138 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



throughout Great Britain and Ireland, it is to the market gardeners that 

 we shall have to look for the greatest success in British horticultural 

 practice and methods. The reasons are many, but the main point is 

 that gardening is in most private places a matter of taste : the personal 

 equation of the owners comes in largely, likes and dislikes being many 

 and varied. 



Many private gardens having both grounds and glasshouses well 

 arranged may be economically managed, but there is often a good deal 

 of sentiment connected with them, and they are often badly arranged 

 and are kept up just as horses and hounds, or yachts and motor-cars, and 

 other luxuries are kept up, viz. for personal rather than for economic 

 reasons. 



With the trade or market gardener cultivation is purely an economical 

 question, and he arranges things so as to save labour, and he produces, 

 not what he likes best himself, but that which sells best, or the things 

 he can grow at least cost and sell for most money. 



One of the most potent aids to progress in horticulture is travel. We 

 must all go to gardens, nurseries, or exhibitions both at home and 

 especially abroad to obtain new ideas and methods and to see what our 

 competitors are doing. The decorative plant cultures of Bruges, Ghent, 

 Brussels, the bulbs at Leiden or Haarlem, the shrubs and trees at 

 Boskcop, are only a few of the object lessons in commercial gardening 

 our own growers ought to see for themselves. Even so it seems to be 

 still a case of demand exceeding supplies, or an excess of population over 

 the present cultivation and produce of the land. 



As things are at present there seems ample room for progress in the 

 shape of more good market gardening, despite the fact that other countries 

 may possess natural advantages, such as a better climate, State aid and 

 instruction, cheaper land and labour ; and last, but not least, better co- 

 operative information bureaus and cheaper transit charges as well. 



English market gardeners are often too exclusive and independent : 

 they fight shy of co-operation as a rule, and so they are practically at the 

 mercy of the big carriers, whether by rail or otherwise. 



One very patent sign of progress nowadays consists in the specialisa- 

 tion going on, especially in trade or market gardening. Some, indeed 

 many, of our best cultivators are specialists in the best sense of the w^rd. 

 It is easier and cheaper to grow a house full of one thing than a house 

 full of many things. One man becomes famous for Grapes or Peaches, 

 and another for Rhubarb and Seakale, or Asparagus, or even Mushrooms ; 

 another grower takes up Carnations or Roses, Palms, or Ferns ; and we 

 have even specialists devoted to Lily of the Valley who can supply flowers 

 of it practically every day in the year. We have Tomato, Potato, Sweet 

 Pea, and Daffodil specialists, and these men are bound to surpass growers 

 who divide their capital and attention amongst too many separate things. 

 The word specialist spells prcgress. The planting of groups or masses 

 of one good plant, or shrub, or tree, instead of the old method of dotting 

 about single plants of almost everything, is one of the most radical and 

 far-reaching of all modern methods in gardens. 



In fruit-growing the same principle is going on, and instead of an 

 orchard of fifty or 100 trees, all different, we have perhaps ten to 500 trees 



