10 PKACTICAL FLORICULTURE. 



and their own practice, having had no opportunity for 

 other instruction. In not a few cases some of these have 

 got ahead of what are known as professional gardeners, 

 those who have had no other experience than that received 

 in private gardens in Europe, which by no means fits them 

 for the American style of commercial floriculture. The 

 increase of a taste for flowers for the past thirty years has 

 been truly wonderful. A gentleman who has a turn for 

 statistics in this peculiar line, informed me that he had 

 begun to procure information from all parts of the coun- 

 try of the numbers engaged in the trade, together with 

 the capital employed. He said that his investigations 

 for this locality, taken in the rough, extending in the 

 radius of ten miles from the center of New York City, 

 proved that the number of florists' establishments was 

 about 500, and the capital used in stock and struc- 

 tures upwards of $6,000,000. If the number of estab- 

 lishments is nearly correct and there is no reason to 

 doubt it I am certain that the value is not overestima- 

 ted, as we have at least half a dozen establishments where 

 the capital used in stock and buildings must be nearly 

 $100,000 each. And this, too, in New York and its 

 suburbs, where the taste is lower than it is in either 

 Boston or Philadelphia. In those places, no doubt, 

 their excellent Horticultural Societies have done much 

 to refine the tastes of the people, and it is to be regretted 

 that neither New York nor its adjacent cities, with over 

 two millions of people, have, until quite recently, had a 

 Horticultural Society, and even that at the date I write, 

 1887, it is not to be compared with either that of Boston 

 or Philadelphia. 



GARDENING AS A BUSINESS HOW TO BEGIN. 



In response to continued inquiries from those who wish 

 to engage in gardening as a business, I propose in this 

 chapter, to give briefly, yet comprehensively, such advice 



