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GARDENERS' MONTHLY 



HORTICULTURIST. 



DEVOTED TO HORTICULTURE, ARBOR/CULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS. 



Edited by THOMAS MEEHAN. 



Volume XXVII. 



JANUARY, 1885. 



Number 313. 



Flower Garden and Pleasure Ground. 



SEASONABLE HINTS. 



One of our nurserymen recently complained to 

 the writer, of those people who continually wrote 



to his firtii for advice. " Please send me , and 



at the same time tell me how to treat them," is a 

 sample of numerous requests. The profit on the 

 whole transaction might be but a dollar or two. 

 Only for the request, the order would be turned 

 over to the proper clerk, and the proprietor could 

 turn his attention to profitable work. But a clerk 

 cannot answer such a letter. The proprietor must 

 do it himself if it is done at all. He is a little 

 nettled at the demand on his time which really ] 

 renders the order valueless ; but he remembers the 

 business maxim that civility always pays in the 

 end, and with the mental wish that the old fellow 

 had sent his query to the Editor of the G.a.rdeners' 

 Monthly instead of imposing on him, he sits down 

 to his half-hour task, and as the letter goes into ; 

 the post box, blandly smiles as he thinks ofj 

 the many golden pieces his sacrifice of all profit 

 will next year bring. 



Next spring the well remembered handwriting j 

 comes. Eagerly the envelope is torn apart, but ' 



in dismay he reads : " Not one of those came ! 



to anything. As I followed exactly your instruc- 

 tions it proves the were good for nothing, so 



I shall expect you to make them good to me with- 

 out cost." He was at a loss to know whether he 



lost more by civility than he would by letting the 

 customer go on the just-as-he-like plan. We can. 

 not tell him ; but this we do know, from experience 

 in these chapters, that it is almost useless to teach 

 a man gardening by rule or note, when he has 

 not common sense to go along with the instruction. 

 Not long since a gentleman wrote, " my gardener, 

 to whom I showed your 'Seasonable Hints,' says 

 what you say about planting trees has been the 

 cause of his great failure last year. He had not 

 the year before been very successful in the trees 

 I purchased. He pressed the earth in very care- 

 fully about the roots, but fully one-third died. I 

 bought a hundred extra-fine evergreens of a 

 nurseryman, and paid an extra price for some that 

 had been several times transplanted. They had 

 roots like moss. I never saw such a mass of fibres. 

 I gave him your magazine and showed him where 

 you said, hammer the earth in as tightly about the 

 roots as you would a post ; unless the earth is 

 packed in tightly so that every root can touch the 

 soil, the root might as well not be there. He replied 

 that it was, in his expression, ' tarnal nonsense,guess 

 he knowed how to plant a tree.' But remembering 

 his failure the year before, I insisted ; but sure 

 enough, over half died, and the balance lived but 

 a sickly life through the whole summer." It so 

 happened in the course of his travels the writer of 

 this happened near to the residence of the writer of 

 the letter, and had one of the trees taken carefully 



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