DEOUGHT AND GAEDENING. 



217 



of many to-day — there was an interesting discussion in the pages 

 of the Gardeners' Chronicle upon the subject, ** How far does 

 botanical knowledge aid the gardener? " The initial proposi 

 tion was that a plant bears on its surface little that can inform 

 the gardener as to the method of treatment he should adopt in its 

 cultivation, and that botanical knowledge is therefore of little specific 

 advantage to the gardener, who must depend upon his derived know- 

 ledge in cultivation and upon experiment for success. Dr. Masters, 

 summing up the discussion with his characteristic calm outlook, 

 pointed out that belittling of the value of botany to the gardener had 

 its only basis in the confusion of the ideas implied in locality and in 

 habitat — mere place of occurrence of a plant in nature is not of 

 necessity an index of its life-relationships, habitat involves environ- 

 ment ; and he insisted that the more the study of botany brings out 

 an accurate knowledge of the exact relationship of plants to their 

 environment, the more must its findings be to the benefit of horti- 

 culture. 



Time has confirmed his foresight. 



Looking, in the light of the botanical knowledge that has been 

 acquired during the twenty odd years that have elapsed since that 

 discussion, at the examples that were then cited as showing the small 

 value of botanical knowledge to the gardener, it is interesting to find 

 that a large number of them belong to the category of cases that are 

 explicable by reference to physiological drought^ — a condition not then 

 identified. Such puzzles of that time as the presence of the same 

 species on the shore and on the hill-top, the cultivation of epiphytic 

 orchids in a pot with crocks and peat, the growth of the same 

 species in peat and in sand, and many others are now soluble by 

 the application of the conception I have been endeavouring to place 

 before you. 



As it has been in the past so will it be in the future, and with 

 increasingly favourable prospect. 



Now, and for some time past, particular attention has been given 

 by botanists to the study of the relationships of plants to their environ- 

 ment and to the effect of environment upon plants. Ecology, which 

 is the name given to this study of conditions and relationships, is 

 indeed the fashionable phase of botany at the moment, and its 

 importance lies in the hope which it begets of the discovery and 

 scientific definition of the causes which determine the vegetation of 

 the world as we see it at the present day. 



But the gardener is the greatest of all practical ecologists. He is 

 always creating conditions, and his skill in understanding the require- 

 ments of his plants and in fashioning the environment to suit them is 

 the measure of his success. If he constitute them aright the plant 

 responds, otherwise there is disaster. The garden is the Experimental 

 Laboratory of Botany. 



, If I say, as I do, that th© science of Ecology would advance more 

 Tapidly were all its v-otarieis prap.tlcal gardeners, so also I will say 



