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I GARDENERS' CHRONICLE I 
I OF AMERICA. | 
I Devoted to the Science of Floriculture and Horticulture I 
■ Vol. XXI. 
MAY, 1917. 
No. 5 
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"Let me suggest that everyone who creates or cultivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem 
of the feeding of the nations; and that every housewife who practices strict economy puts herself in the ranks of 
those who serve the nation. This is the time for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and 
extravagance. Let every 7nan and every woman assume the duty of carefid, provident use and expenditure as a 
public duty, as a dictate of patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or forgiven for ignoring." 
— Woodrow Wilson. 
Things and Thoughts of the Garden 
By the Onlooker 
SINCE the last month's notes wei'e published there 
has been received two very different but inter- 
esting and useful annual publications. One of 
these is the report of the year's work of the United 
Horticultural Benefit and Provident Society, referred 
to last month; the other is the journal of the Kew 
Guild. Both are English publications but we have a 
new and added interest in that country at the present 
time. Moreover, in the last two years an American 
branch of the Kew Guild has been established, with 
headquarters in New York City presumably. The sec- 
retary, however, is S. R. Candler, Southampton, Long 
Island: the president is M. Free, the head gardener at 
Brooklyn Botanic Garden. How many members it 
has I am not certain; probably about fifty or sixty. 
They meet once a year, talk business and finish tip with 
a very entertaining social evening. The Kew Guild, 
however, is world-wide. It is a union of all the past 
and present members of the garden staff of the Ro3fal 
Botanic Gardens at Kew, London. Few outside the 
ranks know just how much horticulture in general and 
the British Empire owe to the men of Kew. The pres- 
ent writer missed going to Kew as a working garden- 
er, but was there as a student and had the run of these 
marvellous gardens for ten or twelve years, off and on. 
* * * * 
But how does the British Empire benefit from a few 
humble gardeners ? Well, in this way. They are sent 
to botanic gardens throughout the Empire, some of 
them in unhealthy, outlandish places, like the Straits 
Settlements and the west coast of Africa. Kew men 
have been prospectors over thousands of almost un- 
known territory. Witness the work of Dawe and 
Brown in Uganda, east Africa. Others have acted as 
instructors in tropical agriculture and horticulture, and 
would you be surprised to know that there are as well 
equipped schools and almost as advanced studies in 
these industries in Senegal and Guinea and the Gold 
Coast, as anywhere in these United States? Many 
have conducted experimental work in the growing 
and testing of native plants and products, while thou- 
191 
sands of seedling stuff", seeds and cuttings are also 
grown on from the supplies that go forth annually 
from headquarters at Kew to the ends of the earth. 
Others are plant collectors. In nearly every instance 
the Kew man who takes up a Colonial appointment is 
the horticultural, agricultural or botanical adviser to 
the local authority. In some respects they are like a 
consul. And because the British Government pays 
them, in very many instances, totally inadequate 
wages, they shift over into the service of private com- 
panies. Thus some have gone into the rubber growing 
industry, both in Africa and Burmah and Mala}-. Some 
have taken hold of tea or cocoa or coft'ee plantations. 
And so the tale goes. 
Kew itself is not onlv a great botanical center of 
work, classification and research ; it is also a home of 
horticulture second to none in the whole world as a 
complete unit in ornamental gardening. The .\rnold 
Arboretum excels it as an arboretum, but then Kew 
has its rock garden, its herbacious plant ground, its 
Iris and Rose collections, water gardens, its borders 
of annuals, its very excellent .Summer bedding, won- 
derful bulb display, and then its extensive indoor col- 
lections of ferns, orchids, aroids, cacti, Cape bulbs and 
heaths, its Australian plants and so on. Kew has been 
the means of bringing hosts of old neglected plants 
into popularity because in its collections they have 
been well-grown and shown, and again it has been 
here that many and many a new plant was first 
bloomed and described. These subjects are dealt 
with in the Botanical Magazine, a publication that 
was first begun about the time of the French Revolu- 
tion and continued uninterruptedly ever since. 
Naturally, a full set of the "Bot. Mao.," to give it its 
abbreviated, well-known title, is worth a lot of money 
—I think in the neighborhood of $800. 
* * * * 
The other report to which reference has been made 
shows that the Benefit and Provident Society has 
funds invested to the extent of $306,820; and tliat its 
