viii 



PREFACE 



river embankment, would suffice. As wholesale dealings of this 

 kind are usually done in the morning hours, it would be easy to 

 make good use of open spaces for this purpose. Some of the 

 useful little district markets of Paris are held in public squares 

 and on the boulevards, and an hour after they are over, tents, 

 stands, refuse, and all other signs of the market are swept away. 

 Those who have their own gardens do not suffer from the ill- 

 managed markets of our cities, but thousands have no remedy save 

 through the improvements of our markets, the Paris markets being 

 a model of what is best in that way. 



The " muddle " method of planting the food garden with fruit 

 trees and bushes, and so cutting up the surface with walks, edgings, 

 etc., that the object of the garden is frustrated, should 

 be changed. We cannot grow vegetables well under 

 trees, and in attempting to do so we destroy the roots of the trees, 

 and is one cause of our poor garden-fruit culture. One-half of the 

 ■ space wholly given to vegetables, divested of walks, large hedges, old 

 frame grounds, old walls, rubbish, and other impedimenta, would 

 give a far better supply. It is not merely the ugliness and the loss 

 of the over-mixed garden which we have to deplore, but the wasted 

 labours of the men who have to look after such gardens. How are 

 they to succeed, with the many things so hopelessly mixed up — 

 and perhaps rank groves of elms or other trees, their roots robbing 

 half the space ? Put the fruit trees in one part — the higher ground, 

 if any — and devote the remaining part to vegetables, cultivating the 

 ground in the best way as a fertile garden. The vegetables, too, 

 would be more wholesome for good light and air ; for shade from 

 ragged and profitless trees and bushes and hedges is one of the 

 evils of this hopeless kind of garden. The broken crops, too 

 (for the most part sickly patches), are not such as one can be 

 proud of. The many excellent vegetables grown for the Paris 

 market are grown in the full sun, and these gardens are a lesson 

 in good culture, and the quantity grown in them in proportion to 

 their size. 



It is the rule in most British gardens to give far too much 

 space to the coarser vegetables like Cabbage and Potatoes, and far 

 too little to the more delicate and nutritious kinds, 

 ^r^the^Best ^^^^ which are usually not grown at all, or so ill 

 grown as to be useless. The Greens and other vege- 

 tables that go with our joints are the coarsest, least nutritious, and 



