18 EXPERIENCES IN THE LIFE OF A GARDENER. [May 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES IN THE LIFE OF A 

 GARDENER. 



By N. KOBERTSON, Superintendent, Government Grounds, Ottawa, 



Canada. 



IN looking over the last number of the Gardeners' Monthly, I notice 

 that a correspondent asks how to establish himself as a land- 

 scape gardener, and your appropriate remarks thereon. With you, 

 I say that one of the greatest wants of the day is, proper men at 

 the head of our public parks in cities and towns. This does not 

 arise because such men are not to be had, but because, when a 

 position of this kind is open, influence has so much to do with the 

 filling of it. Capability is only a secondary consideration, if thought 

 of at all. Examples are not rare of those who go blundering along, 

 leaving marks that show too plainly that they have never studied 

 the first requisites of what constitute an effective landscape gardener. 

 Errors are easily made, and their repair is costly. A builder can 

 commence his work and carry it into completion in a short time, 

 but a landscape gardener can only lay the foundation of a work 

 which nature has to complete for him in after years. 



Your correspondent says he advertised repeatedly and failed. I 

 will relate what my advertisement was which placed me in the 

 position I now hold. I may first say that I was born a gardener, 

 for at a very early age my father saw my inclination was in this 

 direction, and had a gardener come and clean a piece of waste land, 

 and lay out a garden for me to spend my leisure hours in. This 

 garden was my great delight. At the age of fourteen I, as most 

 boys do, thought I had had enough of school, and I wanted to 

 become a gardener. My father and his family were against it, not 

 that they objected to the profession, but there was plenty to do at 

 home on the farm, and there was no necessity for my leaving the 

 family circle. I had a cousin a gardener, and to him I went as an 

 apprentice. As he was a bachelor, and considered crabbed, it was 

 supposed I would not stay long with him. I look back with 

 grateful feeling to him, for he spared no trouble to advance me in 

 the art. He being a man who was constantly on the outlook for 

 progressive matter, my five years of apprenticeship were well spent. 

 The custom being to remove to some other place for a change and a 

 variation of experience, I served one year as journeyman, and then 

 was promoted to the whole charge of the place. On the expiration 

 of that year I took it into my head to try a newer country, greatly 



