"Contorted Coniferous Trees" (1896):
FIG. 3.-- CONTORTED AND DWARFED CONIFERS.
THERE are fashions in gardening in Asia, as well as in the western coutnries of the Old
World, and those of China and Japan strike us westerns by their grotesqueness, formality, and the extreme of artificiality
employed in the production of the desired effects. We observe these peculiarities in their efforts to introduce petty
alpine effects in garden scenery, in the needless intricacies of the shore-line of a lake or streamlet of perhaps very
tiny dimensions ; in the pebble-laid paths made to represent the sea-shore, the gigantic stepping-stones laid across a
mock rivulet, whose water is not deep enough to reach to one's ankles ; and the irregular-shaped flattish pieces of rock
sunk in the course of a path, where we should simply employ gravel or concrete. But for perverted ingenuity of a
high order, we must turn to the specimens of contorted Conifers, of a great age in many instances, whose height and breadth
may, however, be measured by inches. What ceaseless attention in the matter of pinching, stopping, training,
watering, &c., must these miniature trees have cost their cultivators, how carefully must they have been watched
in all those years -- perhaps throughout a century, to prevent the mishap of a pot-plant getting dry at the root and
perishing therefrom. No wonder the gardeners in those countries ask high prices for these quaint productions, and
set great store by them! Few reach this country alive, and of those few it is seldom that any live long, deprived
as they needs must be, of the patient, careful tending of the eastern gardener. It will be remembered by those of
our readers who visited the last Temple Show that a collection of such Conifers was exhibited by Messrs. J. Veitch &
Sons, of Chelsea, growing in the original oblong porcelain pots in which they were cultivated in some Japanese nursery
establishment.(Exhibited by Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons, at the Temple Show, 1896) The dwarfing of plants by pot culture is a common practice in all countries where plants are grown under glass, as witness our Camellias, Azaleas, Oranges, Palms, Cycads, New Holland Acacias, Dracænas, Metrosideros, Callistemons, Eugenias, Melaleucas, &c., most of which rank as trees, but which are kept of moderate dimensions by pruning the roots and the branches, and cultivation in pots and tubs. Where we differ from the Jap and the Chinaman is in our not keeping these plants alive and healthy to an extreme old age, and in not giving them the true arboreal form, except in the case of Palms, Cycads, and Dracænas. 1 |