_ Deo 1.1903 
THE ATSTRALTAN GAPDENER 
be 11 
price of half-a-crown, published by “The 
Book Lovers Library” of Melbourne, is 
very welcome. The contents of this book 
are divided into chapters upon The Prin- 
ciples of Garden Architecture, Designing 
Gardens to Meeu Local Conditions, 
Materials Availapte and the Practical 
Work of Making Garden, The Selection and 
Arrangement of Permanent Plants in 
Garden Schemes, Planning, Forming, and 
Maintaining Small Gardens, Garden Man- 
agement, and a Rose Garden. From the 
foregoing it may be readily seen that Mr. 
Luffmann has written to some purpose, and 
anyone who makes a careful study of the 
book cannot fail to catch the inspiration 
of a man whose heart and soul is in his 
work, and who has done his best to give 
freely of his knowledge and valuable ex- 
perience. The ideas in the book are not 
only eminently practical, but they have 
also the recommendation of being artistic. 
We are quite sure from this book that the 
author is capable of writing a great deal 
more, and what we now look for is another 
volume giving more elaborated details. 
He apparently does not like the idea of 
“books that are mere catalogues of plants 
and directions for managing them.” Just 
so. But there are thousands of amateurs 
who would like to know something of the 
peculiarities of the plants that they are 
‘called upon to manage; and also the best 
way to manage them, and, having set out 
the general principles of gardening in such 
zx fine fashion, we think Mr. Luffmann lays 
himself open to the task of telling us some- 
thing about the things that make up the 
garden. 
The Orchas‘d. 
THE MARVELS OF FRUIT BREED- 
ING. 
By Marcus Woopwarp. 
[rom *f Pearson’s Magazine.” ] 
_ _Sawbridgeworth—a charming,  strag- 
gling, red-roofed village of Hertfordshire— 
is a place with a fame which its peaceful 
inhabitants, I imagine, little wot of. 
name and the fame of this village have 
been carried to the uttermost ends of the 
earth. And, as you will agree is very 
right and proper, it is by its fruits -that 
Sawbridgeworth is known. 
- You would pass through the village on 
your motor-car or bicycle and see nothing 
wonderful about it save its picturesque- 
ness, common to all Hertfordshire villages 
_ —its old-world streets—its quaint’ houses. 
You would pass by it in- your train from 
London to Cambridge, and note only the 
beauty of green country. But take a few 
steps in the right direction away from the 
village, and you come to a place that has 
done more for the improvement of fruit 
than can easily be described or imagined. 
Here are two hundred acres of land un- 
der fruit-tree cultivation—the nurseries cf 
_ the Messrs. Rivers—that have been the 
birth-place of some of the finest, earliest, 
and most luscious fruits known. In the 
- spring-time, when: the white and pink 
blossoms of the fruit trees are out in-all ~ 
their beauty, the nursery is a wonderland, 
The — 
and a walk through the great glass-houses, 
where the choicest peaches, nectarines, 
cherries, plums, oranges, and grapes are 
being hurried on to take their places as the 
first English fruit on the market, is a re- 
velation as to the beauty of fruit trees 
grown in pots. The nurseries stretch 
away over miles of country, for besides 
fruit trees tnere are acres of rose-gardens 
that are a blaze of glory when the summer 
comes. 
But above all, it is here where the most 
extensive experiments ever known for the 
improvements of fruit have been made. 
Day after day the experiments go on. 
Nature’s occasional freaks are looked for, 
and eagerly seized upon when found, to he 
utilised for the breeding of new varieties. 
Marvellous and unlooked for results are 
gained by the crossing of different fruits. 
And it is these experiments, carried on by 
three generations of the Rivers’ family, 
that have resulted in those marvellous 
peaches of the nectarine flavor, those mas- 
sive cherries on tiny trees, those high-bred 
oranges that are in demand even in such 
places as the West Indies and the Cape, 
where orange-growing is one of the great 
industries of the country. y 
These experiments have increased the 
size of the peach from a circumference or 
“six inches to a circumference of nine 
inches, and of the nectarine ‘to a circum- 
ference of twelve inches, and the value cf 
_the fruit has increased proportionately. 
The fascination of fruit-breeding lies in 
its uncertainty. It is largely chance 
work. The seed of a fruit, planted and 
cultivated, may yield fruit better, equal 
to, or inferior than its parent—no man 
knoweth beforehand what the outcome 
will be. One good fruit cross-bred with 
another may yield, in the same way, any 
kind of fruit, or perhaps no fruit. |'Thou- 
sands of seedlings may be cultivated, and 
one only be found an improvement on the 
parent trees. But the one improved seed- 
ling may be worth a fortune! : 
Nothing, for instance, can be more valu- 
able to a fruit grower than fruit which 
ripens earlier than ordinary varieties. A 
promising seedling is tended with as much 
care as a human baby, and when at last, 
perhaps after years of careful trial, it is 
proved to mature its fruit earlier or later 
than any other variety, its value is beyond 
all reckoning. It represents, to the for- 
ward-looking fruit-grower, supposing it to 
be a peach tree, thousands of peaches for 
the market at a time when, previously, his 
fruit was still unripe, or all gathered. To 
prolong the season of any fruit, therefore, 
even by only a few days, is the great aim 
of the fruit-breeder. ' 
' By their art of cross-breeding, growers 
have extended the season so that special 
trees bear fruit for the market a fortnight 
after the season proper for peaches has 
ended, thus prolonging the season to the 
end of September. Hs ; 
The wonderful improvements which 
have been brought about at Sawbridge- 
~worth in the culture of apple trees’ in- 
gardens and on fruit farms are due to the’ 
—the Broad-leaved and the Nonsuch- 
surface, 
- little bushes, and the 
. wrought by such 
discovery of the two best dwarfing stocks 
Paradise. It was chance that brought 
about the system of lifting and root-prun- 
ing apple trees on these stocks and the 
pear tree on the quince stock. 
Mr. Thomas Rivers—whose grandsons 
are now in charge of the nurseries—had, 
as a boy, a famous fruit-appetite, and if a 
tree in the nursery planted by his grand- 
father, now more than a hundred years 
ago, could be found with superior fruit, he 
was a constant visitor’ to it. 
He discovered early in his career that 
the trees with the best fruit were to be 
found in what was called the “hospital” cf 
the nursery—a piece of ground devoted to 
refuse trees, which were too small for cus- 
tomers, and which were often taken up and 
replanted. Many a fine feast of ribston 
and golden pippins he enjoyed in the hos- 
pital—but it was not until he came to a 
thinking age that he realised why these 
refuse trees never made strong shoots, and 
yet bore grand crops. sy 
The reason was simply because they 
were often moved, and the ground round 
about them was often dug over. .Under- 
standing this, he began to introduce a new 
system of fruit-cultivation in the old nur- 
sery—that of making the trees fruitful and 
healthy by keeping their roots near the 
pruning them frequently, and 
moving the trees, if necessary, once in 
about two years. In this way the trees 
are kept dwarf, and great crops are pro- 
duced. ; 
And great changes were made in the 
shape and size of fruit trees. . In old- 
fashioned orchards trees are allowed to 
grow to whatever size and in whatever 
shape they will, and the grass is allowed 
to grow beneath them, as food, it may_ be, 
for cattle. But now the orchards are 
orchards in miniature—condensed orchards 
—with trees only a few feet in height, and 
generally either pyramidal in shape, or like 
ground beneath them 
is carefully cultivated. , 
An apple orchard of one acre planted 
with dwarf trees will contain more than 
five hundred trees, shaped either as broad 
little bushes, or as regular pyramids; and 
there will be space for some seven hundred 
emaller fruits between the trees. 
Profits may be expected after about three 
years, and will continue to be made in an 
ascending scale for twenty years.. The 
effect. on the fruit trade that has been 
revolutionising ideas 
And then the little 
ode 
pusn 
cannot be calculated. 
bush or pyramidal trees make very fine 
ornaments for lawns or gardens. 
But still more interesting is the method 
of growing fruit trees in pots, as ornaments 
to greenhouses. The trees, with their 
beautiful foliage ana fruit, are as decora- 
tive as any exotic flower, and would be 
well worth growing for their beauty alone, 
even if their fruit were uneatable. -In 
the gardens at Sawbridgeworth, small 
orchards are grown in pots under glass— 
orchards of ~peaches, nectarines, cherries, 
and plums, while pears are grown in pots 
in simple span-roofed orchard houses, with-: 
out artificial heat. ° *  ~ 2 
Tt is on these prolific little fruit trees in 
pots in the great glass-houses that the fruit- 
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