412 
COTTAGE GARDENING. 
with a few rods of ground, prizes for Fuchsias, 
Geraniums, and other subjects requiring glass ! 
One feels almost inclined to blush for the 
indiscreet appropriation of their own funds 
and the cottager's time. What could such 
proceedings lead to ? First, it divided the 
attention of the cottager between the useful 
and the useless ; next, it set them trying to 
do that which it was wholly beyond their 
means to do properly; and lastly, it led to the 
production of plants infinitely worse than the 
nurserymen were selling at a mere trifle ; or 
it tempted the cottager to buy, ready done to 
his hand, what would be paid for twice over 
by the prize it would gain. "We have seen 
at the countiy shows, prizes of from 6d. to 
2,s\ 6d. given for the best Balsam, the best 
Cockscomb, the best Fuchsia, or the best 
Geranium, when the best would be the most 
contemptible object that could be imagined. 
How else could it be ? What chance has a 
man, without a foot of glass, to produce, in 
good order, plants which require it ? Why, 
the man who had the means of begging, bor- 
rowing, or stealing a plant, would grow it in 
his cottage window as the only place he had ; 
and by the time the season came round three 
or four threepenny pots from a nursery would 
beat him ; yet he was engaged in this memo- 
rable pursuit by the gentlemen who managed 
the Horticultural Society in his neighbour- 
hood. This is now rapidly passing away : 
it has been effectually written down; and 
Horticultural Society managers are beginning 
to see that it is their duty to encourage the 
useful only, because flowers afford amusement, 
and are sure to be cultivated to as great an 
extent as will supply the grower with pleasure, 
while the prizes incite him to pay the highest 
regard to the vegetables which supply his 
family. Potatoes are worthy of the very first 
consideration — they are almost the staff of life. 
Carrots and turnips are, in their way, highly 
nutritious and favourite vegetables. Cabbages 
are of immense consequence, and where the 
cottager supplies all these well, his family can 
live better than where they have to be pur- 
chased, or are altogether absent. In propor- 
tion, therefore, as the use and importance of 
a thing recommend it, so ought Societies to 
encourage it. Potatoes ought to be produced 
in quantities by all cottagers, and there are 
never half enough prizes given for them, and 
others in proportion to their usefulness. Flo- 
riculture does not give way under such ma- 
nagement ; the cottager will have his rose, his 
jasmine, or honeysuckle up the front of his 
house, just the same as when there was no 
Society at all. He will have his rose-bushes 
as well as his gooseberry-bushes. You find 
his garden nearest the house boasts its ten- 
week Stocks, Pinks, Pansies ; his Carnations 
and his Piccotees growing in their natural and 
beautiful state, far more beautiful than when 
patched round with papers and extinguished 
by shades. He will have two or three strik- 
ing colours of Dahlias, without distorting them 
with flower-pots covering the blooms, and 
bundles of stakes, surrounding the foliage. 
He has them because he loves them ; the only 
effect of offering him prizes for them would 
be that of inducing him to waste much more 
valuable time over them to render them show- 
able on a table, than they would require to make 
them beautiful in a garden. But the original 
fanciers of flowers here, the silk-weavers of 
Spitalfields, shone chiefly, because each man 
devoted his attention to such flower or flowers 
only as he could manage well. He who loved 
Tulips cultivated the Carnation, because the 
same stage answers for both flowers. He who 
cultivated the Ranunculus for June, grew the 
Auricula for April ; and hundreds only at- 
tempted one flower, so that their attention was 
undivided, and thousands of good collections 
have been grown in gardens comprising less* 
than two available rods of ground. Every- 
where small plots are now denied the artisans 
near London — every place near the skirts of a 
town is occupied with new houses, which are 
not allowed to boast of a garden, and the only 
chances for the multitude are those which 
may turn up out of the allotment system, and 
even that is only useful to its locality in any 
very great degree, because distant residents 
have so far to walk, that the greater part of 
their over-time from business, instead of being 
applied to the garden, is necessarily applied 
to the journeys to and from. Nevertheless, it is 
one of the greatest boons to a neighbourhood to 
find gardens for the poor ; and next to having 
it at their own house, to have it found at all 
is a blessing ; for, as a general maxim, the fur- 
ther it is removed from the house the rougher 
must be the crops, and the less chance there is 
of excellency in flowers. Cottage or allot- 
ment gardening of the present day ought to 
be encouraged by appropriating prizes, with 
great care, to the most useful subjects, and 
making the number a little proportionate to 
the number capable of showing them. Thus 
every cottager could exhibit potatoes, because 
if they had only half a rod of ground this 
could be done, and, for their own interests, 
and that of their families, this should 
be done. This calls upon Horticultural 
Societies for numerous prizes, and the grada- 
tion of the amounts should be pretty even. 
The first prize for potatoes, which should be 
shown in two classes, kidneys and round ones, 
should be half-a-crown, but the next should be 
two shillings and threepence, and the next two 
shillings, and so reduce threepence each time 
till they come to sixpence, and that should be 
