viii PREFACE TO NEW EDITION. 



the botanist for his own work, that is the naming of plants, and 

 also for discovering new species of plants. Botany teaches us the 

 native habitats of some of our most beautiful garden plants, also 

 about the flora of many countries, and can teach us many lessons 

 which can be learnt with great pleasure, but there cannot be 

 any proper system of teaching young men gardening unless they 

 are taught the plants of their own country. When it comes to 

 design and landscape gardening one may learn more in some of 

 the back valleys of the Tyrol and parts of Switzerland than from any 

 book, though books on the flora of countries like our own as to 

 climate may tell us what we want to know about the habitats of the 

 plants and trees we wish to know. 



" Lumping " is a term sometimes used for botanists throwing 

 things together that are distinct in life or cultivation. Botanists 

 often work in herbaria so that things come to- 

 Changing names, gether that in cultivation in the living state are 

 really different. An example of this is placing 

 the Austrian and Corsican pines under one species, whereas in 

 Nature and in cultivation they are clearly distinct in form and 

 stature. In botanical books we frequently find changes of genera 

 made often without much reason. This shows the need for an 

 English name. Not only is it difficult to follow the changes in Latin 

 names in many cases, but these names are also very ugly and 

 awkward, as, for exam pie, pseudo-stuga applied to one of the greatest 

 of trees. 



Botanical books are often empty as regards the garden value of 

 plants. Great works, like those of Don and Miller, afford us no 

 guidance for the garden value. The objection does not apply to 

 the floras of countries which may be rich in plants and trees of value. 



So many things are coming from strange countries to our gardens 



that one is often led to plant shrubs that have but little chance of 



doing well. I thought myself very careful not to 



Ware failures, plant what I did not know to be quite hardy, and 



so came my mistakes with even hardy plants that 



did not flower well. The Rose of Sharon, which is beautiful in 



France and also in our country, I planted a large group of. It 



grew well for many years, but never flowered, and seeing it was 



hopeless, I gave it to a friend in the Thames Valley, where it grew 



