50 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 28, 1888. 



years ago. It had the effect of driving out of cultivation a 

 host of deciduous trees and shrubs of wliich gardeners who 

 were learning their profession at that period never acquired 

 any knowledge ; but, on the other hand, it stimulated 

 botanical exploration and vastly increased our knowledge 

 of one of the most important and valuable families of 

 plants. Had it not been the fashion to plant Conifers in 

 England, it is probable that the Floras of the Californian 

 Sierras, of the Andes, of the mountains of Mexico and 

 Japan, of India and the Caucasus, would not be as well 

 known as they are to-day. Other horticultural fashions have 

 not been as productive of good. The fashion, for example, of 

 massing together largenumbersof a few varieties of tropical 

 or semi-tropical flowering or bright-foliaged plants, known as 

 the " bedding-out system," has little to recommend it from 

 the point of view of the increase of human knowledge. 

 And certainly no horticultural invention has done so much 

 to limit the intelligence and practical skill of gardeners. 

 Not much better has been the extravagant fashion of filling 

 green-houses with what are known as fine-foliaged plants — 

 inhabitants of tropical swamps. These plants rarely have 

 conspicuous flowers, and their ordy interest is found in the 

 curious shapes and markings of their leaves. They 

 have not the graceful habit of many Palms ; they cannot 

 bear the temperature of ordinary conservatories and living- 

 rooms, and can only be enjoyed in the reeking atmosphere 

 of close, damp stoves. But no plants are more easily cul- 

 tivated, and it is not surprising that they are favorites with 

 gardeners trained in the "bedding-out" school — of which the 

 taste for them is the natural outcome — and that they have 

 driven out a multitude of beautiful flowering plants which 

 it taxed the best gardening skill to bring to perfection. 



The fashion for cultivating Orchids is not new. A few 

 species were introduced into English gardens in the second 

 half of the last century, and Orchids have been cultivated 

 in the United States during the past seventy years. The 

 taste for them shows no sign of flagging, but, on the con- 

 trary, has steadily increased, both in this country and in 

 Europe, during the last half-century, and has never been 

 so strong or so general as it is to-day. In the United States 

 especially great progress has been made in the cultivation 

 of these plants in recent years. They now form the prin- 

 cipal attraction at many of our flower-shows, and two or 

 three American collections rank with the finest in the 

 world ; and while as a nation we are 'not yet quite as crazy 

 about Orchids as the English, the crowds which surrounded 

 the tables at an exhibition of Orchids recently held in this 

 city, and the high prices which these flowers bring in our 

 markets, pretty clearly indicate the effect of fashion in 

 horticulture. 



The Orchid fashion has certainly much more to recom- 

 mend it than many fashions of a similar kind. The love 

 for cultivating these plants has done as much as any one 

 single agency to make known the vegetation of the tropical 

 parts of the world ; their flowers, as Darwin taught us, are 

 among the most wonderful of all the creations of Nature in 

 their adaptation of means to ends ; and many of them pos- 

 sess wonderful beauty of color and form. It is a question 

 whether the most beautiful Orchid flower ever produced 

 can equal the beauty and grace of the Poet's Narcissus, 

 which was a favorite garden flower centuries before the first 

 Orchid was cultivated and which will be a favorite centuries 

 after three-quarters of the Orchids which collectors now 

 hold so dear will be found only in their native haunts or 

 in ancient volumes of the Bnlanical Magazine. Yet among 

 the mass of Oichids now cultivated because they are new, 

 or rare, or expensive, or odd, are many of very great 

 oeauty, and these will continue to be cultivated as long as 

 the taste for horticulture lives. And the cultivation of such 

 Orchids will increase in this country as they become better 

 known and as people appreciate how easily they may be 

 grown. The belief is still general here that Orchids are 

 difficult to cultivate and can be made to flourish only in 

 great heat. On the contrary, few plants are more easily grown 

 if attention is given to a few of their simple requirements, and 



many of the finest varieties will thrive only in the low 

 temperature of a cool green-house. Indeed, many Orchids 

 will grow, as an English writer recently said oi PhalcFnopsis, 

 "with the calm complacency of the cabbage." There is, 

 too, a fascination in cultivating these plants which increases 

 with experience. But it must not be forgotten that any 

 fashion, however solid the merits upon which it is founded, 

 may easily be carried too far, and that there is great danger 

 that this growing love of Orchids may lead to the neglect 

 of other and equally interesting and beautiful plants. A one- 

 sided development is as dangerous in horticulture as in 

 other human pursuits. 



Hardy Shrubs. 



THE true value of hardy deciduous shrubs is not yet 

 appreciated in this country. The climate of the 

 Eastern and Northern States is peculiarly suited to develop, 

 in the highest degree, the beauty of many flowering shrubs 

 and trees. Our intensely hot summers, long, dry autumns, 

 and cold winters ripen the flowering-wood and give re- 

 sults which are quite unknown in countries where the 

 changes of temperature are less marked. 



The development of American gardening has suffered 

 greatly during the last fifty years from attempts to imitate 

 English gardens in their composition. In our efforts to 

 cultivate the Conifers and broad-leaved evergreens which 

 thrive in England, we have overlooked the fact that our 

 climate is not suited, save in exceptional instances, to 

 bring out their beauty, and that it is a climate particularly 

 adapted to deciduous plants. Thoughtful students of the 

 relations between cultivated plants and climate now begin 

 to realize that if we are ever to have in America a dis- 

 tinctive school of gardening, it must be based upon a com- 

 prehensive use of hardy deciduous shrubs. 



These have other qualifications, in addition to their 

 abundant fiowers, to commend them to more general use. 

 They are easily and cheaply raised. They are long-lived 

 and increase in beauty from year to year. Their size 

 adapts them to the small gardens which must always be 

 more common than large ones in this. country. Many de- 

 ciduous shrubs and small trees also have the charm of 

 brilliant autumnal foliage and conspicuous persistent 

 fruits. The variety of such plants which can be made to 

 flourish in our Eastern and Northern gardens is enor- 

 mous. Few persons yet realize what a shrub garden in 

 Eastern America might be made. In such a garden could 

 be gathered the shrubs of Europe and their innumerable 

 varieties, the result of centuries of careful selection and 

 cultivation — for European shrubs flourish here although 

 European trees do not ; and those of northern China and 

 Japan, countries rich in plants of this description, which 

 have already given us some of the most beautiful orna- 

 ments of our gardens — the Forsythias, Deutzias and Wei- 

 gelas, the Flowering Quince, the Crabs and the finest of 

 the Spira-'as. 



Such foreign shrubs — when shrubs are used at all — now 

 beautify our gardens, and American species, although not 

 less beautiful and better suited to our climate, are almost 

 entirely neglected. The Flora of North America is rich in 

 shrubs and shrub-like trees the more general cultivation of 

 which cannot be too strongly urged. So numerous are 

 they and so varied in character and beauty, that gardens 

 planted with them alone — without any admixture of ex- 

 otic material — might be made interesting and charming at 

 every season of the year. \Mrat small trees excel the little 

 known or appreciated American Thorns, beautiful alike in 

 their spring flowers and their autumnal foliage and fruit, or 

 the Shadbush and the Judas Tree V;'hen they enliven in 

 early spring the borders of the leafless forest — the one 

 with white bloom, the other with glowing pink ? No 

 tree is more striking than the Flowering Dogwood when 

 its broad white bracts e.xpand, or more splendid in its au- 

 tumn color. And these would be followed by the Fringe 

 Tree, by the Rattlebox with its branches covered in early 



