GARDEN CAVEATS.
All manner of curious, and often unpleasant, things have happened in our gardens and will especially affect the planting season that is upon us. The nurserymen have lost a very large proportion of their tenderer bushes and plants, most from the frost, some from the drought. I should doubt whether any plant had suffered more than the strawberry ; a vast acreage has been grubbed up. The old plants bore badly and looked worn out, and on many soils absolutely refused to produce runners of any sort. More than this, the bad season appears to have synchronized with a certain weakness in the stocks due perhaps to a too rapid development of the berry by our hybridizers. Varieties of plants may wear out in this way just as animals ; a strawberry may suffer the same sort of degeneration as the Plymouth Rock, which was at its worst in Britain when it was at its best in Canada. Among flowering plants the tree cistus and in a less degree the humbler rock rose were killed wholesale. The moral is obvious : if we are beginning a series of hard winters, after a generation of mild winters, we must be much more cautious than we have been in our choice of varieties as well as of species. Many lovely bushes, notably the Ceanothus (which in my garden endured the frost without turning a hair) have sorts, not differing greatly in charm, which are the poles apart in power of resisting frost.
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