General Aspects of Commercial Gardening 7 



There are now enormous areas of glasshouses erected all round the 

 metropolis, but more especially to the north in such places as Edmonton, 

 Ponder's End, Enfield, Waltham Cross; in the north-west round Finchley, 

 Whetstone, and Potter's Bar; and to the west at Isle worth, Feltham, 

 Hillingdon, Uxbridge, Sipson, and West Drayton. In other parts of the 

 kingdom, notably Worthing and the Channel Islands (principally Guern- 

 sey), large areas of ground have also been covered with glass. This has 

 naturally led to the development of other businesses, such as the timber 

 trade and the iron trade. Glasshouses are now built on quite different 

 principles from what they were twenty or thirty years ago, and growers 

 are at last beginning to realize the great value of light to their crops, and 

 to appreciate structures that will allow the maximum amount of sunshine 

 through the glass. Less wood and more glass is now the rule. In the 

 iron trade, enormous quantities of material are used for the manufacture 

 of boilers and pipes; while the manufacturers of paint, putty, and other 

 materials also do a brisk trade with market growers. To these must 

 be added the various gas companies and colliery merchants, who provide 

 thousands of tons of coke or anthracite coal to feed the furnaces attached 

 to the glasshouses. 



The crops grown under glass are naturally of a quite different nature 

 from those grown in the open air. They require greater care and skill 

 in cultivation, and frequent changes are made in accordance with the 

 alterations in fashion or the fluctuations of the market. Cucumbers, 

 Tomatoes, Grapes, Ferns, Palms, Aspidistras, Chrysanthemums, bedding 

 plants, Melons, Peaches, constitute some of the chief crops grown exten- 

 sively under glass, and they are all dealt with in their proper places in 

 Vols. II, III, and IV of this work. Such outdoor crops, however, as Cab- 

 bages, Lettuces, Radishes, Mint, Rhubarb, Sea Kale, Dwarf and Runner 



o ' * ' 



Beans, Marrows, &c., are also now grown extensively under glass by many 

 to supply the early markets and thus pander to the fashion of having 

 everything in as early as possible before its natural period. 



Notwithstanding the numbers of market growers who now send pro- 

 duce to the London and provincial markets, it is astonishing to see the 

 enormous quantities of fruits, flowers, and vegetables that are imported 

 from the Continent and the Colonies. The increased speed of trains and 

 steamboats now renders it possible to bring supplies to market that a few 

 years ago would have been considered impossible. The introduction of 

 the refrigerating system on trains and steamboats has still further aided 

 the introduction of colonial and foreign produce to British markets one 

 of the surest signs that they are the most lucrative in the world. If they 

 were not, supplies would soon cease, and trade would flow to the markets 

 where the " biggest penny " was to be secured. 



The Florist Trade. There is scarcely a town of any pretensions in 

 the British Islands that does not boast of at least one florist's shop. In 

 large provincial towns there are many, and in the metropolis itself and 

 its suburbs there are many hundreds. The floral trade has developed 



