100 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ February 6, 1801. 
become a blaze of livings flame when the days are caunting up 
towards three hundred. So might we go on finding here and there 
this power to charm, these evidences of garden glory ; but my 
mission was simply to waken interest, not to exhaust enthusiasm. 
To give practical point to these few hasty thoughts and hurried 
words let us try to put glory into the garden. Let us plant with 
a purpose. In choosing, say creepers, for a wall, have them so 
arranged that there shall always be something in fresh flower to 
see at its best. Perhaps the yellow Jessamine will be a suitable 
first foot for the New Year—the Wistaria, the Woodbine, with 
Pyrus and Ceanothus, to say nothing of the Sweet Peas and 
Canary Creepers, and the host of other things which come and 
flower and go before the Virginian Creeper dazzles you with its 
splendour and marks the time for the lighting of the lamps for 
the approaching night of the year. Have in the shrubbery the 
Laurestine, the Almond, Daphne, Prunus, Mespilus, all in grand 
array. Look for a blank and put something in that shall give 
contrast, continuity, and completion to the space now bare. Have 
no garden gaps in this sense. 
There is something further, and much, that should be said upon 
the Glory of Fruitfulness—berried plants and fruit-laden trees—the 
laughter and song in the vales and the clapping of hands on the 
hills, but this we leave for the present. 
The winter is past. The birds are finding something in their 
throats as I write. The thrush is just rehearsing in the early 
morning when you can see the outline of towers and steeples in 
the distant town as they stand out in relief against the streak of 
light which heralds the coming dawn of the spring day. Shall we 
make our life the fuller, the better, the happier—yes, the holier, 
by trying this year to see, scattered over the fair face of Nature, 
within or without the hedge, some of the beauty and wealth of 
this one aspect of garden glory ?— John Edmunds. 
LESSONS IN MARKET GARDENS. 
The season is again fast approaching when many gardeners 
will be what is generally called “ taking a turn round ” to see 
what is to be seen and learned in gardens and nurseries away from 
their own immediate districts. Such a custom is very properly 
recognised as part of a gardener’s never-finished education, and one 
that is frequently carried out by those whose anxiety it is to keep 
abreast of the times. There is, however, room for doubting, or 
rather saying, that gardeners are much more alive to the lessons of 
a tour than are their employers, with whose interest the custom is 
more closely related ; hence I know, and am sorry to say, that in a 
great many instances gardeners must either stay at home and be 
content with hearing or reading of what is to be seen and learned 
or pay tbeir own expenses, in one sense to their loss, but to the 
profit of others. It is but just, however, to say that if the 
matter were brought before employers in a proper light many of 
them would recognise it to be to their own interest to allow a 
certain sum annually towards this object. No matter how able a 
gardener may be in his profession, an inspection of the doings and 
an hour or two’s chat with other professionals, in even very 
moderate gardens, never fail to give a stimulus to both the visitor 
and the visited. Our tendency is to fancy our own crows the 
blackest and best feathered, and to fall into a stereotyped method 
of “ doing things,” and we require being brushed up by contact 
with the works and ideas of our contemporaries. 
I have heard it related of the famous Mr. McNab of Edinburgh 
Botanic Gardens that he once returned to Edinburgh from an 
inspection of the splendidly cultivated Heaths under the late 
Mr. Turnbull at Bothwell Castle, commenced some important 
operation on the Botanic Heaths, and very vigorously pledging 
himself as not going to be beat by the “ west country people.” 
I mention this incident, as I conceive it to be illustrative of what 
should, more or less, be the effect produced by an inspection of 
superior culture wherever met with. If one thing is more certain 
than another in horticulture it is that whenever a gardener, no 
matter what his age, ceases to be a student in his profession he 
may be labelled as on the “ down grade.” There is no standing 
still in culture any more than in anything else. It must either be 
in a progressive or retrogressive condition. 
If I might presume as an old gardening hand to offer a word of 
advice to intending tourists this season, I would say. If you have 
not of recent years taken a look at some of the market gardening 
establishments, especially those in the vicinity of London, by all 
means devote a season’s tour to an inspection of them. This is the 
more earnestly to be recommended in view of the very important 
change that has taken place in the products now in most request in 
private establishments. The time has gone by when those severe 
tests of skill, huge and splendidly grown specimens of hardwooded 
plants, were the chief pride and attraction of British greenhouses. 
They have been succeeded by plants more tenacious of life anof 
more suitable for house decoration, or for the production of flowers- 
for cutting all the year round, and it is in the great market 
manufactories that such plants are grown to the greatest perfection 
and at the least possible cost. It may be said that such plants can 
be produced with less skill and attention than was required to 
produce the leviathan Primulas, Ericas, and other hardwooded 
plants of forty years since. In one sense this may be true, but in 
another it may be disputed. Many a private gardener has but a> 
very defective idea of the beautiful ornamental foliaged and 
flowering plants produced by market growers in the course of only 
a few months. Such plants every gardener has now, more or fewer, 
to grow for domestic purposes, and an inspection of the establish¬ 
ments round London cannot fail to be an eye-opener to any 
gardener who has not some knowledge of them. It naay be said 
truly that no private growers can command the conditions at the 
command of these market gardeners. Still, that is no reason why 
a man with a receptive mind and his “ wics about him,” should not 
learn a profitable lesson or two that he can apply with considerable 
improvement at home. Speaking from personal experience the 
heads of these great establishments are very civil and communica¬ 
tive to private growers, from whose competition they have nothing 
to fear. A great many of us have but a poor idea of the enormous 
number of plants in the grandest of health produced in pots not 
much larger than breakfast cups in one of such gardens, and I feel 
certain a visit to them would astonish many a gardener, both as 
regards number and quality. 
The same remarks are equally applicable to the production* or 
fruits. Take, for instance, the few following facts. I last season 
visited the establishment of a son of an old friend, and found that 
he had that week in April sent 750 dozen Cucumbers to market, 
and he assured me that he was but a small grower ; and a friend 
told me of a garden that I had not time to visit where the Cucum¬ 
bers were sent to market three times weekly in two-horse waggons- 
I found my young friend adding to his enormous town of glass 
houses, seven houses each 400 feet long and 30 feet wide, all for 
Grapes. These men do not speak of adding a house or two, but 
of covering another acre. At a plant establishment I visited I 
found 40,000 pots of Mignonette turned out in the season, and 
such Mignonette ! Heaths, Pelargoniums, Fuchsias, and Chrys¬ 
anthemums, &c , on the same scale, and in the same grand order. 
I asked my young friend if it were not possible to overstock the 
market with Cucumbers and Grapes. The answer was, Londoia 
can never be overstocked with Cucumbers as long as they can be 
sold at a fair price. 
No doubt the time has now arrived that not much caii be made 
at growing such things except when turned out by the million and 
at the least possible cost of production, and there is but little 
chance for the small grower. It is considered by those who are- 
best able to judge that the time is very near when the best Grapes* 
that can be produced will not realise more than 2s. per lb. Some- 
growers have already sent in large quantities of Grapes that have 
never been thinned, and they go at 4d. and Gd. per lb., certainly 
placing Grapes within the reach of all. 
My impression is that much of the Grape growing in some market 
places is not on a sound footing. The oldest of many Vines are 
but very young. They are torn out and replaced when they should 
be in their prime. Many of them are confined to inside borders, 
and Vines under such conditions never last long nor bear such fine 
fruit as when the half at least of the root run is outside. I am not 
now going to try to account for the fact. Some of the rnarket 
men are finding this out and placing their span-roofed vineries far 
enough apart to give a considerable extent of outside border, and) 
I think they will not need to renew their Vines so often. Probably 
the finest samples now going into Covent Garden are from Vi-nes 
planted nearly a quarter of a century since, and now with boles- 
like a man’s leg and bearing their finest crops. I feel, Mr. Editor, 
I must apologise for such a disjointed and I fear unprofitable 
discourse, but you are partly to blame.—D. Thomson, Drumlanrirf 
Gardens. 
A WORD ON STOKING. 
In the cultivation of fruit and flowers under glass there is- no- 
work necessitating a more constant or watchful labour than- 
stoking. Ventilation perhaps is as important, and watering comee 
next ; but generally speaking the latter, except in very hot 
weather, only requires attention once a-day ; but stoking, especially 
during the early months of the year when much forcing is going 
on, demands almost hourly attention. 
To the uninitiated the work of stoking a fire well seems a very 
simple matter, and may, as they think, be entrusted to the 
commonest unskilled labourer to perform ; but the fact is that 
to be able to carry out this work intelligently, economically, and 
