THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
139 
cheerfully give away to their neighbors any spare plants 
that they may possess; hut the majority decline, for the 
most part, to give away plants at all, because the indis¬ 
criminate practice subjects them to numerous and 
troublesome demands upon both the time and generosity 
of even the most liberally disposed. But every gentle¬ 
man who employs a gardener could well afford to allow 
that gardener to spend a couple of days in a season in 
propagating some one or two really valuable trees, 
shrubs, or plants, that would be a decided acquisition to 
tin guidons of his neighborhood. One or two specimens 
oi such tree or plant thus raised in abundance might be 
distributed freely during the planting season, or during 
a given week ol the same, to all who would engage to 
plant and take care of them in their own grounds, and 
thus this tree or plant would soon become widely dis¬ 
tributed about the whole adjacent country. Another sea¬ 
son still another desirable tree or plant might be taken in 
hand and when ready for home planting might be scat¬ 
tered broadcast among those who desire to possess it, 
and so the labor of love might go on as convenience dic¬ 
tated till the greater part of the gardens, however small, 
within a considerable circumference would contain at 
least several of the most valuable, useful and ornamental 
trees and shrubs for the climate. 
1 he second means is by what the nurserymen may do. 
We are very well aware that the first thought which 
will cross the mind of a selfish and narrow minded nur¬ 
seryman (if any such read the foregoing paragraph) is 
that such a course of gratuitous distribution of good 
plants, on the part of private persons, will speedily ruin 
his business. But he was never more greatly mistaken, as 
both observation and reason will convince him. Who are 
the nurserymen’s best customers. That class of men who 
have long owned a garden, whether it be half a rod or 
many acres, who have never planted trees or, if any, 
have but those not worth planting? Not at all. His best 
customers are those who have formed a taste for trees 
by planting them, and who, having got a taste for im- 
pioving, are seldom idle in the matter and keep pretty 
legular accounts with the dealers in trees. If you can¬ 
not get a person who thinks he has but little time or 
taste for improving his place to buy trees, and he will 
accept a plant, or a fruit-tree, or a shade tree, now and 
then from a neighbor whom he knows to be “curious in 
such things,”—by all means, we say to the nursery¬ 
man, encourage him to plant at any rate and at all rates. 
If that man’s tree turns out to his satisfaction he is 
an amateur, one only beginning to pick the shell, to he 
sure, but an amateur full fledged by-and-by. If he once 
gets a taste for gardening downright—if the flavor of his 
own rare-ripe touch his palate but once, as something 
quite different from what lie has always, like a contented 
ignorant donkey, bought in the market—if his Malmaison 
rose, radiant with the sentiment of the best of French 
women, and the loveliness of intrinsic bud-beauty once 
touches his hitherto dull eyes, so that the scales of his 
blindness to the fact that one rose differs from another, 
fall off forever—then we say, thereafter he is one of the 
nurseryman’s best customers. Begging is both slow and 
too dependent a position for him and his garden soon tills 
up by ransacking the nurseryman’s catalogues, and it is 
more likely to be swamped by the myriad of things which 
he would think very much alike (if he had not bought 
them by different appelations), than by any empty spaces 
waiting for the liberality of more enterprising cultiva¬ 
tors. 
And thus, if the nurseryman can satisfy himself with 
our reasoning that he ought not object to the amateur’s 
becoming a gratuitous distributor of certain plants, we 
would persuade him for much the same reason, to fol¬ 
low the example himself. No person can propagate a 
tree or plant with so little cost and so much ease as one 
whose business it is to do so. 
Vve may add, no one is more likely to know the really 
desirable varieties of trees or plants than he is. No one 
so well knows as himself that the newest things—most 
zealously sought after at high prices—are by no means 
those which will give the most permanent satisfaction in 
a family garden. Accordingly it is almost always the 
older and well-tried standard trees and plants, those that 
the nurseryman can best afford to spare, those he can 
grow most cheaply, that he would best serve the diffusion 
of popular taste by distributing gratis. We think it 
would be best tor all parties if the variety were very 
limited, and we doubt whether the distribution of two 
valuable hardy trees or climbers for five years, or till 
they became so common all over the surroundings as to 
make a distinct feature of embellishment, would not be 
more serviceable than disseminating a larger number of 
species. It may appear to some of our commercial 
readers an odd recommendation to urge them to give 
aw r ay precisely that which it is their business to sell, 
but we are not talking at random when we say most con¬ 
fidently that such a course, steadily pursued by amateurs 
and nurserymen throughout the country for ten years, 
would increase the taste for planting and the demand for 
trees five hundred fold. 
The third means is by what the horticultural societies 
may do. 
We believe there are now about forty horticultural so¬ 
cieties in North America. Hitherto they have contented 
themselves year after year with giving pretty much the 
same old schedule of premiums for the best cherries, cab¬ 
bages and carnations, all over the country, till the stim¬ 
ulus begins to wear out, somewhat like the effects of 
opium or tobacco, on confirmed habitues. Let them adopt 
our scheme of popularizing the taste for horticulture by 
giving fruit trees, ornamental trees, shrubs, and vines 
(purchased by the society of the nurserymen) to the cul¬ 
tivators of such small gardens, suburban door-yards, or 
cottage inclosures, within a distance of ten miles round, 
as the inspecting committee shall decide to be best 
worthy, by their air of neatness, order, and attention, of 
such premiums. In this way the valuable plants will fall 
into the right hands, the vendor of trees and plants will 
be directly the gainer, and the stimulus given to cottage 
gardens and the spread of the popular taste will be im¬ 
mediate and decided. 
“Tall oaks from little acorns grow” is a remarkably 
trite aphorism, but one the truth of which no one who 
knows the aptitude of our people or our intrinsic love of 
refinement and elegance will underrate or gainsay. If, 
by such simple means as we have here pointed out, our 
