14 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER 
[ Jannsry 6,1887. 
Society, and the Leeds Paxton Society. Mr. Jos. Smith (President) 
occupied the chair. 
After the usual loyal toasts the Secretary, Mr. Wm. Sunley, read the 
annual report, which showed that the income of the Society for the past 
year had been £110, the expenditure £49, leaving a saving on the year’s 
working of £61, which sum, added to £766, the savings of the past nineteen 
years, makes a total to the credit of the Society of £827, or £7 7s. 9d. per 
member. The honorary members number nineteen and the financial 
members 112. The average age of the members is about forty-five 
years. 
The toast of the evening, “ Success and Prosperity to the Professional 
Gardeners’ Friendly Benefit Society,” was proposed by Mr. W. K. 
Woodcock, of the Sheffield Floral and Horticultural Society, who took 
occasion to congratulate the officers and members of the Society upon the 
successful year they bad just completed, and spoke of the extreme value 
such a Society is to young gardeners becoming members, and the exceptional 
advantages it has to offer over and above those offered by the large 
affiliated societies, such as the Foresters and Odd Fellows, for whilst the 
monthly contributions paid into this Society are only half the amount 
required by those Societies, the sick and funeral benefits to be derived aro 
about the same in each case, and yet withal this extremely low rate of 
contributions in proportion to benefits, the Gardeners’ Society was able 
to keep on saving money at a very satisfactory rate. He was of opinion 
there were several reasons to account for this. Firstly, gardeners are as 
a rule a healthy body of men, not so liable to accidents as those engaged 
in mechanical pursuits, and the death rate amongst gardeners is low. 
Secondly, the responsibilities attached to a head gardener’s position pre¬ 
cludes the possibility of his laying aside his work to fall upon the 
Society’s funds for anything short of a serious and protracted illness, and 
also that employers of such gardeners do not generally stop payment of 
wages during a short illness ; and thirdly, that gardeners as a class are a 
respectable body of men with independent feelings, who will not allow 
themselves to become a burden upon the funds of a Society without the 
most absolute necessity. He believed there was no better Society a 
young gardener could join, and he would be pleased to recommend any 
such he was acquainted with to become members. He thought it would 
be wise on the part of the officers and committee to endeavour to make 
their Society more widely known, and so obtain members from other 
large centres of gardening. 
Mr.Twigg (Wakefield Paxton Society) supported the proposition, and 
endorsed the opinions expressed by Mr. Woodcock, that it was much more 
advantageous to a young gardener to join this Society than one of 
the affiliated Societies in which men of all trades were admitted as 
members. 
The Secretary (Mr. Sunley) in replying, stated that their Society was 
in no way limited to Leeds and district, but had already enrolled mem¬ 
bers resident in various other districts. He also stated that two years 
since a notice of their Society, together with extracts from the rules, 
appeared in the Journal of Horticulture, which caused them to receive 
numerous letters applying for copies of the rules from various parts of 
the country, and caused them to enrol a number of new members, some 
of whom they had as yet not seen. The Chairman also spoke in reply, 
and stated that their Society was open to receive members from all parts 
of the country, provided they were professional gardeners and were able 
to conform to the regulations required, one of the principal of which is 
embodied in Rule 26, and which states, “ That any candidate for admis¬ 
sion into this Society be required to sign the following declaration :—I, 
A. B., do hereby declare that I have worked as a gardener seven years 
successively (five years for members up to twenty-one, three years up to 
eighteen years of age), and should this ever be detected to be a false 
statement then all claims I may have insured for in this Society shall be 
null and void.—Signed, A. B.” He also said that these qualifications 
were rigidly enforced, and this fact had caused the necessity of refusing 
very many who had made applications to become members. The Com¬ 
mittee endeavoured in every way to work for the good of the members 
who were employed as boDa fide gardeners. 
Mr. R. Featherstone made an able and effective speech in proposing 
“ The town and Trade of Leeds,” and remarked that he believed the town 
had not suffered from depression of trade so badly as had some other 
towns, owing principally to the great diversity of trades carried on in the 
town. The work of the gardener, he considered, was bound up with other 
trades, and although the wages of gardeners were not so high as in some 
other trades, and speaking from his own experience as a trade grower, 
fortunes could not be realised in the business with such rapidi y as in 
those other occupations, yet they as gardeners would all join with him in 
wishing prosperity to every trade in the town. 
Mr. G. Hemming, in a humorous speech, proposed “the Officers of the 
Society,” and.remarked that, although the Treasurer and Secretary had 
each held their present office since the formation of the Society, a period 
of twenty years, they were not yet willing to part with them, feeling 
assured they would never meet with men who had more fully the Society’s 
best interests at heart. 
The Secretary, in replying, stated that had he accepted all applications 
for membership from the formation of the Society they might by now 
have numbered 5000 members. They, however, could admit none who 
were not, strictly speaking, professional gardeners. Not more than thirty- 
five of their members were residents of Leeds or district. 
Our reporter concludes bis notice of “ the most successful and 
thoroughly enjoyable anniversary meeting ever spent by the Society ” by 
commending this Society to gardeners throughout England, and assuring 
them that all applications they may choo-e to make for rules or further 
I information will he cheerfully responded to by the couitnus Fecetary 
Mr. William Sunley, Bacchus Hill, Moortown, Leeds. 
THE PLEASURES OF A GARDEN. 
The pleasures of a garden! Where there is so much to be 
enjoyed how shall we attempt to define ? If there is such plea¬ 
sure in charm of diversity in the actual fact, how can I attempt 
to enter upon a description, written out in carefully definite 
order like the heads of a sermon or a lesson in logic ? In such 
an attempt I should deprive my paper of that feature of natural¬ 
ness which I only wish I could secure, and which it must, in some 
measure at least, possess, if it is to impart even a suggested sense 
of garden pleasures. It will be clear that I have not just now 
in my mind anything approaching the stiff artificialism of closely 
trimmed rows of sombre heavy Yews, cut into severely straight 
lines, relieved (shall we say?) by here ani there a permitted 
growth into something bearing crude resemblance to bird or 
beast, but which is not at all in keeping with the statelier sweep 
of Nature, who draws her lines with freer hand and balances 
new groups with more graceful effectiveness. 
But where am 1 to begin ? What may be put amongst the 
first of garden pleasures P The provision of an occupation 
which shall take you into the open air. This is a pleasure you 
can scarcely over-estimate. Only those who know something of 
mornings in a garden can appreciate it. The sunshine comes 
with his bright warm presence to speak his cheery “ Good 
morning ” to Columbine and Sweet William, to Crown Imperial 
and Ragged Robin. He lifts the dainty beaded coverlet which 
Nature with profusion of sparkling jewels had thrown in the 
night over everything she could cover, whilst the world slept. 
There is something in the balmy freshness of a beautiful 
morning which cannot be described. Dear old Mother Earth 
seems to have put upon her brown hands, just to receive the 
earlier visitors, her brightest gems, and they flash and sparkle in 
the sun, topaz, jasper, emerald, diamond, in bewildering brilliancy. 
She is beautiful always, whether she dresses herself in the sober 
tones of greys and greens when the dark days come, or when she 
uts on her summer finery and smiles upon all who look upon 
er, looking as young and fresh as ever she was. But in the early 
morning she has a charm which must wear duller as the 
day draws on; besides which, there is the chatter of the birds 
which cannot sing, and the full-throated melody of those which 
can, and this is a very special feature of the part of the day 
which modern civilisation for the most part seems vaguely to 
believe has actual existence, and which is referred to as “ the 
time before breakfast.” 
Let me have a line and spade and seed bags, then. It is too 
soon for the world to be curious. Everything astir seems to be 
of a confiding disposition. You leave your spade sticking up in 
the patch you have just turned up to the sun, and when you look 
round again you find a robin is perched perkily on the handle. 
He bobs and bows and chirrups cheerfully, as much as to say, 
“ Oh, yes, I see you’ve been at it.” Then he avails himself of 
his vocal rattle between times in his own peculiar way, “ Well 
I’m sure now, this is an unexpected pleasure. I did not 
expect to see you so early.” And then an acquaintance comes 
chirruping along, and away they go merrily, and next appear 
perhaps on the Briar bush close by you as you venture to 
straighten your back again to have a peep at the top branch of 
the Pear tree, where the thrush —our thrush—sits, and he is 
gurgling and trilling the sweetest dreamiest music in regular 
alternation with another thrush occupying a branch of the 
Walnut tree at the bottom of the next orchard. 
Then there is the pleasure of actually growing the fruits and 
vegetables for one’s own table. Reader, if you have never 
entered into these subtle delights by actual experience you can 
never fully realise the joys I would describe. Have you ever had 
a call some morning at the office—presumably you are a towns¬ 
man—when some friend with evident and ill-concealed nervous 
excitement is carefully untying a diminutive box of which he has 
taken the greatest possible care P He has unfolded from the 
layers of cotton wool three fruits of a red Plum, rusty a bit, 
perhaps, and smallish, but Plums ! Red Plums ! “ Yes,” he 
explains, as his face lights up, “ these are grown on the wall in 
my garden hardly out of the High Street. We’ve gathered six¬ 
teen—no ; one was got for George. Yes, seventeen we have 
gathered, and there are twenty-two more yet—thirty-nine Plums 
on quite a little tree—and such delicious fruit! I wish I could 
leave you one, but I have promised to take them to the office. 
Harriet says she hasn’t tasted Plums like these before.” 
How feeble and prosaic it all sounds as I write it in the re¬ 
membrance of the facts as they stand before my memory. Do 
