THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
87 
fine salable plants of this choice evergreen ; they have 
planted at Topeka something over 50 bushels of French 
apple seed, and are planning for a large increase in their 
canvassing force during the coming season. 
THE HOME NURSERY COMPANY. 
One of the principal nursery firms of Normal is The 
Home Nursery Company, incorporated with a capital 
stock of $50,000. It was established in 1867 and incor¬ 
porated in 1890. It has done business under several 
names since it was established. It received its present 
name in 1887. The management of the business is under 
the direct supervision of its officers : President, S. S. 
Porter ; vice-president and treasurer, J. N. Boyer ; 
secretary, E. A. Vencill ; superintendent of agents, G. 
A. Griggs. Special attention has always been given to 
the retail trade, confined mostly to Illinois and adjoining- 
states. The company has always done more or less 
wholesaling, and is fast changing to that line of business. 
It does all its planting in the vicinity of Normal, and has 
at present i 50 acres under cultivation, most of which is 
adjoining the city limits. It makes large plantings of 
hardy apples and crabs, plum, peach, Russian apricots 
and cherries, together with a good assortment of small 
fruits and ornamentals Its packing grounds are large 
and commodious and well equipped with everything 
necessary for packing stock in first-class shape. The 
business the past season far exceeded expectations, and 
the end of the shipping season found the company well 
sold out on stock of a salable age and size. 
THE GENIUS OF THE GARDENER. 
The landscape gardener, if his education has not been 
neglected, knows very well that a want of preparation 
will sadly prejudice and delay the operations of the short 
planting season this climate affords, he knows that hurry 
and exposure and delay will be resented by the sensitive 
vegetable life with which he has to count, as determined¬ 
ly, if not as passionately as Colorado miners resent the 
repeal of the silver-purchase laws. He desires to get a 
pull on his planting season, just as much as the silver 
men desire to get a pull on the treasury. 
Now is the time to prepare for autumn planting— 
especially where the operations are large. The ground 
should be cultivated and ready—perhaps in grass—the 
stations for all trees and groups should be pegged and 
determined and the holes dug, then with everything 
ready, planting is a pleasure. With everything unready 
and unthought, it is a hurried burden and confusion. 
More than half of the parks and gardens are miser¬ 
able failures. They are stupidly confused, either because 
they are without design at all, or because the design has 
proved to be incapable of economical execution. A park 
or garden without design imprinted on its surface, is like 
the heaps of hewn stone tumbled upon a building site-—■ 
the material is there, but the masons have not studied 
the harmony of their relation to the whole, and they lie 
without shape or congruity or foundation. So with 
many a park and garden. A few meaningless walks 
and drives have been built until both patience and ap¬ 
propriations are expended, many hollows have been 
ploughed out, and bumps scraped up, grass-seed sown, 
and then anybody is at liberty to dot a few trees and 
^ shrubs around ; they may look as if the crows had drop¬ 
ped them, they may be ugly and heterogeneous, with a 
little of everything cheap enough everywhere, and mean¬ 
ingless masses nowhere, and the whole vapid scene is 
complete. 
The imprint of the artistic mind guides the chisel 
and lends its charm to the block of stone, as the genius 
of the painter leaps from a canvas and enchains us, not 
because they emulate nature, or even faithfully portray 
her, but rather because they have the imitative genius to 
seize upon her most perfect expressions and present them 
to the senses in material foreign to nature’s laboratory. 
It is the genius of imitation, the industry of application 
that enchains us 
But how infinitely more subtle are the processes of 
nature herself, how vastly more varied her materials. 
The gardener who would group them must not only have 
a comprehensive knowledge of them, he must have a 
genius higher than that of either architect or painter if 
he would present them m a manner at once congruous, 
distinctive, and without prejudice to the environment. 
Only one man has appeared among gardeners in my 
life time who possessed any such genius as this. This 
man was John Gibson the designer and superintendent 
of Battersea Park, and the introducer of the sub-tropical 
bedding and other features which his travels in the 
Himalaya had burnt into his mind. Mr. Harry Fitch of 
London once remarked to me that this man did more 
for modern gardening than any other of his century, and 
anyone who will think of the thousands who have never 
seen his work—never even heard of him and yet follow 
him—will be disposed to agree that such a man may be 
a power for good or evil design accordingly as his genius 
is imitated in its purity—but in creating a demand for 
material a mighty power indeed. Echeverias and coleus 
and all the host of Battersea sub-tropical plants have 
had a rare survival—and it may be that they will never 
be set aside. 
Trenton, N. J. James MacPherson. 
The Niagara grape which was sold at fancy prices all 
through this part of the country a few years ago, is not 
all that its most sanguine friends anticipated, and ac¬ 
cording to the Albion Republican, some Orleans county 
farmers are taking up their Niagara vines .—Dansvillc 
Express. 
