PREFACE 



IN sitting down to write this work, the writer feels like one 

 who, having made a long pilgrimage, looks back along the road, 

 milestone beyond milestone, and from the recesses of his memory 

 and varied experiences, calls up again those things through 

 which he has passed, and to which through the greater part 

 of his life he has accustomed himself. This initial volume is 

 intended to lead the way to others of a more advanced character, 

 and is such as, in the long past, the writer would have been glad 

 to use had such a work existed. When he first set out on his 

 career as nursery boy the guns of '71 were hurling defiance and 

 destruction between the armies of France and Germany, and 

 one cannot help recalling that fact now that the long-expected 

 results of the conflict have worked out to their conclusion ; 

 but it has seemed a long time, and during all those years the 

 author has been constantly engaged in the propagation and 

 cultivation of plants. He now offers the fruits of his personal 

 experience, not to others of his own age, but to the younger and 

 more inexperienced with whom lies the future of British nursery 

 work, in the hope that the knowledge which he has acquired 

 during a lifetime, combined with the optimism and enthusiasm 

 which are characteristic of younger men, will produce a worthy 

 result. 



The second volume of this little work will deal with special 

 glasshouse crop plants, the third with roses, the fourth with 

 carnations, the fifth with orchard fruit-tree culture, and the 

 last with decorative plants, trees and shrubs. 



F. J. FLETCHER. 

 September, 1921. 



