June 22. 1912 



THE GARDENERS' MAGAZINE. 



471 



EDUCATION OF GARDENERS. 



The following is the text of the paper on 

 "Tlie Education of Gardeners" read by Mr. 

 W. Hales, A.L.S., Curator, Physic Garden, 

 Chelsea, at the conference on "Horticultural 

 Education" held in conjunction with the 

 Eoyal International Horticultural Exhibi- 

 tion ; — 



When one considors the methods for the 

 education of a garden-er in this country, it 

 Lay be said with a great deal of truth to be 

 more or less a system of " drift." 



That such a system — or rather, want cf 

 system — has produced many excellent gar- 

 deners is freely acknowledged, and is clearly 

 shown in the magnificent exhibition which 

 has ju^t been opened; and when one ponders 

 over the training these men have had, the 

 thought naturally arises, how are we to im- 

 prove upon the methods employed? 



Since gardening is a progressive art which 

 does not admit of finality, all true gardeners 

 must ever feel that their education is never 

 complete, and that they must always be 

 alert to adapt themselves to new methods, 

 and idea« if they are to hold their own in 

 the competition of life. 



During recent years rapid strides have 

 been made in educational methods generally, 

 and one finds that the number of elementary 

 schools which teach gardening as a purely 

 educational subject have increased very con- 

 siderably; but so far as the actual training 

 of the real gardener is concerned, these 

 schools play very little or no part. 



There are, however, a certain number of 

 institutions which teach gardening as a 

 whole, or as one of the subjects in their 

 courses, with the object of training gar- 

 deners; but after careful cou'sideration one 

 is forced to the conclusion that many of 

 these institutions fall short of filling the 

 position in the training of a gardener which 

 they should occupy. What one feels to be 

 most needed is that the Avork of these various 

 establishments should be arranged and co- 

 ordinated so that any boy who intends to 

 make gardening his profession may be able 

 to pass through such an organised course of 

 training as will ensure him receiving the 

 proper blending of practice with science, 

 which, in this competitive age, is essentially 

 necessary for the man who desires to reach 

 the top of his profession. 



The Gardener's Work. 



The work of a gardener covers such a num- 

 ber of different branches of the great tree of 

 horticulture, that the education a gardener 

 should receive must of necessity be a subject 

 upon which there are many diverse opinions. 

 There can, however, be no two opinions 

 but that the boy who wishes to make garden- 

 ing his life's work should have received 

 whilst at school as full a general education 

 as the circumstances will allow; and if it 

 were possible for him to continue his studies 

 up to the age of sixteen or seventeen years 

 at a good secondary school, where he will 

 receive an additional training in those 

 sciences which will ultimately have a direct 

 bearing upon his profession, such as geology, 

 botany, chemistry, and land-surveying, he 

 will be possessed of an asset which will un- 

 doubtedly be of value to him in his future 

 work. 



Gardening to-day makes demands upon tho 

 skill and intelligence of the individual such 

 as was undreamt of in bygone years. 



This is partly explained when one con- 

 siders the enormous wealth of exotics from 

 all climes with which quick transit and the 

 work of collectors and travellers have en- 

 riched oar gardens — to say nothing of the 

 work of the hybridist— all of which the gar- 

 dener is expected to grow and make flourish 



under conditions far removed from those in 

 which they grow natiirally. Therefore, the 

 better the education a boy has received at 

 school tlie more fitted will ho be for deal- 

 ing in an intellip-ent manner with the dif- 



ficulties — and 

 future work. 



they will be many — of his 



Learning; Elementary Details. 



We will assume, then, that a boy who in- 

 tends to make gardening his profession has 

 had the best education afforded by the ele- 

 mentary schools of the country. The next 

 step in our policy of ** drift " is for him to 

 obtain employment in a garden as a garden 

 boy, where he should be initiated into all 

 the elementary details of the usual routine 

 work of a garden. The size of the garden 

 will matter little, provTding that it is of a 

 more or less representative character, and 

 has at its head a thoroughly practical man, 

 who is also prepared to take an interest in 

 moulding the boy's character, and generally 

 interesting him in his work. 



This last is most important, as it has to be 

 remembered that since the old system of in- 

 dentured apprenticeship has become almost 

 extinct, no head-gardener in our present 

 system is under any definite obligation to 

 instruct a beginner. Fortunately, however, 

 there are numbers of head-gardeners who 

 consider they have a moral obligation in this 

 respect, and there is not, as a rule, any 

 great difficulty in getting a boy well placet!. 



Personally, I am a great believer in a 

 boy 'beginning on the bottom rung of the 

 ladder and gradually working his way up. 

 It is, howevor. particularly necessary at this 

 period of his career that he should be pro- 

 perly taught the elementary details of his 

 work, and the correct reasons for their per- 

 formance, or he will never become a good 

 gardener. 



Two years spent in acquiring the sound 

 elementary details of his work will be ample 

 to fit an intelligent and capable boy for the 

 more important duties of a journeyman, and 

 he must now realise that the future success 

 or failure of his life as a gardener will 

 largely depend upon himself, in the use he 

 makes of the many and varied opportunities 

 of acquiring knowledge which occur in his 

 daily work. Neither must he forget to use 

 every endeavour to further improve his gene- 

 ral knowledge of those subjects which have 

 a direct bearing upon his profession, since 

 it is at this period of his life that his mind 

 is most receptive to new facts and ideas, and 

 his memory more retentive. 



influence of Environment. 



At this stage of a young gardener's life 

 one fears that the environment in which he 

 finds himself often plays a very large part in 

 making or marring his future- Should cir- 

 cumstances be fortunate, and he falls in vdth 

 studious companions, he will most likely en- 

 deavour to emulate their example. Con- 

 versely, if his fellow-workmen have no in- 

 terest in striving to garner educational 

 knowledge after their working hours, he will 

 most probably follow the line of least resist- 

 ance and do likewise. One feels that this 

 is particularly true in the case of those gar- 

 deners who, from the very nature of their 

 calling, are often isolated in country places 

 far removed from the educational influences 

 to be found in the neighbourhood of large 

 towns and cities. Most of us realise the diffi- 

 culties of getting classes together for th^^e. 

 men, but one feels that the county educa- 

 tional authorities might very well step in 

 here and supply the great need of assist>ance 

 which these men require in the w^ay of pro- 

 viding lectures upon subjects connected with 

 their work. The young journeyman, how- 

 ever, should never forget that the cardinal 

 point in his early training must be centred 

 upon making himself proficient in the actual 

 manual part of his work. Other subjects 

 should be studied more in the way of "intel- 

 lectnaj amusements," rather than as things 

 which must be acquired at this stage. Deeper 

 pursuance of these subjects should be re- 

 served for the later stages of his training, 

 when he will be more likely to have a clearer 

 idea of what he ultimately desires to attain. 



It has 1>een well said that "Everyone has, 

 or should have, two educations : namely, the 

 one he receives from others, and the other 

 he acquires for himself, and the latter is, 

 as a rule, by far the most valuable to him^ 

 The man who does not earnestly strive to 



educate himself can never hope to be a suc- 

 cess in his profession, neither can he hope 

 to get the full enjoyment out of his life- 

 Let me, however, make it clear that I do 

 not desire my young journeyman to alw^ays 

 have his " nose on the grindstone."" He 

 should make time for the healthy physical 

 recreations of life, such as cricket, cycling, 

 etc., as I am a firm l>eliever that a healthy 

 body makes a healthy, active mind; and 

 that taken in moderation, recreations are 

 essentially necessary for the full development 

 of both mind and body. 



Practice and Science. 



When discussing the education of a gar- 

 dener one is often met with the remark 

 that there are manv 



xcellent gardeners who 

 know nothing wiiatever of the sciences; and 

 whilst this may be true to a certain extent, 

 the very fact of their being successful culti- 

 vators of plants shoAvs that they uncon- 

 sciously follow their practice upon scientific 

 principles, although they may not be able 

 to describe their reasons for the performance 

 of any particular practice in a systematized 

 manner; w^hich, after all, is science, puro 

 and simple. 



I l)elieve it was Huxley who once describes! 

 science as "organised common-sense/' and 

 if we were to keep this definition in mind, 

 one would never hear of people trying to 

 divorce good ])ractice from science, since they 

 are inseparable. 



The young gardener should very early ac- 

 quire the habit of using his powers of ob- 

 servation upon the object^s of his daily work; 

 and having observed, he must try and dis- 

 cover for himself the reasons for what ho has 

 seen, and then act upon his conclusions. 



The success of his work will largely depend 

 ui>on the us-e he h;vs made of his powers of 

 observation, since no Avork is more exacting 

 in this respect than gardening. His watch- 

 word must always l>e, " Keep your eyes open 

 to things which want attention," and never 

 do things in a mechanical manner. I lalwur 

 tliis point a little because, having had a 

 fairly wide experience of men, I know only 

 too well how common it is for them to gel 

 into a mechanical way of doing work. They 

 will go through a house of plants for water- 

 ing, and never see the plant which needs 

 watering most ; or they fail to notice the first 

 sign of distress from insect pests, such as 

 thrips and red spider, until a great deal of 



damage has been done. 



It is, of course, only to be expected that 

 at times no satisfactory solution of an ob- 

 served phenomenon may be forthcoming ; 

 but with accumulated knowledge the right 

 solution may present itself. As bearing upon 

 this, I may be pardoned if I cite a case which 

 happened in my own early gardening days: 

 when I well remember being soundly rated 

 by my chief — who was a man of far more 

 than average erudition — because in a mixed 

 house of plants of which I then had charge 

 a particular plant dnrin.qr a s|k*]1 of verv 

 bright sunnv wenther lost its loaves. I 

 was told that T had neglected to i^ivi* this 

 particular plant sufficient water; but T on my 

 part was equallv certain that I had not been 

 remiss in this 'respect. There the matter 

 ended; until several years afterwards, ^yhen 

 reading about the vegetation of the Tatinga 

 region of Brazil. T found that many of the 

 plants of this region during spells of hot, 

 dry weather, cast off their leaves, >o as to 

 prevent transpiratiim. and thus enable them 

 to live through these dry periods. Tpon 

 looking it up I found to my surprise that the 

 particular plant to which T have referred 

 was a native of this region, and was doing 

 under cultivation exactly wliat it would have 

 done in nature. This' is just one case in 

 which a knowledge of ])otany might help the 

 (gardener to solvo orohleni.s which occur in 

 his dailv work; but T wi^li to make it clear 

 tliat I (io nnt tliink a deep knowhxlge of any 

 of the seienees is at all necessary to any- 

 one in the early stages of their gardcninor 

 eartvr. proficiency in the ]ierforTnaTice of tlie 

 manual work being far more desirable. They 

 should, however, be sufficiently versed in the 



