278 THE FLORAL WOELD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



THE AEEANGEMENT OP THE FRUIT AND VEGETABLE 



GARDENS. 



[OOKS and papers on gardening subjects are usually 

 pitched in too high a key, and hence the owner of a 

 small garden who desires information on practical 

 matters, finds it somewhat difficult to obtain. Our 

 readers know full well that we have never ceased to 

 endeavour to remedy this common defect of horticultural literature, 

 but it is quite possible we may often err in the way that others do, 

 and when intending to offer a homely lesson, lose ourselves amongst 

 the grandeurs of gardening. This time we trust we shall keep 

 within bounds, for it is our intention to make a few remarks on the 

 disposition of gardens of contracted dimensions in respect of fruit 

 and vegetable culture. 



The first proposition is that fruits and vegetables should, generally 

 speaking, be grown in gardens or on plots quite apart from each 

 other. Here we seem to get back to grand gardening, and it was 

 the first proposition that suggested our introductory remarks. Now, 

 it is not at all needful for the amateur, who has but a small garden, 

 to conclude he cannot grow a bit of everything in it, because he 

 can neither plant an orchard, nor devote broad tracts to asparagus, 

 seakale, and the rest of the vegetable delicacies. The most pro- 

 fitable imy is the best for him certainly, for he has not an inch of 

 ground to waste ; and the most profitable way, to begin with, is to 

 keep the fruits and the vegetables quite apart. It is common to see 

 in small gardens a number of crooked and perverse apple-trees 

 dotted here and there in delightful irregularity with crops of cabbage, 

 peas, potatoes, etc., between and beneath them. Now that is the 

 unprofitable way, and, therefore, the wrong way. The trees are 

 constantly injured by the disturbance and destruction of their roots, 

 and hence their ugliness, for they are perpetually making distorted 

 growths, and losing the shapely limbs with which they began life 

 in the nursery. On the other hand, the vegetables grown beneath 

 them are robbed by the trees of their due share of rain and sun- 

 shine, and as regards the double tax upon the soil of the trees and 

 the vegetables, the end of it is that they starve each other. The 

 tree that produces a peck of apples, when it ought to produce two 

 or three bushels, cannot be said to have the most judicious treat- 

 ment. The question arises, do the peas, potatoes, etc., grown within 

 its shadow, and amongst its roots, pay for the defect of the fruit 

 crop. Let everyone so circumstanced answer the question in the 

 face of experience. I am perfectly satisfied that the attempt to get 

 both fruit and vegetables out of the self-same plot of ground" is 

 a mistake, because it is an unprofitable mode of managing things. 

 Although I have always condemned the common practice of planting 

 fruit-trees in various parts of the kitchen garden, I have always had 

 gardens so planted, and at the present time one of my most useful 

 gardens is cumbered with apple-trees that are in the way and a 

 nuisance; but because they are there, though not of my plant- 



