A FEW OBSERVATIONS ON GARDENERS’ SOCIETIES. 185 
come out of the country parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 
where they have been receiving very low wages, and out of that they 
have, in many instances, to pay the gardeners a certain fee. The life 
of a young gardener is a life of privation: he comes to London, and 
before he can get employment in a gentleman’s garden, it very often 
happens he has to pay a second fee to the gardener who may employ 
him. Aye, as much as ten guineas, though he may have paid fifteen 
guineas before his arrival in London, and all this to qualify him for 
twelve shillings a week, or at most between twenty-five and thirty 
or forty pounds a year and his board, the half of which sum he 
must spend in clothes and washing; where then is the young 
gardener to get money to keep up gardeners’ societies, or what want 
has he of them, when he can improve himself without them by 
practical observations. This he can do about London. The peri¬ 
odicals may be amusing and instructive to young men in the country, 
but they very often contain irrelevant matter. If you were to impress 
on the minds of young gardeners the importance of visiting the market 
gardens, and thereby improving themselves, you would confer a lasting 
benefit on them, much more than by advocating gardeners’ societies so 
strongly, and could fill up the space, which I consider is now entirely 
wasted, with much better and more interesting articles in your (but for 
them) valuable Register. I remain yours, &c., 
J. H. Burnham. 
Fulham , March 14, 1836. 
The foregoing letter was received too late for insertion in our last, 
but we give it a place in the present, not, however, because the writer 
ei throws cold water ” on the projected formation of a gardeners’ society 
on the west side of London, but because he advises a mode of improve¬ 
ment easily accessible to all. We lately took an opportunity of 
speaking in the highest terms of the excellent system of market gar¬ 
dening prosecuted by the very persons to whom Mr. B. alludes, and 
we fully agree with him in every thing he states commendatory of 
their practice. That a knowledge of market-gardening cannot be 
attained in a nobleman’s or gentleman's place in any of the three king¬ 
doms is perfectly true; and because the two systems are widely dif¬ 
ferent : in the one, unbounded supplies are required in any or in every 
day of the year, in the other, a very limited, but daily supply must be 
had, and often by very limited means. The market gardener has no 
objection to dispose of the whole of any one crop in one market day; 
but the private gardener neither can nor must he do this, for otherwise 
the green-larder would be very irregularly supplied. The manner of 
cultivation pursued in market gardens is, however, well worthy imitation 
VOL. V.-—NO. LIX. 
£ B 
