October 16, 1884. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
355 
orchard where the early lambs gambolled beneath the Apple 
blossoms in the spring. Cutting a gap in the hedge on each 
side, and putting up a slight wire fence and a rustic arch over it, 
opened a charming vista view from the front door to the end of 
the orchard. It is needless to say, perhaps, that the farmer’s 
farm showed almost the same careful cultivation as his garden. 
Last agricultural show he was awarded the gold medal for the 
best cropped and cleanest farm in that division of the county. 
With a bunch of Roses that would fill a half-bushel measure, or 
take a prize at Beeminster Show, a basket of President Straw¬ 
berries, a brace of Cucumbers, long and straight as a gun barrel, 
and a pressing invitation to stay and have dinner with him, we 
shook the big, strong, honest outstretched hand, and said “ Good¬ 
bye ! ” “ Good-bye ! ” said he ; “ yo mun look round again. 
Good-bye ! and thank ye for coming. Yo'll remember the bit 
of ’rickler seed ? — Lijke Ellis. 
TASTE IN FLOWER GARDENING. 
The article you publish on page 331 criticising one from “ Sylvanus ” 
is of such a nature that I trust you may be able to allow me space to 
analyse its contents pretty fully. I do not wish to do this so much for 
any personal reason as in the furtherance of high-class gardening. First, 
then, I will place on one side what “ Sylvanus ” really wrote, and on the 
other what “Adam” has conceived to be his meaning. Headers 
interested can turn back to the articles themselves, and they will realise 
more fully on perusal the difference between the two. 
SYLVANTTS—page 168. 
“We are now so extremely rich in 
flowers suitable for decorative effects 
that there is ample means for all 
purposes. As regards ordinary bed¬ 
ding plants, we are almost in a 
position to defy the weather of 
ordinary seasons. We can as it 
suits the taste have some ‘ wild 
gardening ’ by employing Snap¬ 
dragons, Marigolds, Marguerites, 
Pentstemons, Starworts, Ox-eye 
Daisies, Japanese Windflowers, Yit- 
tadenias. Evening Primroses, G-ladi- 
olus, &c., and have our gardens 
rough enough to please the most 
ardent msthete.I have 
always thought it would be a pity to 
turn out the ordinary bedding plants 
from our gardens in the same way as 
the few rubbishy plants were in 
bygone times turned out of their ill- 
kept borders.There is 
plenty of room in all country gardens 
for growing the few hardy plants 
really worth growing; plenty of 
room for Pinks and Carnations, for 
Daffodils, for Anemones, for Hoses, 
for Phloxes, for lumpy Dahlias, and 
for tall-growing Hollyhocks without 
ousting the bedding plants—as they 
have been rather unhappily termed 
—from the position they have so 
long occupied.” 
I shall now examine the doctrines enunciated in both articles as a 
furtherance to high-class gardening. I have carefully gone over both. 
The one I wrote, to which “Adam ” objects, was very hurriedly written, 
but I do not find anything to withdraw therefrom. The main object of 
the article was to give some hints on the ordinary style of bedding, 
which, notwithstanding the long number of years it has been employed, 
is still most remarkable for the want of taste displayed in the arrange¬ 
ment of many gardens. I think I may safely appeal to persons of 
taste if this be not so. As I stated, there is nothing in a yellow Calceo¬ 
laria, a scarlet Pelargonium, or a blue Lobelia to offend the taste. It is 
in the way they are mismanaged that offence is justly incurred. 
Gardeners have flower gardens to deal with just as they are, and it is 
nonsense to overlook that fact. Nor does it matter whether he has a 
geometrical series of beds to beautify or detached clumps or borders ; it 
is his business in the first place to qualify himself to make the most of 
any material he may have to work on, and that he can alone hope to do 
with some trouble as a young man. When the time comes for the actual 
putting forth of his talents he will find that flower gardening, though no 
simple rule-of-thumb affair, is reducible to a matter of slight difficulty. 
So long as he takes into account his surroundings, bears in mind that the 
flower garden is merely a small artificial feature amid many natural 
features of great beauty ; and when he does not transgress the harmony 
of colours, nor forget the fitness of things, he may be assured that the 
flowers themselves will be on his side to gloss over any slight mistakes he 
may fall into. 
Turning to the article at page 331, and setting aside altogether the 
question of what the writer conceives to be fair in distorting the views of 
another writer, I think there is apparent therein very much that is crude 
and misleading. Where, may it be asked, is the garden or gardens to 
which your correspondent refers when he says, “ The ordinary bedding 
plants embrace a large number of exotics, which for nearly six months 
of the year have to be grown in heat, as well as others less tender in cool 
houses and pits. The propagation and growing of hundreds of thousands 
of these plants in early spring ready for the bedding season is a task 
involving great labour and a heavy expenditure. In many establishments, 
where such a great amount of carpet and other geometrical bedding is 
carried out, the labour power to accomplish all this is absorbed in the 
annual preparation of the plants to the detriment of other work in the 
garden at such a period.” Further on “ six months out of the twelve ” 
are talked of for the preparing of tender bedding plants, and a little 
further “ nearly nine monihs ” is given as the period they are in a state 
of preparation. 
Now, such a mode of trying to place the question of whether bedding 
plants should be grown is not in accordance with fact, as I know the 
state of matters. But if the proprietor of a garden wished his flower 
garden to be managed in the manner and at the expenditure stated, he 
has a perfect right to do so. I know instances where miles upon miles 
of walks are kept at a great expenditure of money and labour, where 
mowing machines are kept going almost continually from spring to 
autumn, where squads of men are kept for weeks sweeping up and 
clearing away fallen autumn leaves, where large annual sums are spent 
in bulbs and plants for forcing, where weeks are frittered away tying 
plants for exhibition or merely for conservatory decoration. Are we to 
condemn in all these cases ? I will go a step further. I know people— 
proprietors of gardens—who will have their Gladioli, Pinks, Carnations, 
Pyrethrums, Asters, Phloxes, &3., kept tied to stakes, who will have dead 
flowers and decaying stems removed, and who will not tolerate their 
hardy borders unless they are kept neat, and I know all these things 
mean a great expenditure of time and labour. How far would your cor¬ 
respondent like to go looking at gardening from this point of view ? 
Practically the question is just this, Are Calceolarias, Pelargoniums, 
Lobelias, Ageratums, Violas, Alteruanthera, and Iresines worth growing ? 
Do they fill a place in our gardens which no other plants can so well fill ? 
I am of opinion they do. To turn them out would be a deplorable mis¬ 
take, just as it was a deplorable mistake to grow no other class of flower¬ 
ing plants in gardens for so long. Of course, I do not in the least accept 
“Adam’s” estimate of how flower gai’dening is managed in “many 
establishments ” until proof is given of the correctness of his statements. 
Turning now to hardy flower gardening pure and simple, I had thought 
I had just a little experience among hardy flowers; however, we shall 
accept the dictum of “Adam” and bow to his prescience. At the same time, 
I have an idea that those people who the most rigorously select their 
material will have the greatest satisfaction from hardy flowers. Of course, 
if a “ collection ” is wanted that is a different thing, but from a purely 
decorative point of view, and that is the gardener’s point of view, we must 
select. 
Going to another point, I may say that I know of some borders and 
beds of hardy flowers, which at the present are simply beautiful—no finer, 
however, than bedding plants beside them—but these were planted for a 
late autumn display, and it is only in autumn that they yield their 
harvest. Other borders I know which would be positively unsightly were 
it not for the labour spent in keeping them in order, and these are planted 
for an all-the-year-round display, and these two cases lead me to believe 
that we cannot have hardy borders fine for any long period. Nor do I 
think it is anything to the disfavour of hardy flowers that it should be so. 
If I might be allowed to insinuate a remark about hardy flower borders 
for the generality of country gardens it would be to fill them with spring 
and summer flowers, and not to attempt much at an autumn display with 
the same borders. 
Finally, just let me point out the conventionality of my critic’s 
reasoning. “ We want no garish parterres, mighty terraces, and squirting 
fountains formed where Nature can dispense with these artificialities. We 
want an ideal garden, a real pleasaunce where Nature and Art work 
harmoniously together ; in fact, a series of floral pictures, skilfully con¬ 
ceived and wrought, devoid of repetition, every step should lead us to 
something original—be it a sequestered spot, with a background of noble 
trees and a foreground of choice hardy shrubs and flowers or a taste¬ 
fully and naturally arranged rockery or ferns, Alpine plants, and so on,” 
&c. Again, may I ask where are we to find a “ naturally ” arranged 
rockery of ferns, alpine plants, &g. 1 The most natural of these are 
highly artificial, and are just as palling to daily acquiintanceship as any 
form of gardening can be. What is there original about “the sequestered 
spot, &c.”? Why should we not have parterres and terraces and 
fountains ? Why should not we reduce pleasure-grounds and gardens to 
their native simplicity and graze them with Highland cattle or high-bred 
Southdown^, and then what would “ Adam ” do ? —Sylvanus. 
KITCHEN GARDEN NOTES. 
Mildewed Crops of Peas. —Mildew, I am informed, has wrought 
havoc on the Pea crops here for many years in succession. I am per¬ 
suaded that the pest is produced by a stagnant condition of the soil result¬ 
ing from disordered or defective drainage. As there was no immediate 
prospect last autumn of the same being examined, and if necessary rectified, 
I considered what would be the best method I could adopt to combat the 
unwelcome mildew successfully. The system of localising crops, as might 
be found necessary owing to the varying character of the soil in some 
gardens, occurred to me, as suggested by a trustworthy writer many years 
ago. As I had a good space at command I resolved to utilise to as great 
an extent as possible the south aspects of wall borders for late crops, which 
were much worse affected than early sorts. These were well dug and 
ADAM— Pages 331 and 332. 
He does not appear to have had 
much experience with hardy plant 
cultm’e, or he would not have gone 
into such ecstacies over “ ordinary 
bedding plants,” and written so dis¬ 
paragingly about what he is pleased 
to term “ wild gardening,” in which 
are employed the “few hardy plants” 
worth growing. So far from there 
being only a “ few hardy plants 
worth growing,” we can state from 
experience that their name is legion, 
and with a few exceptions worthy of 
a place in every garden. 
Now a few words on behalf of the 
“few rubbishy plants” which your 
correspondent has written so dis¬ 
paragingly about. He scornfully 
alludes to the beds of Carnations 
and other old-fashioned bedding 
plants which our forefathers used 
to justly admii-e, as well as lumpy 
Dahlias, Hollyhocks and other first- 
class plants. 
