Floriculture

“ On light soil with bad tillage, when the flax was so poor that the cultivator was about to plow it up, the application of three bushels of plaster, in the morning when the dew was on, produced a larger yield of better flax from an acre than adjoining growers got from two acres of their best land.
FLOWERS.
Floriculture is an employment appropriate to all classes, ages, and conditions. No yard connected with a dwelling is complete without a flower-bed. The cultivation of flowers is eminently promotive of health, refinement of manners, and good taste. ”

“ For the more important positions in the flower garden we have choice of many really sumptuous subjects, such as Stocks, Asters, Balsams, Drummond’s Phlox, Lobelias, the lovely new varieties of Antirrhinums, Dianthus, Portulacas, Zinnias, tall Stock-flowered Larkspurs, Nemesias, and many other flowers equally beautiful and lasting. We do not hope by these brief remarks to change the prevailing fashion—indeed, we have no particular wish that way—but we feel bound to observe that it is sufficient for the beauty of the garden that the greenhouse bedders should be confined to the parterre proper. ”

“ We lay out our grounds, dig, plant, transplant, manure. We read catalogues of roses till we are bewildered with their lustrous glories. We set out plum, pear, and peach, we luxuriate in advance on bushels of choicest grapes, and our theoretic garden is Paradise Regained. But in the actual garden there are cut-worms for every cabbage, squash-bugs for all the melons, slugs and rose-bugs for the roses, curculios for the plums, fire-blight for pears, yellows for peaches, mildew for grapes,{268} and late and early frosts, droughts, winds, and hail-storms here and there for all. ”

“ Subtropical gardening has shown us that one of the greatest mistakes ever made in the flower-garden was the adoption of a few varieties of plants for culture on a vast scale, to the exclusion of interest and variety, and, too often, of beauty or taste. ”

“ Is it any wonder if horticulture in its best sense—that is, the culture of the garden as a whole—is not what it should be? No gardener can get prizes for well-kept beds, for effects of harmonious colouring, for arrangement of shrubberies, for the grouping of herbaceous plants. He is tempted for the sake of a single specimen to sacrifice the beauty of a whole plant, or the clusters of an entire fruit-tree. That it is most important for nurserymen to be able to compare new species, [74] or new varieties of old species, is of course undeniable. ”

“ A guide to the successful propagation and cultivation of florists' plants. The work is not one for florists and gardeners only, but the amateur's wants are constantly kept in mind, and we have a very complete treatise on the cultivation of flowers under glass, or in the open air, suited to those who grow flowers for pleasure as well as those who make them a matter of trade. The work is characterized by the same radical common sense that marked the author's "Gardening for Profit," and it holds a high place in the estimation of lovers of agriculture. ”

“ A florist cultivates a plant for the sake of its flower; and regards the roots and leaves as of value, chiefly because they are instrumental in producing the flower. But while, as an ultimate product, the flower is the thing to which everything else is subordinate, the florist has learnt that the root and leaves are intrinsically of greater importance; because on them the evolution of the flower depends. He bestows every care in rearing a healthy plant ”

“ Like the flowers of the field and the garden, they are “all rooted and grounded” in the soil of the same earth; they are warmed by the same sun, refreshed by the same air, and watered by the same dews. They each derive nourishment, growth, and increase from the same life-giving Source. As the flower puts forth its leaves and petals, adorns the place which it inhabits with its beauty, and possesses an internal system of qualities, whereby it is enabled to bring forth its seed or fruit in the appointed season; so does the Christian. ”

“ The strength and energy of people, in northern climates, have led them to excel in the rearing of fruit—not in imparting a more delicious flavor, but in the quantity, the fulness, and the size of the fruit. In the balmy air and under the sunny sky of the South, vegetation develops more rapidly and more luxuriantly. He who adds to the list of beautiful and fragrant flowers, or improves some variety of fruit, enlarging, or rendering it more luscious, will be remembered as a benefactor. Gardening is a pleasant and healthy occupation to those that love outdoor life. ”

“ If all interested in flower-gardening had an opportunity of seeing the charming effects produced by judiciously intermingling fine-leaved plants with brilliant flowers, there would be an immediate revolution in our flower-gardening, and verdant grace and beauty of form would be introduced, and all the brilliancy of colour that could be desired might be seen at the same time. ”

“ It is difficult to know what class of plants has in late years most profited by the artful nature, or unnatural art, of the skilful gardener; but certainly, some of the most striking successes [60] have been among roses, clematis, begonias, and rhododendrons.
But it is not the florist only who has been helping on the cause of botanical science at home. Within the last few years the botanists, or rather perhaps the naturalists, have been increasingly busy among both the English field and garden flowers. ”

“ Ornamental plants, or those commonly cultivated in flower gardens, will not stock the school gardens contemplated by the committee. Native wild plants, such as ferns, grasses, asters, goldenrods, violets, native shrubs, and economic plants, such as grains, vegetable roots, and leguminous and cucurbitaceous plants, must be the stock of the gardens. ”

“ There are several species hardy and well suited for flower-garden purposes, and, more advantageous still, distinct from each other. The effect afforded by them, when well developed, is equal to that of any hothouse plant that we can venture in the open air for the summer, while they are green and ornamental at all seasons. ”

“ I was led to think of the enormous number of beautiful hardy plants from other countries which might be naturalised, with a very slight amount of trouble, in many situations in our gardens and [vi] woods—a world of delightful plant beauty that we might in this way make happy around us, in places now weedy, or half bare, or useless. I saw that we could not only grow thus a thousandfold more lovely flowers than are commonly seen in what is called the flower garden, but also a number which, by any other plan, have no chance whatever of being seen around us. ”

“ But the scope of practical gardening covers a range of horticultural practice wide enough to give play to every variety of human taste. Some find their greatest pleasure in collecting as large a number as possible of [003] all sorts of plants from all sources, others in collecting them themselves in their foreign homes, others in making rock-gardens, or ferneries, or peat-gardens, or bog-gardens, or gardens for conifers or for flowering shrubs, or special gardens of plants and trees with variegated or coloured leaves, or in the cultivation of some particular race or family of plants. ”

“ The man knows about his crops and his wife about the flowers, herbs, and vegetables of her garden; but no countrymen know the names of wild flowers—and few countrywomen, save of medicinal herbs. I asked one farmer the name of a brilliant autumnal flower whose intense purple was then unfamiliar to me—the Devil's-bit. He answered, "Them's Woilets." Violet is the only word in which the initial V is ever changed to W by native New Englanders. Every pink or crimson flower is a Pink. Spring blossoms are "Mayflowers." A frequent answer is, "Those ain't flowers, they're weeds." ”

“ From low, broad spreading trees depended the grape fruit, as large as an infant's head and yellow as gold, while the orange, lime and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, green and ripe fruit all together, met the eye at every turn, and filled the garden with fragrance. ”

“ Meadow Rue, Thalictrum.—Tall and vigorous herbaceous plants, mostly without any beauty of flower when closely examined, but often affording a pleasing distant effect when seen in masses, and hence desirable for this mode of gardening, though seldom suitable for a position in the garden proper. They grow in any soil, and should be placed among rank herbs and coarse vegetation, not in the foreground, which might be occupied by more brilliant subjects. ”

“ If one chose to enumerate the plants that grow in British and European waters, a very long list might be made, but those which possess no distinct character or no beauty of flower would be useless, for it is only by a judicious selection of the very best kinds that gardening of this description can give satisfaction; therefore, omitting a host of inconspicuous water–weeds, we will endeavour to indicate others of real worth for our present purpose. ”

“ It deserves as much attention as any plant in cultivation, and yet how rarely is any thorough preparation made for its perfect development. What is there growing in garden or in wild more nobly distinct and beautiful than the great silvery plumes of this plant waving in the autumnal gusts—the burial plumes as it were of our summer too early dead? What tender plant so effective as this in giving a new aspect of vegetation to our gardens, if it be tastefully placed and well grown? ”

“ In our Southern states, the rich assign one of their slaves to the garden.
16. In the United States, almost every family in the country, and in the villages, has its garden for the production of vegetables, in which are also usually reared, a few flowers, ornamental shrubs, and fruit-trees: but horticulture, as a science, is studied and practised here by very few, especially that branch of it called picturesque, or landscape. To produce a pleasing effect, in a garden of this kind, from twenty to one hundred acres are necessary, according to the manner in which the ground may be situated. ”

“ The types that lay latent in the oldest vegetation have simply been separated and perfected; progressive development has been gradually led along a series of intricate but constantly diverging lines that lead out and up, and finally terminate in the endless graded ranks and profuse varieties which constitute the grand flora—the grandest the world has ever seen—that annually buds and blooms, and bears its wealth of leaf and fruit for you and me, provided only we appreciate it all. ”

“ All the species flourish under cultivation, and become very ornamental early border flowers; but care should be taken to plant them in rich black vegetable mould, the native soil of their forest haunts. ”

“ The florist mingles his compost, he proportions warmth and moisture, he is patient and watchful, observant of the atmosphere and of the seasons, else he knows that his richest bulbs would be cast away. ”

“ Before we trespass on the domains of arboriculture, horticulture, or agriculture, under which heads the cultivation of useful or ornamental plants divides itself, some consideration is required of those plants which, quasi-wild, are usually included in accounts of the vegetation under the head of aliens, denizens, colonists, and so forth. ”

“ We grow our flowers as if they were the choicest rarities, to be coddled in a hotbed or under a bell-jar, and then to be exhibited as single specimens in some little pinched and ridiculous hole cut in the turf, or perched upon an ant-hill that some gardener has laboriously heaped oh a lawn. Nature, on the other hand, grows many of her flowers in the most luxurious abandon, and one can pick an armful without offense. She grows her flowers in earnest, as a man grows a crop of corn. One can revel in the color and the fragrance and be satisfied. ”

“ We will tell you how to grow fourteen of the best, and when you have succeeded with those you can find hundreds more described in ‘The English Flower Garden’ and other well-known books. Your parents and grandparents can remember when all the beautiful herbaceous or perennial plants were hardly to be found in gardens, and everyone was content with the straight rows of red, blue, and yellow, the ignorant gardener will still inflict on you if you let him. In those days bulbs were planted in autumn and dug up in spring, to make way for Geraniums, Calceolarias, and Lobelias. ”

“ I am sure that gardeners who study the native flora of England derive much more pleasure from their flowers than those who focus all their attention on the cultivated species and hybrids which are grown in gardens. The hedges and woodlands are full of examples and full of suggestions, for they show us the habit and manner of life of the English relatives of our exotic plants. By studying the wild species with their wonderful grace and simple beauty, indicative of adaptation of means to ends, we are less liable to become the slaves of the florists. ”

“ At the commercial florists, and in many of the large private gardens, rows upon rows of flowers are grown on the vegetable-garden plan, solely for gathering for the house, and while those with limited labour and room cannot do this extensively, they can gain the same end by an intelligent use of their seed beds.
Many men (and more especially many women) , many minds, but however much tastes may differ I think that a list of thirty species of herbaceous perennials should be enough to satisfy the ambition of an amateur, at least in the climate of the middle and eastern United States. ”

“ Quite obviously it is not the mere beauty of sunshine dancing upon the landscape, as entrancing a picture as that may be any summer afternoon, with the play of sunshine and shadow on the tracery of foliage. That green color of the foliage, the almost universal green of so much of the earth’s vegetation, restful to tired eyes, providing us with the most pleasant shade, has wrapped up within it the secret of just what sunshine does for plants. For under the magic of light acting upon this greenery one of the most important industries in the world, the manufacture of food, is constantly going on. ”