1875. J 
GARDENING AND THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
241 
PENTSTEMON HUMILIS. 
WITH AN ILLUSTRATION. 
J 5 YE are indebted to Messrs. Backhouse and Son, of the York Nurseries, for 
4^X7 tlie opportunity of figuring this charming little hardy herbaceous plant, 
which had been imported by them from the Rocky Mountains, and 
which blossomed freely with them in the month of June. Though 
amongst the many species of Pentstemon in cultivation there are some more 
stately and showy than this, there is not one that is more charmingly beautiful. 
It is a dwarf-growing plant, with the stems about 6 in. high in garden speci¬ 
mens, but according to Dr. Hooker, growing to twice that height in the wild state. 
The leaves, which are mostly radical, are narrowly linear-lanceolate or elliptic- 
spathulate, stoutish in texture, entire and glabrous. The flowers, which are half- 
an-inch to two-thirds of an inch long, are horizontal or drooping, and collected 
into a shortish panicle of three or four whorls ; they have a slender slightly- 
inflated tube of a reddish-lilac tint, and a wide-spread limb of a deep bright blue- 
purple, the filaments being smooth, and the style hairy. One can scarcely imagine 
a more pleasing little border flower than this.—T. Moore. 
GARDENING AND THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL 
SOCIETY. 
HEAR on all sides lamentations that the Royal Horticultural Society should 
be in a state of financial embarrassment, that discordant views should exist, 
11 and that acrimonious discussions should have followed each other with 
such rapidity of late, at the public meetings at South Kensington. I regret 
the financial difficulty, I regret also the tone of the discussions, but I cannot say that 
I regret the discussions themselves. Peace is, I hope, at length restored, and the 
difficulty above alluded to in a fair way for arrangement; but if not, I have that 
faith in the importance of gardening, both as an art and as a science, to believe 
that it will not only stand the test of being talked over, but that the attention 
called to it by this means, although it may prove a momentary disadvantage to 
the Society, will prove a future and permanent gain to the thing itself. 
I propose to myself, on the present occasion, to endeavour, first, to prove that 
gardening is entitled to rank both as an art and as a science ; and secondly, to 
say something about the Royal Horticultural Society—past, present, and future. 
First of gardening as an art—Landscape Gardening. 
Would any one assert that the power of imagining, designing, and working- 
out a complete and beautiful garden is outside of the domain of Art ? It is true 
that an individual with the most rudimentary knowledge of a certain kind may 
plan and lay out a garden, as any one with rudimentary knowledge of another 
sort may work a figure in stone or place figures on canvas. But the mere 
mechanical skill employed in doing this is not of necessity art. The difference 
between gardens, as regards the offence they give or the pleasure they convey to 
3rd (SERIES,—yiii. x 
