With respect to trees and shrubs, we would ask any one who has studied, however slightly, the collections in the arboretum of the Horticultural Society's Garden, of Messrs. Loddiges, and Messrs. Buchanan, about London; and of Mr. Donald, at Goldworth; Mr. Miller, at Bristol, and those in the Birmingham, Manchester, and other botanic and horticultural gardens in the country, how it happens that so very few of these trees and shrubs are to be found in gentlemen's pleasure grounds ? To take one genus, for example, Cratï¾µgus; how does it happen that in very few pleasure grounds more than three or four sorts are to be seen, while in the arboretums mentioned there are from thirty to fifty sorts, besides varieties ? It cannot be on account of the price, because that of all the sorts is the same; viz. 1s 6d. for dwarfs, and 2s 6d. for standards. It cannot be owing to the tenderness of the sorts; because they are all grafted on the common hawthorn, and all, practically speaking, as hardy as that species. To what, then, can the absence in our pleasure grounds of so many species of trees and shrubs, which might easily be planted there, be owing? Simply to the want of knowledge of those trees and shrubs, among gardeners and their employers. It cannot be expected that either should recommend plants that they have never seen, and of the culture of which they cannot know anything, and the names of which they would not know, even if the plants were brought before them. The truth is, that a knowledge of this branch of gardening among gardeners, and a taste for it among their employers, are both as yet in their infancy.
