2 DWABF AND 8L0W-GB0WING CONIFERS 



mutilated branch stumps in silent protest. The dwarf 

 conifer was practically never found in such gardens; it 

 was too rarely found in large pleasure-grounds, and even 

 there was frequently ill-placed. 



The few old specimens that still exist are nearly all 

 planted on lawns. There seems to have been a period 

 in British gardening — somewhere about 1850 — when there 

 was a growing demand for dwarf conifers for lawn planting. 

 On the Continent there has always been a small but steady 

 demand for pygmy trees, but in Great Britain it was a 

 passing phase. 



Loudon, in 1838, describes but ten dwarf conifers in 

 cultivation; Carriere (1855-67) described about forty. 

 They must have reached the high-water mark of their 

 popularity early in the seventies, for in contemporary 

 catalogues of the Lawson Nursery of Edinburgh and of 

 Smith of Worcester one finds as many as forty-one dwarf 

 forms of such for sale. In those days, when the dwarf 

 forms were few in number, the nurserymen who owned 

 them raised their own stock and one could get them true 

 to name. Then followed a period of depression. The 

 number of new arborescent species increased and, possibly 

 for this reason, less attention was paid to garden forms. 

 At any rate, the dwarf forms began to disappear from 

 nurserymen's catalogues; year by year their numbers 

 decreased. Nurseries changed hands, and the old speci- 

 men " mother plants " were lost sight of, or thrown 

 out, until at last, in Great Britain, only in one or two old 

 established nurseries, such as those of Veitch and Antony 

 Waterer, could one still find original specimens. On the 

 Continent most of the forms described by Carriere remained 

 in cultivation, and were found in nurseries, such as those of 

 Simon-Louis in Metz and Transon Freres in Orleans ; but, 

 generally, the cultivation of dwarf conifers had reached 

 its lowest ebb, when the growing popularity of Rock 

 Gardens revived it. 



These pygmy conifers were just what was required to 



