October 16, 1S88. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER 
361 
the price that man has paid for adherence to unreason, superstition and 
folly. 
Amongst the many persons who have carried out my proposals I will 
name Mr. James Hudson, the gardener at Gunnersbury House, who is 
known to you, and whose work is near at hand. He had long lamented 
the unfruitfulness of a collection of good varieties of dessert Pears, but 
be saw no way to improve them but to continue the practice of pruning. 
He saw my sample trees in 1876, and from that time he allowed the 
•trees to manage their own affairs, since when they have been constantly 
and abundantly fruitful. Mr. J. James, then gardener at Redlees, took 
a similar course and secured equally happy results. In this garden of 
■the Koval Horticultural Society you may see collections of pyramid 
lately at Heckfield, Mr. Wildsmith pointed out some Pear trees under 
reverse training that proved more than ordinarily fruitful. This reverse 
training does not pay when it is carried out in a severe manner by the 
aid of the knife and a multiplicity of ligatures, for that system is a 
mere warfare against Nature, which can never pay. It is in this case 
practised in a coaxing kind of way ; the trees know but little of the 
knife, and the long rods are brought down gently, as I suggested years 
ago in what I termed “• pulley pruning.” Many fruitful trees acquire a 
half-weeping habit from the mere effect of the weight of the fruit which 
brings down the branches. There is no merit in observing this, but there 
is merit in taking from the fact a lesson in cultivation. The reverse 
position of the branch checks growth, exposes the wood and the fruit 
Fig. 41—THE CHISWICK TOMATO HOUSF. (See page 351.) 
Pears that have been systematically summer pruned for any number of 
years, and have borne moderate crops intermittently. But you may also 
see a collection of Apple trees in the form of free bushes that have only 
been lightly winter pruned to keep them somewhat in order, and they 
have been constantly and abundantly fruitful, and, in fact, have every 
year for several years past illustrated my idea of fruits displayed like 
ropes of Onions. In the famous garden at Calcot near Reading, where 
the late Mr. Richard Webb had every year finer crops of fruit than, 
probably, could be found in any garden of similar extent in all the 
home counties, there was absolutely no pruning practised ; the trees 
never made more than a moderate growth, though in land of great 
strength, and the fruit was of such quality that Mr. Webb took a high 
•place in great exhibitions as well as in Covent Garden Market. When 
most completely to the sun and the air, and we may say the mere fact 
of fruitfulness is promotive of fruitfulness, the half-weeping habit that 
the law of gravitation enforces on the tree exactly suits its constitution 
as a fruit producer. Very much of the prevailing practice in pruning 
promotes rigidity of growth, and compels the tree to be a mere leaf 
producer. 
Now to conclude. Observation and experience have taught me that 
summer pruning is too promotive of useless secondary growth to be 
advantageous ; and it tends also to keep the roots in action until late 
in the year, when they ought to be at rest. The effort of the tree to 
ripen useless wood is detrimental to its more profitable duties. Prune 
immediately after the fruit is gathered, first cutting out all dead wood, 
then cutting out cross and ill-placed shoots that would interfere with 
