GARDEN LIBRARIES. 



127 



In America and in Germany the library seems to be thought 

 as essential to good gardening and profitable land culture as is 

 here with us the seed-room or the tool- shed ; and in England we 

 are beginning to perceive the value of technical education and 

 to recognise the vital importance of the most recent of scientific 

 discoveries relating to our crops and their diseases, or the soil in 

 which they grow. Private garden libraries, while most desirable, 

 really form a part of a much larger and wider question. If 

 libraries are essential for the garden, surely they are even more 

 so on the farm. 



In the good old times, when we held a practical monopoly of 

 wheat and wool, the farms brought in plenty of money to tenant 

 and landlord alike, and so prosperous farms kept up our fine old 

 English gardens. Nowadays there seems a tendency, and 

 especially near large towns, to turn farms into more profitable 

 fruit and market gardens, so that the cases are reversed, and the 

 garden is now often expected to pay its way, and to replace, as far 

 as possible, the money losses of the farm. How to make the land 

 pay is the question of the time. This is a question of great import- 

 ance to our county councils more especially. Nearly everywhere 

 they are sending abroad technical instructors to the villages and 

 country districts, and the good they do might well be largely 

 augmented by their establishing village club-rooms and libraries, 

 for it has been well said that a man is not benefited half so much 

 by what you teach him as he is by what you help him to learn 

 for himself at the time when it is of highest service to him and 

 to his country. 



But to form libraries we must have good and useful books, 

 and I shall give a short list of those I believe to be the best of 

 their kind ; and one of the best ways I know of getting the best 

 gardening books into the best hands is to award them as prizes 

 to the cultivators and exhibitors of garden produce at allotment 

 garden and village flower shows. 



GOOD AND USEFUL GARDENING BOOKS. 

 Elementary. 



1. The Primer of Horticulture (Macmillan). 



2. Paxton's Cottage Gardeners' Calendar ("Gardeners' Chronicle"). 



3. Best Fruit Trees for Cottagers (Royal Horticultural Society). 

 4 An Encyclopaedia of Gardening (Sanders). 



5. Epitome of Gardening (Moore and Masters). 



