JOURNAL 



OF THE 



Royal Horticultural Society. 



SPRING-FLOWERING TREES AND SHRUBS. 



By Mr. W. Goldmng, F.R.H.S. 



[Read May 13, 1890.] 



The subject upon which I have been asked to speak to-clay is 

 of considerable importance in gardening, seeing that hardy tree 

 and shrub growth forms the foundation of all really beautiful 

 gardens and parks. We can hardly imagine what England 

 would be like without the multitude of hardy ornamental trees 

 and shrubs which we have brought from other lands to embellish 

 our garden and park landscapes, and to mask the poverty of our 

 native tree flora. Happily our insular climate is peculiarly 

 suitable for the growth of the vast assemblage of exotic arbores- 

 cent vegetation which we have gathered from every temperate 

 region of the world ; indeed there is probably no other country 

 where in one garden may be grown in the open air the plants 

 from such widely separated countries as Canada and Chili, Japan 

 and New Zealand. 



An English open-air garden, a few acres in extent, may at 

 the present day contain a greater variety of temperate vegetation 

 than can possibly be seen collected in a similar area in any other 

 country, and this is why our park and garden scenery is the 

 admiration, not to say the envy, of all foreign visitors, especially 

 those from the mid- Continent, where the rigorous winters and 

 hot and dry summers are inimical to the well-being of hosts of 

 the beautiful trees and shrubs which we enjoy here, where the 

 atmosphere is perpetually moist and the winters rarely injure 

 even the plants of Japan and New Zealand. 



One would scarcely imagine that the subject upon which 

 I am speaking is so important, considering the little attention 

 that is given to it at the present time. It is, in fact, one 



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