148 
THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE OF AMERICA. 
understands. But in the spring the bulbs will come up 
in orderly rows, or, worse still, in geometrical patterns. 
IVrhaps the gardener does not listen. Perhaps he thinks 
you cannot be really so foolish as you seem ; or. perhaps 
— and this is the most probable explanation — the habits 
of a lifetime are too strong for him, and as he plants he 
obeys unconsciously his instinct for symmetry and order. 
Whatever the explanation ma.) be, these incidents make 
pleasant relations difficult; and. for the enthusiast, un- 
pleasant relations with his gardener are intolerable. 
They must be even worse for the gardener, since he 
cannot openly rebel except at the risk of losing his live- 
lihood. It is his business, you may say, to please his 
employer; but he is human, and the more his heart is 
in his work the more eager he will be to do work after 
his own heart. Every good gardener is something of an 
artist, however perverse his taste may seem, and he 
needs to be humored like an artist. But then his em- 
ployer too, if he is an enthusiast, is also something of an 
artist, and probably not content witli mere humoring. It 
may be a point of honor with him to have no bedding 
plants in his garden. It may lie a point of honor with 
the gardener to have some. When this is the case the 
humane employer usually makes some concession. He 
sees that if there were no bedding plants his gardener 
would lose all interest in his work and pine away. 
Therefore he gives him a piece of the garden to play with 
and does not grudge the time he spends upon it, pro- 
vided he will do as he is bid elsewhere. This compromise 
is not perfectly satisfactory to either party. The em- 
ployer has to explain to his friends that the bedding 
plants are not his taste. The gardener has to explain to 
his friends that only in one little part of the garden has 
he been given a fair chance. Some employers, perhaps, 
will say that they see no reason for a compromise at all. 
The garden is theirs to do what they like with. But the 
gardener, though they pay his wages, is not altogether 
theirs. They can, of course, get rid of him, and look for 
one who will do exactly as they like ; but they will find 
it difficult to get him. The good gardener always has 
tastes of his own ; if he had not he would not be a good 
gardener; and his tastes are usually conservative, not 
merely because he has been trained in an old-fashioned 
school, but also because all men, except the most able. 
are apt to fall into routine in any difficult work that is 
the main business of their lives. In the difficult work 
of a government office this tendency produces red tape. 
In the difficult work of the gardener it produces the 
bedding-out system ; for gardening is very difficult work, 
much more difficult than the irresponsible amateur is 
apt to suppose. He plays with just the parts of it which 
amuse him, and he finds them easy and delightful. He 
forgets that the gardener has to do many things which 
are not amusing — that he has to produce fruit and vege- 
tables as well as flowers: and, above all. that he is ex- 
pected not to fail in what he attempts. It is this con- 
sciousness that be must not fail which makes the profes- 
sional averse from experiment. It is the consciousness 
thai he can fail if he chooses which makes the amateur 
so eager for experiment. We wonder why die presenta- 
tion portraits which we see in the Academy are so dull 
and unadventurous. We should remember that the 
artist who paints portraits for a living has to produce 
good likenesses. If he does not. he is held by his cus- 
tomer to have failed. He cannot begin on the portrait 
of an alderman, and then, if the whim seizes him, turn 
it into a picture of light. If he does, the alderman will 
not buy it. So a gardener has to produce a certain 
amount of cabbaees in the year and a certain amount 
of flowers; and if be knows one sure way of producing 
them, he sees no reason for trying another. Thus, there 
is a cause, much deeper than mere perversity of taste, 
for horticultural routine; and many an eager amateur 
who rails at it would soon slip into it if he were in his 
gardener's place. The free play of the intelligence and 
the consideration of first principles are excellent things ; 
but very few of us have enough energy to combine them 
with practice, and this is the reason why practice is 
usually so much less clever than criticism. It is the busi- 
ness of criticism to be clever. It is the business of prac- 
tice to produce results ; and practice will usually take the 
line of least resistance towards that object. 
These are general considerations; but they have a 
very particular application to gardeners, who have much 
more difficult work to do than most men of so little 
general education. It is only genius that can combine 
efficient practice with a free play of the intelligence and 
a consideration of first principles ; and even genius must 
be educated before it can do this. Genius, of course, is 
as rare among gardeners as among other men, and edu- 
cated genius still rarer. Even the most accomplished 
amateur, if lie has the luck to catch an intelligent gar- 
dener young, if he can teach him all that he knows him- 
self and train him in his own taste, will yet probably 
fail to teach him that certainty of practice which is 
required of most gardeners. His pupil may know a good 
deal about Alpines ; he may lie able to plant and maintain 
a beautiful herbaceous border ; but the chances are he 
will be rather disappointing with his spring greens, and 
no good at all at grapes. Men trained in this way may 
be invaluable in very large gardens, where there is much 
division of labor; but they are not so useful as the ordi- 
nary routine-trained gardener in a place where they 
have to do or supervise everything. Amateurs often 
wonder at the certainty of the results produced by the 
great florists. That certainty comes from a division of 
labor impossible in the ordinary garden. The man who 
has only one thing to do learns to do it excellently, not 
only because he is always doing it, hut because he has 
nothing else to think of. The ordinary gardener has a 
great many different things both to do and to think of. 
He has to plan as well as to execute ; and it is only na- 
tural that he should plan according to a routine and 
should be very unwilling to break through it. Thus, it 
is not sheer vice in the gardener that he likes bedding 
out, but the natural tendency of even conscientious men 
to simplify their tasks. Their minds flinch from the in- 
security and bewilderment that await them as soon as 
they leave their routine, and the more conscientious they 
are the more they prefer a narrow and obvious success 
to an ambitious failure. 
These reflections are not intended to dishearten the 
enthusiast. Their purpose is that he shall make the best 
of his gardener by first learning to understand him. 
When he does that he may teach his gardener to under- 
stand his own aims and to see that they are not merely 
the results of ignorance. Gardeners are apt to think 
meanly of all information got from books, for they know 
that books are usually written by amateurs. It is no use. 
therefore, to try to impress your gardener with your 
knowledge for he will assume that you have got it from 
a book written by some one who has never grown a cab- 
bage. The only way to convince him that you know 
something is to prove it by results. Then he will respect 
you, even if he disagrees with you. You may. by per- 
suasion and artifice, even induce him to agree with you 
to s 011ic extent in time. At any rate, that is the object 
to aim at; otherwise you must he always at odds with 
vour gardener, or else always changing him until you 
find a paragon: an event which may never happen. 
es of articles reprinted from the 
* From Studies 
London Times. 
Gardening, a seri 
