128 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Decembeb 4, 1860. 
owe the present revival of them to Mr. Holmes, who was 
the first mover of the Stoke Newington Chrysanthemum 
Society—the first of its kind in the three kingdoms, and 
who with Mr. Arthur Wortley laid the foundation of it 
twenty years since. And in five years after the foundation 
stone was laid the Society held its first exhibition, and a 
host of really good, practical gardeners competed with the 
said founders for some years, to their mutual advantage 
and to the final triumph and success of the Chrysan¬ 
themum on British soil, and more particularly as a city 
and suburban plant of the highest interest and value, as is 
now attested by the endless repetitions all round London 
of the spirit which first moved the Messrs. Holmes and 
Wortley. 
The stud-book records the rise and progress of the 
fancy to the present day ; but it would not be safe, or just, 
or generous lO attempt to draw up a digest of what has 
been done to this period, without first consulting those 
who must best know the causes of success. Mr. Bird, 
although he did not enter the lists as a competitor till 
within the last few years, was from the first a warm 
supporter of the movement, and he rolled the ball on its 
yearly round by some valuable prize to be competed for. 
I volunteered to see the wise men of the east on these 
grounds alone ; but having seen the deference which was 
paid to the practical value of Mr. Holmes’ opinions this 
season in the Floral Committee, of which he is an honorary 
member, like the rest of us, I made a double point of 
seeing him in his own castle before a final judgment 
should be made on our present progress in Chrysan¬ 
themums. 
We have seen, and we have long known, that Mr. 
Salter grows all his Chrysanthemums on the natural 
system, out of pots in the open borders, without stopping 
or training, and that he removes his best kinds and all the 
newest sorts with balls early in October into his winter 
garden under glass, giving them as much free air almost 
as they had out of doors. Mr. Bird’s system is widely 
different. He grows all his plants in pots, but he neither 
cares nor looks for shape, or size, or symmetry in his 
plants—all his strength ia reserved for the blossoms alone, 
which he sells as fast as they are ready at so much a 
dozen, a score, or a hundred. Mr. Holmes, on the other 
hand, having been brought up a gentleman’s gardener, 
has a constant eye to the conservatory, the drawing¬ 
rooms, the corridors, vestibules, and front halls of public 
and private mansions; and his growth of Chrysanthe¬ 
mums is exactly on the Chinese model, and that model 
or perfection of specimen-growing has not yet been at¬ 
tained in England by some of her best practical sons, as 
was well exemplified at the last competition in their 
growth at the Crystal Palace, and as Mr. Fortune had 
told us of in his second book on China. If I could get to 
that point of charity which would admit that Mr. Fortune 
had made a slight error, or was deceived by the China 
gardeners in respect to their way of applying liquid 
manure to their Chrysanthemums, I could prove that 
there is not the breadth of a hair in the difference 
between the Chinese and the best English growers of 
Chrysanthemums, and at their head stood Mr. Holmes, 
as long as he chose to follow suit. 
Mr. Fortune says—“The method of cultivating the 
Chrysanthemum in China is as follows Cuttings are 
struck every year from the young shoots (top of suckers), 
in the same manner as we do in England. When they 
are rooted they are potted off at once into the pots in 
which they are to grow and bloom—that is, they are 
grown upon what would be called by our gardeners the 
‘one-shift system.’ ” That is just the system which Mr. 
Holmes practised and recommends for all private gardens, 
amateurs, and objects; but for public show and com¬ 
petition with cut blooms, Mr. Bird’s is the only sure way 
to success. “The plants are trained each with a single 
stem,” Fortune goes on to say; “this is forced to send 
out numerous laterals near the base, and these are tied 
down in a neat manner with strings of silk thread. By 
having the plants clothed with branches in this way, and 
by keeping the leaves in a green and healthy state, the 
specimens never have that bare and broom-headed ap¬ 
pearance which they often present in England when they 
are taken into the greenhouse in winter.” Mr. Holmes 
says there is neither force nor art necessary in England 
to induce single-stemmed plants of Chrysanthemums, on 
the one-shift system, “ to send out numerous laterals 
near the base.” Nothing of the sort. The one-shift 
system gives them the same amount of freedom as they 
would receive at that age and stage of stinted grow th, 
if planted in the open ground ; and the effect of that 
planting on a stinted growth of so many inches is to let 
go or start all the eyes at once, and almost on equal 
terms with the leading bud; but should a very free kind 
run up from the terminal bud before the laterals got a 
fair start, it is easily brought to the balance by merely 
bending it for a time till the laterals are as forward as 
itself. Mr. Holmes wrote, read, and lectured on Chry¬ 
santhemums, for the good of the fancy, for the last twenty 
years with great success, and his very last words in his 
last year’s catalogue, in which he gives a digest of their 
culture, are these:—“In growing specimen plants for 
exhibition (or for private use), it is of the utmost im¬ 
portance to make a judicious selection of suitable varieties ; 
for, as a general rule, the varieties producing the finest 
blooms to exhibit in a cut state are the very worst for 
growing as specimen plants : ” and farther on he says, “ I 
am decidedly in favour of shifting plants for specimens 
from the 60 or 48-sized pots at once into the 11-inch pots 
—they invariably break stronger and more free.” The 
italics are mine to lay most stress on the key notes. The 
soil they U3e in China is of the richest description in the 
world—the bottom of pools, ponds, and the bottom of 
their own filthy tanks or cesspools, mixed up and dried, 
and pulverised in the sun and air, and they use liquid 
manure the whole summer; but in our colder and much 
damper climate nothing is farther from the practice of 
our best Chrysanthemum growers than all this richness. 
Mr. Holmes says the best compost is “ two-thirds loam, 
one-third leaf mould, or manure from an old hotbed,” 
with good drainage, and “ use liquid manure at all times 
sparingly,” and never till the bloom-buds are well 
forward. Mr. Bird told me that some believed his success 
was owing to a running stream of sewage at the bottom 
of the nursery, and he did use it for his Geraniums one 
year all through the spring growth, and never saw such 
leaves and shoots ; but, like Aunt Harriett, he found to his 
cost that that was not the way to have abloom worth look¬ 
ing at, and he never allows one drop of liquid manure to 
any one of his Chrysanthemums before the end of August. 
His very words were, “ Keep them cool, like Christians, 
in hot weather ; but when it gets cold in the autumn, and 
they have a load to bear, a little warm liquor will do 
them as much good as to you or me.” His compost is 
two-thirds forest loam—that is, yellow, strong, friable 
loam, and “ a little rough rotten dung, or old leaf mould.” 
For his largest flowers he has adopted a safe method for 
strengthening his plants just at the proper period. He 
puts a lot of spent Hops on the top of the pots for the 
stems of the plants to root into, and to encourage the rise 
of new roots from the old ones in the ball. 
Spent Hops, at os. a large cartload in London, are the 
next best thing for holding moisture, and for young roots 
; to spread in after the Cocoa-nut refuse, and the next best 
substitute for recovering old Orange trees or any half¬ 
dead woody plants. Mr. Holmes’ catalogue has five 
! pages of the most useful instructions for growing Chry¬ 
santhemums for all purposes. His collection of them is 
as select as his knowledge of them and of his principal 
customers would indicate. 
His own selection of kinds for making specimen plants 
of is the following :—Annie Salter, Christine, Hr. Maclean, 
General Negrier, Queen of England, Plutus, Insigne, 
