AMONG OUR G 



NEIG1B01S 



THE BOGIES OF PREPARATION 



AS ONE reads the conventional books and papers on 

 /\ garden practice there grows up an appalling specta- 



/ \ cle of precision and definite formulas in the handling 



I % and growing of particular plants. That, unques- 

 "^ "■" tionably, has done much to suppress the activities 

 of the average would-be gardener. Nearly all the writers on 

 practical gardening have approached the subject from their 

 own view-point and assuming that others have at their command 

 an abundant supply of different kinds of available soil have 

 dictatorially laid down proportions and quantities for this, that, 

 and the other crop so that primary steps of cultivation bore 

 no inconsiderable resemblance to a physician's prescription for 

 the compounding of drugs. 



It is perhaps natural, certainly excusable, that the skilled 

 technician should interpret himself in the terms of perfection; 

 but it is a mistake not, at the same time, to state that these 

 things, though the most desirable, are not pre-requisite essentials 

 to success. Besides, success may be of degrees, and the indivi- 

 dual gardener is usually satisfied with an average result rather 

 than perfection of exhibition standard. 



Then again, convention and rule-of-thumb repetition of stereo- 

 typed formulas all come easily and so few actually speak from 

 the experience of trial and observation. This was forcibly 

 brought out in one of the articles on Rose growing in the March 

 Garden Magazine. Mr. McFarland there had the temerity 

 to hold up to question the time-honored prescription of extra 

 deep soil preparation for the growing of Roses — the prescrip- 

 tion that has been talked about and written about in the face 

 of the very obvious fact that hundreds of people are growing 

 Roses successfully, or at all events successfully enough for 

 their personal needs, without all the such laborious and costly 

 preparation called for by the conventions. 



This article has awakened a responsive chord in several quar- 

 ters and one reader of recognized standing in the horticultural 

 world writes: " I have long been half convinced of the sound- 

 ness of Mr. McFarland's philosophy, and that the three foot rule 

 for Rose soil preparation was largely bunk — yet, notwithstand- 

 ing, I have gone on and on teaching my students the same old 

 stuff." And a good many other readers have perhaps them- 

 selves awakened to the realization that for the first time they 

 were achieving success along unconventional lines and were do- 

 ing this without knowing it. Without realizing the wherefore, 

 they still stood appalled at any innovations because in the 

 books they were told they were to have this, that, or the other 

 requirements as a matter of dire necessity before the cultivation 

 of a particular plant could be attempted. 



Unquestionably, we have been binding ourselves with fetters 

 of convention in gardening as well as in other things, afraid to 

 be original or not capable of thinking for ourselves, and yet 

 it is the individual's own course of progress that holds the great- 

 est opportunity for future possibilities. What a lot of things we 



know or imagine we know because we have heard them repeated 

 over and over again, which, when put to the test, are 

 found to be not so! In this respect gardening is a fine discipline 

 for the mind and the soul, not that it is an eternal struggle 

 against adversity as one horticultural divine has expressed, and 

 therefore a most pious occupation, but that it does offer the 

 greatest field for the reflective intellect and at the same time 

 mental and physical recreation. To the inquiring mind, garden- 

 ing is full of fascinating, broadening possibilities, ever and anon 

 returning new surprises in exchange for the inquirer's enthusiasm. 

 One man defying all the laws plants Roses and gets good blooms; 

 another plants bulbs "too late" and harvests flowers; the third, 

 ignoring the instructions of the planting tables, plants deeply 

 because experience has told him that otherwise his plants blow 

 over; and so on. Not that the table was wrong, but tables can 

 after all only express an individual experience and there is 

 nothing so certain as the uncertainty of certain certainties of 

 gardening. 



And so among the gardeners there is a pooling of human ex- 

 perience and interchange of ideas that is pleasing to the reflec- 

 tive and inspiring to the prospective, and where gardeners meet 

 together they chat in friendly interchange of thought as "in 

 after dinner talk across the walnuts and the wine." And so in 

 friendliness the neighbors chat and in their confidences contri- 

 bute to the sum of knowledge. The Garden Magazine wel- 

 comes in this particular number such amicable reciprocity of 

 experience among the neighbors and takes pleasure in featuring 

 it through several pages of the issue. 



PLANT QUARANTINE AGAIN 



THE further postponement of the "conference on plant 

 quarantine" called by the Federal Horticultural Board until 

 May 15th still leaves time for our readers to express themselves 

 to the Secretary of Agriculture, and to their representatives in 

 Congress. Objection is not to a reasonable quarantine against 

 actual menace of disease or injurious insects, but to the attitude 

 of the Federal Horticultural Board in abrogating to itself the 

 right to determine (as a part of quarantine regulation) what 

 particular kind of plant, and even what varieties of a given plant 

 may be "necessary"' for the trade of the country. 



It is not a reasonable quarantine when an office of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture dictates the kind of plant and quan- 

 tity of a particular variety, even, that shall be admitted quite 

 regardless of the question of disease menace. Readers of the 

 Garden Magazine should also bear in mind that the Board's 

 Chairman has definitely asserted that the mere adornment of 

 private estates is not sufficient use of plants to justify their in- 

 troduction. 



There is further evidence, too, that other officials of the De- 

 partment of Agriculture are looking to the imposition of further 

 restrictions; indeed, speaking before the Society of American 

 Florists at the annual convention last August, the Horticulturist 



195 



