834 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ October 9, 1884. 
of the plants noted in th? preceding genera. It only contains one species 
P. cereiformis, a Mexican plant, somewhat resembling a Cereus with tri¬ 
angular or quadrangular stems, and white or rose-tinted flowers. The fruits 
are globular, half inch in diameter, semi-transparent, and of a violet hue. 
It is interesting botanically, but is seldom seen in collections.—L. Castle. 
ORCHARD HOUSES. 
I AM regularly taking in tke Journal of Horticulture, and I cut 
out of the issue of September 25th Mr. Abbey’s letter on orchard 
houses, sending it to my brother. Many years since he Tvas in¬ 
duced, at my instigation, to have a large house built, which he 
still maintains, more for his amusement than profit, and I am 
doing the same here, although I am obliged to subscribe to his 
criticisms. It seemed to me that his letter in reply to me, and 
in reference to the whole subject, was worthy of a place in your 
columns, and therefore I enclose it herewith.—J. T. H. 
“ I have to thank you for sending me that interesting extract 
from the Journal of Horticulture. You and 1 cannot wonder at 
the fact implied in Mr. G. Abbey’s letter that orchard houses soon, 
like croquet, went out of fashion; that the mania, unlike that of 
cauine rabies, required none of M. Pasteur’s vaccination for a 
conquest over a hitherto invincible disease, but quickly died out 
of itself. A bubble will burst. In my enthusiastic days 1 have 
written to that same Journal panegyrics on orchard house 
culture, but like a lady, I claim the privilege of altering my 
mind, or at least of modifying my early impressions in some 
degree. I have no doubt that the original brochures from the 
pens of such men as Rivers and Bri'haut were unconsciously 
dipped in ink of a too rubrical hue, misleading amateurs to form 
sanguine expectations hardly justified by the event. They only 
regarded the bubble’s iridescent colours befoi'e its collapse, the 
blaze of the meteor while it lasted, and so took optimist views, 
and far be it from me to take pessimist views. Having had 
abundance of fruit from July until now 1 have no reason to go 
into the opposite extreme, only I know that without the patience 
and perseverance, which are not granted to all amateurs, failure 
will indubitably ensue. Have you not remarked that gardeners, 
as a rule, hate orchard houses ? And why ? Because they are 
alive to the trouble they involve all the year round, which they 
consider incommensurate with its results. You have left the 
management of your orchard house pretty much to your man 
Friday, and he, being as I know a painstaking and intelligent 
man, has succeeded on the whole better than most; and yet he, 
if admitted to the franchise, which he deserves, would, 1 have 
not the least doubt, register his vote against orchard houses and 
all toy trees. He would do so, as counting the cost of success, 
not so much as regards money, for that comes out of your pocket, 
but as regards the value of his own labour, and the unremitting 
care occasioned by a whole host of drawbacks. I, on the other 
liand, have kept the management of my orchard house entirely 
in my own hands; and although I am, I believe, looked upon in 
these parts as a successful cultivator, yet I do not scruple to say 
that after full twenty years’ experience, apart from the personal 
pleasure derived from the pastime, the game is not worth the 
candle, and that to any friend of mine intending to invest in this 
euteiqirise, I should be inclined to give the advice so emphatically 
given to a man about to mai'ry—Don’t! at least think twice about 
it; profit by my experience who know how many pitfalls beset 
your unwary steps, and have threaded myself some of the avenues 
which lead to a fiasco. 
“ The pros are outnumbered by the cons, for first of all the soil 
you select may prove of the wrong kind; you may, if you don’t 
mind, ram it into the q»ot too hard, and so fill it with a substance 
impervious to moisture, in which no tree can fiourish; or you 
may fall into the same error by operating on the soil when it is 
wet, oy else you may not press the soil in hard enough. In your 
selection, too, of trees at the nursery, without the advice of a 
well-experienced friend, you may lay up in store for yourself a 
fund of future disappointment, either getting trees infested with 
insects, or late varieties, whose Clingstone fruits may be as 
large, yes, and as hard too, as Turnips; or you may get mil¬ 
dewed trees or misshapen oddities, or some which very likely 
will never grow freely; no, not even with the most loving care. 
Pruning and summer pinching, according to the directions given 
in books of authority, may be secundum artem, but the amateur 
who follows those directions is soon made aware of the ugly fact 
that he is committed to a persistent struggle against Nature, and 
the question occurs. Can that be right ? Nature generally wins 
in the long run. It is best to follow Nature as a guide. 
“ The best produce I have ever seen, both a‘s regards the size 
an I quality of the fruit, was this year in an orchard house in 
Herts, wherein the wall trees were trained in the old way (not 
cordons, I mean) and the others having their roots outside, were 
trained on a table sufficiently low to allow the light getting to 
the trees on the back wall. There were not many trees, but 
those that were there were full grown, and covered a good deal 
of space. Like Britons, they seemed to like liberty, to have free 
course, and not to be perpetually pinched in, which to sensitive 
plants, I should think, must be the reverse of pleasant. And 
oh ! for the warfare entomological against aphides appearing 
with the blossoms and first green leaves. Would Lord B. have 
taxed “ baccy ” to such an extent had he known the amount of 
fumigation necessary for the elimination of thelly; the battle 
against thrips which eat the shoot’s tender tips; against ants 
which ensconce themselves m your very pots, which love to inject 
their acid venom into your punctured cuticle, and not content 
with personal violence, add insult to injury by the careful redis- 
ti’ibution of aphidian seats, bearing their milch kine from tree to 
tree, and thereby helping to propagate those sweet morsels ad 
infinitum, and which also make a raid on your fruits when ripe, 
and spoil them for your own eating or for exhibition purposes; 
against scale and mealy bug, which extract the vital Iluid of your 
trees, sjioil the bark, and blacken and foul the fruit; against red 
spider, that tiny but almost ineradicable pest, destructive of the 
flavour of your fruit, weaving entangling webs among your 
branches, populating the under surface of your leaves, and strip¬ 
ping off your withered foliage before Midsummer day has dawned; 
and warfare finally against earwigs, wasps, and bluebottle flies ? 
The battle of Tel-el-Kebir was nothing to it. 
“Then in a large house (130 feet by 14) replete with pots, 
only ‘ the servants who draw the water ’ kno w the number of 
gallons requisite each day for either watering or syringin gthe 
trees, and the labour those necessary operations involve. And 
one more grumble and I have done. Should the master chance 
to leave his house for a few weeks for a well-earned holiday, what 
will he find on his return ? All things gone to the bad, damage 
done not to be remedied; ruin rife everywhere. ‘ I thinks as 
’ow this ’ere tree must have been struck by the lightning,’ says 
my man George to me when I had returned from only a three- 
weeks absence. I need hardly say what was really the matter 
with it. 1 had left my trees very free from ‘ rubra cura,’ but the 
ventilating shutter had become closed where this tree was, and 
its top was as much injured by red spider as if it had been 
stricken by lightning. I am partial to orchard house culture 
myself. It has been to me a great resource, and I like the 
lounge the spacious glass structure affords in wet and cold 
weather. I would not give up my occupation while I have 
strength to carry it on; but I would not go so far as to make 
my own proclivity an argument for inducing a friend to under¬ 
take the same care, my own candid opinion being that the 
nurserymen who sell the infant trees are the greatest gainers, 
that the books of growers of nursling trees must be regarded as 
advertisements of their profitable business ; honest men they are, 
no doubt, but it is ‘ human ’ to know on which side one’s bread 
is buttered. The best people in the world are like bowls, follow¬ 
ing the bias of self-interest. Demetrius, perchance, was a sincere 
devotee of the great goddess Diana, but did he not let the cat 
out of the bag when he said, ‘ Sirs, ye know that by this craft 
we have our wealth P ’ ”—H. W. H. 
A DAY AT BEXLEY HEATH AND SWANLEY. 
MR. LADDS’ ESTABLISHMENTS, 
I STATED last week that Mr. Ladds’ enterprise does not end at Bexley 
Heath, but that he has another large establishment at Hartford Heath. 
Here we found a large area of span-roofed houses of similar dimensions 
to those at Bexley Heath, devoted prineipally to Tomato-growing. Four, 
however, of these houses were planted with fine healthy trees of Royal 
George Peach. Each house contains about twenty-four trees, and these, 
I was informed, had borne about four dozen fruits each, or some¬ 
thing like 400 dozen in the aggregate. The trees appeared to be grown 
on the extension system, as they bore scarcely any evidence of having 
been manipulated with the pruning knife. An immense qu antity of 
Tomatoes are grown out of doors here, and they were, despite thetdrought, 
carrying a heavy crop of fruit. The success of the operations a Bexley 
Heath and Hartford Heath has induced Mr. Ladds to start another 
establishment, which he intends shall be of still greater magnitude. 
This last venture is at Swanley, adjoining the Swanley Junction 
station of the London, Chatham, and Hover Railway, and the far-famed 
“ Home of Bdowers.’’ Mr. Ladds only acquired the site towards the close 
of last year, but with his characteristic energy a block of fifteen houses, 
each 200 feet by 17 feet, and a large span-roof house 686 feet long by 
25 feet wide, was soon built and occupied. The whole of these houses are 
intended for vineries. The situation is high, and the subsoil a sandy 
gravel, thus affording plenty of drainage for the Vine borders. A heavy 
dressing of stable manure was well trenched into the soil, and the young 
Vines planted therein early in the present year. In order to make the 
most profitable use of these houses until the Vines are ready for fruiting, 
the borders are planted with Tomatoes grown and trained similarly to 
those at Bexley Heath. The large house had the appearance of a forest 
