130 General Results of a Gardening Tour : — 



ness, or the profession of a gentleman's gardener, will ever 

 be again what it has been, appears to us clearly impossible. 



In the first place, with respect to nurserymen, the know- 

 ledge of all the best methods of propagation is now so gene- 

 rally diffused, and thereby rendered so easy, that every 

 gentleman's gardener, having once obtained a new plant, 

 propagates it for himself, his neighbours, and his master's 

 friends. This reduces the business of the nurseryman, as far 

 as new plants are concerned, to the profits which he may 

 make during the first three or four years after the new plant 

 is come into his possession. Let a new plant once find its 

 way into twenty or thirty private collections, and unless it is 

 one of extraordinary popularity, such as the pelargonium, 

 the camellia, and a few others, the nurseryman may discard it 

 for ever from his stock. For fruit trees there will always be 

 a demand ; because, as long as houses are built or repaired, 

 gardens will continue to be made or altered : but the propa- 

 gation of fruit trees is now become so general, that it affords 

 very little profit, except to nurserymen in the country, who 

 pay low rents for their land. The rage for forest planting, 

 which prevailed some years ago, when corn and timber were 

 at war prices, and gentlemen consequently full of money, has 

 subsided ; and hence the millions of seedling larches, and of 

 Scotch pines, which are. raised in the nurseries in Aberdeen- 

 shire, at Perth, and at Kilmarnock, are either burned on the 

 spot, or sold at little more than sixpence a thousand. Well 

 dried, and made into small bundles, these seedlings would 

 bring more money in London for the purpose of lighting- 

 fires. In short, capital employed in the nursery business 

 returns at present perhaps less than capital employed in any 

 other trade. It once returned more, but the reason why it 

 did so no longer exists ; viz. the enjoyment of a monopoly by 

 the nurserymen in the article of skilful propagation of plants. 

 That monopoly is now gone for ever, as other monopolies 

 have gone, and as all will go. 



The profession of a gentleman's gardener will never be 

 what it has been, for this simple reason, that his employer is 

 no longer, and never will be again, what he once was. 



The higher classes, feeling themselves obliged to retrench, 

 though they will never be able to do without gardeners, will 

 yet learn to dispense with those departments of the profession 

 which are more especially luxuries ; and the gardener will be 

 required to extend his management to the woods, or to the 

 farm, or to both. He will, at the same time, while acting in 

 the united capacity of gardener and bailiff, find it requisite to 

 possess more botanical knowledge than he does at present ; 



