CHINESE GARDENING. 



INTENSIVE GARDENING AMONG THE CELESTIALS 



GARDENS of the Middle 

 Flowery Kingdom are of less 

 importance than its garden- 

 ing. China is a vast garden, 

 and so appears to the eye, 

 the landscape containing no 

 meadows o r pastures or 

 fences or hedgerows. The 



plots of land are treeless, but broken by raised 

 pathways in which many trees are seen growing, 

 and scattered here and there are pleasant villages 

 of whitewashed houses, prettily embowered. Never- 

 theless, one who knew the country well wrote of it : 

 "Elegance or ornament, orderly arrangement and 

 grandeur of design, cleanliness and comfort, as these 

 terms are applied in Europe, are almost unknown 

 in Chinese houses, cities or gardens." 



There are, indeed, gardens like that owned by a coun- 

 try gentleman of Ningoo, into which one passes from 

 the dwelling rooms of the residence through apparently 

 subterranean passages, revealing here and there courts 

 planted with dwarf trees, and graceful creepers over- 

 hanging little pools— gardens of dwarf trees, vases, or- 

 namented lattices and beautiful shrubs, mingled with 

 winding, rocky passages, in such fashion as to deceive 

 the judgment regarding the extent of the grounds. But 

 even in these the rapid decay of the unsubstantial mason 

 and wood work, unless constantly repaired, soon results 

 in a ruinous appearance. It is strange that in that 

 country where government, customs and the organiza- 

 tion of society are most enduring, villages and cities 

 should be so insignificant, buildings so unsubstantial, 

 and the appearance of everything have a temporary and 

 partially decayed air. For in China it is the method that 

 endures. Its gardening, like its civilization, is less the 

 result of individual enterprise than of a vast accumula- 

 tion of experience obtained by five thousand fairly peace- 

 ful, toilsome years of social and national existence. 



The tools used in cultivating the ground are primitive, 

 the implements of ages past, perhaps ruder than the 

 ploughs and hoes of earliest England ; but the methods 

 of cultivation are, in some regards, in advance of even 

 our own. Perhaps one-fourth of the entire cultivated 

 land is made to produce two crops in the year, a portion 

 of it three crops ; and fallows appear to have been almost 

 if not entirely banished by the careful economy which 

 makes use of all known manures, using even the burnt 

 firecrackers of the feast of lanterns to fertilize the fields, 

 not to speak of less pleasant forms of waste nitrogenous 

 compounds. 



Williams, in his excellent "Middle Kingdom," esti- 



mates that the cultivated land per inhabitant is, in 

 France, \ \ acres; in Holland and in China, i| acres, 

 which the duplication of crops in the latter country may 

 be said to increase to 2| acres. 



Such facts are highly important to a comprehension 

 of the merits and the defects of Chinese gardening, and 

 by their light we are able at once to appreciate what 

 these busy millions of gardeners have accomplished, and 

 also to see wherein they have failed of success in their 

 long ages of industrious toil. 



The country is a vast vegetable garden, and almost 

 every variety of edible vegetable production is in use on 

 Chinese tables. Rice is the staple, and two crops are 

 commonly gathered, after which, in some provinces and 

 near the cities where land is valuable, a winter crop of 

 sweet potatoes, cabbages or turnips is raised upon the 

 rice plots. Apparently the aim of the gardener has been 

 to keep the ground in constant use rather than to obtain 

 a large crop or improved varieties ; for we are told that 

 the Chinese vegetables are usually inferior in size and 

 flavor to those found in our markets. The sweet potato 

 is the common tuber,' and the many sorts of beans hold 

 pre-eminence among the important vegetables, notwith- 

 standing the almost universal use of garlics, onions, 

 leeks, etc. Every growing edible is used for greens : 

 pigweed, purslane, clover, ailanthus, as well as lettuce, 

 spinach, celery, ginger and mustard ; even green ginger 

 is used as a vegetable. The variety of cucurbitaceous 

 plants extends to twenty, and aquatic roots, nelumbium, 

 etc., still further enlarge the list of vegetable dishes. In 

 the Chinese Herbal, kitchen herbs consist of five families, 

 containing 133 species, some parts of each of which are 

 eaten. 



Without attempting in this short paper to enter upon 

 more than the outlines of a subject of so many details, 

 we may turn at once to certain practical lessons to be 

 drawn from China's vast experience in gardening, and 

 in the use of garden products. 



ist. We are told that the Chinese agriculturist man- 

 ures the plant rather than the soil. He obtains his fer- 

 tilizers by making economy of fertilizing compounds a 

 first principle, to the disregard of many other important 

 considerations. Canon Gray tells us that some of the 

 prettiest women he saw in China, each with a flower in 

 her hair, were those engaged in the removal of night soil 

 from the streets. If such a result is desirable, then Chi- 

 nese civilization is as superior as that conceited people 

 claim it to be. 



2d. Chinese success in gardening has given the coun- 

 try its vast multitudes, but has deprived them of cattle, 

 milk and bread. There is said not to be an acre of land 

 sown to grass in all China. If we desire a vast popu- 



