340 JOURNAL OF THE EOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



character which marks him out as a great gardener born, for with a few 

 clever strokes he disentangled from all wherewith it is nowadays con- 

 fused, the true spirit of gardening. It would not be difficult to assign Lord 

 Rosebery his proper niche in the temple of Renaissance design. He 

 would not make a hybridizer, for such who delight in raising curious and 

 diverse plants are those who produce the material wherewith gardens are 

 embellished. " He is a gardener in taste, in sentiment, and appreciation," 

 says a critic. Man as a race is gardener born ; he cannot help himself. 

 From Adam onwards, if in outward bravado he makes a show of scorn of 

 all order and discipline within the garden, or if like the noble lord who 

 was the founder of our canal system, and in his professed subordination 

 of everything to utility, he takes his cane and switches off the heads of 

 the flowers, saying contemptuously, What care I for these gaudy trifles ? 

 the garden instinct will have its revenge. In many parts of the country 

 his canals are about as picturesque as they are useful, and their wealth 

 of flowers in many counties where the meadows dip into their^and fringe 

 them is phenomenal. Mankind, I say, is gardener born ; we cannot 

 help ourselves. We always fall into classification and arrangements 

 and the study as to the sources of things. I do not care if we are 

 only collectors of brass buttons, this principle holds good and we cannot 

 escape from it. 



I say, again, 1 agree with every gardener that the drilling system and 

 classification may be carried too far ; this is the faculty of art, namely, to 

 conceal and tone down any tendency to stiffness and angularity. 



Yet, nevertheless, I would have you remember, good friend, that 

 selectiveness and marshalling of trees and plants after a certain order is 

 what you yourself are engaged in doing during most, if not all, the months 

 of the year. If you have a conservatory you stage the plants and flowers 

 for effect, so it is exactly in the borders and in the shrubberies, and you 

 even try and help Nature sometimes in the woodland effects. Whenever 

 you prune or tie up trees and plants, graft or hybridize, the same process 

 of selectiveness and restraint is being exercised ; and, as we all know, many 

 hybrids get sometimes a Royal Horticultural Society's medal ere we 

 discover that they have not the vigour and hardiness to fill their position. 



It is from the monks and the monasteries that our national traditions 

 of gardening are obtained, and they, as we know, were perfect geniuses in 

 the arts of classification. Is it not said of Adam that one part of his 

 occupation in Eden was to keep it in order ? 



There are certain shrubs, flowers, and trees which become a 

 Renaissance garden, such as the rose, the lily, and possibly the carnation, 

 because they have a certain classic pose and expression. They are the 

 stately standards of refinement. In one or two of the choicest of the 

 Italian gardens there is nothing else in the way of flowers but the rose, 

 the lily, and the geranium, which is there not such a groundling as ours 

 out of doors, and the shrubs are almost exclusively the box and the 

 cypress, orange and myrtle, with infusions of the stately stone pine. 

 Occasionally a deciduous tree and a few of distinctive or variegated foliage 

 are inserted very sparingly, and there is no lack of variety with their 

 coupled shafts, their stately architectural rest-houses, with cool colonnades 

 and fountains. 



