THE 



GARDENER 



AUGUST 1870. 



HORTICULTURE FOR COTTAGERS. 



jlAVE we recently passed a Horticultural Reform Bill, or, if 

 not, what mean this sudden awakening, on the part of cer- 

 tain great ones, to the knowledge that our cottagers are 

 " horticulturally " ignorant? and this anxious desire to 

 spread amongst them the principles of correct gardening by means of 

 a flood of essays that are assumed to contain, for the information of 

 the cottage-gardener, all the knowledge and research that many years 

 of study have enabled the writers to treasure up 1 It was very kind 

 of those who held out the alluring baits to these earnest scribes thus 

 to try to inculcate into the minds of the poor labourer a little more 

 knowledge relative to gardening, and there was no doubt an equally 

 kind intention on the part of the writers themselves ; but, after all 

 their labours and all their good intentions, not one-hundredth part of 

 our cottagers will read one-tenth part of what has been written ; and 

 not more than one-tenth of those who read will comprehend, much 

 less practise, what has been so learnedly and so laboriously composed 

 for their special behoof. There are two things about cottagers that 

 seem to have escaped the attention of their would-be patrons — 1st, 

 They take but little interest in garden literature (the horticultural 

 column of a penny weekly paper being their chief reading) ; 2d, They 

 are, as a rule, much better versed in practical cottage-gardening than 

 they have hitherto been supposed to be. That these two assertions 

 will have the support of nearly all who are thoroughly conversant with 

 cottage-gardeners I feel assured ; and they will also admit that the 

 poorer classes are really good vegetable cultivators, their success in 

 this respect being usually more often limited by the means at their 



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