542 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
April 20, 1901. 
fore a branch is cut out, not only the present advan¬ 
tage is to be studied, but the future. 
The thing to aim at for successful fruit growing is 
to produce a tree with well balanced limbs, with 
fruiting branches from the trunk to the ends. This 
can only be attained by allowing plenty of room for 
development and the easy penetration of light and 
air. Most gardeners know that the leaves are the 
respiring organs of plants, but not enough seem to 
comprehend the fact that it is only under the influ¬ 
ence of plenty of light that the leaves can assimilate 
their food. Pruning is of great financial importance, 
for although the number of individual fruits Is often 
lessened the actual weight is greatly increased. 
A crop of small Apples takes just as much nutri¬ 
ment out of the soil as a crop of large ones, for in 
the large ones eighty-seven per cent, is composed of 
wa ter—a plentiful and cheap food. It is the seed 
and the pulp that are such a drain on the soil, 
necessitating the frequent application of expensive 
manures to prevent the soil from becoming ex¬ 
hausted.—! 7 . C. 
——-»s » . — 
PROPOSED SITE FOR THE NEW 
CHISWICK. 
Bucklebury Place, Woolhampton, Berks, 
April 12th, 1901. 
Sir, —The notice given in your current number 
calling a special general meeting of the Fellows of 
the Royal Horticultural Society for April 23rd, to 
consider, and if approved, adopt the proposal of the 
council to purchase land on behalf of the society for 
the purpose of its new gardens, brings the Fellows 
face to face with one of the most important issues 
in the history of the society, upon which, with your 
permission, I should like to offer a few comments. 
In the first place, it will be seen that whereas in 
the annual report, the adoption of which was pro¬ 
posed by the president on February 13th, 1900, the 
council recommended the purchase of a site (Limps- 
field), as the most suitable means of celebrating the Cen¬ 
tenary of the Society, in the present nonce no reference 
is made to the centenary, the council merely pro¬ 
posing to purchase 48 acres of land at South 
Darenth “ for the purpose of its new gardens.” It 
is most important, therefore, to ascertain whether 
the council still consider the formation of new 
gardens to be the best means of celebrating the 
centenary, and whether the Fellows are also of the 
same opinion. 
If the site now recommended by the council prove 
to be a suitable one for the formation of a garden, 
which shall in all respects be worthy of the society, 
and where gardening in all its branches can be 
carried out in the highest possible degree of per¬ 
fection, and if the council are assured that they 
already possess, or can raise, not only sufficient 
capital to furnish and equip such a garden suitably, 
but to maintain it at the annual cost which would be 
necessary, no doubt at least treble that which Chis¬ 
wick now costs (about £1,400 per annum), there 
may be no special reason why the scheme should 
not be carried out, if the Fellows generally consider 
this to be the best means of celebrating the cen¬ 
tenary. 
But whatever the feeling of the Council and 
Fellows may have been fourteen months ago, there 
can be little doubt that only a small minority of 
the Fellows now consider the formation of such a 
garden to be the best means of commemorating the 
centenary of the society. My reasons for so think¬ 
ing are:— 
(1). We have constantly been reminded that the 
society was formed with the distinct object and 
purpose of " promoting horticulture," and the 
Fellows have to decide whether a garden in the south 
of England, over twenty miles from London, how¬ 
ever well appointed and managed, is the best 
means at their disposal for promoting the horticul¬ 
ture of Great Britain. It is true that with an ideal 
garden, where the best methods of forcing fruit, 
flowers, and vegetables of all kinds are carried out, 
in addition to outdoor operations, a certain number 
of students might be trained to become efficient 
gardeners: but it is at least open to question 
whether such a training would be superior or even 
equal to that which the same class of students can 
already obtain in the first-class private establish¬ 
ments of the country. It is important, moreover, 
to know whether the gardens, if once formed, would 
be utilised principally by those aspiring to become 
bona fide gardeners, or whether they would princi¬ 
pally form a training-ground for the comparatively 
few men who are required to assist the neighbour¬ 
ing county councils in providing courses of lectures 
during the winter months. 
In the case of the Limpsfield site, there was 
certainly an idea that the gardens might be quite as 
valuable to the county councils as to the Fellows 
of the society itself. However this may be, we have 
to compare the possible influence upon horticulture 
which such a garden might have, visited asdt would 
be annually by scarcely one in 300 Fellows, with 
the very definite impetus to horticulture of every 
description, which the opening of a suitable horti¬ 
cultural building in London would afford. It is 
quite true that Fellows living at great distances from 
the metropolis are not often able to attend the 
exhibitions, but this objection applies with far 
greater force to a garden some twenty miles to the 
south of London. In proportion as facilities are 
given for exhibiting such high-class products of 
horticulture as are seen at the Drill Hall, so would 
the horticulture of Great Britain be distinctly pro¬ 
moted and advanced. 
(2) . Because the more the idea of celebrating the 
centenary by the formation of a new garden is con¬ 
sidered and carefully examined, the more evident 
has it become that only an extremely small pro¬ 
portion of the Fellows generally would benefit in 
any degree whatever by such a garden, apart from 
the interest which might attach to reports of experi¬ 
ments published in the Journal. Such reports would, 
of course, possess [a] certain value, but this would 
depend entirely upon the experimental work attempted 
and carried out in the new garden. From the work 
done at Chiswick during the last twenty'years, we 
must not, however, be too sanguine as to the result of 
similar operations elsewhere. It is not unreason¬ 
able to ask that in proposing the best means of 
celebrating the centenary the council should make it 
perfectly clear that the interests of the greatest 
possible number of Fellows will be considered. 
(3) . Because during the last fourteen months the 
Fellows have had further opportunities of carefully 
considering the financial aspect of the question, and 
very many—I believe a great majority—are not 
prepared to sanction so great an annual expenditure 
as would be necessary to maintain in a state of proper 
efficiency any gardens worthy of our national horti¬ 
cultural society, without evidence that the society 
has the means at its disposal. It may quite reason¬ 
ably be supposed that the annual cost would be 
£4,000, or at least three times that of Chiswick. 
Whatever scheme is ultimately decided upon as 
the best for celebrating the centenary of the Royal 
Horticultural Society, a large sum of money must be 
Taised, and therefore it would obviously be desirable 
that the scheme be one which will commend itself 
to the greatest possible number of Fellows, and I 
venture to think that the establishment of a perma¬ 
nent home for the society, with a suitable hall for 
exhibition purposes, committee rooms for the various 
committees, whose work is so important to the 
society, and which is at present carried out with so 
many discomforts; and also a lecture hall for the 
fortnightly lectures, and in which the Lindley 
Library might be housed, is one which would have 
the hearty sympathy of an immense majority of the 
Fellows. The sum of money now annually spent on 
Chiswick would be more than sufficient to pay the 
interest on any loan that might be required for the 
acquisition of the necessary site and cost of building. 
—Arthur W. Sutton. 
P.S.—Since writing the above letter I have, by 
the courtesy of Mr. Wilks, had an opportunity of 
visiting and examining the proposed site near 
Farningham Road, in company with Mr. Wright, 
the superintendent of the Chiswick Gardens. 
There is no doubt that, so far as the soil is con¬ 
cerned, and the approach to the site, it is decidedly 
preferable to that at Limpsfield. Water and manure, 
too, are easily obtainable. This is, however, almost 
all that can be said in its favour. The best trains 
take an hour to cover the twenty miles from London, 
after which there is a walk of about half-an-hour, 
and very little, if any, opportunity of getting such 
refreshments as Fellows who spent a day or half-a- 
day in the gardens, would need. The site is a very 
open one, and as there are no trees upon it, there is, 
of course, no shelter, except on the south-west side ; 
neither do buildings of any kind at present exist 
there. At the same time, as the soil Is undoubtedly 
good, there would be no insuperable difficulty in 
forming the garden if a great majority of the Fellows 
wished to celeb’ate the centenary in such a manner, 
and at such a distance from London. 
It seems strange that it should not be possible to 
obtain 15 to 20 acres in the Feltham neighbourhood, 
or other districts where market gardeners, seeds¬ 
men, and nurserymen have already found the soil 
and situation suitable for horticultural operations. 
The cost per acre would undoubtedly be greater, 
but then a much smaller area than 48 a:res would 
suffice for all the necessary purposes of a garden.— 
A.W.S. 
-—I—- 
AMARYLLIS AT CHELSEA. 
The Amaryllis house in the nursery of Messrs. J. 
Veitch & Sons, Ltd., King’s Road, Chelsea, is now a 
gay sight and worthy of going a long way to see. 
Botanically, the proper name for the plants is Hip- 
peastrum or Knight’s Star, in allusion to the white 
band along the midrib of the segments, forming a six- 
rayed star. Of course, in a great many of the 
improved varieties which have been raised by Mr. 
John Heal, the star has been obliterated. We 
remember when H. vitiatum, one of the parents of 
the modern race, showed its lineaments visibly in 
almost every variety exhibited before an admiring 
public. That was a long time ago, and the collec¬ 
tion, as now seen at Chelsea, includes many self- 
coloured, scarlet, red, crimson, and other richly 
coloured varieties. The flowers themselves have 
been largely increased in size, while the tube has 
become more flattened out and thereby apparently 
shortened. The striping, shading, marking, and 
other features of the flowers have also become 
marvellously multiplied, so that the casual observer 
having seen the originals only would be puzzled to 
know from whence the wonderful colours have 
come. 
At present there are 1,500 flower spikes in the 
house, most of them flowering for the first time. 
The bulbs were repotted about the second week of 
February, ever since which time the amount of sun¬ 
shine has been very limited indeed. Under such 
conditions one might have expected that the flower 
scapes would be drawn and weak. On the contrary, 
we have seldom seen them so dwarf, and they are 
stouter than ever, some of the stronger ones being 
like a polished Malacca cane. The foliage also is 
good, so that when one comes to consider it the 
marvel is how such small bulbs could give rise to 
such a bulky growth in stems and leaves in the 
course of two calendar months. They are grown 
singly in 4-in., 5-in., and 6-in. pots, according to the 
size of the bulbs. 
A two-year old bulb in a 4-in. pot carries two very 
large flowers of a dark orange-scarlet. The size of 
the bulb is often a question of variety, but in this 
case it is remarkably small, and the flowers corre¬ 
spondingly large, especially when one considers the 
small quantity of soil in which it is growing. Two 
scapes from a bulb of Rialto carry eight large, deep 
crimson flowers, shaded with maroon in the throat. 
An Award of Merit was accorded this floe variety at 
the last meeting of the R.H.S. Very choice and 
handsome as a light coloured variety is Sirenes, with 
bright scarlet tips, the rest being white, with a light 
green throat. The pure white edges of Agneta set 
off the bright scarlet segments admirably. Peteon 
is red, deeply shaded with rose and forming a rather 
distinct colour, rose being an uncommon colour in 
the genus. Scindia is a large, open and smooth 
flower, of a rich crimson-scarlet,deepening to maroon 
in the throat and glossy as if polished. 
The difficulty of obtaining a pure white is remark¬ 
able. Some of the lines of colour that have 
descended from the original parents are almost sure 
to make their appearance in greater or less numbers. 
Armoire is pure white, with the exception of a few 
red lines on each side of the midrib of the segments. 
Another very distinct variety is Nota, slightly veined 
with rose on a white ground. Clarice is white with 
a few red spots on the segments and a pale green 
throat; it also has a crimson eye-like ring at the 
very base. At the time of making these observations 
this is the nearest approach to a pure white which 
has turned up this year. 
A beautifully open flower is Osiris, having a white 
centre, bright scarlet towards the apex of the seg¬ 
ments, and mottled. A very regular and evenly 
formed flower is Hybia, with scarlet tips, an! other- 
