for a Garden Library. 109 



We have long entertained the idea, and expressed it in our Encyclopaedia 

 of Gardening, that a library of books ought to form a part of the furniture 

 of every garden, for this reason, that a gardener can no more acquire his 

 profession without books than he can without tools, and because the wages 

 of gardeners, and especially of journeymen, are inadequate to every indi- 

 vidual's purchasing such books as are requisite for him. 



We take it for granted, that no man can ever become fit for the duties of 

 a master gardener, without possessing what may be called a tolerable school 

 education ; such as writing, arithmetic, geometry, drawing, and, for the sake 

 of botanical names, some acquaintance with the rudiments of Latin. This 

 is exclusive of professional education, which, besides the practice of the 

 different operations of gardening, should consist of a considerable extent 

 and variety of reading on the various departments of vegetable culture and 

 territorial improvement. As things at present stand, very few parents who 

 bring up their children to gardening are able to bestow on them the requi- 

 site elementary education ; and we are sure it will be at once allowed, that 

 journeymen gardeners, as they are now paid, can never afford to purchase . 

 the professional books which they would require to read. It may be asked, 

 after this statement, how it happens that there are any good gardeners at 

 all, and how gardening goes on so well as it does ? To which we answer, 

 that the few who are properly qualified to act as master gardeners, have 

 attained thereto by a fortunate concurrence of circumstances as to parent- 

 age and local education, or by extraordinary exertion, and the denial, in 

 great part, of even the necessaries of life for a series of years while working 

 as journeymen. Many journeymen are unwilling or unable to undergo these 

 privations ; under their pressure the exertions of others are weakened ; and 

 in no case are they what they might be, or what the art requires. This is 

 the reason why there are so very few first-rate gardeners, and why, as we 

 have often said, there is not one garden in a hundred, whether large or 

 small, that affords to its owner half the enjoyment which it might do. 



But, independently of farther improvement, even to maintain gardening 

 and gardeners in their present state, why should young men acquiring that 

 art be subjected to greater privations than young men acquiring other arts 

 or trades ? Journeymen carpenters and smiths are allowed such wages as 

 enables them to buy their tools; why are not journeymen gardeners al- 

 lowed similar wages, in order to enable them to buy gardening books, which, 

 it cannot be denied, are just as necessary to them as spades or rakes ? 

 Gardening is now quite a different thing to what it was twenty years ago ; 

 more than double the number of exotic plants are now in culture, and 

 nearly the same proportion of new fruits. Forcing by flues, steam, ferment- 

 ing substances, &c. is now carried to an extent never before contemplated. 

 Discoveries in chemistry, the doctrine of heat, meteorology, geology, and 

 vegetable physiology, have been brought to bear on the art of culture in 

 such a way, that there is not a single operation, whether on the soil or on 

 plants, that has not undergone improvement. If we compare the present 

 state of garden buildings, structures, and implements, we shall find them so 

 various, and so greatly superior to what they were twenty years ago, that a 

 gardener, to ascertain which is best or most suitable to his case, must not 

 only see and use them, but know something of the mechanical or other prin- 

 ciples in which their excellence consists. Add to all this, that a gardener, 

 however limited the sphere of his operations, is more or less employed as an 

 artist, or man of taste, in designing and laying out walks, roads, and plan- 

 tations of various kinds; and this in scenes of different degrees of extent 

 and importance, from the flower garden to the park. When to these points 

 are added the knowledge of the uses of timber, with a view to profitable 

 planting, and of fencing, draining, irrigation, and various other parts of 

 agriculture connected with gardening, it will not be denied, we think, that 



