January 3!, 1839. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
81 
O N all hands the assertion is, rightly or wrongly, being made, that 
horticulture is in a bad way just now. Looked at from some 
points of view there may he more than a grain of truth in th's. 
There cannot be any denial of the fact that the somewhat pro¬ 
tracted depression of the landed interest has in very many instances 
told unfavourably on the progenitor of agriculture. For a long 
period of years the great landowners stood almost alone as munifi¬ 
cent patrons of horticulture, and it is much to be regretted that 
any of them should now be forced to curtail, and to a certain ex¬ 
tent dismantle, their gardens and turn them into semi-commercial 
establishments, as many of them have done. It has been unchari¬ 
tably asserted that while many have had these steps forced on them 
others who have been under no pecuniary necessity to do so hare 
taken the opportunity of following the leaders. 
Looked at from another standpoint there is less reason for 
fearing that horticulture is in such a bad way after all, nor nearly 
so bad as it would have been if the depression and curtailment 
referred to had taken place thirty or forty years since. At that 
time, as compared to now, comparatively few cf the mercantile 
classes were, so to speak, in the swim of horticulture, because 
as compared to these times there wore but few who could launch 
cut in horticulture in its more luxurious phases, and the taste for it 
had not then so permeated the body politic. Horticulture has now 
outgrown the bounds of the aristocratic domain and found its way 
into the more limited and artificial domain of the merchant, and 
among the more plebeian to somewhat adorn and ameliorate their 
lot ; so that while no doubt it has ebbed at a few large bays and 
strands it has flowed and is flowing into thousands of smaller ones. 
No one can deny that the culture of fruits, flowers, and 
vegetables has now assumed gigantic proportions and is becoming 
more popular every year. The fact that, in spite of the cry about 
reductions, horticultural buildeis have in many instances so much 
work in hand that they can hardly overtake it ; the multiplication 
of associations and societies for discussing horticultural topics and 
for advancing the culture of garden specialties ; the multiplication 
of and greatly improved horticultural papers and the energy with 
which in many cases they are conducted, and the efforts that are 
being made for the aged and indigent gardeners, their widows and 
orphans, go to show that horticulture is neither “ lame nor lazy.” 
Perhaps the most significant and striking proof of the progress 
made and making lies in the enormous proportions to which com¬ 
mercial horticulture has attained as compared with even twenty- 
five years since. Literally acres of glass have sprung, and are 
springing, up round every large town in the kingdom for the pro¬ 
duction of all sorts of produce. Taking one article, it is no 
exaggeration to say that where stones of Grapes were produced at 
the time named tons are now produced. And in this connection it 
is interesting to recollect, as I do, when some growers for Covent 
Garden then sent their early Black Hamburghs to market in 
basketfuls on a man’s head for fear of rubbing off the bloom. 
Grapes are now whirled into Covent Garden, even from sterile 
Scotland, by the ton. Indeed, it is only by producing them by the 
ton that a living can be made by them. To show the great diffe¬ 
rence in price and method of producing them, it is within my 
knowledge that an amateur in Scotland some twenty-five years 
since ripened a house of Hamburghs and Chasselas Musquii in 
No. 449.—Von. NYIII.j Tmr.n Skp.iks. 
February and sold the whole of them to a fruiterer for 25s. per lb., 
and most of them went to the late Emperor of the French at 
50s. per lb. Now Grapes in February do well if they realise from 
2s. 6d. to os., thus bringing them more or less within the reach of 
all well-to-do families. These remarks may not be of much 
interest to those of your readers who are like myself old horticul¬ 
tural hands, but they may be of interest to your younger readers. 
There is one dark phase of gardening that forces itself into 
notice, a most difficult one to deal with, and it relates to the 
gardener in the shape of a hired servant. I do not recollect a 
time, and many experienced men say the same, when a good man 
had so much difficulty in securing a good situation. The market is 
crowded, and many are willing to accept terms less than able men 
expect and ask for, and the latter ore elbowed to one side. Of all 
the false economies practised by owners of gardens few are more 
delusive, or tell so powerfully against their interests, as that of 
taking an inferior man at low wages. What is £10 or £20 a year 
spent on the labours of an efficient man, compared to the waste and 
unproductiveness of inferior men, and all the heartburnings they 
entail ? If ever anything deserves to be branded as penny wise and 
pound foolish it is this, and it is a marvel that more wagepayers 
have not found it out by sad experience, as some have done. Many 
nostrums have been prescribed to cure this evil, and all that can 
be said of them is that they are quack remedies, and the evil will 
remain until employers become enlightened enough on the subject 
to take proper steps to find the best men, and pay them accordingly. 
In this connection I cannot refrain from expressing the opinion 
that the correspondence regarding the social position of gardeners 
is likely to be a fruitless one. Our social position is neither more 
nor less than that of servants, and if we do not degrade that posi¬ 
tion it will never degrade us, and it may safely be said that gar¬ 
deners of intelligence and character seldom have reason to com¬ 
plain of the bearing towards them of those who are considered 
above them in the social scale. Gardeners themselves have had 
more to do than anything or anybody else with the disrespect that 
is in some cases deservedly meted out to them. If they respect 
and honour themselves, others that know this of them will do so 
too. Those who complain of being denied votes for various purposes 
may be right, but there is a practical side to the question, and it is 
that the franchise does not and will not always either improve the 
gardener’s social position or increase his comfort, and public 
questions perhaps lose very little by our quiescence in this matter. 
If the industry of gardening has expanded so much, and kept 
pace with the times, probably in no civilised country has it so little 
to thank Government for. It cannot be denied that it is an industry 
of national importance, one which is bound up, to all intents and 
purposes, with the prosperous and healthy existence of a com¬ 
munity. It says much for gardening, that it has trimmed its sails 
and shaped its methods so as to enable it to hold its own in the 
teeth of a vigorous foreign competition. Probably it might have 
done even better if our Government had, like other governments, 
done something to foster the art and science of cultivation. If it 
had even subsidised such bodies as have done their best for it, such 
would have been better than nothing. Perhaps on this score we 
should not complain, for agriculture has been tieated much in the 
same way, and if something had been done to enlighten Hodge as 
to the science and practice of agriculture, and so enabling him to 
adapt his practice to changing circumstances, he might not have 
been in the plight he is in now. Here, too, landowners have been 
very shortsighted. If their heirs had been trained to the technical 
management of estates, or if men were chosen ftr agents with such 
training instead of, as so many of them are, fresh from the lawyer’s 
writing desk, there might have been less agricultural depression to¬ 
day. Take all the men in charge of estates and their farmers from 
any given county in Great Britain, and ask them w'hat chemical 
action caustic lime has in soils, and the answer in nine cases out of 
ten would be a blank stare. It is a curious commentary on the 
No. 2105.—Yon. LXXX., Old Seuies. 
