICULTU 1M 



897 



Victor Lemoine 



announcement a Bhori time ago in these columns 

 that the trustees of i he ' etts ] [orticultui 



ciety had awarded the l Medal of 



Honor foi ni year I I 



France, as the person who ha? done the most during the 

 ears to advance the in < hor- 



ticulture in n- broadest sense, brought man) 



-i. m- of approval "f the award that we feel sure 

 our readers will I" 1 interested in Learning more regard- 

 ing the .-i> ments of this great man. For mui 

 the information herein are indebted to our 

 esteemed German contemporary, M oiler'- Deutsche Gart- 

 ner-Zeitung and i" our translator, Sir. Gusts 

 men. Coming as it does through a German medium the 

 unqualified praise and recognition of merit extended to 



ignorant though he may have been of the name 

 of In tor. 



The g world may well be proud of the many 



men n made for themselves an honorable name 



by their diligent work in some particular, circumscribed 



specialty, but Victor l.emoine is the man of all men, 



who hits I,,.,.,, able to master the art of hybridizing in an 



astonishing degree and in so many and widely diversi- 



tied 1 r threescore years he has worked, unos* 



• utatiously ami without boastful claims and furnishing 



a notable i with the vain-glorious and preposter- 



ropaganda put forward in recent years on behalf of 



or operators in this field. 



Very often, indeed, the gardening world could not 



foresee or realize from the modest, brief announcements 



View in tin; Gardens of Victor Lemoine 



Reproduced from Mutter's Deutsche Oartner-Zettung 



a Frenchman by our contemporary on an occasion some 

 four years ago has deeply impressed us (and doubtless 

 many others) with the universality of horticulture and 

 the utter ignoring of political or racial divisions and 

 prejudices which is everywhere characteristic of the true 

 follower of tins, the noblest pursuit in which man can 

 engage. 



Almost sixty years of honorable and highly successful 

 work, in one of the most difficult lines of horticulture, 

 is the record of the subject of our sketch. Since 1852 

 Victor Lemoin oted himself and his time to the 



development of new and useful varieties of the horticul- 

 turists' most cherished subjects. There is no spot on 

 this wide world wherever plants and flowers are raised, 

 where we do not find representatives of Lemoine's hy- 

 brids or introductions ; no florist or gardener, who has 

 not. at one time or another, handled Lemoine's produc- 



of Lemoine's novelties, what treasures were being placed 

 within their reach. Still hale and hearty and laboring 

 as industriously as ever this gTand man at the age of 

 88 continues his loved occupation and it is to be hoped 

 that a life so glorious and useful may be extended for 

 years to come. 



Victor Lemoine was born at Delme (Lorraine), Oct. 

 21, 1823. His ancestors for generations back had been 

 gardeners. After bis college studies at Vic-sur-Seille 

 he devoted several years to traveling and then worked 

 successively for Bauman at Bollweiller (Lorraine), and 

 Louis Van Houtte of Ghent (Belgium), also Miellez of 

 Lille (France), and in 1850 established himself, with 

 small means, as a florist and landscape gardener at Nan- 

 cy (Lorraine). There he was a member of the town 

 council from 1871 to 1888. On June 13, 1885, he was 

 made a knight and on April 3, 1894, an officer of the 



