l)ctt<T odiuation. As soon as his minority is passed, he comes out an acknowledged gentle- 

 man most probably gets into the best society, and associates with educated men. Mark 

 the diflerence. Some time since, a writer in some horticultural paper, stated that he never 

 knew a foreign gardener to bring up his sons to the business. I think I have stated the 

 reason he does not : too many years of labor and study for too little pay. 



Some of your readers may say, if this is so, how is it that Great Britain has such good 

 gardeners ? The answer is nearly this : all the gardeners in that country are self-educated 

 men ; they commenced the profession with little or no learning ; when they were cast upon 

 the world (as Sam Weller says), to play at leajvfrng with its troubles, they jumped the first 

 back that presented itself, hardening in England oft'ers employment to tens of thousands 

 of men ; there you may lind every kind of gardeners, from Sir Joseph Paxton to the gentle- 

 man that has no objection to milk the cows, and tend the garden. Philip Miller, the first 

 great gardener we have any account of, was bom in obscurity. Loudon says he raised him- 

 self to a degree of eminence never before equalled in the character of a gardener. He was 

 born in l(j92 ; he maintained a correspondence with the most eminent botanists of the 

 continent of Europe. Amongst his correspondents was Linnaeus, who said of his Dictionary : 

 Xon erat Lexicon Hortulanorum sed Botanicorutn ; and by other foreigners he was emphatically 

 styled, Hortulanorum Princeps. So it is, at the present time, with the great majority of 

 Ih-itish gardeners ; they are self-educated and self-made. In Great Britain, every avenue 

 of labor is closely filled with manual as well as mental labor, and, therefore, every employer 

 in any branch of business, has a great variety to choose from ; hence it is they have good 

 gardeners. Now, what has been the case in the States ? The reverse of all tliis. Our ave- 

 nues of labor are not filled up to the same extent they are there ; the consequence is, the 

 garden has gone in search of a gardener, instead of the gardener going in search of the 

 garden, and when this is the case, the majority of the gardens will be decidedly bad. I 

 know that, for the last twenty years, the supply has not e(iualled the demand, and that has 

 Ijrought into existence a lot of self-styled, but not self-made gardeners. 



My object in writing this letter is, first, to vindicate the true foreign gardener, and to 

 ])rune out the quacks, and the following is a plan, I think, might be adopted. As we have 

 in this country a great number of good horticultural societies, I propose to use them to 

 advantage to the employer and the employed, to wit : — 



That every horticultural society shall appoint a committee of four or six of the best practical 

 gardeners belonging thereto ; the duty of said committee shall be, to examine any applicant 

 calling himself a practical gardener, wishing to fill a situation as such ; and, if said applicant 

 be found competent by the committee, he shall be entitled to a printed certificate, to be filled 

 up by said committee, and signed l)y them, and the President of the Society. Now, suppos- 

 ing some such thing as this was in operation in this country, every competent gardener would 

 soon become aware of it, and submit to it with pleasure. If such a plan was adopted, and 

 every employer requiring a gardener, if the latter is a stranger, he should exhibit a certifi- 

 cate from the nearest horticultural society. The gardener, on receipt of his certificate, shall 

 pay said society any fee the society may think reasonable. If something like this could 

 be done, the complaints would soon bo stopped ; if the demand is greater than the supply, 

 don't employ the trash ; you can import good, responsible men. 



[Mr. Meston has stated the case in an intelligent manner. The real difficulty to be en- 

 countered in America, is the supposed fact that other employments afford an apparently 

 higher field of social and pecuniary compensation ; but this is only on the surface. In the 

 first place, in an intellectual point of view, how much higher are the enjoyments of a scien- 

 tific gardener than those of most mechanical businesses ? If a youth fails to profit by such 

 ()l>portunities as our correspondent proposes, he must be, and deserves to be, only a manual 

 laborer ; but a really good gardener can always get, after a few years of experience, a nursery 



