1868. ] 
GARDENING IN FRANCE. 
201 
•will yield a certain and valuable return. It is by this method that the fine 
Apples sold in Covent Garden and in the Paris fruit shops at such high 
prices are grown. Why should we have to buy these from the French at 
such a high rate ? Considering the enormous number of walled gardens 
there are in this country, there can be no doubt whatever, that by merely 
covering, by means of this plan, the lower parts of walls now entirely 
naked and useless, we could supply half a dozen markets like Covent 
Garden with the very choice fruit referred to. The climate in most parts 
of England will be found to suit them quite as well as that of Paris, if not 
better, because the sun in France is in some parts a little too strong for the 
perfect development of the flesh and flavour of the Apple. There is no 
part of the country in which the low cordon will not be found a most useful 
addition to the garden—that is, wherever first-rate and handsome dessert 
fruit is a want; while in very cold and northern parts, where many Apples 
ripen with difficulty, it will prove a great boon. There, of course, it would 
be desirable to give the trees as warm and sunny a position as possible. 
In no case should the system be tried except as a garden one—an improved 
method of orcharding being what we want for kitchen fruit, and for the 
supply of the markets at a cheap rate. The Calville Blanche Apple, the 
kind above all others that I ‘would recommend for growing on the sunny 
places above alluded to, sells in Covent Garden at half-a-crown and some¬ 
times three shillings for each fruit.” The whole subject of cordon trees is 
very fully treated on, in the book from which this passage is condensed. 
Our own modes of Training Espalier Trees by means of rough wooden 
k 2 
