How to Popularize the Taste for Planting 



whether the distribution of two valuable hardy trees or 

 climbers for five years, or till they became so common all 

 over the surroundings as to make a distinct feature of em- 

 bellishment, would not be more serviceable than dissemi- 

 nating a larger number of species. It may appear to some 

 of our commercial readers an odd recommendation to urge 

 them to give away precisely that which it is their business 

 to sell, but we are not talking at random when we say most 

 confidently that such a course, steadily pursued by ama- 

 teurs and nurserymen throughout the country for ten years, 

 would increase the taste for planting and the demand for 

 trees five hundred fold.* 



The third means is by what the horticultural societies 

 may do. 



\\ e believe there are now about forty horticultural soci- 

 eties in North America. Hitherto they have contented 

 themselves year after year with giving pretty much the 

 same old schedule of premiums for the best cherries, cab- 

 bages, and carnations, all over the country, till the stimulus 

 begins to wear out, somewhat like the effects of opium or 

 tobacco, on confirmed habitues. Let them adopt our 

 scheme of popularizing the taste for horticulture by giving 

 premiums of certain select small assortments of standard 

 fruit trees, ornamental trees, shrubs, and vines (purchased 

 by the society of the nurserymen) to the cultivators of such 

 small gardens, suburban door-yards, or cottage inclosures, 

 within a distance of ten miles round, as the inspecting com- 

 mittee shall decide to be best worthy, by their air of neat- 

 ness, order, and attention, of such premiums. In this way 

 the valuable plants will fall into the right hands, the vendor 

 of trees and plants will be directly the gainer, and the 

 stimulus given to cottage gardens and the spread of the 

 popular taste will be immediate and decided. 



5 Record should be made of the very great influence for good exer- 

 cised by the nurserymen of America during the past 100 years, not only 

 in the particular manner recommended by Mr. Downing, but in many 

 other ways. It need not go unremembered in this connection that Mr. 

 Downing hiinsdf was first of all a nurseryman. - F. A. \V. 



