32 HISTORY OF GARDENING. Parr I.

Avenue trees, chiefly elms and oaks, are trained for eight or ten years in the nursery; repeatedly removed so as to become furnished with numerous fibrous roots, and pruned so as to have clean smooth stems from ten to fifteen fect high. Avenues, being public property, are under the care of proper officers. Judging from the vigorous growth of the trees, and the manner in which they are pruned, these officers seem to under- stand their business, and to do their duty. In Rotterdam, on the quays, are perhaps the finest trees in Holland: they are narrow-leaved elms, upwards of fifty feet high, with clear stems of twenty-five feet, and upwards, of a century old. At the Hague are re- markably fine limes in the Mall, on the road to Scheveling; and oaks, elms, and beeches, round the palace called the House in the Wood. The hornbeam is a very common plant for the garden-hedges. Every plant in the row or hedge is trained with an upright stem, and the side shoots are shorn so closely, that we often find hedges of six or eight feet high, not more than eighteen inches wide at base, contracted to six inches wide at top. These hedges receive their summer shearing in July, by which time scarlet runners are ready to shoot up from the garden side of their base, which in the course of two months, cover the hedge with their fresh verdure and brilliant blossoms, and present a good crop in October and the beginning of November. The Dutch have also very excellent field-hedges of birch and willow, as well as ot all the usual hedge- plants, and the gardeners are particularly dexterous at cutting, training, and shearing them, The deep moist grounds on the banks of their estuaries are particularly favorable for the growth of the willow, and the hoops of two years’ growth from the Dutch willow a variety of Saliv alba, with a brownish bark,) are in great esteem in commerce. Their common basket willows(S. viminialis) are also excellent.

Sunsrct. 5. Dutch Gardening, as empirically practised.

151. Happily the use of gardens is universal in the Netherlands; and of the Dutch and Flemings it may be truly said in the words of Lord Temple,“ that gardening has been the common favorite of public and private men; a pleasure of the greatest, and a care of the meanest, and indeed an employment and a possession, for which no man there is too high nor too low.” The gardens of the cottagers in these countries are undoubtedly better managed and more productive than those of any other country; no man who has a cottage is without a garden attached; often small, but rendered useful to a poor family by the high degree of culture given to it. Every available particle of matter capable of act- ing as manure is assiduously collected, and thrown into a neat ridge, cone, or bed, which is turned over frequently; and when sufficiently fermented and ameliorated, applied to the soil. The plants in general cultivation in the cottage-gardens are the cabbage tribe, including Brussels sprouts, the white beet for the leaves and stalks, the parsnip, carrot, yellow and white turnip, potatoe, the pea, bean, and kidney-bean; the apple, pear, and currant, and in some places, the vine trained over the cottage, are the fruits; and double stocks, rockets, wall-flowers, pinks, violets, roses, and honey-suckles, the leading flowers and plants of ornament. It is almost unnecessary to add, that the gardens of the trades. men, farmers, citizens, private gentlemen, and princes, rise in gradation, in extent, riches, and high keeping.

152. The principal nurseries, florists’ gardens, and market-gardens are in the neigh- bourhood of Amsterdam, Haerlem, and Antwerp. These gardens formerly supplied trained trees, vines, and all the most valuable plants to Britain, and other parts of Europe; and the florists still continue to monopolise the commerce of bulbous roots. Great part of the fruit-trees sent by London and Wise from their nursery at Brompton Park, in the beginning of the 18th century, were previously imported from Holland; many of them reared in large wicker-baskets, were sent over in that state, and produced fruit the first year after final planting. Justice(Brit. Gard. Dir.) gives credit to the Dutch nurserymen for accuracy and punctuality; he mentions Voerhelms and Van Zompel as tradesmen which he could recommend; and it is remarkable, that the same establishment(Voorhelm and Schneevooght) is the most eminent at this day. Garden- seeds, for which Holland has long been celebrated, are chiefly grown by the market- gardeners and small farmers round Haerlem. Roses are extensively grown at Noord- wyck, between Leyden and Haerlem, for the apothecaries, and the dried leaves are sent to Amsterdam and Constantinople. The sorts are, the Dutch 100-leaved and the com- mon cabbage rose. A striking characteristic of Dutch fruit and forest tree nurseries is the length of time the trees are trained in the nursery.‘Chey are so often removed there, as to have a large fasciculus of fibrous roots, and the fruit-trees commonly bear for a year or two before they are sold, at least for local planting. Ready-grown hedges and shrubs, of various sizes and shapes, may be purchased; and as they have been transplanted every third year, like the trees, there is little risk of their not succeeding. At Brussels, pro- fessor Van Mons has established a fruit-tree nursery, which he calls Pepiniére de la Fidé- lité, in which are grown upwards of 800 new varieties of pear, raised by himself and M. Duquesne of Mons, since 1803, besides new varieties of the other hardy fruit-trees,

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