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GARDENERS' CHRONICLE 
OF AMERICA 
Devoted to the Science of Floriculture and Horticulture 
1 Vol. XXI 
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DECEMBFR 1917 
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No. 12 I 
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®ur 2i0st Misli^s for ti}t "Ntw ^^ar Ar^: 
tl|at it luiU ualjpr in ait parly rrsaatinn of tl^r luorlfi's t;ostilitiPS 
tl^at it uiiU sounli ttfp JJpatlj kntU of autorrary anJ» gtue birttj to 
uiorld-iuidr fiptnorracy 
tl^at it luill arouBP all mankinb to a greatrr realization of ita rloar 
relational^ip to <So& an& inetill in all ntorp of tljp (EljriBt life, ao 
tljat uir will lout one anotljrr an& ho nnto ottjera aa uip uionlii 
Ijavt ttfrm iia unto na uil;irl| alonr ran aaeurr puprlaating 
CSood Mill anJi ppacp on Eartlj- 
Things and Thoughts of the Garden 
By The Onlooker 
N 
( t\\ tliat sr.ciw and frost have covered and bound 
the great outdoors again, our gardening has to be 
jnirsued in the warm quarters under glass, and 
how delicious it is to have a greenhouse or warm con- 
servatory wherein to enjoy the plants and flowers. This 
is where the value and utilit\- of the attached greenhouse 
can be appreciated, that form of greenhouse of which 1 
have written several times on this page. 
But we are shut in. at any rate. There is so little to 
do or see out of doors. And now is a good time for re- 
flection, too. Lately my mind wandered back over the 
wonderfully interesting story of gardening. There was 
a time when they burned an innovator, one Albertus 
Magnus, for trying to make a greenhouse — a rude enough 
structure it was, a kind of shell with some talc or trans- 
parent material to let in the light. 
Throughout Europe, gardening was kept alive and 
slowly improved bv the monks in their monasteries. 
Every such place had its garden, more or less large, and 
just what was grown therein was mentioned in a list in 
last month's Chronicle. One section of the monastic 
gardens,, and an im))ortant section, was that wherein the 
medicinal plants were grown, and the sweet smelling 
herbs. An infirmary was attached also to the monas- 
teries. These monastic gardens occupied the fertile 
valleys, although occasionally set well up on an eminence. 
The monks planted fruit trees too. and tended them, and 
where the gra])e-vine would grow and flourish, this was 
a very important fruit. Back in those old mediaeval 
days Air. ]Monk liked his wine, sour or sweet as he could 
get it. We may be sure that the vegetables would appear 
decidedly strange to us at the present day, ver\ raw- 
looking things. Salpetral, soot, rags and bones began 
to be used about the year 1600. Potatoes and tomatoes 
were then a mere curiosity, and neither cauliflowers nor 
scarlet runner beans were as yet introduced. The latter 
was grown for a considerable period as an ornamental 
flower. It was Philip Miller, the curator of the Chelsea 
Physic Garden, in London, who suggested that as the 
pods were edible, the scarlet runner might be grown as 
a vegetable. Broccoli was a stranger in England until 
toward 1710. Parkinson, in 1629. also furnishes the 
first reference to celery as a salad crop, but he figures 
the Winter Cherry {Physalis) as a vegetable. But this 
is rather far in advance of the main current of the story. 
'Tn the ages which succeeded the fall of the Roman 
Empire few books were written except on religion. The 
first that appeared in Italy on rural matters was by 
Crescenozio. early in the fifteenth century ; but none ap- 
peared in Britain till that of Fitzherbert, published about 
the middle of the century following," savs the renowned 
Londiin. 
In this gentleman (Sir Axthoxy Fitzherbekt j, who 
died in 1338, we have "the father of English husbandry." 
He was an able lawyer, and native of Derbyshire. Be- 
sides being author of treatises on law, his "Book of 
Husbandry," 1.^32, and "Surveying and Book of Hus- 
bandry," 1537, have obtained him lasting fame. His 
advent ushers us upon an era when gardening becomes 
less and less involved in obscurity, and thanks to the in- 
vention of printing (about 1450), our art "emerges out 
of its state of semi-torpidity, at first slowly, but never- 
theless surely, towards the proportions it has assumed at 
the present day." 
In ihe time of Thomas Hill (sixteenth century), the 
<tvle of garden, which remained the typical form for 100 
\ears or longer, had straight walls which were sanded, 
427 
