Dwember S, 1867. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTIOULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAKDENEE. 



49t 



aent Mr. Perkins, at Thombnm Hall, a amall quantity of seed 

 of tbia Beet last BpriDg, nud I should like to know bis opinion 

 of it aa an oruamentiil plant in a flower garden. — C. Suoiit, 

 Flixtiiii I'ark, ISuwiaij. 



[Wo Bent the above to Mr. Perkina, and thia ia his reply : — 

 "Imnst say that Mr. Short's Ked Beet exceeded my expec- 

 tations. As a crimson-leaved plant for a long ribbon border it 

 ia most vnliiable. This Beet may be sown in March without 

 any fear of its running to seed, and if protected in severe 

 weather, it soon becomes fit for either the salad bowl or the 

 flower garden. Its habit ia very dwarf, and the leavea hang 

 down 80 as to completely cover the root, which ia a very im- 

 portant characteristic, not only in a flower gardening point of 

 view, but as a Rreat protection from frost, hence its usefulness 

 in a flower garden for the greater part of November. 



" The decorative character of this Beet ia greatly increased 

 when it is grown by the side of Variegated Pelargoniums, Cen- 

 tauroas, and other white-leaved plants. The small leaves of 

 this Beet are also very useful for decorating the dessert, for 

 which purpose I have not heard of their being nsed before. 



" Mr. Kobson, of Linton Pcuk, was, I think, the first to re- 

 commend Beet as an ornamental-leaved plant for the flower 

 garden, and, perhaps, he will inform us whether be still uses 

 it, and if so, whether he ever used the variety in question."] 



FRENCH AND ENGLISH GARDENING. 

 W;: have next (see pages 383, 3S-f), to deal with Mr. Rivers's 

 remarks on French gardening, taking them in detail. We have 

 seen the tendency of bis letter ; we have seen how much he 

 admired the " truths " of the " Londo.v Mahket (taiuienei!," 

 we shall now see what his ideas upon this subject are worth, 

 and what are his claims to pronounce judicially upon it, even if 

 disposed to do so fairly. After ridiculing the various fancy 

 ways of training pursued by the French— remember — I assure 

 the reader that I had praised no fancy mode pursued by them 

 or others — he comes to a definite observation : — 



1. " The cordon system, so much written about, is a very 

 old English system," Mr. Thompson, of Chiswick, having prac- 

 tiaed it for " some forty years past," and " in every good fruit 

 garden in England fruit trees are trained after the same 

 method!" Each of these statements is incorrect. I happened 

 to be at breakfast with one of the best and most respected cul- 

 tivators in the British Isles, and one well acquainted with gar- 

 dening in all parts of the country, when I first saw the number 

 of The Joounal or Uobticultuue containing -Mr. Rivera's 

 article. He read it for me while I breakfasted, and upon 

 coming to this passage well might he exclaim, " What a sweep- 

 ing untruth !" There are only a few j'oung cordons in the 

 Chiswick gardens, the cordon system originated in France, and 

 the system is merely in its infancy in English gardens. 

 To call a Pear tree trained in the usual fashion on a wall 

 a cordon, is absurd. The pinching and pruning are the same, 

 no matter what form the Pear tree may assume ; but the 

 name cordon is only appUed in France to trees kept to a 

 single stem, or with very slight deviations from that form. 

 The palmette Verrier, or any other popular form, may be seen 

 with its branches trained in exactly the same way as the oblique 

 cordons on the wall ; but the cultivator never thinks of apply- 

 ing the term cordon to the larger forms. In fact, the very 

 merits claimed for the system are that by planting trees very 

 closely against a wall or trellis, and confining their energies to 

 a single stem, the wall maybe covered quickly. If the ordinary 

 Pear tree with horizontal branches trained against a wall or 

 espalier be ni cnnlm, where is it called so ia our books ? It is 

 of course no such thing either in France or England. The cor- 

 don system is not of English origin, being known to have existed 

 in France even longer than with " the old farmer in Sussex." 

 For the address of this gentleman I, as well as others of your 

 readers, would feel much obliged. Not that the fact of bis having 

 trees with branches trained in the vase form, or something very 

 like it, and grafted on the Crab, proves that he has had the least 

 to do with the origination of the cordon system, but he is said 

 to have produced such a wonderful result that he must be 

 worthy of a visit. But as his system has little or nothing to do 

 with the one modification of the cordon recommended by me, 

 and absolutely uouo of its advantages, I pass it by without 

 further notice. 



2. Mr. Rivers defines a cordon as " simply a branch or single- 

 stemmed tree with all its young shoots shortened during the 

 Bommer." That is the most correct definition in bis paper, bat 



not quite correct, for yon may see in numerous French gardens 

 the single-stemmed cordon Peach tree with the shoots laid in pre- 

 cisely like the trees with a score of branches. But in a recent 

 number of a contemporary journal Mr. Rivers distinctly saye 

 that this definition (given by an opponent in diecusaing tlus 

 question), " was simply the statement of an error." How does 

 he reconcile the two statements ? How is it possible to arrive 

 at any useful conclusion where such tactics are pursued y Mr. 

 C. Baltot, of Troyes, a distinguished French fruit-grower defines 

 a cordon as a tree reduced to it.'< most simple form — one single 

 stem furnished with little fruiting branches. 



3. In one part of the letter he praises onr English climate, 

 in another he says it is poor compared to that of France. He 

 does this wishing to show that we " are not behind the French 

 so far as our climate will allnw." I say that we are decidedly 

 behind the French in the culture of the Pear tree. The reader 

 may ask, IIow? In the first place, our humbler and lower middle 

 class hardly know v.hat it is to taste a good Pear from one end 

 of the year to the other. In France it is different ; many a poor 

 householder who cultivates his own garden in his spare hours, 

 has a stock of Pears now gradually coming to perfection in his 

 house that a British gardener with half a dozen assistants 

 might well be proud of. With us the knowledge of fruit culture 

 is confined to professional gardeners, and amateurs wealthy or 

 comparatively eo. In France it is not thus; the knowledge 

 of good kinds and their treatment is spread through every class 

 of society to a far greater extent than with us, and I look for- 

 ward to the day when the same knowledge spread among onr 

 people will produce an equally good result. I am told that as 

 good Pears as ever grew are obtained in this country, and that 

 their flavour is superior to those of any other country, and 

 then, perhaps, asked immediately afterwards, " How are we 

 to improve ? Consider our climate." I answer that if one 

 sage individual can grow a good Louise Bonne of Jersey, or 

 any other first-class Pear, there is no reason why one hundred 

 or more individuals in the same neighbourhood may not do 

 the same, and that what we want is an increased knowledge of 

 fruit culture and its advantages among cottagers ; indeed, 

 amongst all classes. There is an enormous class of small ama- 

 teur gardeners in this country who are hardly at present ac- 

 quainted with a good Pear. If this class cultivated that fine 

 fruit as much as they might, and as much as I one day hope to 

 see them do, they would add very much to their own domestic 

 comforts, swell their purses, and benefit the markets by seUing 

 the fruit. 



But Mr. Rivers has been traversing France fifteen times or 

 so during the past thirty years, as he tells us, and though, pre- 

 vious to the present discussion with me, he has always highly 

 praised the French fruit growers, he now takes a very different 

 course, and, perhaps, I shall be told by him, that it is the cli- 

 mate does all this for the French. Therefore, I will quote a 

 letter from a very able English gardener, one who has resided 

 seven years in France, and who was so honourably mentioned 

 in your report of the great French fruit show — Mr. H. Knight, 

 of Pontchartrain. Nobody can be better acquainted with the 

 demerits of French gardening than he if. T'o him is due the 

 honour of showing the French how to cultivate the Vine as it 

 ought to be cultivated, and of making a really first-class garden 

 amongst them. But although he can do most things better 

 than the French, he freely admits that in some things we may 

 well learn a lesson from them, and accordingly adopts any of 

 their plans that seems to be an improvement upon our own. 

 To guard against misunderstanding, I may state that he lives 

 within thirty miles or so of Paris, and in a neighbourhood as 

 cold and harsh as England during the winter and spring 

 months, or more so. In the same neighbourhood I saw the leaves 

 of Magnolia grandiflora turned as brown as dried tobacco by 

 the frost at the cud of last Jlay, and the grower of the Peach 

 in the same region takes about twice as much trouble to pro- 

 tect his trees from frost as we in England generally do. After 

 giving some interesting statistics of the enormous quantities of 

 fruit annually aent to the Paris markets, and stating that 

 Beurri' d'Amanlis had been selling for 2s. a-hundred, and 

 Duchease d'Angonleme for 4) francs the hundred in August, in 

 the small markets near, he proceeds — 



" It is a notable fact, that every Frenchman cats at least a 

 bushel of fruit a-year, while it is as notable that two out of five 

 English rarely see, much less taste, goodfruit of any description. 

 An Apple, Pear, bunch of Grapes, or a handful of Cherries, is 

 eaten daily by every subject of Napoleon III. This 3C.5 lots of 

 fruit multiplied by the millions of population, necessarily 

 gives a total prodigious in itself, apart from the immense quan- 



