never removed, so I did uot marvel at their unusual breadtli audi 

 height. While the blooming season is over for all but the maxi- 

 mum variety, not a faded bloom or seed-pod did I see anywhere, 

 not one. The laurels now just passed are as clear and free from 

 old flowers and seed vessels as if thex had not flowered at all. 

 Not a lilac panicle going to seed among thousands and thousands 

 of these ea.rlj blooming shrubs. I recalled that a nurseryman 

 had said to a friend of mine only a few days before: "Don't 

 bother cutting away or picking otf these old rhododendron blos- 

 soms, the new growth will force them off." 



Now, this is not so. The new groAvth does not cause them to 

 fall, the tinv new bud under the old one. Here and there some 

 may, but it is not that tiny new bud that is responsible for their 

 falling. So when I saAv this immense massing of all the rarest, 

 beautiful and many hybrid and native rhododendrons stripped 

 clear of any old blossoms I thought, how ill-advised many Ama- 

 teur Gardeners are by professionals. (Of course, whilst the word 

 "professional" sounds rather sonorous, after all it really doesn't 

 mean so very much if you stop to consider its true and real 

 meaning. ) 



Aside from the natural beauty of the Arnold Arboretum, its 

 wonderful collection of trees, shrubs, etc., aside from the fact 

 that the Arnold Arboretum has done so much to add to the beauty 

 of our gardens, our parks and our highways, aside from all this 

 I was deeply impressed by the liberality of space given every 

 growing _thing. The specimens can be examined from all sides; 

 there is ample space to walk all around the smallest and the 

 largest of the specimens. Another , fact markedly apparent,, 

 everything is mulched, gigantic trees as well as miniature heaths. 



I feel there is no subject of greater interest to Amateur Gar- 

 deners and Garden Clubs than the hybrids, the newest discoveries 

 in the plant world, and the week I spent with them at the Arnold 

 Arboretum convinced me of their magnitude, of their importance. 

 I saw hybrids that were unworthy of their parents, and I also saw 

 hybrids presenting such a leap upwards in the scale of beauty 

 that it was scarcely possible to recognize their parents. The old 



