26 
JOURNAL. OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
July 12, 1894. 
frames, or stored in pits and houses, covering a few dozen plants 
at a time with a twofold thickness of mats is all that is necessary, 
a close succession being maintained by covering a fresh breadth 
every week. The broad-leaved variety keeps the best ; but a 
mixture of this and the cut-leaved or green curled form pleases 
most persons.— Market Grower. 
THE MAKING OF GARDENERS. 
I OBSERVE the “ Daily News ” has been devoting one of its 
leaders to a criticism of Mr. H. Elliott’s pamphlet on the 
status of gardeners. Mr. Elliott is fortunate in securing such 
notice, but he has told us nothing whatever that is in any way 
new; indeed, all his observations are but repetitions of what has 
been said time after time in the gardening press for the past 
forty years. It is one of the themes that will be the subject of 
discussion so long as gardening and the gardening press endure. 
The suggestions for the establishment of some form of examina¬ 
tion for gardeners have been made scores of times, but have never 
been adopted. Practically it is found impossible to do so, much 
as we may wish to purge the profession of its many mediocrities 
and incapabilities, yet so long as gardening is regarded rather as a 
luxury than a necessity, so long will pay be relatively very poor, 
and the requirements of gardeners equally so. Gardeners never 
have been an organised body of workers; it is doubtful whether 
they ever will be. Whether I favour some organisation or not that is 
not the point, but at least I will not follow Mr. Elliott in seeking 
to secure a cheer of approval by denouncing trades unions. Eeally 
in expressing a desire to set up an examining authority with 
power to grant certificates, Mr. Elliott is proposing to establish a 
trades union of the most arbitrary nature. 
It seems always to have escaped the attention of critics of 
this description that gardening is an art that more perhaps than 
any other comes to us by nature. My experience is but that of 
scores of others, and I say that I have met with numbers of cases 
where men have proved to be literally born gardeners, although 
brought up in totally different work. These men have a true 
gardener’s soul. They are filled with deep love for the work, and 
when they have a chance to exhibit that love it is really astonishing 
to see how able they become as gardeners. Take any considerable 
group of allotments, go through any number of cottage gardens, 
examine the thousands of amateurs’ gardens in the kingdom, note 
the numbers of men who have suddenly leaped from the bench, or 
the anvil, or the lapstone, or the factory to be well-to-do growers 
of market produce, or to be competent florists, or something else, 
and then we find that though gardening is an art, and a beautiful 
one, yet does it come to thousands of the human family by nature, 
for are they not born to the vocation ? 
How much does gardening owe to all this section of workers ? 
A class that an examination would exclude, and yet proves to 
be, as practical men, far more useful to horticulture than are any 
number of passed students. What guarantee does any form of 
examination afford that a passed student will like his work, 
that he has his heart in it, that he possesses what is so indis¬ 
pensable to gardeners, a good moral character, is honest and 
industrious ? It would not afford any proof that he would be 
tidy or methodical, although it may prove that he possessed a 
considerable amount of theoretical knowledge. Much of the finest 
theory in the world has been utterly useless, simply because the 
theorist had no knowledge how to put it into practice. A college 
such as I referred to in a recent issue may turn out clever 
theorists, and yet all be absolutely unable decently to dig or hoe 
a piece of ground. 
When Mr. Elliott tells his readers that the “ outcast and refuse 
of every trade and profession swoop down upon gardening,” he is 
making, which, to put it mildly, is a random assertion. Thousands 
have gone out of gardening because, after being brought up in it 
they have disliked it, or found they had no aptitude for it, and 
succeeded or failed in other directions, but so far as my long 
experience of gardeners has gone, it has shown me that 90 per 
cent, of those in it have been either brought up in it, or have 
that special love and aptitude for it that they could not help 
succeeding. Mr. Elliott’s remedies for the evils, he with such 
ravenlike proclivities proclaims, are union and improved education. 
Take union first. What does that mean but organisation, and if 
not to improve the status and position of gardeners, then what 
does it mean ? How is that to be done ? By restricting the 
output, as it were, of gardeners, limiting the supply, practically 
creating a trade’s union—and one of the worst kind—for it would 
ri^dly exclude from the ranks of gardening all who failed to pass 
the union examination. If it be possible to improve the gardener’s 
position, give him better wages and more constant work. We 
shall all be delighted, but there can be no greater fraud on 
the public or the gardener than to assume that any form of 
theoretical examination will tend to that end. Of all the fallacies 
of the age, “cramming for exams” is the greatest. We submit 
to it because it is now the rage, but when that rage subsides, 
we shall then see how great has been our folly. 
The finest test of a man’s gardening knowledge is found in the 
nature of the work he does. Nothing can equal that form of 
examination. It is the way we test our allotments and cottage 
gardens, and it is almost infallible. If some such test could be 
applied to all garden work, something useful might result. On 
paper the cleverest student may win, but in actual work the 
plucked candidate may show by far the best results. No, Mr. 
Elliott, you have not yet set the gardening Thames on fire. 
—A. Dean. 
NATURALISING FLOWERS. 
The somewhat despondent note struck by your contributor, 
“ E. K., in the issue of June 14th, will find an echo in 
the breast of many lovers of wild flowers on this side of St. George’s 
Channel. The more beautiful forms are either gone or becoming 
very scarce in the neighbourhood of London and the larger towns. 
There is a pressing fear of the extermination of not only the rarer 
species, but of such familiar kinds as the Dog Roses, the Prim¬ 
roses ; most forms of Ferns, except the Bracken, are gone, and 
even the commoner Orchids are fast disappearing. There are 
many causes contributing to this denudation and impoverishment 
of the country side beyond the pressure of population. The incon¬ 
siderate ways of professed botanists. One well-known authority 
boasts of upwards of 200 dried specimens—tubers, leaves, and 
flower spikes—of Aceras anthropophora. Surely the tubers might 
have been left in the soil. Prizes for dried collections, to be 
presently thrown away ; the day tripper of the ordinary type, and 
the excursions of day and Sunday schools are responsible for much 
of the destruction and mutilation which is stripping our woods and 
waysides of flowers. The Selborne Society is doing what is possible 
to educate the country into an appreciation of its native flora and 
the love of Nature in situ; and “E. K.” will be glad to learn 
that the Society is extending to Ireland, Mr. E. Lloyd Praeger, 
of the “ Irish Naturalist,” interesting himself in the matter. 
Whether the steps recommended by “E. K.” for enriching 
our flora will commend themselves to professional botanists the 
following extract from an article on the subject by the Editor of 
“Nature Notes” and the “Journal of Botany” will perhaps 
reveal. After illustrating the extent to which the greed of 
tourists has despoiled the Alps of the Gentianella, Edelweiss, 
Androsaces, and other alpine gems, he goes on to say, “ Holiday 
makers who remain at home may find ample scope for self-denial. 
They will spare at least some of the Ferns they meet with on their 
country walks ; they will refrain from stripping the Thames of its 
Water Lilies ; they will not divulge indiscreetly where they found 
the Osmunda, or reveal the roots of the rarer Orchids. If they 
find a rare plant they will pluck it in moderation and spare its 
roots, and they will discourage “ root-grubbing ” of all kinds ; and 
they will also hold in detestation a line of conduct diametrically 
opposed to “ root-grubbing,” but one equally to be abhorred, we 
allude to the introduction of plants into localities where they may 
become naturalised, and apparently form part of the indigenous 
vegetation. The problems connected with plant distribution, and 
Nature’s ways of working them out, are full of interest, but if 
human agency is deliberately employed, the interest ceases. Yet 
this is sometimes done, even by members of natural history 
societies, who certainly ought to know better. Quite lately the 
flora of Hampstead Heath and the botany of Keston Bog have 
been enriched in this manner, and we were ourselves the unwilling 
spectators of the “ planting out ” of Butterwort and Grass of 
Parnassus in a New Forest bog. We also had the satisfaction of 
following in the tracks of the planter and of endeavouring to 
remove the traces of his unholy work.” 
Whether this uncompromising attitude of botanists would, or 
should be extended to such acts as the re-establishment of the 
Dianthus coesius on the ruined walls which they formerly enriched 
at Cheddar, the Primrose on Hampstead Heath, where constables 
keep watch and ward over roots laboriously dibbled in on the 
western slopes by enthusiastic ladies, must remain a matter of 
opinion. 
The agency of man, sometimes sensibly, is constantly used to 
increase, if not to enrich, our native flora. In 1843 the Anacharis 
was introduced from Canada, and has since found its way into 
nearly all our canals and running streams, much to the detriment 
of the former. It is well known that the courses affected by the 
