Improving the Gardens of Cottagers. 271 



A subsequent letter on this subject, by " A Lover of 

 Facts," contrasts the case of a gardener out of a situation 

 with a house-servant under the same circumstances. The 

 former, he says, gets employment from the nurseryman, in 

 general, as soon as he asks for it ; the latter enters his name at 

 an office for servants, and waits till he hears of another 

 place, without being able to earn any thing in the mean time. 

 Perhaps, in the course of a month or two, both he and 

 the gardener have spent all they had saved when in place ; 

 but while the gardener can still exist in consequence of the 

 employment which he receives from the nurseryman, the 

 footman or butler is reduced to the greatest extremity. " A 

 Lover of Facts," therefore, as well as " A Nurseryman," 

 thinks gardeners are more indebted to nurserymen than nur- 

 serymen are to gardeners ; and as far as respects the immediate 

 benefits which the former derive from the latter, we are decidedly 

 of his opinion, convinced that a nurseryman might get his work 

 done much cheaper and better by labourers in his employ 

 permanently, than by the employment of professed gardeners 

 casually. As a proof of this, we may refer to the nursery 

 of Mr. Donald of Woking, Surrey, where the operations are 

 performed with a degree of accuracy and neatness not always 

 to be met with in the London and Edinburgh nurseries, and in 

 which the workmen are common country labourers. The 

 single circumstance that makes it worth a nurseryman's 

 while to employ, for short and indefinite periods, gardeners 

 out of place, is the hope of getting their custom, when in the 

 wheel of fortune, a place turns up. It is a satisfactory con- 

 currence of circumstances that commercial and serving gar- 

 deners are thus mutually dependent. — Cond. 



Art. V. On improving the Gardens of Cottagers. By Mr. 

 William Wilson, Gardener to W. J. Bethell, Esq. at 

 Merley Gardens, Winborne, Dorsetshire. 



Sir, 

 Nothing can be more laudable than a wish to improve, as 

 far as we possibly can, the condition of those individuals 

 whom it has pleased a wise and just Providence to place in the 

 more humble walks of life. You call, and with much pro- 

 priety, upon the gardeners of the nobility and gentry to 

 assist you in your disinterested endeavours to do good to 

 this class ; and as an individual belonging to that profession, 



