x INTRODUCTION. 
practical use at that period. The professional gardener of 
the 18th century was, however, woefully lacking in skill and 
intelligence. He could cultivate ordinary crops, but failed 
_to possess the art or initiative of growing the choicer vege- 
tables and fruit, hence these had to be imported from Holland 
and Flanders. Later, he seems to have improved, and to 
have been able to understand the art of securing early crops 
and ensuring successional supplies. 
GARDENING IN THE LAST CENTURY. 
It was in the last century that gardening in all its phases 
made the most rapid strides, thanks to the efforts of such 
eminent experts as Thomas Andrew Knight, who did so much 
in the improvement of the varieties of our hardy fruits; 
John Claudius Loudon, in the designing and planting of 
gardens and in the publication of his remarkable Encyclo- 
pedia of Gardening, and Trees and Shrubs, etc., both works 
showing a unique mental capacity and an amount of per- 
sonal industry unequalled to the present time; Sir Joseph 
Paxton, the talented gardener and designer of the gardens of 
Chatsworth and the Crystal Palace; Charles Darwin, who 
rendered immeasurable service to botany and the improve- 
ment of plants by his researches and studies as to the origin 
of species; Dr. Lindley, who did so much for us in regard 
to plant physiology and botany; and Dr. Maxwell Masters, in 
regard to conifere—all men of noble character, high ideals, 
and the widest scieutific and practical attainments, who have, 
alas! gone to their well-earned rest, and left behind them 
records of greatness that will never die out so long as horti- 
culture exists. 
It would, indeed, be an impossible task to mention even a 
tithe of those, living or dead, who have, during the past 
‘century, done so much for the art of horticulture, either 
by pen or deed. The long period of peace which we have 
enjoyed, the more widely diffused education which has pre- 
vailed, the immense help which the plethora of societies has 
rendered, and the marvellous increase of literature on the 
subject, have all been conducive to extending a love of horti- 
culture far and wide throughout the kingdom. 
It may truly be said that there is hardly a house outside 
our congested cities that does not possess a garden, and even 
in towns where garden space does not exist, the love of 
gardening often stimulates the citizen to form a miniature 
