THE DANGER OF FLOWER SHOWS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11, 11 September 1912, Page 39

THE DANGER OF FLOWER SHOWS.

FASHION IN ROSES. (From the “London Times.”) After the International Flower Show one of the gardening papers published a warning against the evil effects of flower shows upon the art of gardening. The opinions expressed we find very strongly confirmed by a professional florist who was speaking lately of the effect of

fashion on the sale of roses. He said it was not worth his while to stock some of the best garden roses, because they were seldom seen at flower shows, and so were never asked for by his customers. It is easy to understand how this happens. A flower show always tends to be a show, not of plants, but of flowers; and naturally every nurseryman, since he is competing with other nurserymen, shows the most conspicuous flowers he can bring together. He has to catch the eye of the public, and he employs all his horticultural skill to do so. But in the case of roses it is often not the most vigorous or the most beautiful which produce the most conspicuous flowers for show purposes. There are certain roses, like Mildred Grant, which bear enormous blossoms but are quite useless for garden purposes. If the flowers of an excellent garden rose like Lady Waterlow are shown beside the flowers of Mildred Grant, the very excellence of the former is against it. For Mildred Grant puts whatever vigour she has into the production of one or two gigantic blossoms. whereas much of the far greater vigour of Lady Wa terlow goes in a growth proportionate to the size of her flowers. No one can tell from a flower show that in the garden Mildred Grant is a deformity and Lady Waterlow a beautiful shrub. And as it is with size of flowers so it is with colour. At a flower show, as at a large picture show, the eye is caught by violence rather than by beauty of colour: ami exhibition flowers have been evolved, like exhibition pictures, with the one object of catching the eye. There is a peculiar pink found in other flowers besides roses, in sweet-williams, for instance, and sweet peas and snap-dragons, which has a strong dash of yellow in it ami which utterly outshines the softer pinks inclining to blue. This is now a most popular colour in all flowers we have mentioned, and at shows, (‘specially in the half-light of a tent, it is most effective. But tents are not gardens: ami in the garden it has this fault, that it kills other colours near it. not by superior beauty but by greater sharpness: while used alone and in masses it is often lurid. There are now. (‘specially among the hybrid teas, a number of lurid roses produced by tin* crossing of pink and yellow varieties that is to say. by the

fusion of two colours that are rather discordant in contrast: and the discord is latent even in the fusion. Indeed, it is this latent discord that makes them conspicuous. The eye is caught by them more than by purer colours, as the ear is caught by discordant chords in music. It, for instance, the new rose Juliet were shown in a tent beside Mrs John Laing, no one would notice the latter. \ et in the garden Mrs John Laing has the beauty of a Hower, whereas Juliet has the force of an outrageous toilette. She draws all eyes to her, but does not satisfy them. She is a bad neighbour to every other colour through violence, not through superior beaut v. And the worst of it is that each new exhibition wonder of this kind suppresses the last. Juliet overcrows the Lvon rose, and soon, no doubt, something will overcrow Juliet. It does not matter much that a coarse flower should have a short vogue, but it does matter that the skill of florists should be wasted in producing these monsters when it might be employed in improving the race of garden roses. Yet we cannot blame the florists. It often takes many years for a tine garden rose to establish its reputation: ami a florist profits most by the immediate popularity of a novelty before every nurseryman has a stock of it. The fault is in the public, who run after novelties without asking whether they are really beautiful or vigorous, ami whose demand encourages the supply of show prodigies. Yet we must have flower shows, and it is not easy to suggest any cure for their evils except in preaching wisdom to the public. But wisdom is much easier to preach than to practise. The most experienced gardener is apt to have his head turned by a flower show. He forgets all his caution and all his principles when he enters a tent tilled with flowers of incredible size and brilliance. Though he may know that many of these flowers have been grown for the show ami by methods quite incompatible with garden beauty, yet he is possessed b\ the am bition to have flowers like them in bis garden, and gives orders which he pro bably regrets in the cohl light of autumn when the plants arrive and have to be planted ami paid for. It is usually the novelties, roses, phloxes, larkspurs, pent steimms. or what not. that are grown

with most pains for the show. A single flower or a single spike of bloom hits been developed at the cost of all the others; ami the gardener in his heart knows this. Vet he judges the novelty, as hr sees it at the show, by contrast with his own home-grown flowers; he persuades himself that it will be as much larger in his garden as it is at the show: and next year he is undeceived, only to be deceived again by another novelty. That is his fault, and only he himself can find the remedy for it. It is easy to say that whole plants, and not merely flowers. should be show n al flower shows, but in many cases that is impossible. The plants would have to be pot-grown if they were not to sutler by removal to a Hower show, and the larger plants often could not be well grown in pots. In the rase of rock plants one can see the whole plant at a show, but even they have often been grown in frames, ami the nurseryman who has grown them so may not know himself how to grow them as well in the open. There is nothing for it except to preach ami practise caution, and above all to insist that a garden is something very different in all its conditions from a tent at a flower show. When you see a new flower, make all due allowances for the florist’s art and ask yourself how it will look among your other plants. Experiment, for the art of gardening only advances both aesthetically and technically by means of experiment: but do so on some system, ami have your own taste and your own principles of judgment. What is called bad taste, in flowers as in other things, is the absence of any genuine taste. It is the gardener who does not know what he really likes himself who is at the mercy of fashion in colour and other matters. He very likely expresses a disgust of magenta and an admiration of those yellow-pinks which are far more difficult to harmonise with other colours ami far more luridly conspicuous; and he does so because magenta is mid-Vic-torian ami the yellow-pinks are new. not because he dislikes the former or likes the latter. We cannot expect the florists to provide ns with a taste: their business is to give us the flowers we like, and our business is to know what flowers we do like and not to be hypnotised by flower-show fashions.