1689. The practice of the different kinds of gardening may be classed under four heads, viz. Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Landscape-Gardening. Of these horticulture must have been the first practised, as its object is to cultivate the vegetable products used as food; and it was probably followed by floriculture, or ornamental gardening, the object of which is to cultivate plants ornamental in domestic economy. It includes flower, botanic, and shrubbery gardening, and forcing and exotic gardening, as far as respects plants of ornament. Arboriculture, or planting, the object of which is to cultivate trees and shrubs useful in general economy, was probably the next branch of gardening practised. It is carried on in forests, woods, groves, copses, stripes, and rows. Lastly came landscape-gardening, the object of which is to produce landscapes; or, so to arrange and harmonise the external scenes of a country-residence, as to render them ornamental, both as domestic scenery, and as a part of the general scenery of the country.
