only this, but it has brought into our gardens many new 
ornamental trees and shrubs of great beauty and utility. 
To every bona fide plant lover in America who has a r<*al 
home for one of these neAv plants and can really experiment 
with them, belongs the right to a share of these rare and untried 
plants which our explorers and correspondents abroad send in. 
And, while of necessity the great majority of these plants which 
we bring in are for orchards and fields and pastures, there are 
many rare and valuable forms that are finding their way into 
the flower gardens, too. I might remind you of a few — the hardy 
Chinese roses Rosa hugonis and Rosa xanthina, the Chinese 
Hollies and Bamboos, the Japanese flowering Cherries and 
Apricots, the Chinese Elm and the white-barked Pine, a new 
Iris, a new scarlet Lily, a new Lilac, and Honeysuckle, a new 
Hawthorn, Juniper, Mallow and Actiniclia, and the Chinese 
Chestnut. 
I have left in the back of the room to be distributed, our fall 
catalogue of new plants. I shall be glad to have you send us 
your request and as far as we are able we will fill them. As a 
government agency we do not pretend to cover the field of 
ornamental plants, for it is too vast ; but in so far as we can we 
shall endeavor to get into the hands of the trade all of the truly 
beautiful and valuable plants which there are in the world 
worthy of forming a part of our garden equipment, and in their 
preliminary try-out, such gardens as yours are peculiarly fit 
places for them. 
I would recommend every one of you who is interested in new 
plants to visit any one of our six Plant Introduction Gardens, 
two of which are on the Pacific Coast, two of which are on the 
South Atlantic Seaboard, and one of which is half way between 
Washington and Baltimore. 
I am sure the Garden Club of America has a great future 
before it and a great mission. That mission is far more than 
the building of your own lovely gardens, for it includes the 
encouragement of the creation of the new and more beautiful 
and more useful plant forms which mankind is to enjoy and use 
in the future. 
Times have altered the conditions for private plant breeders ; 
there are fewer men producing new varieties of plants than there 
were twenty years ago, and something really American in its 
plan and scope will have to be done to encourage those equipped 
to do this vastly important work. You can encourage this 
tremendously. If you knew, as I do, how the plant breeders 
scattered through the country are looking to you for that en- 
couragement, and if you realized how hopeless is the future 
before them financially, you would be stirred to take up their 
cause. 
I welcome you to your own capital, and I hope that you will 
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