' Secretary's Budget. 321 



The road must be wide enough to haul manure in with the 

 cart, and the horse and hoe-harrow kept in view when the rows of 

 vegetables are provided for. But in the neat cottage garden we 

 find a main path of gravel or gi-ass, neatly kept. An edging of 

 box, or some other dwarf growing plant, a border two or three 

 feet wide, in which are peonys and double butter-cups, rocketts, 

 sweet-williams, love in the mist and love entangle, and loads of 

 real flowers, showy, sweet-scented and enchanting. Then there 

 are the back-grounds of currants and gooseberries, or trained fruir 

 trees, the beds of laspberries, with their deep mulch to keep the 

 soil cool. Blackberries trained to stakes, so that one may carefully 

 get among them, and with surface dressings of rich manure, so 

 that the fruit may be sugary, succulent, and jovial to look upon. 

 The beds of asparagus, herbs, onions, and salads are all neatly lined 

 out, and not a weed to be seen anywhere. Who that loves garden- 

 in,g has not met with such a scene ? and who, once seeing, would 

 ever forget ? No plough or iiorse ever enters there. The digging 

 fork and the wheelbarrow are the ruling powers, and when at rest, 

 are found enjoying themselves in a regular palace of a ''toolery" 

 at the garden end. 



There is a pleasure in such gardening for which no penny saved 

 in tl}e market-house, or at the peddlar's wagon is any sort of com- 

 pensation. But is there any saving? We think by no means al- 

 ways. We know of some good vegetable gardeners who will get 

 more out of a rod of land with the spade and the hoe, than the 

 horse man with his best machinery will get from an acre. Of 

 course, all this is intended for the encouragement of the amateur 

 gardener. In your conventions and horticultural meetings, he is 

 rarely considered. The market man and the thousand acre orchard- 

 ist have it all their own way. We do not want to neglect them ; 

 they should not be neglected. The men who grow fruits and vege- 

 tables for market on a grand scale are among the makers of our 

 earthly paradise. We give them many a chapter in our columns. 

 But they do not give all the pleasure there is in gardening, nor by 

 any means all the profit. 



Just now, we are reminded of these things, because it will not 

 be long before we shall be in the midst of horticultural meetings 

 and conventions. These have lost, in a great measure, their popular 

 charm. The best people in the towns or cities where the meetings 

 are held seldom attend them. They are looked on simj^ly as trade 

 gatherings, in which the community at large has no interest. It 

 should be the aim of these bodies to interest all. They should 



