26 
Old Time Gardens 
as a tiresome weed, spreading and holding the 
ground. Some homesick missionary or his more 
homesick wife bore it there ; and her love of the 
home plant impressed even the savage native. We 
all know the story of the Scotch settlers who car- 
ried their beloved Thistles to Tasmania “ to make 
it seem like home/' and how they lived to regret 
it. Vancouver's Island is completely overrun with 
Broom and wild Roses from England. 
The first commercial nursery in America, in the 
sense of the term as we now employ it, was estab- 
lished about 1730 by Robert Prince, in Flushing, 
Long Island, a community chiefly of French Hu- 
guenot settlers, who brought to the new world many 
French fruits by seed and cuttings, and also a love of 
horticulture. For over a century and a quarter these 
Prince Nurseries were the leading ones in Amer- 
ica. The sale of fruit trees was increased in 1774 
(as we learn from advertisements in the New York 
Mercury of that year), by the sale of “ Carolina 
Magnolia flower trees, the most beautiful trees that 
grow in America, and 50 large Catalpa flower trees ; 
they are nine feet high to the under part of the top 
and thick as one's leg," also other flowering trees 
and shrubs. 
The fine house built on the nursery grounds by 
William Prince suffered little during the Revolu- 
tion. It was occupied by Washington and after- 
wards house and nursery were preserved from 
depredations by a guard placed by General Howe 
when the British took possession of Flushing. Of 
course, domestic nursery business waned in time of 
