2 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 
find congenial conditions, have become established in those 
parts where the Himalayan Rhododendrons are happy. 
The richness of the British garden flora is due to the 
exceptional advantages our climate provides. Fortunately, 
a love of gardening has for centuries prevailed among the 
people of this country, and this has led not only to the 
introduction of plants of all kinds from foreign countries, 
but also to experiments in their cultivation and their im- 
provement by cross-breeding and selection. In no genus, 
except the Rose, has this passion for growing and breeding 
been so productive of great results as it has in Rhododen- 
dron. It is difficult to imagine what the gardens and 
parks of this country were like in winter before the intro- 
duction of exotic evergreen trees and shrubs. The first of 
the showy Rhododendrons to be grown in England was 
R, maximum f which Philip Miller says was first flowered 
by James Goidon of Mile End in 1756. R, ponticum was 
introduced a few years later by Conrad Loddiges of 
Hackney, ^^who sold the first plant to the Marquis of 
Rockingham, a noble encourager of botany and gardening.'" 
R. caucasicum was introduced in 1803, but never became 
common. R. catawbiense was not known here until the 
commencement of the nineteenth century, when the cele- 
brated traveller-collector, John Fraser, sent it, together with 
many other North American plants, to his nursery in Sloane 
Square. According to Loudon, it was most common " 
in gardens in 1838. 
The Rhododendron as a garden shrub is therefore a 
modern creation. Its popularity did not really commence 
until breeders made use of the Indian species, particularly 
R, arboreum, and, by crossing it with existing sorts, added 
variety in flowers and habit to what had previously been bred 
from the older species, namely, R, ponticum^ R, caucasicum. 
