In the open garden we found excellent crops, particularly of the new Flemish pears, which were trained against the walls in the horizontal manner. Some of these pears do not bear so readily on the spurs of the old wood, as they do on the buds and spurs of one and two-years-old wood; and hence such trees chiefly exhibit fruit in a zone between the trunk and the extremity of the branches, which zone spreads wider and wider from the trunk, as the tree advances in growth; hence, unless something is done, a large and increasing space in the centre is constantly barren. To remedy this evil, Mr. Balfour, gardener to Earl Grey, adopted reverse grafting (see Vol. I, p. 71.); and other gardeners have turned back the shoots, or crossed them in different directions over the barren spots. Mr. Davis, the present gardener at Oakhill, keeps up a succession of young branches in such a manner that the fruit is equally distributed over the tree; or at least more equally than is generally to be met with. None of the fruit tree borders are cropped, and they are all very shallow on a gravelly bottom. On a border on the north side of a wall the pine strawberry is grown, and here it comes in three weeks later than in the open garden. The late gardener Mr. Dowding, and his successor Mr. Davis, are well known in the lists of the successful competitors for prizes for fruits, published by the Horticultural and other Metropolitan Societies. There cannot be a better garden than Oakhill for young men to study forcing and the culture of fruit trees; and, by a little management, the pleasure-ground might be rendered as superior to what it now is, as the kitchen-garden and forcing-houses are to other kitchen-gardens and forcing-houses.
