ITS ADVANTAGES 3 



may go into greenhouse after greenhouse and find beautiful 

 and well-grown foliage and flowers, undoubtedly, but all of 

 the same stamp. It is seldom that a new and distinct plant 

 arrests one's steps and arouses one's enthusiasm, and how 

 rarely does one see nowadays the grand specimens of hard- 

 wooded plants which were the pride and glory of a past 

 generation, but which took both time and patience to build 

 up. To-day the gardener's art consists in turning out plants 

 wholesale, and it is not too often that he has any incentive 

 from his employers to rise above it, and truly enough it saves 

 a "power of trouble." The amateur, on the other hand, 

 longs to move out of the common groove, and grudges no 

 trouble, but he taxes the capabilities of his unheated house 

 beyond its reasonable limits, and it fails. Midwinter finds 

 him mourning over half-frozen flowers, which, in the quaint 

 phrase of our forefathers, refuse to " blow," and will scarcely 

 even exist. He also, therefore, denounces his cold greenhouse 

 as a fraud, because he has grown plants in it which cannot 

 thrive in a low temperature, and either practically gives it up 

 or orders a furnace. Thus both professional gardener and 

 untutored amateur agree in condemning the cold greenhouse, 

 though from different points of view. 



Now my plea is not for unheated greenhouses as against 

 hot-houses. We cannot do without the lovely flowers of the 

 tropics the Allamandas and Dipladenias, the Palms, and the 

 Orchids, which are such a delight to all flower-lovers. Let us 

 have these by all means, but all the same we need not over- 

 look the numberless hardier plants, not inferior to them in 

 beauty, which are grateful for the simple shelter of glass, and 

 will give us of their best without the expense and labour 

 involved by an elaborate heating apparatus. Believe me, the 

 gardener's and more especially the amateur gardener's 

 troubles are not at an end when his greenhouse is fully 

 equipped with boiler and quadruple rows of pipes. Let us, 



