The Profession of Gardening? 



By W. W. Ohlweiler,-'- Missouri. 



The (|uestion mark is inlcntional and means to call 

 forth the query as to what the profession of fiardcn- 

 ing if there he such a thing, really is! A profession 

 is something or other that off-hand we have learned 

 to associate with something genteel, as, for instance, 

 law, medicine, theology, politics, etc. Une idea of 

 a profession is an occupation that involves considerable 

 education or its ecjuivalent, and requires mental rather than 

 manual labor. Lleing professional is to our mind a matter 

 of learning, and learning implies more or less an absence 

 of manual labor. But no one for a moment would try 

 to dift'erentiate between gardening and work, (iarden- 

 ing implies work and plenty of it. Are we really justified 

 then in calling gardening a profession? Our dictionary 

 defines gardening as an art liaving to do with the plan- 

 ning and executing of garden work. In other words it 

 is horticulture, and horticulture is but a part of the large 

 .science of agriculture dealing with the more intensive 

 methods of enclosed spaces. Art, however, implies the 

 practical application of knowledge or natural ability, 

 skill, dexterity, facility or power. It may ;dso imply a 

 system of rules devised for procuring some scientific, 

 aesthetic or practical result, i. e., a Ijranch of learning to 

 be studied in order to be applied. ( )n the other hand, we 

 distinguish essentially between the fine arts and the use- 

 ful arts, the former suggesting largely the e.xercise of 

 the imagination, and the latter applying to the arts of 

 utility which require chiefly manual labor or skill, and 

 which engage the ingenuity of the artisan. If then gar- 

 dening is an art and of this, then there hardly seems to 

 be any question, it must be both a fine and a useful art, and 

 one's definition has luuch to commend it for to repeat, 

 "gardening is an art having to do with the planning and 

 execution of garden work." The ])lanning calls for the 

 display of all those finer qualities of the imagination that 

 are usually associated with the finer arts, while in the 

 execution of the plans that the use of the fine arts have 

 produced, we have every chance to display personally 

 ability and power. Gardening then is not merely an art, 

 hut is an art that must be studied and studied well in 

 order to be applied. Since a profession indicates a cer- 

 tain amount of learning we may safely refer to garden- 

 ing as a profession, Init it is a profession that calls 

 equally upon the mental and manual faculties of the in- 

 dividual. Just as it is both a useful and a fine art, so it 

 is both a mental and a manual profession, (iardening 

 therefore needs no qualification, it stands in a class by 

 itself and embodies the qualifications of j)reparation and 

 utility that sonic professions iinfortiinatelv do not. It 

 is not one sided or incomplete, it is a law or an art unto 

 itself. Gardening is an artistic profession I 



If we have allowed ourselves too high an ideal for our 

 life's work, i. e., if we have liehl that true gardening 

 requires something more than mere physi(|ue anil muscle: 

 if it requires that a man's brain sh;ill labor ef|ually with 

 his muscle power, then we must obviously revise our con- 

 ception of what a gardener reall}' is. However a gar- 

 dener may be either a person skilled in gardening, or 

 merely one who tends a garden, hut it seems as if a 

 little reflection would show that it is hardU' fair to con- 

 sider the man who merely tends a garden as in the same 

 class with one who is skilled in gardening. The two tvpes 

 are essentially different, and in desiring to make the dis- 

 tinction clear and concise we are only exercising the 



.same prerogatives as any other profession or trade. Too 

 many men who lack the initiative and ability to plan for 

 the care of gardens claim to be gardeners and unfortu- 

 nately are regarded as such, sim])ly because they happen 

 to be doing some laboring in and about a garden. And 

 this class of labor does not hesitate to make application 

 for work as gardeners, and fee! that having worked in 

 a garden entitles theni to consideration as efficient gar- 

 deners. A filing clerk would hardly assume to apply 

 lor the ])ositif)ii of head l)0(jkkee])er. The thousands of 

 laborers in and about large engineering projects make no 

 pretensions of being civil engineers. There is as much 

 connection between the average garden laborer and the 

 gardener as there is between the printer's devil and the 

 editor. Let us draw the line at once and for all time. 

 I'otting plants, sowing seed, sjiading lieds, trimming 

 hedges are merely phases of garden labor that we might 

 more clearly designate as manual labor, and in this con- 

 nection we might remember that in a profession and 

 especially an artistic one, manual labor is the result of 

 and not the moving force. Gardeners should l)e as jeal- 

 ous of the high ideals of their profession as the members 

 of any other profession, and the person who is not 

 qualified by training and experience to assume the plan- 

 ning and execution of garden work, should soon be 

 shown the difference. But lest we place ourselves open 

 to a wrong impression, we must admit that training and 

 experience do not necessarily come through our insti- 

 tution of learning. Experience is the longer school, and 

 without doubt the lietter one in the long run, but all 

 the experience in the world without the enlightening in- 

 fluence of close study will not make a garciener of any 

 man. Institutions of learning, owing to their .system of 

 supplying the results of their experience, have made the 

 long road of experience shorter by many years, but with 

 this helji as a starter, there remain many things to learn. 

 Study and training are but short cuts to experience that 

 are the trend of modern education, and it must always be 

 borne in mind tiiat an education in itself is but a poor 

 makeshift to any ]irofessional man. Education or experi- 

 ence in itself does not signify nearly as much as the two 

 together. One tempers the other, and in their union 

 there is strength. 



Gardening, however, as all other lines of endeavor may 

 have for its specialties any one of which may present 

 sufficient incentive and field for study to take up all of a 

 man's time. But the general field of garden education 

 should be ref|uired of any man taking uj) one of the gar- 

 dening specialties. We have lawyers who are considered 

 sjiccialists in criminal law. in civil law : we have lawyers 

 who have specialized in l,-i\v applying to corporations. 

 In botany we have plant physiologists, jilaiit breeders, 

 nioriihologists, systematists, sociologists and the like. In 

 gardening we have truck gardeners, market gardeners, 

 flower gardeners, florists, foresters and landscape gar- 

 deners. With the last we are Drincipallv concerned. 



• Knowing well by this time the emphasis that we have 

 placed upon gardening as a profes.sion, the word land- 

 scape in this connection has no more significance than 

 the word truck or market. The gardener is the essential 

 part and the profession of gardening the dominating fea- 

 ture, landscape gardening merelv signifies a specialized 

 form of gardening. We are therefore forced to admit 

 that in the majority of cases the term landscape gardener 



