GARDEN CITY 



3425 



GARDEN CITY 



mile can be safely collected, as also 

 the seeds of the meadow saffron 

 or autumn flowering crocus. 



GARDENING AS A PROFESSION. 

 No industry requiring wide know- 

 ledge offers fewer prizes than that 

 of horticulture. Practical garden- 

 ing is the study of a lifetime. The 

 lad who wishes to become a 

 gardener will be compelled to start 

 at the age of fourteen years to pull 

 up weeds, push the lawn mower, 

 and make himself generally useful. 

 The successive stages in his career 

 will be those of improver, journey- 

 man, foreman, and head, when his 

 responsibilities may include the 

 disposal of the services of thirty 

 or forty men and boys. 



In many establishments the 

 head gardener is permitted to sup- 

 plement his income by competing 

 for prizes at local horticultural ex- 

 hibitions and flower shows. This is 

 a concession of doubtful advantage 

 from the employer's point of view, 

 inasmuch as there is a natural 

 tendency on the part of the gar- 

 dener to concentrate his attention 

 upon the comparatively small 

 number of plants from which he 

 hopes to derive personal benefit, 

 and to neglect the general routine 

 work of the garden. Before a gar- 

 dener settles down into what he 

 hopes will be a permanent position, 

 he will be well advised to have held 

 situations, and gained experience 

 in different parts of the country. 

 Though the general rules of horti- 

 culture apply throughout the 

 greater area of the kingdom, con- 

 ditions in extreme latitudes as, for 

 example, the N. of Scotland and 

 the S. of Devon, require special 

 knowledge and treatment. 



GARDEN LITERATURE. The num- 

 ber of gardening books produced 

 annually is gnormous, but few 

 remain standard works of refer- 

 ence for many years, for the know- 



ledge of horticulture increases 

 from year to year. One old classic, 

 which is still quoted when experts 

 differ, is : " Paradisi in Sole Para- 

 disus Terrestris. A garden of all 

 sorts of pleasant flowers which our 

 English ayre will permit to be 

 noursed up : with a kitchen garden 

 of all manner of herbes, rootes, and 

 fruites, for meate or sauce used 

 with us, and an orchard of all sorte 

 of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes 

 fit for our land, together with the 

 rightorderinge, planting, and pre- 

 serving of them and their uses and 

 vertues, collected by John Parkin- 

 son, apothecary of London, 1629." 

 This work was reprinted in 1904. 

 Practical Knowledge Essential 



No theoretical help from books 

 is as good as practical knowledge, 

 supplemented by the occasional 

 courses of lectures arranged from 

 time to time by the various 

 authorities controlled by county 

 councils and horticultural insti- 

 tutions. Many of these institu- 

 tions also possess useful libraries. 

 The leading nurserymen of the 

 United Kingdom issue annually 

 to customers elaborate illustrated 

 catalogues which are mines of in- 

 formation, although, naturally, 

 such information is prepared with 

 a bias towards the particular 

 varieties inwhich the firm specialise. 



Bibliography. All about Garden- 

 ing, S. O. Beeton, new ed. 1895 ; 

 Handbooks of Practical Gardening, 

 ed. H. Roberts, 1901, etc. ; The 

 Century Book of Gardening, Ernest 

 T. Cook, 1903 ; The English Flower 

 Garden and Home Grounds, W. 

 Robinson, 12th ed. 1913 ; The 

 Encyclopaedia of Gardening, T. W. 

 Sanders, 17th ed. 1919. Good 

 periodical publications are : The 

 Gardener's Chronicle, 1841, etc. ; 

 The Gardener's Magazine, 1865, etc.; 

 The Garden, 1871, etc. ; Gardening 

 Illustrated, 1879, etc. Amateur 

 Gardening Annual and Year Book, 

 ed. T. W. Sanders, 1912, etc. 



GARDEN CITIES AND THEIR PROGRESS 



C. B. Purdom, Garden Cities and Town Planning Association 



Town planning is complementary to the above article. See also 



Hampstcad Garden Suburb; Letchworth, etc.; also Architecture; 



Building ; Commons ; Hoivard, Ebenezer ; etc. 



The garden city movement is 

 concerned with the improvement 

 of housing conditions and the 

 proper planning of towns. Its 

 specific aim is the development of 

 new industrial towns in rural dis- 

 tricts, as a means of restoring a 

 balance between town and country. 

 The concentration of population in 

 great towns, and the depopulation 

 of rural districts is characteristic 

 of all countries in which mechani- 

 cal industry has been developed. 



In England in 1851, when the de- 

 velopment of industry-in England 

 was far advanced, about half the 



population lived in the country 

 and half in the towns; between 

 that date and 1911 the population 

 of the towns increased from 9 to 

 over 28 millions, while the rural 

 population declined by more than 

 a million. Industry depends upon 

 a certain concentration of popula- 

 tion ; but in England, as else- 

 where, the process has gone too 

 far; the great towns have out- 

 grown their efficiency, and the 

 congeries of towns in the neigh- 

 bourhood of London, Manchester, 

 and Glasgow, for example, present 

 almost insoluble problems of local 



government, traffic, poverty, and 

 public health. 



The garden city movement is 

 the first serious attempt to divert 

 the stream of population. It owes 

 its origin to Ebenezer Howard's 

 book To-morrow : a Peaceful Path 

 to Social Reform, published in 1898. 

 The essence of the idea was the 

 acquisition of large tracts of land 

 on which towns could be planned 

 with full industrial facilities, in 

 order that manufacturers might 

 establish themselves and their 

 workpeople under healthy and 

 economical conditions. That it 

 was practicable to establish mech- 

 anical industries in rural surround- 

 ings had been shown many times 

 in the course of the century, the 

 most notable example being Bourn- 

 ville. But Howard maintained 

 that the best results could only be 

 got by a combination of manufac- 

 turers in a scheme large enough to 

 possess the qualities of a real town. 

 The Rural Belt 



There were two other important 

 elements in the scheme ; one was 

 that the land values created by 

 the new community should be 

 employed for communal purposes, 

 meeting municipal expenditure 

 normally paid out of rates ; the 

 other was the formation of closer 

 relations between urban and rural 

 life by the retention of a wide belt 

 of agricultural land as part of the 

 garden city scheme, the town not 

 being allowed to extend beyond a 

 certain maximum ; further growth 

 was to take the form of a new ur- 

 ban nucleus beyond this agricul- 

 tural belt. In this way agriculture 

 was to be in permanent association 

 with the social life, business facili- 

 ties, and mechanical equipment of 

 the town. In a national system of 

 garden city development urban 

 centres would be distributed evenly 

 throughout the country to the 

 great advantage of agriculture, 

 and with far-reaching effects upon 

 food production and the increase 

 of the agricultural population. 



The first attempt to build a 

 garden city was made in 1904 

 when Letchworth Garden City was 

 established. Six square miles of 

 land in a purely agricultural dis- 

 trict in Hertfordshire, 35 m. from 

 London, was bought by First 

 Garden City, Ltd., a joint stock 

 company. On this land a town of 

 35,000 inhabitants was planned, 

 with industries, houses, shops, 

 public buildings, etc., occupying 

 about two square miles, with a 

 permanent agricultural belt round 

 it. The population is now (1920) 

 12,000, with about 40 factories. The 

 features of the garden city as ex- 

 emplified at Letchworth are that 

 the workers have good houses, 



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