16 
ON PRUNING AND TRAINING PLANTS TO FORM STANDARDS. 
means of awakening the love of novelty, it actually becomes, in some instances, 
highly advisable in an ornamental point of view. A standard plant is emphatically 
a beautiful object, if its due proportions be well preserved. It is only when these 
are violated — a thing which, unfortunately, too often happens — that it becomes a 
kind of deformity. It is impossible to give rules for preserving its symmetry. 
The eye will be the best judge ; the main features to regulate being the keeping a 
proper balance between the length and thickness of the stem, and the size of the 
head. 
We may turn aside here for a moment to observe that the ordinary method of 
trimming the heads of standards, so as to keep the shoots within very narrow 
limits, and to give them all the native inclination upwards, is extremely different 
from that which we have in view in advocating the preparation of plants after the 
standard fashion. It is by crippling and confining them in this manner that they 
are converted into the insipid and characterless things, against which the strongest 
objections would lie. Our way of training them, however, would be to give the 
principal shoots greater freedom; to let them grow to a greater length; and then, by 
the weight of the branches, or by the assistance of strings to confine them down- 
wards, they would take a partially drooping direction, and assume an appearance 
which would be the very perfection of gracefulness. 
Beyond the ornamental character thus given to standards, it would be advan- 
tageous to bring many plants to such a shape, for other reasons. Some species, 
which grow near the ground, would, by being elevated on a stem, be kept 
from getting soiled by rain, from becoming the receptacles of dead leaves, from 
having their branches broken by persons clearing the ground amongst them, 
or from being cut by the scythe where they are growing on lawns. Others, 
whose flowers are pendulous, and which would have them almost hidden, but for 
some such contrivance, would be brought freely into notice as standards. Another 
class, again, with blossoms of a comparatively small but beautiful description, 
especially those which are delicately pencilled, or which possess any sort of 
fragrance, would, by being trained into standards, invite a closer observation, or a 
more regaling enjoyment of their odours. A fourth group, of only annual 
duration, might in this way be turned almost into perennials. 
For these and several similar purposes, the process of making dwarf plants into 
standards would be exceedingly useful. And, as is proved by illustrations which 
must be known to every cultivator, there is hardly a tribe of plants, which may 
not be more or less subjected to the operation. 
There are two plans by which humble and bushy plants may be turned into 
standards ; and these are grafting on standard stocks, and pruning. The last 
of them is the most simple and natural, the former being ofttimes the most conve- 
nient and expeditious. 
To convert a plant into a standard by pruning, it is requisite that the knife be 
applied from the earliest period of the plant'^s growth, or at least from the time of 
