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AN ISSUE IN ETHICS 



IT IS a pity that issues should elbow their way into the garden, 

 rending its presumptive peace; we say presumptive because 

 every true gardener knows it actually as a place of creative 

 struggle crowned with the tingling joy of achievement, 

 though popular fancy persistently pictures it as steeped in 

 a sort of radiant, slumberous, and permanent quiescence. 



A perturbed query, recently arrived, has set us wondering how 

 gardeners in general solve the problem in question and how 

 visitors to gardens really feel about carrying away with them 

 part of the beauty, possibly at the expense of the portion left 

 behind. Our questioner writes: 



Though a flower garden is the most delightful place in the world, 

 still there will come little perplexing things to mar its pleasure. My 

 garden is small, oneof perennials arranged for continuous blooming, and 

 little picture effects from spring until the autumn. It has also been 

 my pleasure to welcome many visitors and, between my desire to keep 

 my floral pictures perfect and that stern sense of duty toward the visit- 

 ing ones, I have found a problem. Shall I cut and give to those who 

 come to me and deplete my blossom effect, or shall I be selfish? 



At the risk of being relegated to the ranks of the hopelessly 

 unregenerate we venture the opinion that one gardener visiting 

 another gardener derives the greatest amount of satisfaction in 

 the inspection of the actual growing plant, in that particular 

 environment, where most of us prefer it should be left to render 

 its full service for its full life as a vital part of the garden in 

 which it has been set. 



Student visitors coming for purposes of comparison or other 

 specific reasons are manifestly an exception, and the interchange 

 of material in such cases is rather a different matter from the 

 ordinary ruthless culling of blossoms for a few moments' en- 

 joyment. 



On the other hand, there are people who do greatly appre- 

 ciate the gift of flowers though, in fact, they are usually not 

 gardeners themselves or at any rate do not own gardens. 



We admire a painting and the artist comfortably listens with- 

 out any disquieting twinges of conscience, knowing full well 

 that we do not harbor the slightest expectation of profiting by 

 our praise. However generously disposed, he never for a mo- 

 ment dreams of snipping off the bit of color that pleases and 

 presenting it to the appreciative visitor to carry away. 



Gardens, too, are sometimes little masterpieces wrought 

 through long months of careful planning, and doubly precious 

 for their transiency; like masterpieces, too, in that they are 

 never twice the same. It is conceivable that on occasion the 

 higher form of unselfishness, and certainly the more difficult to 

 practise, may be to let one's friends go empty handed and the 

 garden stand untouched to be enjoyed in its beauty and com- 

 pleteness by other friends and every passerby. 



Of course, the obvious practical solution, wherever space 

 permits, is a roomy cutting bed full of all the blossoms people 



usually love, but for those of us who count in inches rather than 

 acres there is no such easy answer. Perhaps our readers, both 

 gardening and garden-less, may throw sufficient light on this 

 nagging little issue in garden ethics, which continually em- 

 barrasses so many of us, to reduce it to a final negligibility. 

 How would you answer this appeal? 



INTO THE OPEN 



ALTHOUGH it may be of small comfort, there is, perhaps, 

 i some satisfaction in learning, over the signature of the 

 Chairman of the Federal Horticultural Board himself, that the 

 "general principle underlying Quarantine 37 is as rapidly as 

 possible to make this country independent of foreign supplies, 

 with the object of ultimately reaching a condition where entry of 

 foreign plants will be limited to new plants and such plants as 

 are not capable of production in the United States." 



This is what many of us have suspected all along and that 

 invoking a Quarantine order was simply camouflage. It has 

 taken the Board a long time to come out into the open with an 

 honest statement of the real purport of its rulings. In a recent 

 statement elsewhere Doctor Marlatt has also declared that 

 "mere adornment of private estates is not a sufficient use of 

 plants to warrant permission to import them by mail or any 

 other way." What in the name of horticulture does Doctor 

 Marlatt think is a "sufficient use" of plants? Is the Board deter- 

 minedly starting out to oppose the adornment of grounds and 

 hamper the development of the aesthetic sense and insist that 

 all planting and cultivation of trees, shrubs, and plants in gen- 

 eral shall be solely utilitarian and for economic necessity? 



The rules imposed by the Board and the restrictions, even 

 when they are making what they are pleased to call "liberal 

 interpretations," are hampering to the action of individuals try- 

 ing to import new plants, and indeed the method is so compli- 

 cated that it is practically impossible for a private individual to 

 import plant material of any sort. Even the dealer, the com- 

 mercial horticulturist, cannot import for re-sale, only for prop- 

 agation, and to guarantee his good faith has to file a bond to 

 the effect that the material is for propagation and will not be 

 distributed for a term of years. Such slight modification is 

 obviously of no benefit to the ordinary individual and, it may 

 be suggested, it is not the intention of the Board that it should 

 be. Indeed the definite attitude of the Board as at present 

 constituted is that it alone, directly or through the Bureau of 

 Plant Industry is to be the sole judge as to what new or scarce 

 things may be imported. Thus the beginning of a dangerous 

 centralization of bureaucratic power in the Bureau of Plant In- 

 dustry of the Department of Agriculture that is un-American in 

 principle. Individual or commercial initiative is prohibited 

 without relation to any possible danger of admission of new in- 

 sects or diseases. No word in the Act of August 20, 19 12, 

 creating the Federal Horticultural Board warrants such action. 



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