40 
THE GARDENING WORLD, 
Sept. 20th, 1884. 
TieH.MATMM' wAUilO. 
The Pleasiu’es of Gardening.—As one grows 
older and interest in the active occupations of life, 
once so paramount, declines in intensity it is a most 
happy circumstance to have such a resource to fall 
back upon as an intelligent delight in gardening. 
There are many men nearing middle age whose time 
has been so engrossed by business cares and duties as 
never to have felt the need of providing a pursuit for a 
later period of then- lives, when from enfeebled physical 
powers or other causes they will be unable to engage 
in any occupation making much demand on muscular 
force. Sooner or later this changed condition of 
things comes to all whose lives are prolonged, and it 
will then be a matter of necessity to discover some 
congenial pursuit which will yield interest and agree¬ 
able occupation without undue fatigue, -unless the 
close of life is to be so monotonous as to be scarcely 
bearable. As it is almost impossible to awaken a 
really absorbing interest in any pursuit taken up for 
the first time late in life, it behoves every one to make 
provision for the future in then - earlier years ; and 
there are few pursuits so capable as gardening of being 
engaged in during those earlier years, which mil con¬ 
tinue growing in interest as life advances, and in 
which the aged can expect to continue interested as 
long as they can feel interest in anything. 
And what more agreeable and engrossing occupation 
can there be for the evening of life than tending a 
garden? We do not mean doing the harder, rougher 
work of digging, and such other operations, as may be 
most properly left to the young and the strong, but the 
lighter work of seed-sowing, pruning, and training 
plants, or the more fascinating work of hybridizing 
with a Anew to improving plants, flowers, or fruit; 
fixing some admired sport; growing some pet plants 
to the highest attainable perfection; or by skilful 
cultivation and careful selection intensifying some 
valuable characteristic in a plant so as to add to the 
common stock of the world’s treasures. There is 
scarcely a plant that grows which is not capable of 
improvement in some respect; either in earliness or 
lateness, in size or shape, in colour or flavour. And 
this is work mainly to be done by the intelligent 
amateur who has interest in the work and time at his 
disposal. Then, again, what a wide field lies open for 
exploration by the patient, accurate observer in the 
matter of insect pests, and the ailments, parasitic and 
otherwise, to which plants are subject. 
A love of gardening seems inborn in the Tinman 
breast. Children are for the most part born gardeners. 
Give any merry little trot of a boy or girl only a 
square yard of garden which it can really call its own 
and see with what loving assiduity it will be tended. 
Whatever its deficiencies may be, it will, in Milton’s 
phrase, be “a happy garden ” where the “immortal 
fruits of joy and love” can be gleaned, and will 
contain “in narrow room Nature’s whole wealth; yea 
more, a Heaven on Earth.” No greater pleasure can 
be given a healthy child than letting it have a garden 
of its own; and nothing but mismanagement will 
prevent the love for the pursuit growing keener year 
after year, and thus will provision be made for later 
years of the most beneficial character. 
How deeply planted in our nature the love of 
gardening is may be seen by anyone in our large 
densely-peopled towns. A large number of country- 
bred boys and girls, men and women, migrate annually 
to the principal seats of manufacture, and are 
swallowed up in then- population. Such folks, brought 
up amid gardening pursuits, and learning as children 
to love flowers and to discern the beauty of growing 
things, even the commonest weed of the field and 
hedgerow maintain their liking long after their separa¬ 
tion from country life and scenes. In the windows of 
back-houses, in dingy courts where the bulk of such 
people usually spend their lives in towns, attempts at 
plant growing are often to be seen under the most 
uncongenial conditions ; many a Fuchsia, Geranium, 
pot of Musk, Creeping Jenny, or other plant of tenacious 
hold on life, growing in an old jug or spoutless teapot, 
affords undoubted testimony of a pure taste and a 
strong liking which have survived the ojDportunity for 
then full exercise. 
In our wealthier suburbs, where there is no space 
for ordinary gardening, the love of plants is evidenced 
in a multitude of ways; by a rich display of tastefully 
filled window boxes, pot plants, and all kinds of 
devices which ingenuity has constructed for over¬ 
coming or diminishing the effects on plants of hot, 
dry rooms and impure atmosphere—wardian cases, 
window greenhouses, fern cases, &c. Difficulties 
seem only to lead to greater exertions to overcome 
them, and many a pleasure is drawn from these town- 
grown plants. 
One of the most marked indications of the wide¬ 
spread love of flowers, is the enormously increased 
trade in cut flowers which has developed within the 
last few years. We know a manufacturing town 
where a hundred times the quantity now find ready sale 
as compared with those sold twenty years ago. Not less 
than a dozen florists now grow huge quantities of 
flowers for this market, and find it a very profitable 
business. One of the consequences is that dinner- 
table decorations, button-holes, and bouquets are to 
be seen everywhere—all witnesses of the great love of 
flowers which exists. 
The little child gathering its bunch of Daisies and 
Buttercups and flinging them aside as they fade and 
lose their charms, is an ever-living witness of the 
universal passion for the “ stars so blue and golden, 
which on earth’s firmament do shine.” Flowers are 
one of childhood’s chief delights; they deck the 
blushing bride and her attendant maidens on the 
marriage day; and they are the tenderest exponents 
of our deepest love for departed dear ones, as we place 
them reverently about their final resting place. 
Poets and essayists have vied with each other in 
naming the pleasures of gardening. To men inclined 
to contemplation there is probably no more congenial 
pursuit. The busy man who loves a garden, and as 
naturally loves a * greenhouse too, is a man to be 
envied, for however pressing and arduous may be the 
work of his daily life, he has a place of calm retire¬ 
ment for his hard-earned leisure, where a gentle 
occupation among pleasant surroundings enables him 
to recreate himself and build up anew the flagging 
energies which the world has drawn upon too largely. 
Here, as he dons his easy coat and billycock, he dis¬ 
misses the cares of the outer world, and in the pursuit 
of simple refining pleasures among beds and borders, 
reinvigorates himself for the daily toil of the morrow. 
The more he engages in the work of his garden with 
his own hands, the larger is his share of the purest 
of pleasures. And how endless are the interests it 
supples! The mere tilling of the soil is a vastly 
beneficial occupation for the man of sedentary habits 
whose daily work makes a big demand on his brain 
and nerves. But the higher work of cultivating fruit 
and flowers is still more beneficial, especially when it 
is done so as to exercise the intellectual powers, and 
science directs art in the work undertaken. The 
highest delight is however reserved for him who takes 
up the improvement of plants by selection, hybridizing 
and skilful cultivation. What pleasure can be greater 
than that which falls to the lot of an amateur who 
raises an improved vegetable or fruit, or adds a lovelier 
flower to the lovely ones already in existence ? Try 
to realize what the skilful hybridist feels who after 
years of labour and many failures, succeeds in the 
realization of an ideal he has striven for so long. Who 
can forget our indebtedness to such men; but even 
though we forget what we owe them we cannot rob 
them of then - reward. They win it and enjoy it as 
they see the fruit of their labours. 
Orchids.—No time should be lost in preparing for 
the winter by thoroughly cleansing the orchid-house, 
wood-work, glass, and staging. The best way is to 
dear one house at a time, or if there be but one orchid- 
house, to clear the plants out of it into another plant- 
house, where they can be taken proper care of for the day 
or two necessary for thoroughly washing and cleansing 
their house. Every part of it should be made scrupu¬ 
lously clean, the tanks being cleaned out, and under¬ 
neath the stages freshened with a thin coating of 
shingle or -whatever is used for the purpose. This 
thorough autumn cleansing destroys insects otherwise 
unreachable, and saves much trouble in the future. 
When quite ready, the plants should be each one care¬ 
fully inspected, sponged over with weak tobacco water, 
have the pots cleaned, and anything else which they 
might w r ant doing to looked after, so that all may be 
sound to commence and go through the winter. 
Cleanliness is one of the cardinal virtues where orchid¬ 
growing is concerned, and one which it is most pro¬ 
fitable to cultivate.— J. O’B. 
HARDY FUCHSIAS. 
In passing through a small Yorkshire village the 
other day, I was much pleased to see fine clumps of 
hardy Fuchsias in most of the cottage gardens. They 
were extremely showy, being large bushes simply 
smothered with their beautiful and graceful blossoms. 
I noticed that there were two species, F. coccinea and 
F. gracilis. Both kinds are very fine, the former, 
however, being the more showy of the two. It seems 
strange, and much to be regretted, that the different 
species of hardy Fuchsias are so seldom to be seen, 
even in good gardens. There are many kinds which 
would well repay good cultivation, though as a matter 
of fact they require very little care in culture. Plant 
them in a good, rich, deep soil, and they will grow 
remarkably well. 
What a very handsome plant is F. corallina, with 
its vigorous stems, and showy crimson-scarlet pendent 
flowers, 2 to 2\ in. long. Of F. gracilis I believe there 
are two kinds—one much dvarfer and more floriferous 
than the other. F. pumila and F. globosa are beau¬ 
tiful kinds, either for borders or for the rock garden. 
The New Zealand Fuchsia (F. procumbens) is very 
nice, with handsome fruit, but I am a little doubtful 
as to its hardiness. There are several other species 
and varieties which are well worth a trial, viz., F. 
Biccartoni, F. conica, F. minima, and F. discolor.— 
F. A. P. 
THE HORSE CHESTNUT. 
When English gardeners received the Horse Chest¬ 
nut from “ the East,” they acquired, in spite of 
Gilpin, a very beautiful tree. Its history, in brief, 
is this : it belongs to a genus of trees indigenous in 
the mountainous regions of North America, as well 
as Asia and some other countries. In fact, the genus 
is widely distributed. The co mm on Horse Chestnut 
came to England directly or indirectly from Thibet, 
via, according to some authorities, Constantinople, 
Vienna, Italy, and France. Some say that it passed 
directly from Thibet to England in 1550, and was 
afterwards taken to Vienna by Clusius, and thence to 
Paris by Bachelier. According to other accounts it 
was first grown in France from seed obtained by 
M. Bachelier from the Levant, and sown by him in 
his gardens at Paris, which were then celebrated. 
In 1629, in any case, Parkinson planted the tree in 
his orchard as a fruit tree, and here we may mention 
the derivation of the name from esca, nourishment, 
and hip 2 )os and castahea, a horse and a chestnut. 
Evelyn tells us that in his time the nut, ground into 
meal, was given to broken-winded horses, as well as 
to cattle having colds and coughs. 
The horse-doctors of Turkey still use the same 
medicine for short-windedness and cough in horses. 
As to the nutritious value of the nut, we have seen 
deer watching and listening for the welcome sound of 
the ripe fruit as it quits the husk when shaken by the 
wind, and comes rattling through the branches to the 
ground; they eat it readily and so do sheep. In 
Switzerland Horse Chestnuts are largely consumed by 
stock, sheep receiving 2 lb. each of the crushed nuts in 
two meals, morning and evening. The nuts increase 
the yield of milk in cows, and are eaten by pigs after 
having been steeped in lime-water, and by poultry after 
boiling and when mixed with other food. The nut- 
meal mixed with alum-water forms a paste highly 
offensive to vermin, and worms are killed, or brought 
wriggling to the surface, by the pouring on the ground 
of an infusion of the nuts. Rooks sometimes plant 
this tree by carrying off the nuts and spreading them 
over the country. Not that rooks act benevolently on 
sowing seed broadcast, as they sometimes do, their 
actions, as well as our own, are largely based on 
stomach, but they don’t eat the whole nut, and the 
germ sometimes outlives their attack, and sometimes 
their feast is disturbed. An example of this method 
of sowing Horse Chestnut-seed was quoted from 
R. Ellison’s “Berwickshire Naturalist,” in The Journal 
of Forestry, 1880, p. 877. 
The tree is believed to be indigenous in the moun¬ 
tains of Northern Greece, where, according to The 
Gardeners’ Chronicle (1880, vol. i., p. 488), it occurs 
wild 3,000 or 4,000 ft. above the level of the sea. It 
loves a deep, free soil and sheltered situation, as on 
the Thames side, where the soil is light and moist. 
We have never seen it more at home and growing 
faster than on the best sandy land of Surrey wherever 
