July 5, 1894. 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
13 
FLOWERS IN COVENT GARDEN. 
{Continued from page 513.) 
So mucli for the history of the rise and progress of the market. Now 
for a look at it as it is. I suppose most of us have visited Covent 
Garden Market during business hours. If any have not, I trust they 
will take an early opportunity of doing so. No language of mine can 
adequately convey the various impressions different minds may receive 
on such a visit. The practical gardener can here critically examine the 
various plants and flowers, and compare them with those of his own 
growing. The lover of plants and flowers will flit from stand to stand 
with a wondrous uncertainty regarding which is the most beautiful aud 
deserving of the lot. The curious and inquisitive will ask all sorts of 
being most objected to by business people. Here let me say that, 
though the market may be written of and spoken of, and is often visited 
as a flower show of the free-and-gratis order, it is primarily and 
essentially a place for the sale of goods, and not for exhibition. To 
those who visit it daily for business purposes its beauties cease to have 
the charm of novelty. In the business of a busy market there is little 
time for leisure or sentiment. Each trader goes for the particular 
plants and flowers he requires, bestowing scarcely a thought or glance 
on others, and it is to this business portion of the market I must now 
come. We will, if you please, consider ourselves strictly market people. 
Bach and every morning all the year round we are there at the opening 
of the doors. Our wants vary with the seasons, and for these the 
Fig. 2.—L^LIO-CATTLEYA CANHAMIANA ALBA. 
questions respecting how things are so grown, and the quantities 
brought, and where they come from, and where they go to j and if he is 
inclined to mathematics he will probably set himself sundry curious 
problems based upon data he receives. 
The sentimental will probably doat on some wild flowers, and in the 
search for Forget-me-no‘8 probably venture into the outer area, where 
rough-looking gipsy chaps dispose of Moss, Ferns, and Water Lilies. 
On her return (I suppose her to be a lady) she will possibly express a 
wonder that such rough, unwashed, and altogether disreputable-looking 
individuals should be associated with her pet flowers, and why flower 
girls should be such a coarse, dirty, draggle-tailed lot, and why the duke 
or somebody else does not provide them with clean tall Normandy caps 
and picturesque gowns and aprons. 
Of all visitors to Covent Garden a market-stroller is perhaps the 
grower must provide. Now, there are two classes of growers ; one class 
regularly attends, and has always something to bring; the other class 
only attends at certain seasons, either because he is a specialist, and 
grows only a certain class of stuff, or because he is a fruit as well as a 
flower grower, and consequently only grows such flowers as suit his 
convenience. The former class is your true market flower grower ; he 
has to provide a succession of goods for every day of the year. Then, 
again, this growing business naturally divides itself into different 
sections :—1, There is the pot-plant trade, with its two great parts—(a) 
flowering plants, and (b) foliage and decorative plants ; and 2, the cut- 
flower trade. 
The former requires great experience, great labour, and great judg¬ 
ment, with often but little profit. The rage for pots of flowers has 
somewhat gone out of late years. But only look at the market when 
