THE HARDENING WORLD . 
267 
March 2K, 1903. 
The World of Gardening. 
By F. W. Burbidge, M.A., F.L.S., F.R.H.S., V.M.H. 
The world of plants is wide and varied, and its variations, 
more especially, are deserving of the young gardener’s attention 
and study. All good gardening depends on the adaptability of 
wild plants to cultivation or to what may be otherwise ex¬ 
pressed as their evolution when cultivated for special purposes 
or uses, under more or less artificial conditions and surround¬ 
ings. 
When we say a gardener grows any particular plants well, 
all we mean is that he helps forward their innate capacity for 
variation or production, and their natural range of adaptability 
to different climates, uses, and different soils. In a word, the 
gardener's duty is to assist the plants in their natural liking for 
particular soils and climates, and, further, in a more limited 
sense, he may also modify the climate for exotics, as he does in 
giving extra heat, shade, and shelter in glass-roofed conserva¬ 
tories. There are, at least, a few fundamental facts about the 
plants of the- world that all young gardeners should learn to 
grasp, as being, so to say, the bed-rock of our craft or profession. 
We hear much said now and again about “ weeds,” but there 
are really no weeds in Nature’s gardens. “Weeds” are merely 
plants, and often beautiful ones, too, in the wrong place, just 
as “ dirt ” is matter in the wrong place. It is a mere case of 
position rather than of inferiority ; Nature, as Nature, has no 
'■ weeds,” although she has many plants that trouble and annoy 
us in the garden all the world over. She has no waste products, 
but utilises all things clean and unclean for the general good ; 
and it is only under artificial conditions of life that “ weeds ” 
and “ waste ” products are a trouble to us all. 
To explain further what I mean about weeds, I may say that 
when I was in the tropical island of Singapore some years ago 
I visited a friend who had just cut down and burnt a piece of 
jungle on which he had built a bungalow and made a garden. 
Well, the weeds that troubled him most were plants of the 
native Pitcher plant (Nepenthes rafflesiana), which persisted in 
cropping up in his flower-beds and on the lawns! One or two 
native Palms and tropical Ferns ■were also a trouble, but he 
assured me that the Pitcher plants were the worst of all the 
weedy enemies with which he had had to deal. 
Another broad fact often overlooked, but which I wish to 
emphasise, is that all the so-called species of plants—I say 
species, so-called, because no one knows what a “ species ” really 
is; all plants whatever—Orchid, Palm, Lily, Pelargonium, or 
Ferns—are found absolutely wild on some portion of the world’s 
surface somewhere or other in Nature’s great wild garden. The 
most beautiful of all our hothouse and greenhouse or conser¬ 
vatory plants originally existed wild in forest and prairie, or in 
the rivers and lakes, or on the mountains, and could be col¬ 
lected without let or hindrance by any traveller who cared to 
do so. Collectors, nurserymen and rich amateurs and travellers 
originally stocked our gardens from the wild places of the earth, 
and are to a lesser degree still doing so. Sir Walter Raleigh 
is credited with bringing us the Potato and Tobacco from the 
West, and both are “great comfort,” as the peasants say even 
0 in the Ireland of to-day. 
Another striking feature in connection with wild plants is 
the wide differences they show in their capacity to withstand 
varying temperatures, and the narrower or wider limits under 
which they vary from self-fertilised seeds under cultivation. 
Thus, of two plants taken from the same soil, aspect and eleva¬ 
tion anywhere, one may prove hardy in the climate of Britain, 
while the other can only exist under artificial heat in a hot¬ 
house or greenhouse, as the case may be. The physicist and 
the physiologist are so far quite unable to say exactly why this 
difference exists, although they have shown us in how many 
cases form, structure and function are closely related in the 
case of plants. When we find plants growing in anv particular 
place or position abroad or at home it does not always follow 
that that situation, climate, or soil is the best suited to them ; 
all.it proves is that the plants have been able to adapt them¬ 
selves to their environment, this variable adaptability being 
really what is otherwise spoken of as evolution. As I have 
before said, “ evolution ” simply means adaptability to different 
surroundings or “ environment,” jargon more affected by 
scientists than by practical men. Thus, as every traveller 
and plant collector knows, many plants succeed here at home 
under conditions far different to those of their native habitats. 
Thus, while it is often an advantage to a cultivator to know 
under what general conditions of soil, heat, moisture, shade, 
aspect, or sunlight a plant naturally thrives abroad, it by no 
means follows that those are the only conditions under which 
it will luxuriate in our gardens here at home. It is evident, 
then, that the mysterious power to' vary, which plants have 
acquired in one form or another, and in different degrees, as 
Copyright, Messrs. Sutton and Sons. 
Diascia Barberae lias pretty pink coral-like flowers, abundant 
in summer, is a half hardy annual, excellent both as a dwarf border 
and as a pot plant. (See jtac/e 273.) 
they came to us down the ages, is one of the most potent 
factors in their adaptability to artificial conditions in the 
garden. 
Now, a step further, and we may see that plants found wild 
together cannot vary in the garden any more than they can 
possibly vary in nature. The wind, the fly, the bats, birds, and 
the bees or other natural agents that fertilise the world’s plants 
to-day, as during past eons, have paved the way for those culti¬ 
vators who wor 1 “ artificially,” as we say, but they do not really 
do that ; they must work on Nature’s own lines in our gardens 
and greenhouses here at home. Man as a hybridist or a cross¬ 
breeder is not an original creator ; he is, if successful, simply 
carrying on Nature’s work on her own lines. He may originate 
what distance or other physical and functional drawbacks stood 
in Nature’s way, and prevented her doing, in the forest or savan¬ 
nah, but the possibility of such blendings oi* unions was always 
there! In a word, the gardener has, in the close proximity of 
plants from all wild sources, in the garden a greater opportunity 
