368 Landscape Gardening 



ous in such things," - by all means, we say to the nursery- 

 man, encourage him to plant at any rate and all rates. 



If I hat man's tree turns out to his satisfaction he is an 

 amateur, one only beginning to pick the shell, to be sure, but 

 an amateur full fledged by-and-by. If he once gets a taste 

 for gardening downright - if the flavor of his own rare- 

 ripes touch his palate but once, as something quite differ- 

 ent from what he has always, like a contented, ignorant 

 donkey, bought in the market -- if his Malmaison rose, 

 radiant with the sentiment of the best of French women, and 

 the loveliness of intrinsic bud-beauty once touches his 

 hitherto dull eyes, so that the scales of his blindness to the 

 fact that one rose differs from another, fall off for ever - 

 then we say, thereafter he is one of the nurseryman's best 

 customers. Begging is both too slow and too dependent a 

 position for him and his garden soon fills up by ransacking 

 the nurseryman's catalogues, and it is more likely to be 

 swamped by the myriad of things which he would think 

 very much alike (if he had not bought them by different 

 appellations), than by any empty spaces waiting for the 

 liberality of more enterprising cultivators. 



And thus, if the nurseryman can satisfy himself with our 

 reasoning that he ought not object to the amateur's be- 

 coming a gratuitous distributor of certain plants, we would 

 persuade him for much the same reason, to follow the example 

 himself. Xo person can propagate a tree or plant with so 

 little cost and so much ease as one whose business it is to do 

 so. And we may add, no one is more likely to know the 

 really desirable varieties of trees or plants than he is. No 

 one so well knows as himself that the newest things - - most 

 zealously sought after at high prices - - are by no means those 

 which will give the most permanent satisfaction in a family 

 garden. And accordingly it is almost always the older and 

 well-tried standard trees and plants, those that the nursery- 

 man can best afford to spare, those that he can grow most 

 cheaply, that he would best serve the diffusion of popular 

 taste by distributing gratis. We think it would be best for 

 all parties if the variety were very limited, and we doubt 



