248 



Horticultural Society and Garden, 



General Management, and the Plan of the Garden. ■ 

 Loudon's evidence. 



■ Extracts from Mr. 



I consider that the Horticultural Society 'Jhas 

 no more occasion for a garden than the Society 

 of Arts has for a workshop or a manufactory. 

 No Society ought to attempt any thing that can 

 be done by individuals. There is nothing that 

 has been attempted by the Horticultural So- 

 ciety that could not have been better done by 

 individual gardeners and nurserymen. Instead 

 of collecting and cultivating all the fruits, with 

 a view to naming them, if the Society had 

 offered handsome premiums to the nursery- 

 men, and arranged with a different nursery- 

 man, or other gardener, commercial, private, 

 or amateur, for every different fruit, all the 

 fruits would have been collected and named, 

 and might have been published by the Society, 

 at a fraction of the expense which is now 

 incurring for the same object. This plan 

 would have been attended by this great addi- 

 tional advantage to the public ; that the nur- 

 sery where any particular fruit was proved 

 would, have been ever afterwards the stock 

 nursery for that fruit, and would have been 

 applied to by all the country nurserymen. I 

 should say the same thing as to culinary vege- 

 tables, flowers, and experiments of every kind ; 

 firmly adhering to the general principle of the 

 Horticultural Society's acting as a stimulus to 

 others, and entering into no details itself. 



But supposing the Society determined on pos- 

 sessing a garden, and having obtained the 

 33acres at Chiswick for that purpose, I con- 

 tend that it is most improperly laid out. It is 

 begun on so extravagant a scale, I mean with 

 reference to walls, hot-houses, buildings, &c, 

 that its completion could scarcely ever have 

 been contemplated by its founders without go- 

 vernment's assistance. It is too much frittered 

 into parts ; it contains miles of hedges, not 

 one yard of which was necessary ; it contains 

 three times the requisite length of gravel 

 walks, and more than double the requisite ex- 

 tent of walling. It contains some acres of 

 grass, and a serpentine canal, which were to- 

 tally uncalled for. These hedges, walks, walls, 

 grass, and water, have added much to the 

 first cost, and greatly increased the annual ex- 

 pense of management. 



The orchard is the most valuable department 

 in the garden ; but even here there are hedges. 

 A great error in the management has been, 

 first, sowing down the compartment containing 

 the standard trees, with tap-rooted plants, such 

 as the red clover ; and next, breaking it up and" 

 planting it with exhausting plants, such as the 

 potato. After the trees were planted, it ought 

 never to have been once dug or cropped in any 

 way ; it ought merely to have been hoed, to 

 destroy weeds. All digging among fruit-bear- 

 ing trees is highly injurious to them, by pre- 

 venting their roots from coming near the sur- 

 face. This hoeing, or slightly stirring the 

 surface with a fork, would have cost incompar- 

 ably less than the crops of clover and potatoes, 

 and the trees would have been in a far better 

 state. Having said this, I must not omit to 

 state that I consider the orchard by much the 

 most valuable part of the garden, and, indeed, 

 worth all the other parts put together; and 

 this the more especially, as the young man, 

 Thompson, who has the management of it, has 

 paid the greatest attention to the subject of 

 fruits, and is likely to bring the experiments 

 going on to a useful conclusion. 



The next division is the flower-garden, 

 which, with the exception of some plants from 

 North America, and perhaps a few pa;onies 

 and phloxes, contains nothing that could not 

 be found in every nursery, before the Horticul- 

 tural Society had its existence. It is full of 

 walks and box edgings, which add to the ex- 

 pense of keeping. 



Of the arboretum I have given my opinion 

 in the Gard. Mag. (Vol. V. p. 344.) ; whether it 

 is considered in the light of a botanical collec- 

 tion, or a specimen of landscape-gardening 

 (and it is evident, from its plan, that it is an 

 attempt to combine both), I consider it a dis- 

 grace to the country, hitherto eminent for 

 ornamental and landscape-gardening. 



With respect to the general arrangement of 

 the Society, I think some alteration would re- 

 quire to be made in the charter, and that a new 

 set of by-laws should be framed. The Council, 

 I think, should be liable to be totally changed 

 annually, as in the Geological Society, and the 

 President should not hold his office more than 

 three years, or even, perhaps, one year. Much 

 of the evils of the Horticultural Society, as 

 well as of other societies, originate in the per- 

 petuity of the president. I should prefer a 

 president elected by the general sense of the 

 Society, instead of one chosen by the Council, 

 and balloted for by the some half dozen of 

 members who attend at the annual elections. 

 Men that can speak (and there has not been 

 one in the chair that could, in my time), 

 and have a talent for eliciting discussion, 

 such as takes place at meetings of the Geolo- 

 gical Society, should be chosen. Much good 

 would be done by free discussion on the sub- 

 jects of the papers read or fruits presented; 

 or, at any rate, there would be some entertain- 

 ment. There ought not to exist that invidious 

 distinction between Fellows of the Society who 

 are, and those who are not, subscribers to the 

 garden. Not a plant, cutting, or seed ought to 

 be given away direct from the garden, or in 

 consequence of written applications to the So- 

 ciety, but to nurserymen or other commercial 

 gardeners. All spare plants, cuttings, or seeds, 

 ought to be given away at the meetings of the 

 Society to those who happen to attend; and 

 the officers of the Society ought on no account 

 to be liable to be written to by country or 

 other members (always excepting commercial 

 gardeners) for grafts, seeds, plants, &c. There 

 can be no end to these sorts of applications 

 which add much to the expense of conducting 

 the business of the Society, and cannot be 

 otherwise than sources of dissatisfaction to 

 all parties. Every Fellow of the Society ought 

 to be allowed free access to all the books, pa- 

 pers, accounts, and other documents of the 

 Society, at all reasonable times, without ap- 

 plication to the Council as at present. All 

 Fellows ought to have a right to give orders 

 to see the garden, and the library, and models 

 of fruits ; and all practical gardeners what- 

 ever ought to have free access to the garden 

 at least on one day of the week. A profes- 

 sional accountant of eminence ought to in- 

 spect the accounts of the Society once a year, 

 and prepare a balance-sheet ; and he ought 

 to be made responsible for its correctness. 



The garden, in my opinion, might be given 

 up without the slightest injury to the advance- 

 ment of horticulture; and all the objects pro- 

 posed to be effected by the Society might be 

 attained in a better manner than they possibly 

 can be in any wholesale experimental garden, 

 by the separate experiments of individuals. A 

 garden of an acre, near town, for the purpose 

 of laying in articles by the heels, as the techni- 

 cal expression is, when they were received by 

 the Society, and to contain them till it was con- 

 venient to send or deliver them out, is all that I 

 can conceive necessary ; but even that, I should 

 say, would be more cheaply done by any re- 

 sponsible nurseryman, who should consent to 

 devote a plot of ground, and the requisite as- 

 sistance when wanted, to the purpose in view. 



But as the Society have got a garden,should 

 they wish to keep it, and render it useful, then 



