XII. 



STATE AND PROSPECTS OF HORTICULTUEE. 



December, 1861. 



AEETROSPECTIVE glance over the journey we have travelled, 

 is often both instructive and encouraging. We not only learn 

 what we have really accomplished, but we are better able to over- 

 come the obstacles that lie in our onward way, by reviewing the 

 diflBculties already overcome. 



The progress of the last five years in Horticulture, has been a 

 remarkable one in the United States. The rapid increase of popu- 

 lation, and the accumulation of capital, has very naturally led to the 

 multiplication of private gardens and country-seats, and the planting 

 of orchards and market gardens, to an enormous extent. The 

 facility with which every man may acquire land in this country, 

 natuJally leads to the formation of separate and independent homes, 

 and the number of those who are in some degree interested in the 

 culture of the soil is thus every day being added to. The very fact, 

 however, that a large proportion of these little homes are new 

 places, and that the expense of building and establishing them 

 is considerable, prevents their owners from doing much more 

 for the first few years, than to secure the more useful and necessary 

 features of the establishment. Hence, the ornamental still appears 

 neglected in our country homes and gardens, generally, as compared 

 with those of the more civilized countries abroad. The shrubs, and 

 flowers, and vines, that embellish almost every where the rural homes 

 of England, are as yet only rarely seen in this country — ^though in all 

 the older sections of the Union the -taste for ornamental gardening 



