TREES AND SHRUBS. 
HOW TO TRANSPLANT THEM SUCCESSFULLY. 
THEIR REMOVAL AND RECOVERY NO LONGER A MATTER OF CHANCE AND 
LOSS, BUT ONE OF SCIENCE AND SUCCESS. 
Even ill a moderately well-designed garden how lovely evergreens always look compared with a 
barren, uncultivated rough spot, particularly during the long dreary winter, even to those who 
unfortunately have not a keen taste for gardening, and if well grown all will stand and admire them in 
the spring before leafage becomes general on the deciduous kinds. 
On deciding to have ornamental and beautiful shrubberies, or a fruit garden, all will profit im- 
mensely by perusing, thinking over, and well understanding the following brief extemporaneous address 
given by Mr. H. Canneu., Senr., before the members of the Gardeners’ Association, Bromley, Kent. 
Choosing and ordering from the nurseryman is easy enough, but what I want to show, and what 
all interested in gardening .should wish to know, is how to make a successful transfer of trees from one 
place to another without there being in the spring much difference in their looks, and without dis- 
figurement and vexation. Nurserymen get many angry letters when the trees look bad or die ; none 
when they flourish. Lovely as they may bo when they come in from the nursery, remember they have 
to probably undergo what in the hands of the unskilful workman is next to a killing operation. In my 
opinion there is no branch or operation in gardening which ought to be done with greater human kind of 
feeling, exactness and care, than transplanting, yet no work is commenced or carried on year after year so 
unthoughtfully, or with loss consideration, although vigour of life, or death of our dear proj>erty is wholly 
dependent on our knowledge of the treatment they receive. Here the true 
meaning of the phrase comes in, “Nothing succeeds like success,” and the 
following is how to attain that happy object. The suffering of the plant we 
value so much has never entered the operator’s mind. No one ever stops 
to look or think of the losses in the flow of sap which the plant must sustain 
by being wrenched up and the breaking of roots in taking them up from 
the hard ground, or to say what is wanted and what should be avoided. 
Most people are satisfied and contented so long as they get big long tops 
and a small portion of root, and conclude it is sure to grow, never thinking 
of the une(iual balance between toj) and bottom before and after being 
taken up. This alone often prevents a plant succeeding, and when it 
becomes leafless, or its lovely green foliage turns to a dirty sickly brown, 
then the proprietor feels dissatisfied, and, of course, blames someone. No 
one cares to know how or why it occurs, why it lives, and why it died. 
Strange no one ever asks themselves a common sense question 
respecting them. What caused this plant to die ? There is a reason. Let 
us look at Nature in an ordinary sense manner. Plants, like mankind, 
cannot endure too much hardship or die just when they like, and when 
they do there is certainly something that has brought it about, and that 
cause with the practical thinking mind can very often bo seen pretty 
clearly. A doctor’s character and value are estimated by the family 
exactly by the skill and the amount of common sense that is used and 
adopted in getting the patient well according L) Nature’s laws, so are 
gardeners’ abilities estimated in a similar way; and respecting the getting 
of patients well of whatever may be the matter, the more clearly the 
doctor sees and understands the nature of the case and advises and acts 
accordingly, so will the ailing sooner recover (or the removed tree assume 
its former vigour), and the better character will he obtain in the eyes of 
those who are anxious to see all live happily. The great secret, when a 
patient or plant is undergoing a severe and dangerous operation, is to 
keep up the strength and vigour — lose this and the end is surely near. 
It sliould be remembered there is no twig or leaf — no, not even the smallest 
tendril, but what has its roots supporting it, and exactly vice verscl. 
I ask any practical man interested to stand in front of a tree or 
shrub : tbink of the innumerable little feeding roots penetrating 
and burrow'ing in all directions in the soil during all w'eathers, absorbing 
largo quantities of moisture or food and sending it up to the plant. Think when a powerful digger comes 
and thrusts in a 10-inch steel pronged fork and brings up a good-sized forkful of soil ; wash this and get 
out the small rootlets ; the number it contains will be surprising; multiply these all round and beneath 
the jilant, and imagine a plant enjoying them to-day, and without them and food or drink to-morrow, in 
THUJA ORIENTAI.IS. 
Reduced ami made a better shape. 
