For October. 1921 



747 



9. Garden Foes and Friends. Ccntrcl of insects, diseast-s, 



etc. Economic Ornithology. 

 10. Botany a. Physiology — plant structure and function, b. 

 Taxonomy — Classitaation and ide.ititication of piants. 

 It is recommended that the students be taken on frequent 

 trips of inspection to plant growing establishments ; floral, vege- 

 table and truit exhibitions, etc. 



It is desirable that the work of students be arranged so that 

 they may Le responsible, at the discretion of the i istructor, for 

 certain greenhouses; and have opportunity of taking charge of 

 work out-doors so that they may beccme familiar with handling 

 men. 



The course so far as possible should bj given in a garden 

 where practical application of the theoretical work may be made. 



MoNT.\GUE Free, 

 George H. Prixg, 

 H. Ernest Downer. 



PRESIDENT CRAIG: You have heard the report of the 

 Committee on Interesting Yoimg Men in Gardening. Is there 

 any discussion on the same? 



SECRETARY EBEL: When we had our Convention at St. 

 Louis, Director Moore of the Botanical Garden practically de- 

 voted a wdiole day to that subject. I had a meeting with Mr. 

 Moore at the Gardens, and he offered a proposition which if 

 the Association could carry on would be a wonderful thing. 

 They have started a fully equipped building to train the young 

 men. 



His idea was if we could interest some wealthy man to make 

 a contribution, we could put a trained, experienced man there 

 to take hold and then lake our young men and send them to an 

 estate for a year or two. After that, let them come to St. 

 Louis for a couple of years, and train them and then send them 

 out. The Botanical Garden would call it the Institute of the 

 National Association of Gardeners. I think it would be a 

 wonderful thing. I have worked with a wealthy man in the hope 

 of interesting him, I haven't given up hope. He is just com- 

 pleting a greenhouse and in it he is arranging and providing the 

 facilities for taking care of young men, to give them a training. 

 He is building a club house for them. He has a young man 

 in his employ that was in the office the other day, and he told 

 me what a tine employer that man was, that he was personally 

 interested in seeing that everything was satisfactory. 



If we could get a wealthy man to take up this proposition, 

 it would certainly be a great opportunity for training young 

 men, and I think this man I mention is sufficiently interested to 

 do something. 



MR. B.\XTER: The United States Golf .A.ssociation has the 

 co-operation of quite a number of wealthy men. They are start- 

 ing a course to educate their keepers and superintendents. The 

 Golf Association is a new thing ; it has only been in existence 

 about two and a half or three years. There is a great future 

 for the gardening profession. There will be all these golf courses 

 to be kept ; and many of them are doing landscape gardening, 

 building greenhouses and so on. 



Whenever I have a chance to talk with a gentleman who has 

 a gardener I ask him what the gardener does. Then I mention 

 the National .Association, and tell him what we stand for. In 

 fact, I talked to two or three gentlemen from Arlington and they 

 did not know anything about the Association. They told me they 

 were coming up here and ihey mentioned the Green So.x, Na- 

 tional Golf Association. I thought that Association could co-op- 

 erate in regard to young men taking up these studies and filling 

 these positions. I told the gentlemen, "If you are looking for 

 men qualified to run ilie grounds, you cannot do any better than 

 to wrile a letter to cur Secretary in New York." I gave them 



the address, because many times gardeners might take up such 

 positions. 



SECRETARY EBEL: 1 had a call the other day from a 

 man from somewhere outside of Chicago. He wanted a man 

 that had had experience on a green, but I knew of no man who 

 had had experience with that sort of thing. He was willing to 

 pay $250 a month to start. 



MR. B.\RNET: Training young men in the state colleges offers 

 a great opportunity. We had the good fortune to have Professor 

 \\ ildc, of the Pennsylvania College, lecture to us on September 

 17. The Pennsylvania State College was not aware of the Na- 

 tional .Association of Gardeners. They had graduates, he said, 

 one lady and two gentlemen, who had graduated some two 

 years ago, and only o.ie of them had an answer to an ad for 

 a position as greenhouse assistant or gardener's assistant in any 

 way shape or form. He did not apply to the right place. 



They have conceived the idea that by getting the proper ap- 

 propriations they could build some greenhouses and train young 

 men and women to the gardening profession, or any course that 

 they want to take up. Now, it seems to me that this is the 

 kind of thing that we are looking for. 



MR. PRING: Personally I think the training of gardeners 

 is far better in a botanical garden of the type where they have 

 facilities the same as you have in the universities, and where 

 they can have the plant collections, which is essential for the train- 

 ing of gardeners. Now, the School of Gardening connected with 

 the St. Louis Botanical Gardens is very good. Students have 

 been turned out into positions prominent over the country, not 

 only private estates, but landscape gardeners, florists, and men 

 in business. 



The requirements for the course are that the boy must have 

 a high school education before he is admitted. Scholarships are 

 open there. There are competitive examinations and the best 

 man wins, of course. We don't require any previous experience 

 in gardening. The student is required to take three years' train- 

 ing before we turn him out a qualified gardener. During that 

 three years he is required to put every morning in on practical 

 work in a manner so that he can say he has had practical ex- 

 perience in bedding plants, landscape work, floral display, com- 

 mercial plants, and so on, and in addition to that the afternoon is 

 given purely to theoretical training, that is, the study of plant 

 diseases, and they are taking on a simplified course which is 

 sulimitted tentatively to this organization. 



MR. STEW.VRf : The greatest fault that I have held about 

 the college trained fellows is the question of work. I have 

 no fault to find with their theoretical training. They are full 

 of that, but when it comes to the question of back-bending and 

 knuckling down to hard work, they are not there. The young 

 men today don't seem to want to do the laborious work, and 

 it is impossible for them to become thoroughly trained gardeners 

 unless they know how to work, how to handle their hands. We 

 put them to back-bending, make them do weeding, center their 

 attention around hard work for a little while. It takes a good 

 many years of hard knocking before they become good gardeners. 

 The college ought to emphasize that point, that they should take 

 some practical training under some competent gardener after 

 they come out of the college. 



.'\I.R. THOMSON: Many colleges put the course before the 

 boys and they take that which they think they will like. It was 

 not in the colleges for years, and then not as a full-time course. 

 They had horticulture only a short time, only one or two hours, 

 perhaps eight hours throughout the week. When they got through 

 they were chockful of theory, but they didn't know how to do 

 the practical work, and they don't want to get down to work. 



SECRETARY EBEL: Mr. Barnet suggests that we co-oper- 

 ate with these colleges. We have done that to a great extent. We 



tsSstatSsm 



National Association of Gardeners' Con7enlion parly in front of Park .Ateniie Hotel. .Xen' York City 



