GARDENERS AND KXPKUIMKNTAL ().\IU>KNS. 



be sold at the most convenient depot, as well as at the garden ; the proceeds 

 would very soon pay all expenses, and leave a supply; the head gardener, and 

 even the assistants who proved themselves worthy of conrKlenec, should receive a 

 pcrcentau:e on the sales, on the same plan as was so long jjursued in tlie eastern 

 whale-ships; no one should participate in this itorcentage who did not rcmiiin a 

 certain stipulated length of time. 



Here should be a respectable school for apprentices — a place not yet provided 

 in anv part of the United States — for the education of gardeners ; the conse- 

 (pience of which is that we have no class growing up among us accpiaintcd with 

 our climate and our wants ; we depend upon foreign laljor in this department, 

 and we all know, with honorable exceptions not a few, what we get. As re- 

 marked by Mr. Chorlton, himself a good judge of a gardener's qualifications: 

 " So long as the present system of obtaining gardening labor is in existence, we 

 mav not look forward with a progressive eye. We ivant more home-made gar- 

 deners, so as to infuse a portion of the home intelligence into the business. Let 

 horticulture be advocated and acknowledged as a science more strenuously in the 

 newspapers, in the different periodicals, and throughout society, so as to make it 

 appear worth while for the intelligent youths of the country to take it up ; let it 

 be spoken of on the hearth-stone as something worthy of their acceptance ; edu- 

 cate them so that they may apply their minds for a time to close study and obser- 

 vation of nature; and withal entice the cottagers to cultivate their plots by 

 encouraging them at the Horticultural Societies, so that the family growing up 

 may acquire a taste for these things, /or /< is from such homes that native gardeners 

 must come. Add to this a better knowledge of gardening affairs on the part of 

 employers, so that they may know how to appreciate the value of a good gardener, 

 and he will be stimulated to fresh exertions. Likewise establish public and 

 experimental gardens, that we may have something to look up to." 



The education necessary for a gardener is not merely one of routine. " All 

 operations in horticulture," says Trofessor Lindley, " depend for success upon a 

 correct appreciation of the nature of the vital actions ; for although there have 

 been many good gardeners entirely unacquainted with the science of vegetable 

 physiology, and although many points of practice have been arrived at altogether 

 accidentally, yet it must be obvious that the power of regulating and modifying 

 knowledge so obtained cannot possil)ly be possessed, unless the external influences 

 by which plants are .affected are clearly understood. Indeed, the enormous differ- 

 ence that exists between the present race of gardeners and their predecessors 

 can only be ascribed to the general diffusion that has taken place of an acquaint- 

 ance with some of the simpler facts in vegetable physiology." Gardeners can 

 scarcely call themselves such unless they have mastered this science ; let those 

 who complain of the want of good assistance ask themselves how much have they 

 done to assist in teaching it. Uow many of us provide books on the subject for 

 our gardeners ? 



to the compensation of gardeners it would be difficult to fix a rule; but 



