June 1, 1893. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
457 
effect as the true work of a landscape garden artist, many writers say, 
■has no equal in this country. The lakes, cascades, and surprise views 
are most complete and rechercht in their effectiveness in giving a 
•dominant view of the salient points of the Abbey and the Cathedral at 
Kipon. 
After enjoying these fine woods and woodland natural parterres 
•a hurried visit took us to the gardens. These have recently been placed 
under the charge of Mr. Fred Kneller, and astonishing zeal and activity 
he has displayed in the six months he has been there. All the old 
Vines have been taken out, new ones planted, and new piping in all the 
vineries as well as new boilers, three of Green’s Municipal Boilers and 
one vertical one have been employed. The kitchen gardens have also 
been remodelled and planted with fruit trees. This place will be 
worth a visit by-and-by when Mr. Kneller has had time to complete 
and mature all his plans for the practical and general beauty of the 
grounds. 
In front of the mansion and adjoining the Italian garden there are 
«ome fine Coniferm—Thuja borealis, 40 feet, and a Silver Spruce, 75 feet 
high, supposed to be the finest in England. There are also a few Cedrus 
atlantica, 80 feet high, planted by the Princess of Wales about twenty- 
five years ago, and a young Cedrus Deodara in 1887 by Mr. W. B. 
Gladstone ; in addition Abies pinsapo and Cupressus Lawsoniana are 
scattered about. The flower garden is a pure specimen of the Italian 
style.— Bernaed Cowan, F.R.H.S. 
AMERICAN ORCHARDINa. 
“ American Gardening ” for April contains the following trite 
remarks on the “growth ’’ of a nurseryman into a large orchardist. 
“ Forty years and more ago T. C. Maxwell started a nursery upon 
six acres of land at Geneva, New York. Tree-growing was a new 
business in those days [in America], and even the few bold spirits who 
attempted it began cautiously. The little venture of young Maxwell 
prospered, and he soon associated with him an elder and a younger 
brother, Henry and Joshua, under the firm name of T. C. Maxwell and 
Brothers. The young firm soon gained a reputation for energy and 
reliability, and for thirty years it distributed an enormous quantity [for 
America] of fruit and ornamental trees throughout the country. But 
there finally arose a great competition in the nursery business, and 
prices fell, while the prices for good fruits were rising. Fruit-growing 
is the natural outcome of tree-growing, and the Maxwells, like scores of 
others in this interesting Western New York country, graduated from 
the nursery business into the fruit business. It is marvellous what a 
hold plant life and fruit culture obtain upon the nurseryman ; he never 
outgrows his love of trees and flowers. And his training in the nursery 
makes him the most discerning and successful of fruit-raisers, and his 
influence extends far and wide. 
“ It is a universal practice in Western New York to raise fruit-tree 
stock upon new land—soil which has not grown nursery stock before. 
This arises from the fact that treed land produces short wood, because it 
is deficient in some of the immediate elements of tree growth ; yet the 
fact that there are thousands of acres of successful orchards in this 
region upon old nursery lands is proof that the soil still contains sufii- 
cient fertility for profitable tree-growing. The excessive growth of 
nursery stock consumes much of the readily available plant food, but 
the more unavailable elements are still retained, and give themselves up 
slowly but continuously to the moderate demands of mature trees. 
The age of the nursery tree determines its market value, and the greater 
size must be attained in the given time, but the fruiting tree is measured 
by its performance rather than by its age. So it comes that soil which 
is no longer profitable for fruit-tree stock may still make the best of 
orchard lands.’’ 
In this we have an instance of the difference between American and 
English methods, and it affords the key to the success of the nursery, 
and points to the reason of the general failure of British orchards. The 
nursery grounds are broken up deeply, in many cases trenched, and the 
soil undergoes considerable knocking about and mixing to a good depth 
in the course of the succession of young trees. Thus the soil manu¬ 
factures enough food for the young stock, and is left in the finest con¬ 
dition for manufacturing more—sufficient for trees planted at six to twelve 
times the distance apart. What has supported those number of trees 
will certainly be made fast enough and quite sufficient for one to get 
a good grip of the soil and produce fruit profitably at an early age, 
after which it is only a question of feeding in the right place, at the 
proper time, with the needful elements. That is why nursery land is 
suitable for an orchard. True, this system prevails in some instances in 
fruit plantations, and where it does there is little to choose between 
American and well-grown English fruit, as both are alike excellent, but 
the latter is more juicy, and as regards feeding value the better of the 
two. 
But the idea that any description of soil is good enough for fruit 
trees, and any site suitable, is to build castles in the air, and perish in 
the effort. Breaking up scrub land, digging holes in poverty stricken 
soils, and sticking in fruit trees where nothing has grown well hitherto, 
is the way not to do it. Why cannot we supply the home market, and 
become exporters instead of importers ? Land that has had no more 
done to it in the way of cultivation than loosening the surface with 
plough and harrow may grow the surface-rooting Currants, Gooseberries, 
and Plums, but it is only planting Apples, Cherries, and Pears in pan 
soils to gum or canker to death. There are some soils naturally 
permeable to air and rain for the manufacture of a sufficient supply of 
the mineral elements, and it is only then necessary to augment the 
natural resources by artific-al supplies, with nitrogenous elements for 
the essential growth, according to the exigencies of the season and the 
demands of the crops. 
The Maxwells commenced twenty-five years ago with fifty acres set 
with “ Baldwins, Greenings, Spitzenburgs, Red Canadian, and other 
standard kinds. . . . Twenty-five acres more are devoted to Apple 
orchards in other places, making a total of seventy-five acres. All these 
orchards are regularly pruned and manured, and just as regularly 
sprayed with Paris green and Bordeaux mixture. Even last year, when 
the early season was exceptionally wet, good results were obtained from 
the spray, the freedom from leaf blight, and the small amount of scabby 
and wormy fruit. The largest crop which the fifty-acre orchard has 
produced is 9000 bushels.” 
The yield of the American orchard of fifty acres is at the rate of 
36 bushels per tree at twenty-five years of age, if the trees are 24 feet 
apart, and “ the trees are singularly uniform in size and shape, and they 
are ideal types of the high heads and round tops of the Western New 
York system of Apple-growing ”—that is, they are standard trees, and so 
are the trees of the Northern United States and Canada that supply 
the choicest Apples to the British markets. In fact, the “setting out’’ 
of the lands acquired by the “ pilgrim fathers ” in America, and the 
colonists at the Antipodes has been on the same lines as that of their 
ancestors in England before the Roman invasion. But the orchards of 
England area failure ; 99 per cent, of those attached to farmsteads pro¬ 
duce crab-like, scabby, and wormy fruit, with a singular irregularity in 
the size and an anomalous shape in the trees, models of what can be 
produced by fungal and insect pests, starvation, and neglect. Instead of 
proving, like the Apple orchards of America and the Antipodes, “ a safe 
investment,” they have not given a tithe of the results for which the 
owners have looked, and the reason is they have not been attended to in 
matters of pruning and cultivation and the keynote of successful 
practice and the incentive to maintain a place in the struggle for 
existence. This in a country the richest in soil and with a climate best 
calculated to produce the juiciest and finest Apples in the world. It is 
not the soil or the climate that prevent ours being an importing instead 
of an exporting country in the matter of hardy fruits ; but it is in the 
cultivation—not keeping pace with the most important discoveries of 
modern horticulture, and striving to meet the requirements of the 
increased population with produce of a higher using value at a rate 
within reach, for, sentiment aside, the stomach rules the world, and 
instead of its being a question of force it is a matter of culture. 
All growers of fruit for sale advocate few varieties to be planted. 
This is no doubt right from a certain standpoint. Half a dozen varieties 
of Apples noted for great productiveness and constant bearing may 
continue so for a time, but that will reach its limit, and then it will be 
found that certain varieties have lost the power to properly fertilise 
themselves, and they will then cease to bear full and regular crops. 
This already is the case in America and in the European vineyards— 
lessened vintages through degeneration, and consequent greater suscepti¬ 
bility to disease. There can be nothing of this where new varieties are 
constantly being introduced. Mr. Rivers has no difficulty in securing 
enormous crops of his Early Prolific Plum—it is a total failure in some 
soils. But is it a question of soil, or incapability of self-fertilisation ? 
The planting in blocks acres of one variety must lead to absolute sterility, 
or the Darwinian conceptions are positively erroneous. But the trees 
verify all that Darwin has advanced, and much more; for a block of 
one variety so isolated as to be beyond the reach of fertilisation by insect 
agency with another variety, not only bears irregularly itself, but the 
progeny from it are marked by weak constitution. Therefore the 
block system may not be pushed to extremes, and the arrangement 
must be such that one variety will not be solely dependent on itself for 
fertilisation ; but by cross-fertilisation by another variety its self-insuffi¬ 
ciency will be overcome, and its crops be maintained at a high standard 
for abundance, regularity, and quality. 
This important truth is well known to American orchardists. “ It 
has been known for many years that some varieties of the native Plums 
are not self-fertile,” says “ American Gardening,” “ but it remained for 
M. B. Waite to apprehend that the same principle applies to many 
varieties of Apples and Pears as well, and that the reason for failure of 
fruit crops is evidently to be ascribed in many cases to planting too 
continuously of single varieties. ... It was discovered as an incidental 
feature in experiments to determine if the Pear blight is communicated 
from flower to flower, and last year definite experiments were made 
upon a larger scale, which show conclusively that mixed planting is 
often necessary to the setting of full crops of fruit. This Maxwell 
Apple orchard was the scene of one of the most important of these 
experiments, and it has now, therefore, yielded a sufficient crop to pay 
for all its years of care—but the crop is knowledge, not Apples ! ” This 
is where the difference comes in between American and English methods, 
the first “ have been a safe investment and a crop of knowledge,” the 
latter has been marked by the uncertainty of the returns, and the still 
farther aggregation of prejudice. 
There comes a trite saying—known everywhere but in England— 
from New Zealand, “ The Briti-h public are so wedded to old notions 
that generally the rest of the world have adapted any new idea before 
they awake to its utility.” See the Journal of Horticulture, May 11th, 
1893, page 371. But 1 have no faith in so tender an Apple as the 
Northern Spy being a fit stcck for Apples in this country. Most 
