SALUTE TO THE WEST 
F ROM the Ohio River westward to the Rockies lies a great 
territory where in recent years an awakened spirit of 
gardening has been finding practical expression with in¬ 
creasing intensity. To this area of the Central Plains 
and the region abutting thereon, the contents of this 
number of The Garden Magazine are especially dedicated—an 
effort to interpret something of the peculiarities of the region 
both to those who dwell in it, and to those other gardeners on 
the two coasts and the warm south who garden under somewhat 
different and often easier circumstances. Gardeners are always 
eager to have an understanding of one another’s trials and prob¬ 
lems, a friendly interest in their friends’ perplexities that leads 
to the larger fellowship which finds so abundant expression in 
the garden. 
After all, gardening is notan exact science, and though much 
may be accomplished through a knowledge of the controlling fac¬ 
tors of heat, light, rainfall, etc., yet the ultimate, the final 
solution to the problem in planting is very largely to be reached 
only by experiment. The several articles and picture presenta¬ 
tions in this issue cover some eighteen states. They breathe the 
note of achievement and triumph after trial and tribulation, and 
through all the contributions there speaks the great lesson for 
all gardeners everywhere, that the local problems must be 
solved locally. 
We believe that this present collection of material is unique 
and shall naturally be glad to learn how our readers receive it. 
Our thanks to those contributors who have helped in this 
presentation of the garden triumphs of the West; and may the 
good work go on! 
THE INHIBITING EFFECTS OF QUARANTINE . 
MONG those who attended the two great flower shows of 
the spring—New York, N. Y., and Cleveland, Ohio—there 
was a general observance of the absence of certain big plants 
of decorative quality that lent grandeur and dignity to the 
shows of yesteryear. 
Some felt all this but did not pause to realize the underlying 
cause; others freely expressed their views that the effects of 
Quarantine 37 were at last being publicly manifested. Gone 
are the formally decorative Bay-trees, gone the stately Palms, 
gone the gorgeous Azaleas and Rhododendrons—to mention 
only a few of the striking vacancies—which were formerly im¬ 
ported from European nurseries for our delight, and some can¬ 
not be grown here for one or two generations. 
I hese are stern facts which are changing our horticulture. 
We have stepped backward seventy-five or a hundred years, and 
what the line of advance shall be it is vain even to guess at now. 
But we need not be blind to the limitations which have just 
begun to be forcibly demonstrated to the people at large, who, 
however, may never understand. Our ornamental horticulture 
is to-day where the world horticulture stood just after the Na¬ 
poleonic era, when Europe stretched out its hands to all quarters 
of the world to gather in the glories of the earth for greenhouse 
and garden. And so began the great age of modern horticulture. 
The New World after its Great War also looked into the wide 
world not to see what it could add, but universally, to exclude. 
Our horticulture “advances” backward! 
One of our Garden Magazine family of readers who enjoys 
the world-wide interests of gardening, looking homeward from 
across the seas draws an interesting, imaginative picture; 
My copies of the magazine forwarded to me from home, are reaching 
me here in Southern France and are giving me, as usual, much food for 
reflection—pleasurable or otherwise, as the case may be! In the letter 
in the December issue, under the caption “ Does Danger Lurk in 
Seeds?” 1 have read of the new ruling of the Federal Horticultural 
Board, prohibiting the importation into the United States of the seeds 
of perennial plants! Far be it from me to comment on the decrees of an 
all-wise and farseeing government—they are indeed inscrutable—but 
would not the Federal Horticultural Board save themselves a good deal 
of trouble and their fellow-countrymen (I had almost written “their 
victims,” in a moment of temporary aberration!) a good deal of anguish 
if they issued a blanket law forbidding ornamental horticulture, once 
for all? Then there would be no question of transgressing by introduc¬ 
ing a few seeds or bulbs inadvertently ordered or purchased under the 
mistaken idea that they would not only give innocent pleasure to the 
introducer but that they might inspire other garden-lovers to go and do 
likewise. All our land then would be safeguarded against any danger¬ 
ous aliens in the form of flower, fruit, or tree. In due course of time 
we might hope to see even what are now green lawns (harboring who 
knows what possible perils?) changed into nice safe areas of asphalt. 
All winter, here on the French Riviera, I have been delighting not 
only in finding again the flowers which I remember of old in this land of 
enchantment—the Anemones and Irises, the Brooms and Heaths, the 
Hellebores and Arums of these Mediterranean hillsides, but I have 
been thinking how many of them might perfectly well be grown at 
home with the winter protection of a coldframe perhaps, and as 1 have 
studied the charming gardens of Cannes, of Mentone, and of San Remo 
-—many of them a mere series of shelves or steps on these steep hill¬ 
sides (I am speaking of the small gardens of modest houses and of 
hotels, not of such great places as Eilenroc at Ca Antibes or as the 
Hanbury Garden at La Mortola)—I have realized how much we in the 
United States might learn and how deeply we might profit by such 
study, were we permitted to do so. 
Sometimes I feel as if the art of gardening were still in its infancy in 
our country and little enough being done to encourage it! Are you 
quite sure that The Garden Magazine itself may not be sup¬ 
pressed as seditious and undesirable in that it inspires unholy ambitions 
and longings for a wider knowledge of garden lore and a greater variety 
of flowers and fruits? As Miss Agnes Repplier so dispassionately and 
discreetly observes in the February Atlantic Monthly, “Nothing in the 
way of inhibitions is impossible to the United States!” 
GET READY FOR THE INTERNATIONAL 
GLADIOLUS EXHIBITION 
G LADIOLUS growers will be interested in visiting the trial 
collections at Guelph, Ontario, on the Agricultural College 
grounds, where the varieties are planted in plots clearly named. 
All this is in anticipation of the International Gladiolus Exhi¬ 
bition August 20th and 21st. The exhibition schedule of the 
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