136 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Gone are the huge and more or less complete collections from most, if 

 not actually all, large nurseries, because they are no longer popular in 

 private gardens— Ericas, Cape Pelargonia, Ferns, hard-wooded plants 

 from the Cape and Australia, and many other special things. 



"Bedding-out" is much modified, and the growth of elephantine 

 exhibition plants has nearly ended to-day. Even the so-called " florist's 

 flowers " as florist's flowers are on the wane ; so also with hybrid per- 

 petual or ''show Roses," so called, and many other once popular things. 



Of course these things still exist, and the best of them are often grown 

 far more largely than before, but not for exhibition purposes. In a word, 

 gardening has been, and is, very largely influenced to-day by a deep and 

 healthy and much broader public taste than ever before in our history. 

 Cultivated and artistic people do not like to see show Roses and Chrysan- 

 themums stuck hard and fast into stiff wooden boxes, nor Pansies and 

 Carnations in paper collars to-day. 



We can most of us remember how the late John Gibson, of Battersea 

 Park, modified the badding-out arrangements there by what has since 

 been called sub-tropical gardening. Then we had the still existing change 

 in favour of hardy herbaceous and rock or Alpine flowers. 



The Narcissus hobby, again, has occupied attention for years, and 

 still exists, even if perhaps a little less fervently than a year or two 

 ago. The Iris, the Pa?ony, and the Viola have had and retain popularity, 

 just as did the Auricula, the herbaceous Phlox, the Hollyhock, the 

 Anemone, the Ranunculus, the Pansy, and the florist's Tulip before them. 

 We had hardy wild gardening as an improvement on half-hardy sub- 

 tropical bedding, and now many are practically expressing a taste for 

 flowering trees and shrubs, for bamboos ; indeed, the bamboo garden, or 

 " bamboosery," the pergola, the water-garden for choice coloured Water 

 Lilies and other aquatics, and the moraine bed or border seem present- 

 day rivals of the pinetum and the wire temple rosaries of other days. We 

 have had a Sweet Pea and a Dahlia revival, and now that Daffodils, 

 excepting the best of course, are on the wane, we are to have the Garden 

 Tulip as a coming flower. 



Plants of to-day must be decorative or both beautiful and useful 

 selections, and not merely formal or curious collections, and, as often 

 happened in the past, both difficult and expensive to cultivate. Owners 

 of gardens to-day do not emulate the botanical gardens, as did those at 

 Woburn, (hatsworth, or Knowsley in days agone ; and for this very 

 reason our botanic gardens, with their full collections, hold an interest 

 lor us now that they scarcely ever held since the early history of botanical 

 gardening began. 



Selections useful and beautiful rersus collections curious and rare- 

 arc the order of the day. Very few country gentlemen now ever think of 

 l-lanting a " pinetum," as so many did fifty or more years ago ; and still 

 the best of conifers are sold in much larger numbers to-day than ever 

 before. This eclectic taste is true of other things. As a matter of fact 

 we have to-day better and more catholic tastes at work, and the many 

 have now acquired the taste for planting and gardening formerly confined 

 bo the few. Even the poorest cottagers and allotment labourers to-day 

 may possess a bit of garden if they care to do so. 



