PKEFACE. 



ol)servation has proved adapted to our climate. Tlie species and 

 varieties of plants found here most desirable for use or ornament, 

 have been selected and described. This mass of material has been 

 modified and increased by pretty copious garden-notes of my own. 

 Still, it has been my object to make a useful and reliable, rather 

 than an original work. 



Where an author's language suited my 'purpose, it was at once 

 incorporated into the text. If the expression is sometimes changed, 

 it is generally to make it more concise. To save repeated acknow- 

 ledgments and quotation-marks in the text, a list is appended of the 

 authors which occur to me from whom assistance has been derived. 

 The names of those to whom I am most indebted have a star pre^ 

 fixed. 



It was first intended merely to modify an English work — G. W. 

 Johnson's " Kitchen Gardening" — and adapt it to our own cli- 

 mate. Hence, his arrangement of articles in the alphabetical order 

 of their genera is ; adhered to. Plants similar in nature are thus 

 gTOuped together, and some repetition is avoided. But that work 

 not proving so available as expected, and botanical names being- 

 still in a state of change,* not many articles were prepared before 

 I regretted not having followed the common method, which is cer- 

 tainly more convenient for reference to all except botanists. But 

 as the index renders it easy to find any plant by its common name, 

 the arrangement of the articles was of too little importance to be 

 changed at that per^pd. 



The necessity of a Southern work on Gardening is felt by every 

 Horticulturist in our midst. Our seasons difier from those of the 

 Northern States, in heat and dryness, as much as the latter do 

 from those of England. Treatises perfectly adapted to their cli- 

 mate we are obliged to follow very cautiously. English works 

 require the exercise of a stiU greater degree of judgment in the 

 reader, the climate of England being still more cool and humid. 

 Again, our mild winters admit of garden-work nearly every day of 

 the year. All the heavy operations of trenching, manuring, laying 

 out, pruning, and planting trees, shrubs, and hardy ornamental 

 plants, are at that season most conveniently performed. 



* Chervil, for instance, is now Chrerophylum sativum. 



