GARDENERS AND EXPERIMENTAL GARDENS. 



we can say, that when the art flourishes to the extent it is destined to do, prices 

 will follow demand. As a general rule, we do not think the best gardeners are 

 sufficiently paid. To have become a thorough master of the business implies a 

 long study and much time ; in other professions we hear this brought forward as 

 an argument for high charges. The consulting physician sends in a bill of ten 

 dollars for a single visit ; the attorney charges hundreds of dollars for a fee; but 

 the gardener, at a price which tailors would consider very indifferent compensa- 

 tion, is supposed to be well enough paid, though he places on the table of his 

 employer, daily, fruits which are beyond price, and flowers which money can 

 scarcely purchase. 



One mode of compensating gardeners, beyond present prices, we have seen 

 successfully practised both abroad and in America. Some persons may object to 

 it, but on examination it will be found both practicable and a useful stimulus, no 

 less than a public benefit. Colonel Wyse, who expended fifty thousand dollars in 

 opening the Egyptian Pyramids, and who'se residence is near Windsor Castle, 

 when age had begun to confine him to home, entered warmly into the spirit of 

 gardening, and with his ample fortune provided every known means for propa- 

 gating fruit on an extensive scale for his own amusement. He very soon found 

 himself overstocked with the most delicious fruit ; but instead of diminishing his 

 walls and houses, he quadrupled them, gave his gardeners an interest in the pro- 

 ceeds, and they very soon became great contributors to Covent Garden market. 

 In a short time the experiment not only supplied his own table bountifully, as well 

 as the tables of his friends, but the returns paid all the cost of a large corps of 

 employees. He had the full enjoyment of a capital garden, with plenty to con- 

 sume and give away, without cost. A few instances of similar success on this 

 plan have come to our knowledge here; and mostly, we believe, the gardener 

 receives the premiums of Horticultural Societies for plants and fruits raised at the 

 employer's expense. 



Still, we think the best gardeners are sometimes under-paid, and that discrimi- 

 nation in prices is too frequently disregarded. The result is that the best informed, 

 most practical and useful, often desert their employers as soon as au opportunity 

 presents of going into business on their own account. Owners of gardens in first 

 rate condition find it difficult to supply the deficiency, get discouraged, and blame 

 the profession; whereas if they had made the home of the gardener comfortable, 

 given him enough to educate his children, and otherwise made a friend of him, he 

 might have enjoyed his operations, performed on a plan he had become accustomed 

 to, for the whole of his life, instead of encountering new terrors in the shape of 

 such new torments — who, as Mr. Barry says, "often palm themselves off as gar- 

 deners, when they were nothing more than mere garden laborers in their own 

 country." 



"With regard to experimental gardens, those who have seen the one at Edin- 

 burgh need not be informed that it is a model of beauty, has been very profitable 

 few stockholders, and has turned out some of the best gardeners in Europe. 



