678 
jane 25, 1892. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
CULTURE V. NATURE.* 
“ All knowledge is of use if applied aright; no knowledge is 
of use if applied awry.” — Prof. M. Foster 
The cultivation of vegetables, fruits, and flowers for 
domestic use, or for profit in other ways, is now one 
of our most important national industries, and it is a 
pleasure to see the interest now being taken in the 
matter by the different county councils, for we can¬ 
not have too much light and learning thrown upon 
such an interesting and profitable theme. 
Your secretary asked me for a paper on the 
"adaptability of plants to cultivation," so I have 
glanced at the subject, and headed it, " Culture 
versus Nature.” The fact really is, we do not know 
much of the adaptability of plants until we actually 
cultivate them, each for ourselves ; for one of the 
charms of gardening is the ever-varying develop¬ 
ment of the same plant under different cultural 
conditions. Now, let us simply ask ourselves, What 
is the meaning of the word " culture," as applied to 
plants ? Culture to us means improvement; and as 
Pope has it— 
" If vain our toil, 
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil." 
Then culture or improvement consists of many 
things. Firstly, for example, the plant selected is 
isolated ; thus competition with other plants for food 
and light and air and space is removed. Not only 
does the gardener thus enable a plant to naturally 
gain the most advantages from any one selected plot 
of soil, but he often augments the food supply by 
irritating the soil, and by adding special plant food 
or manures for special crops; while pruning and 
training often increase the resultant crop by securing 
that growth force can develop freely along definite 
lines, and just where and when it is most wanted, or 
when the greatest strain of fertility bears upon the 
plant as an individual. 
Now, Culture versus Nature is a big question ; and, 
secondly, let us ask ourselves point-blank whether 
culture of the best ever surpasses Nature at her best ? 
In asking this question, 1 do not wish to limit your 
views of culture to the glass-house or market-garden 
point of view ; but I do ask it from the cultivator’s 
or human standpoint, and not from Nature’s point of 
view, which is often, if not always, very different. 
As thus limited, there can be no doubt but that 
culture " is an art that doth mend Nature, change it 
rather, but the Art itself is Nature.” That is a very 
suggestive history in the Bible, of Cain with his 
flocks and herds, and of his brother Abel, who culti¬ 
vated the fruits of the earth, and it shows to us how 
early the practice of cultivating wild plants and the 
taming of wild animals began. As an example of 
What i mean by Improvement, 
let us take the common Violet (Viola odorata), as 
existing on a soil where it grows and flowers very 
luxuriantly, and on the same soil the gardener will 
easily surpass Nature, as I said before, from the 
human point of view. It is so abroad in tropical 
lands where Pineapples or Bananas exist in what I 
may call a state of Nature, much finer crops of fruit 
being gained by culture; and the same is true in 
Asia Minor with the Fig and the Vine. Of all fruits, 
perhaps the Vine is the one most amenable to 
changed conditions, i.e., culture, and even allowing 
that Grape growing in Great Britain is the best in 
the world, yet, I believe, still finer cultural results 
could be obtained at Alicante and elsewhere in 
S.E. Europe or Asia Minor where the Vine is more 
thoroughly at home. 
Cultivation really means the conservation and 
enhancing of growth, force, or energy for particular 
ends or aims. 
One of the earliest and hardest lessons for a 
gardener to learn, is to rid his mind of prejudice in 
plant culture. As a rule, we want plants to grow 
where we like rather than where the plant likes, and 
sometimes the man and the plant are not agreed on 
the point, for the question of position, of moisture 
and of shelter, is one the plant naturally knows and 
feels more of than the man, and though the plant 
cannot speak, its evidence to knowing eyes is un¬ 
mistakable. 
I must now define what I mean by the human 
point of view, as before alluded to. Well, it very 
often means succulent leaves, or large pulpy fruits, 
or large many-petalled or shapely flowers, rather 
than the perfectly ripened seeds, actual life, and not 
* A paper prepared by Mr. F. W. Burbidgb, Curator, 
Botanic Garden, Trinity College, Dublin, and read, in his 
absence, at tbe meeting of the Horticultural Club, Hotel 
Windsor, Tuesday, June 7. 
mere beauty, after which Nature more generally 
strives. 
Flowers, fruits, or vegetables, is the gardener’s 
object, but Nature is lost unless she goes to the end of 
her cycle of growth, and finishes up by ripening her 
seeds. With us the gardener and the Seedgrower find 
it more economical to complete the cycle by co¬ 
operation, the one growing produce, and the other 
ensuring the seed. 
I have sketched out culture as embracing isolation 
of the crop, irritation and irrigation of the earth, 
pruning and training, and manuring or special feed¬ 
ing, all factors in good culture, but factors of widely 
different value in various localities and soils. In a 
word, it is a gardener’s duty to adapt his methods of 
cultivation to suit his crops, rather than for him to 
expect plants to adapt themselves to his system of 
culture. The best cultivators are facile and elastic 
in their methods, and so succeed where the “ rule-of- 
thumb ” practitioner often fails. 
It has been said “ many men, many minds,” and 
so of plant culture one may say, "many gardens, 
many methods." We must not be dictatorial on this 
question, but preserve a broad and catholic frame of 
mind; for a course of practice perfectly successful 
in one place may happen to be the very worst to 
adopt in another, where geology and climate may be 
different. 
Variation of Cultural Methods. 
If we study the cultural practice of, say, the best 
Peach or Grape growers in England, in France, and 
in America we shall perceive at once how necessary 
it is that cultural methods must perforce vary, in 
order to be successful under different climatic con¬ 
ditions. But we need not go so wide in our geo¬ 
graphy to note the truth of this statement, for 
gardeners will tell us that Apples and Pears, or 
Strawberries or Plums, or any other garden plants, 
vary enormously as grown in different -gardens 
adjacent to each other, or even as grown in different 
parts of the same garden. That Orchids will thrive 
in one part of a hothouse, and not in another, is a 
fact well known to all cultivators of these plants. 
Moisture and shade may have something to do with , 
this ; but all stiff-leaved Orchids, such as Cattleyas, 
Laelias, &c., in growing, erect or deflect their leaves 
at a certain angle, so as to receive a certain amount 
of light, and when once the leaves harden or stiffen, 
they cannot alter their position, and so, if shifted, 
or turned round so as to expose the backs of their 
leaves to sunlight, great harm is often unconsciously 
done. A Fuchsia, or a Pelargonium, readily readjust 
their leaves to altered conditions of light, but to 
many Orchids this is impossible. 
The main facts that influence vegetation may be 
set down as light, heat, moisture, and the nitrogen¬ 
absorbing and yielding qualities of the soil. Ele¬ 
vation, shelter, and aspect influence these in a 
marked degree. 
I have elsewhere said that the gardener, like the 
poet, is born, rather than made, but, other things 
being equal, of course in all arts the most logical 
practitioner is sure to succeed best. In a word, 
cultural success is a matter of accurate observation, 
careful experiments, and just reasoning powers. 
The greatest difficulty in gardening is to be quite 
sure of our facts before we deduce or build up a 
course of practice upon them. When we are not quite 
sure of our facts, we do what Darwin advised—i.e., 
we try " fool’s experiments," or index trials, so as to 
get nearer " guesses at truth.” 
The difficulty is not only the intricate complexity 
of Nature, but that her facts and figures often form 
a shifting index from year to year, or from one year 
to another. Thus gardening becomes an intellectual 
game, far ahead of the Sirdah's chessboard or the 
German war-spiegel, since both her squares and her 
counters are different every time, and so not only 
every garden but every season becomes a special 
study of itself. 
Gardening an Empirical Art. 
We have been told that the gardener’s art is an 
empirical one ; but this is a statement only half 
true. All arts are empirical up to a certain point, 
but become more and more exact and scientific as 
accurate knowledge is gained. 
Again, we are told that gardeners must be taught 
by actual work in a garden, just as carpentry is best 
taught at the bench ; smilh's-work at the anvil, or 
surgeon's in a hospital. This again is a half-truth, 
dangerous in its subtlety. Up to a certain point, 
actual practice is truly the best way ; but work in a 
garden, if well directed, and supplemented by good 
reading and good lectures in addition to the work, 
must in the long run be better than either alone. 
I should be one of the first to admit that books 
and lectures are merely the reflex of actual things, 
but by them we gain concrete knowledge, and life is, 
as we all know, too short to allow of our testing or 
experimenting on all things for ourselves. As 
Huxley says, " Science not only teaches us how to act 
rightly, but is especially valuable as often preventing 
our making useless experiments." Any one man’s 
practice is necessarily limited, and books are as valu¬ 
able to the gardener, if well used, as they are to the 
lawyer, the architect, or the engineer. If it be 
thought that they are not so, I must ask the objector 
for his reason why books are considered a help or 
aid to one artist or craftsman and not to another ? 
Speaking of the natural limitation of any one man's 
power, reminds me of my once speaking to the late 
Mr. John Dominy on this very subject. Everyone 
knows how much Dominy really did in opening the 
way of hybridisation amongst Orchids and Nepen¬ 
thes, and he always felt that " Art is long and Time 
is fleeting.” “ Ah ! ” said he to me, " the fact is, a 
gardener should have nine lives like a cat, and three 
or four pairs of hands like a Hindoo idol, and then 
something might be done in a lifetime.” 
Books as Aids to Knowledge. 
We must use books as aids to knowledge, just as 
all wise men use them, and young gardeners may well 
treasure up Sir John Lubbock's words that books 
wisely bought and rightly used areagood investment, 
and not an expenditure. 
Good culture hinges on many things, but 
especially on a good start from seed or other kinds of 
increase, or propagation. As a rule all hardy seeds, 
i.e., the seeds of hardy ornamental plants, should be 
sown as soon as they ripen, but where artificial food, 
crops, &c., are required at particular times and 
seasons, it follows that seeds must be sown at 
different times, spring, summer, or autumn, as the 
case may be. Any particular strain of vegetable or 
flower seeds can only be kept true by isolation, so as 
to prelude inter-crossing, but novelties, on the other 
hand, are often giined by selection after hybridism 
or cross-fertilization. As a rule, both special selec¬ 
tions or strains, and hybrids alike, die out unless 
they are specially cultivated and protected, and in 
this way garden hybrids are far less stable than are 
Nature's hybrids, many of which are comparatively 
permanent, and in some cases are dignified and dis¬ 
guised by specific names. 
The Oxlip, or Polyanthus Primrose, is an instance 
of this fact. It is the result of inter-crossing between 
the Cowslip (Primula veris) and the Primrose (P. 
acaulis), and is itself called P. elatior. So again 
Narcissus incomparabilis got a specific name from 
Miller, which it still retains, although well known 
to be a hybrid between N. poeticus and the Daffodil 
(N. pseudo-Narcissus). 
All so-called species of plants are now known to 
be mutable. In a state of Nature plants rest un¬ 
changed only when their surroundings are the same. 
On the other hand, in the-forest or jungle “ change 
or die,” is often Nature's fiat, and conditions are rare 
in which some slow series of changes are not in pro¬ 
gress before our eyes. In the garden, sudden 
changes of external or internal conditions take place 
far more quickly, but are, as we have said garden 
variations are, far less well fitted for a casual 
existence ; hence if we ever come across a desolate 
garden that was once well stocked, we find that most 
hybrids and selected seedling plants will either have 
gone back or reverted to their parental stage, or they 
will have died away entirely. 
(To be continued.) 
--f-- 
MAIANTHEMUM BIFOLIUM. 
The dwarf plant under notice has a host of names, 
but the English translation of the generic name 
means Mayflower, which is fancifully applied to 
various plants both in this and other countries. The 
stems vary from 5 in. to S in. high and bear two 
somewhat heart-shaped leaves not unlike those of a 
Smilax, but grass green. It is a more lowly plant, 
however, and suitable for planting on rockwork in a 
moist soil or by the side of shaded walks. The 
short racemes of white flowers just rise above the 
foliage and may be compared to those of the Lily of 
the Valley, of which it is a near relation. It may be 
propagated by division in the same way as the last 
named. 
