2 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



find congenial conditions, have become established in those 

 parts where the Himalayan Rhododendrons are happy. 



The richness of the British garden flora is due to the 

 exceptional advantages our climate provides. Fortunately, 

 a love of gardening has for centuries prevailed among the 

 people of this country, and this has led not only to the 

 introduction of plants of all kinds from foreign countries, 

 but also to experiments in their cultivation and their im- 

 provement by cross-breeding and selection. In no genus, 

 except the Rose, has this passion for growing and breeding 

 been so productive of great results as it has in Rhododen- 

 dron. It is difficult to imagine what the gardens and 

 parks of this country were like in winter before the intro- 

 duction of exotic evergreen trees and shrubs. The first of 

 the showy Rhododendrons to be grown in England was 

 R. maximum, which Philip Miller says was first flowered 

 by James Goidon of Mile End in 1756. R. ponticum was 

 introduced a few years later by Conrad Loddiges of 

 Hackney, "who sold the first plant to the Marquis of 

 Rockingham, a noble encourager of botany and gardening." 

 R. caucasicum was introduced in 1803, but never became 

 common. R. catawbiense was not known here until the 

 commencement of the nineteenth century, when the cele- 

 brated traveller-collector, John Fraser, sent it, together with 

 many other North American plants, to his nursery in Sloane 

 Square. According to Loudon, it was " most common " 

 in gardens in 1838. 



The Rhododendron as a garden shrub is therefore a 

 modern creation. Its popularity did not really commence 

 until breeders made use of the Indian species, particularly 

 R. arboreum, and, by crossing it with existing sorts, added 

 variety in flowers and habit to what had previously been bred 

 from the older species, namely, R. ponticum, R. caucasicum, 



