CHAP.TEiRjVIII 



SOiQ fcriiai 

 THE HOME NURSERY 



ON the majority of wooded estates throughout the country 

 a home nursery either exists, or has existed in some form or 

 another for many years. It may take the rough-and-ready 

 shape of a patch of ground in a corner of a wood enclosed 

 by a bit of wire netting, and used for three or four years 

 at the longest, or it may consist of the more elaborate kind 

 characterised by intersecting hedges and gravel walks, in 

 which nursery stock has been raised and grown for many 

 years. In the one case we have what is called a temporary 

 nursery, which is generally used to bed out young trees 

 which have been bought in from a public nursery for 

 immediate planting, but for which time was insufficient or 

 weather interfered with the original plan. Such nurseries, 

 of course, are simply a means of keeping alive plants which 

 would otherwise perish, or become useless in the course 

 of the summer, and any ground which can be protected 

 from ground game, and on which rank rubbish can be kept 

 in check, will answer for this purpose. 



But the formation and management of a permanent 

 nursery is a more complicated business, and requires a 

 little more consideration. In the first place, it is necessary 

 to glance at the advantages which are derived from it in 

 the shape of acclimatised or cheaper trees and shrubs, and, 

 in the next, at the trouble and expense of raising seedlings 

 and young plants on a small scale. 



The advantages of a home nursery were probably much 

 greater a hundred years ago than they are to-day. At 

 the former period the number of public nurseries in the 

 country was comparatively small, and those that existed 

 carried on the raising of ordinary forest seedlings on a much 



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