1876.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



165 



neither would I hesitate for one moment to aver 

 that a clever gardener is also better qualified to 

 make a good lawn, arrange a parterre^of flowers, 

 prune trees and shrubs — some engineers whom I 

 know would make sad work of this — and to do 

 a hundred things among the almost numberless 

 operations which a landscape gardener is called 

 upon to perform. ^^ 



But on the other hand are there not some 

 things for the engineer to do ? Some things which 

 he, from the very nature of his^training, is better 

 fitted to perform than any gardener^as a gardener 

 can possibly be? Does the education_and train- 

 ing of a gardener — I am speaking^ now of good 

 gardeners — better prepare him to^locate and con- 

 struct a drive, form a terrace, build a wall, ar- 

 range a system of drainage, than a'well educated* 

 and experienced engineer? Why, my dear Mr. 

 Editor, I have known a gardener, than whom 

 there was none superior in his line] of work, to 

 try persistently to make water run up[_hil], at the 

 expense of both the money and patience of his 

 employer. I have known others to [[utter wise 

 prophecies — wise in their own eyes — concerning 

 the alleged instability of certain work done 

 under the supervising care of a competent en- 

 gineer ; work which stands to-day, after a good 

 many years of trial, proving how very umvise 

 those prophecies were. As I write, I have in 

 mind a place not many miles away, which was 

 possessed of great capabilities, and which might 

 have been made one of the most beautiful seats 

 this side of England ; but which, if not utterly 

 spoiled, was at least shorn of a large share of its 

 natural beauty, and its great capabilities were 

 frittered away by the " lay out " of one who 

 was thoroughly competent in all the work of a 

 gardener, from the management of the orchid 

 house, down to the operations of the potato 

 patch. 



And again, I have known men who were 

 thoroughly conversant, both in theory and prac- 

 tice, with all the abstruse problems of railroad 

 building, who were never so happy as when an 

 obstinate skew arch called for their best powers, 

 who were competent to plan and build the East 

 River Bridge, and they would have built it too, 

 before this, if they could have had their way 

 about it; but who were no more fitted to design 

 a plan of ornamental grounds than — well, than 

 some of the gardeners I have known. And to 

 their credit be it said, none knew this as well as 

 they did. 



Hence, I claim that it does not follow that 



because a man is a clever gardener he must of 

 necessity be a competent Landscape Gardener, 

 any more than because he is a skillful civil 

 engineer. Sometimes, in my journeyings, I have 

 had the suspicion thrust upon me by the word- 

 ing of signs, and cards, and circulars, that some 

 of these men, of both classes, perhaps, in their 

 honest and laudable ambition to become land- 

 scape gardeners, were actually ashamed of the 

 term gardener. They had themselves printed 

 and called landscape architects, landscape en- 

 gineers, rural architects, artists in grounds, etc., 

 etc. ; anything but landscape gardeners. 



And here, by way of parenthesis. Let us stick 

 to that good old name, landscape gardener, worn 

 and honored and elevated by Repton, Loudon, 

 Kemp, Downing, Daniels, Bauman, Copeland, 

 and some living men who are not ashamed of it. 



But to return. Suppose we combine the two 

 professions. Putting aside all jealousies, suppose 

 we try the experiment of training, for the future 

 adornment of our common country, a race of 

 men who shall be both well educated, and well 

 trained gardeners and engineers ; to say nothmg 

 now of other more artistic qualifications. Is there 

 anything inconsistent in this idea? Cannot one 

 man be both f It seems as thoughtless to say " No " 

 to these queries as it would be to assert that an 

 ' architect is not a skillful architect, because he 

 knows all about carpentry, and painting, and 

 stone cutting, and plastering, and masonry; cr, 

 to insist that, because a merchant is well versed 

 in the law of contracts, therefore, he cannot be 

 a prosperous merchant. One of the most suc- 

 cessful clergymen I ever knew was educated as a 

 lawyer, and he used to say that what little suc- 

 cess he might have had in the management of 

 the affairs of his parish, and his friends know 

 that it was anything but little, was due, in a 

 large measure, to his legal training. Of course 

 it is not practicable that all clergymen should 

 first be bred as lawyers ; and yet, if it were so, 

 perhaps it would be no detriment. The thought 

 I would emphasize by these illustrations is this : 

 A landscape gardener cannot be too well educated. 

 There is no danger of his knowing too much. 

 Let him be chemist, botanist, farmer, gardener, 

 architect, engineer, artist, it will not impair his 

 usefulness. He will have need of all he knows, 

 and with it all, he will find himself wanting ; or 

 if he does not, others will. 



Landscape gardening with us Americans is in 

 its infancy. It is where architecture was twenty 

 or thirty years ago. Not only the artist, but those 



