June 21, 1994. 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
503 
the counter attractions, the old love loill sooner or later assert 
itself. 
It has been said, libellously no doubt, that a maxim of an innately 
valorous people is “ If there is a head hit it.” With more truth it may 
be said in respect to the lovers of our gentle craft, “ If there is a garden 
go in it.” So zealous and determined are some votaries that they can 
■scarcely be kept out if there is a garden within reach. Some enter 
from curiosity, some for pleasure, some for information, some to sell 
something, some to beg, some to—we will say fetch something that they 
think ought to be in another place. Let us hope there are none of this 
latter tribe in Belgium. Our friends there may, perhaps, not understand 
it without an example. Here it is. 
Not very long ago a certain man took great pride in his garden—his 
front garden in a London suburb. His aim was apparently to ” cut 
out” all his neighbours in floral decoration. He obtained beautifully 
flowered specimens of Begonias, Petunias, Pelargoniums, and Mar¬ 
guerites, plunging the pots in the central bed and side borders. 
Passers-by lingered to admire. One morning a cab stopped. It had 
rubber tyred wheels for ease and quietness, especially quietness. It was 
very early in the morning—two o’clock. A lady and gentleman 
alighted, carefully removed the cherished plants, and drove away with 
them, an invalid in an adjoining house whom the “silent” cab dis¬ 
turbed watching them the while from an upper window, but unable to 
prevent the removal. Those plants were clearly in the wrong place 
according to the ideas of the admirers who had taken so much trouble 
to, as they thought, put them right. 
Great is the attractiveness of flowers, and many the wants of those 
who love them. We go into a garden, admire something, “want” it, 
and take steps to obtain it. These steps are of a diverse order. One 
person will make up his mind in the best of all ways— ie., take down 
the names of plants he desires to have, and order them from the nur¬ 
series. For obvious reasons all flower lovers cannot do this, and some 
who can appear to prefer different methods. One floral diplomatis% 
when he sees a plant he would particularly like, speaks glowingly not 
only of it, but of something he has at home, and which he will have 
pleasure in sending to the visited garden. Possibly it may be already 
there ; but that does not matter so long as the offer results in the 
diplomat taking away with him what he covets. This he will propagate, 
and retain for similar glorification and use when on further travels. 
Another astute negotiator keeps his garden stocked with the cream of 
the collections from all the gardens round about in this way. He tells 
his man when any gardener from So-and-so calls he is to be taken into 
the house, and the butler and cook will know how to treat him ; then 
when the gardener man pays his return visit, as he cannot be similarly 
treated, he is offered as compensation anything he likes from the garden, 
and so the object is gained. It is clever, and regarded as good business, 
though some persons are wicked enough to call it by another name. 
The interchange of cuttings and plants in a friendly way and to a 
reasonable extent, not indulged in through motives of cupidity, is 
both legitimate and desirable, for the custom adds greatly to the 
pleasures of owners of gardens innumerable. Friendships are made and 
sustained through and by the agency of flowers. They form links in 
the chain of sympathy that binds together men and women of kindled 
tastes, and may live, as many have done in the past, and will in the 
future, to be cherished as souvenirs of distant friends or as memorials of 
those who have passed away. Moreover, the gift of a few plants or 
cuttings has often been the means of fanning the latent love for flowers 
into a living flame that must he kept burning by fresh acquisitions, 
obtained no matter at what cost within the means at disposal, and 
occasionally, perhaps, outside them. Happy are those who have the 
love, also both the means and the will, for gratifying it, in the culture 
of those plants and flowers which afford them the purest, the most 
wholesome of pleasures, and against which the finger of scorn and the 
voice of faction cannot be raised. 
“ Do you remember the few plants you gave me, and persuading me 
to erect a greenhouse five years ago ? I did not know that I cared for 
plants till then, and hardly know what to say to you now. My other 
bouses have cost me £2000, and I have spent £400 in plants this very 
year, besides papers and books that I should never have thought of reading 
but for you. But yon had better come and see me.” Such is the cita¬ 
tion from a letter in possession of the writer from a prosperous City man 
whose surplus wealth once went in a different direction, the change being 
effected in the manner described. We must not, then, begrudge the 
giving of a few plants, or indiscriminately reflect on those who inter¬ 
change from the pure love of so doing ; but chronic beggars belong to a 
different category. 
Then there are individuals who, when they read about something 
that has been favourably depicted as flourishing in a particular garden, 
cannot restrain themselves from writing to the gardener for a supply 
on certain terms suggested, when at the same time the plants could 
bave been found in sundry catalogues and obtained through nur¬ 
serymen. A writer in the Jourrtal of Horticulture received so many 
letters of this nature that he was driven to suppress his identity. It is 
natural for lovers of plants to “want” those which they may admire 
the most, and it is fortunate when these are easily purchaseable. One 
of the most admired plants in a Belgian garden in May was of a dwarf 
and lowly character, but a sheet of chaste beauty, putting all others of 
a great collection in the shade at that particular time, and it was for 
several weeks a chief feature in the flower garden—Phlox canadensis. 
Is it P. divaricata ? 
For this plant Messrs. Paul A Son, Cheshunt, obtained a certificate 
at one of the R.H.S. spring meetings of the present year. Individually 
the flowers attract by their shining bluish lilac colour, but much more 
so in a mass, as was shown in a large pan in Messrs. Ware’s fine collection 
at the Temple Show. In the Chester (Dickson’s) collection we find 
Phlox canadensis (divaricata), and if it grows and flowers as freely 
in British gardens—and there seems no reason why it should not—as it 
was seen in a garden near Antwerp, it ought to find its way everywhere, 
and be as effective in the spring as Aubrietias, Alyssumg, Iberises, or 
any other plants that contribute bold masses of colour in the early 
months of the year, yet differing from them all. 
The garden in which it was so boldly yet charmingly assertive was 
that of the great Belgian amateurs, Mr. and Mrs. Everaerts, near Ant¬ 
werp. They are among those who find happiness in the most interesting 
garden they have formed, and which they lovingly and liberally maintain 
—a garden rich in trees, shrubs, and nearly all kinds of Alpine plants 
that nestle in nooks, and hang in streaming masses of colour on the great 
rockery, as well as of herbaceous plants which luxuriate in the borders 
that extend alongside the long curving walks of the pleasure ground. It 
is a garden of luxuriance rather than of stiff and prim neatness. The 
autumn leaves are left to decay and enrich the earth in the shrubberies, 
and surface mulchings of manure impart vigour to the growth of the 
FIG. 82.— PHLOX CANADEKSIS. 
border plants. Even the large expanse of grass beyond the borders Is 
encouraged to grow, and was nearer 3 than 2 feet high on the 11th of 
May. It was in this garden when Rhododendrons were in full beauty, 
also dells of hardy Azaleas all aglow with flowers, when the side* of the 
miniature Alps were clothed in pink and purple, blue and gold, produced 
by Saponaria ocymoides, Aubrietias, Myosotis, and Alyssum, with many 
other sparkling gems that the beds of Phlox canadensis exerted their 
powerfully attractive force. They were large beds containing thousands 
of spikes and myriads of flowers, forming dense cushion-like masses of 
shimmering bluish mauve or lilac, about a foot above the ground. Some 
persons appear to regard P. canadensis as synonymous with P. divaricata, 
while others regard them as distinct. In Paxton’s and Johnson’s 
Dictionaries the latter species is said to have been introduced in 1746 
and the former in 1825. Who can settle the point ? 
Those who wish for a floral treat in spring should do a* Mrs. 
Everaerts did—purchase plants of this Phlox, increase them, then not 
dot one here and there in an isolated manner, but fill some beds with 
them, and await the result. It is not until seen as thus represented 
that the full decorative value of the plant can be displayed, though a 
small spray (fig. 82) shows the character of the flowers. Phlox 
canadensis wa* described as absolutely hardy, and gave no trouble 
whatever in preserving and growing. Mrs. Everaerts has heard of a 
