592 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
May 21, 1892. 
his estimation unexcelled. He at least 
worships his products, his gardening is of 
the most enthusiastic order ; it is with him a 
matter of soul, whilst to the extensive 
grower his extensive products are but 
matters of fact. What an impulse to the 
erection of small greenhouses also has the 
culture of Tomatos given ? All who can 
like to grow their own fruits if possible, and 
although not one tithe of those who con¬ 
sume Tomatos can do so, at least the 
cultivators of these now popular fruits may 
be counted by thousands, for they soon find 
ouc the art of Tomato cultivation to be no 
enshrouded secret. 
With many amateurs a few Roses for 
bottonhole decoration, with others Carna¬ 
tions, with myriads a few Chrysanthemums, 
are fancies which have strongly operated to 
make the trade of manufacturers like Mr. 
Cooper an active one. and long may that 
activity continue. When everything need¬ 
ful in a greenhouse or frame can be had 
cheaply to order, and is put together with 
a minimum of trouble, what wonder that 
these buildings increase. 
T^eddikg Out. —How many gardeners are 
there just now who are busily 
engaged in the somewhat laborious as well 
as won ying duty of filling the beds and the 
borders of their gardens with the o dinary 
summer be filing p'ants The work seems 
to be now,as it has been for the last 40 years, 
as much a part and parcel of garden work 
as is the sowing of Peas or the planting of 
Potatos ; and yet there can be no doubt 
but that to an appreciable degree it is 
as much a product of taste or of fashion, 
whilst the other work alluded to is of abso¬ 
lute necessity. 
We may have bright, beautiful gardens, 
without bedding-out at all, but then we 
cannot with any degree of certainty secure 
anything like the same effects or permanent 
masses of bloom from ordinary hardy plants, 
such as tender plants give. Indeed whatso¬ 
ever may be the objection to the bedding-out 
system they rather relate to style than to 
the plants employed, for it would be as 
uncalled for that we should deprive our 
gardens of the great wealth of bloom and 
beauty they afford, simply because of any 
prejudice entertained towards the bedding- 
out system of flower gardening. So far as 
the public are concerned we have ample 
evidence that summer bedding displays are 
with them just as popular as ever. That 
fact may be discerned in any of our public 
parks and gardens, where the public most 
do congregate, and where the bedding 
masses become for the time their National 
Galleries and Royal Academies, offering, in 
the floral pictures on turf delineated by 
the gardeners, attractions as potent as are 
those on the canvas of the artist. 
It may not be good taste, but there it is 
in any case, and gardeners have to cater 
for it. Even still the carpet or mosaic beds 
are of the most popular, although no form 
of flower gardening could be more remote 
from natural gardening than are these com¬ 
binations. Well,our gardeners must do their 
best with a troublesome duty. Probably 
most of-Them, even in the few months of 
summer which follow, find in the pleasure 
given ample reward. 
I p UR wishing. —In all resorts of the wealthy, 
* and of fashion, those who cater for the 
foliage and floral displays, now held to be 
indispensable adjuncts to festive or social 
gatherings as well as to the ordinary sur¬ 
roundings of town life, are also very busy. 
Those whose lives are of a somewhat pro¬ 
saic nature, and almost entirely of the 
country, have very little conception of the 
extent and importance of the furnishing 
trade, or of the way in which it has 
developed during the past twenty years. The 
requirements of the wealthy have long out¬ 
grown all ordinary satisfying, and great 
occasions are only grappled with by high- 
class furnishers, who themselves plant or 
decorative artists, are also aided by staffs 
who have become artists also through long 
experience. 
Then it is only in populous places, the 
metropolis for instance, where there is to 
be found that wondrous abundance of dec¬ 
orative plants, the which are so essential 
for high-class furnishing. The contractor 
can have all his needs satisfied from the 
plant market any morning. There is 
hardly anything which is not to his 
hand and in profusion, also of such remark¬ 
able excellence. It is doubtful whether 
any city in the world is better supplied with 
plants of all sorts or with better quality 
than is London. With the aid of these 
resources the contracting designer can per¬ 
form wonders. He may in a few hours 
convert the barest or ugliest of places into 
fairy bowers, scenes of beauty and of en¬ 
chantment, the which extort enthusiastic 
admiration. Then, in a more common place 
way, the furnisher too, is just now busy fil¬ 
ling the window or other boxes with which 
so many town mansions and houses are 
annually decorated. Here again the mar¬ 
ket is ransacked to furnish its wealth of 
plants in variety, and usually in colours 
that are in complete harmony. 
The better conservatories, hal's, bal¬ 
conies, porticoes, vases, and other recep¬ 
tacles for plants are refurnished, too, just 
now, so that for a time, if all b o short, our 
town gardeners are hard at work on these 
forms of bed ling out. Not mere bedding 
stuff, but fine, well-flowered, handsome 
plants are in this way swallowed up by 
hundreds of thousands, even perhaps by 
millions, during the season, hence it is made 
very clear that town furnishing presents a 
most important, and we trust a lucrative 
department in horticulture. 
/Slur Fruit Prospects. —The reports 
^ which w r e published last week, kindly 
furnished by gardeners from diverse parts 
of the kingdom, showed but too plainly 
how generally harmful to the fruit bloom 
were the severe frosts and intense cold 
winds of the past month. We have had 
little to complain of in respect of weather 
since May set in, and the Apple bloom, as 
well as the later Pear, Plum, and Cherry 
bloom, with also the Currants and Straw¬ 
berries, have had trifling troubles to 
encounter. We shall probably get a fine 
crop of Apples, and of some other fruits, 
but Plums and Pears have been very ma¬ 
terially harmed, especially in low or 
specially exposed gardens or orchards. 
None the less we do not doubt but that 
there will be in all gardens more or less 
crops of these fruits, for it almost invaria¬ 
bly happens in the end that things are not 
so bad after all as they first seemed to be. 
But the reports to which we refer 
showed very conclusively how difficult the 
culture of hardy fruits has become. Even 
wall trees where sheltered by coverings at 
night have had a troublous time, and the 
fruits materially thinned, and if they with 
the artificial protection secured thus suffer, 
how can the open or exposed trees hope to 
escape ? We now find that trees that bloom 
in April, do so under conditions which make 
the chances of fruitfulness dead against 
the grower. It is one of those difficulties 
which no amount of fruit cultural teaching 
or of fruit exhibiting can overcome. 
It would be folly to attempt to minimise 
the dangers which are incidental to hardy 
fruit culture, especially that spring after 
spring shows that these dangers in no way 
decline. Probably they strengthen as the 
years roll on. It must soon become with 
us a serious question as to how these 
troubles arising from low spring tempera¬ 
tures may be avoided or at least com¬ 
batted. 
- -- - 
Gardeners’ Orphan Fund. —It will doubtless be 
gratifying to many of our readers who are supporters 
of this fund to know that the dinner on Tuesday 
night was an unqualified success, the subscription 
list amounting to a little over ^1000. A report of the 
proceedings will be found on p. 598. 
The Temple Fiower Show. —The Fruit, Floral, and 
Orchid Committees of the Royal Horticultural 
Society will assemble at the Inner Temple Gardens, 
on Wednesday, May 25th, at n o'clock precisely. At 
12.30 the exhibition will be formally opened by the 
president of the society, Sir Trevor Lawrence, Bart , 
M. P., and will close the following day (Thursday), at 
8 p.m. 
Presentation to a Gardener. —On Friday evening of 
last week, Mr. Cameron, gardener, Forglen House, 
N. B., was waited upon by a few of his friends, and 
presented with a handsome marble clock, and silver 
watch and chain. The clock bore the following in¬ 
scription :—“ Presented to Mr. Robert Cameron, 
gardener, by a few of his friends, as a mark of their 
respect, on his leaving the employment of the Aber- 
cromby family, at Forglen, after a service of thirty 
years. May, 1892.” Mrs. Cameron was also 
presented with a beautiful tea service, and Miss 
Cameron with a silver brooch. Mr. Marr, gardener, 
Hatton Castle, made the presentations. Mr. Cameron 
feelingly acknowledged the gifts. 
Royal I nstitut on of Great Britain.—A course of 
three lectures, on " Some Modern Discoveries in 
Agricultural and Forest Botany,” will be delivered 
at meetings of this institution to be held on May 28th 
and June 4th and nth, by Prof H. Marshall Ward, 
Sc.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., Professor of Botany at the 
Royal Indian Engineering College. 
Gai’deni s.—Mr. Whitton, Glamis Castle Gardens, 
Forfar, recently sent to a meeting of the Dundee 
Gardeners Association two young plants of Gardenia, 
full of flower and buds. The following cultural 
direction accompanied the plants :—” The cuttings, 
pretty large ones, were put in small pots on the 
27th July last year, potted into flowering pots (5-in.) 
10th September, wintered from November to April 
in a moderately cool temperature, average 50° Fahr. 
at night. The success of the batch induces me to 
repeat the experiment annually.” 
Mr. R. Whitehurst, for seven years gardener to the 
late Canon Fielden, at Honingham, Norfolk, has 
been engaged to succeed Mr. Little as gardener at 
Monks Orchard, Kent. 
A New Park for Hanley—The first sod of a new 
park, extending to upwards of a hundred acres, 
which has been acquired at a cost of ^42,000, was 
cut on Monday afternoon by the Mayor of Hanley, 
Mr. Huntbich, amid public rejoicings. Five thousand 
pounds, to form the nucleus of a fund for laying out 
the park, was left by the late Mr. George Meakin. 
A Colonial Seed Catalogue.—English horticulturists 
are for the most part familiar with the beautifully 
printed and artistically got up catalogues now issued 
by our leading seed firms, and many a time and again 
have these trade productions claimed our admiration 
for their exceeding good taste and the general fidelity 
to nature of their illustrations, but even we, who see 
most things in this way that are issued, were surprised 
the other day to find a colonial firm treading closely 
on the heels of our home producers. We had placed 
before us the seed catalogue for the present year of 
Messrs. Anderson & Co., of Pitt Street, Sydney, 
New South Wales, and which for several reasons 
has interested us much. It consists of some 200 
quarto pages, and from the first page to the last bears 
a strong family likeness to the best of our home pub¬ 
lished catalogues, and singularly enough in perhaps 
nothing more than the nature of the articles oflered. 
Looking through the various lists we cannot help 
being struck with the singularly meagre number -of 
what may be termed especially local subjects that 
are enumerated. We don't grow Snake or Soja 
Beans, Pop Corn, Sugar Corn, Celestial Pepper, 
Rosella, or Water Melons, Okra, or Pak Choi, but, 
with these exceptions among vegetables, the public 
fancy in New South Wales would appear to be very 
decidedly English. 
