THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
130 
THE NURSERYMAN AS A LANDSCAPE GARDENER 
However desirable it would be to keep the profession 
of landscape gardening separate from that of the nur¬ 
seryman, the fact remains there is a growing tendency to 
combine the two. 
The sale of plants and the planting of them, is becom¬ 
ing more and more a single contract. Many nurseries 
are recognizing this and have a planting or landscape de¬ 
partment connected with their business, in fact in many 
localities the terms nurseryman and landscape gardener 
are synonymous to the people who employ them. 
The laying out of large estates requiring the services 
of engineers, draftsmen, and landscape experts, will al¬ 
ways call for a service the nursery is unable to give. In 
fact in the development of large estates, parks, the lay¬ 
ing out of towns and cities, and such like undertakings, 
the planting is only a detail, and often secondary to the 
location of buildings, road making, draining, grading, 
and other branches of the profession, the nurseryman is 
hardly likely to be equipped to carry out. 
There will always be a call and a place for leaders in 
the profession, of landscape gardening, to undertake the 
comprehensive phases of the work, which need an asso¬ 
ciation of experts under one head or organization to 
properly handle a large undertaking. Such concerns 
should have no real connection with the nursery bus¬ 
iness, as it is as separate as the architect and builder. 
Apart from this, however much the nurseryman may 
wish to confine himself to the growing and selling of 
plants, there are so many of bis customers, who only 
have small places', that the paying of a landscape gar¬ 
dener to show them how to arrange the plants they buy 
will not be considered for a moment. Such customers 
prefer to go to the nurseryman to supply and plant, and 
if he wishes to succeed at his business he must be pre¬ 
pared to do it. 
After all good gardening consists of putting the right 
plant in the right place, and giving it the right attention 
when you have got it there. Who is better equipped to 
do this than the well informed and experienced nursery¬ 
man? 
There is a good deal of humbug being written and 
talked about landscape gardening in the abstract, which 
is really detrimental to the profession. If there were 
less attention paid to art even among the professional 
landscape architects, and more to deep digging, we 
should see more satisfactory and more beautiful gardens. 
A plant wrongly placed is not quite so bad as a wrong 
plant rightly placed, because with the latter it won’t 
thrive and is a complete failure. 
Most landscape gardeners do not seem to have learned, 
that the plant comes first—that only when it is well 
grown and given suitable environment, is proper garden¬ 
ing carried on. The arrangement of the plants is not 
so important as growing them well, but of course well 
grown plants properly placed or arranged, is true land¬ 
scape art. 
Left to bis own judgment, the good plantsman will 
usually select the right plant for the right place even 
though he does not know much about design, and then 1 
is really no better combination for the laying out of small 
grounds than an interested proprietor, who wishes to give 
individuality to his ow n grounds, and a nurseryman co¬ 
operating with him. 
With the smaller places the building architect often 
specifies the grades, roads, draining, etc., so as to har¬ 
monize with the building, and too often he attempts to 
landscape the grounds. They usually know w hat kind 
of a setting their building needs, but do not know bow to 
produce it. 
The writer recently saw a very fine house of which the 
architect may well be proud, set on a knoll in a grove of 
magnificent white oaks; trees that were two or three hun¬ 
dred years old. These had all been trimmed up to look 
like so many poplars, presumably to show off the build¬ 
ing better, there seemed to be no other reason. The 
owner was to blame because be did not engage a land¬ 
scape gardener, or even a nurseryman to prevent such an 
outrage against good taste, or perhaps it would be better 
to say common sense. 
The nurseryman is often asked to do the impossible, 
such as supplying fruit trees which will bear a full crop 
next year. Plant a bed of evergreens that w ill stay just 
one size and always look well, supply plants that w ill 
bloom all the time and plants that will thrive and look 
well without any care. One lady brought a painting of 
f!ow r er border to a nurseryman to show him just what 
she wanted. The painting was a very good one. as it 
was possible to identify the different flowers in the bor¬ 
der, and so must have been the artist’s imagination, for 
he had daffodils, paeonies. Iris larkspurs, sunflowers, 
all blooming at the same time. It was not an easy mat¬ 
ter to convince the lady it was impractical. 
Practical and thorough knowledge of plants, is the one 
great requisite towards the making of a successful gar¬ 
dener, so that a nurseryman is usually eminently (itted to 
take up the profession which the exigencies of his bus¬ 
iness is leading him into. 
“THE MONTHLY SUMMARY OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE” FOR JAN. 1915, GIVES THE FOLLOWING REPORT OF 
IMPORTS OF PLANTS, TREES, SHRUBS AND VINES. 
ARTICLES 
JANUARY- 
1914 
1915 
Quantity 
Value 
Quantity 
Value 
Plants, trees, shrubs and vines : 
Bulbs, bulbous roots, or corms, cul¬ 
tivated for their flowers or foliage 
AH ° ther .{ duT": 
Total. 
3,099 
32,863 
358 
101,593 
12,895 
• 
114,826 
3,586 
129,508 
134,814 | 
247,920 
SEVEN MONTHS ENDING JANUARY- 
1913 
1914 
1915 
Quantity 
Value 
Quantity 
Value 
Quantity 
Value 
282,976 
1,776,898 
1,612 
713,734 
208,152 
• 
2,017,118 
9,299 
777,768 
236,741» 
2,252,^75 
11,018 
765,% 1 
2,492,244 
. 
2,804,185 
3,029,454 
