This is the last line of the first verse of the old Bing Crosby song "Swinging on a Star".
Our papers lately have been full of an American doctor who wishes to clone human beings in the not so distant future. Does that mean we will be able to create a plant that is our own idea of a "dream" plant? Could we take a "Gardenia", cross it with a beautiful apricot "Rosa", clone them and not have to worry about placing salt within the petals of the "Gardenrose", or perhaps "Rosagardenia", and thus stop the blooms browning after we have picked them?
If you could mix any two flowers to make a new bloom, what would you create? I must rush to assure you, as I am sure is painfully obvious already, that this is not a serious scientific question. My scientific knowledge is practically nil and I garden by instinct and romance. My brother-in-law, a doctor of science, is always taking me to task when I write or talk about specie*S*. He says that gardeners are the only group of people that add the S to express the plural.
Or, if you could develop a plant that will be happy to grow in your particular garden situation, satisfy your artistic cravings and delight all your senses, what plants would you cross to make your own magic and create your fantastic cultivar?
How about crossing a Wisteria with a Laburnum? And what would you like the result to be? A blue Laburnum tree or a yellow climber? A Kerria [ part of the rose family] we could cross with the red of "Paul's Scarlet Climber" and have shoots of scarlet, non-prickly spears, layering themselves all over the "white border" garden How about the blue rose, a blue camellia or even a blue daffodil? And, my most important question of all - - Do we want such monstrosities?
We have all heard of the square tomato even if we don't grow it. There is sense behind this development. Many sandwiches are made with square loafs of bread. Purple beans are very beautiful but do we want white lettuce? Then what do we call our "greens" that are so necessary in our diet? At least it would finally eradicate the housewife's old habit of adding carbsoda to the peas to keep them "nice and green" and thus kill all the vitamins.
In my wildest dreams, I could imagine a cottage garden full of Hollyhocks holding their spears up to a blue sky, their flowers matching the vividness of the heavens above. But I can live without that and persist with learning how to successfully grow the blue Meconopsis. I am sure that great leaps and bounds are being made in the scientific world which will help the starving children in the Third World countries have a decent meal. Experiments to make plants more disease resistant, grow stronger and faster and be capable of withstanding draught conditions, these changes are so worthwhile, but to make our garden flowers bigger, brighter and double, in my opinion, is not a step forward.
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