THE 



GARDENER. 



SEPTEMBER 1873. 



REMARKS SUGGESTED BY A HORTICULTURAL TOUR. 



HE last few decades of tlie present century have been strik- 

 ingly characterised by perseverance, energy, and material 

 progress. The commerce of nations, and of Britain in 

 particular, has been developed and augmented until it has 

 assumed proportions which the most clear-sighted and sanguine of 

 prophets failed to anticipate thirty years ago. With this gradually 

 rising flood of prosperity and wealth, many citizens have risen on 

 the tide of their affairs from conditions of very limited means and 

 dependence to be men of easy circumstances, and capitalists, and 

 have provided themselves with country homes and country domains 

 and gardens. Into their gardens and gardening they have brought 

 the same energy and application by means of which they have 

 placed themselves in the position of owners of gardens. To this 

 class — the backbone of the country's greatness — horticulture owes 

 much of the rapid development in which it has pretty well kept 

 pace with material expansion. Those who are not acquainted with the 

 vast extent to which our cotton and iron lords have embarked in horti- 

 culture, can form little idea of the gardening that is going on within 

 a radius of twenty miles of our rich and great centres of commerce. 

 The places to which reference is now made have grown up with mush- 

 room-like rapidity ; and, as in commerce, the owners of such gardens 

 are apparently never wearied of aspiring higher and higher, and ex- 

 tending into every branch of horticulture, in many cases regardless of 

 expense. 



2d 



