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House & Garden 
CONSIDER THE GARDENER 
What He 
I N America today, unless the gardens are 
of the intimate form and size in which 
many of our colonial ancestors and later 
such enthusiasts as Celia Thaxter joyed to 
labor, the ubiquitous pest of which not even a 
quarantine ruling of the Federal Board of 
Horticulture can rid our Edens is the labor 
problem. Gardens may have to be simplified, 
if they are too large for the sole care of the 
owner, because a wealth of literature and visits 
to perfected old-world gardens have stimulated 
taste beyond the physical power to apply it. 
How can we escape the wilderness unless more 
skilled gardeners come to the rescue? 
Whatever the nationality of workers at pres¬ 
ent listed on the family tree as gardeners, they 
may apparently be anyone shouldering a shovel 
as a symbol. The dictionary justifies this 
classification, for it defines “to garden’' as not 
only “to lay out, to prepare, to cultivate land 
as a garden, to practice horticulture”, but “to 
labor in a garden.” So “gardener” is inter¬ 
preted in various human forms. 
\\T E have found that a gardener may be an 
untrained day laborer who ignorantly fol¬ 
lows or fails to follow directions as he pleases, 
possibly weeding out even rose bushes without 
prick of thorn or conscience and hoeing up 
the precious self-sown seeds. He may be a 
sporadic worker—perhaps a Norwegian sail¬ 
ing-master, driven to shore tasks by the sink¬ 
ing of so many of his country’s ships during 
the war, and who climbs down from a painter’s 
ladder patiently to extract miniature bulbs from 
the sod where they have become naturalized. 
Or there is the odd-job man who with a little 
general knowledge and experience contracts to 
care for a place by the season, but who takes 
no special interest in any particular one, as 
his attention is distracted by the claims of 
other places. 
Then we have the resident handy man who 
serves as bathing master in the summer and 
caretaker in the winter, working in the gar¬ 
dening incompletely—for when some flowers 
are missed from the beds, they are found lying 
indoors in their original packets. Again, an 
ex-blacksmith of Herculean stature, deprived 
of equine customers, essays kitchen-gardening, 
growing fruits and vegetables to scale with 
his own bulk and admitting that he can, where 
flowers are in question, only distinguish a 
cabbage from a rose. Finally, there is the 
chauffeur gardener, who is likely to be called 
at any moment from the intricacies of me¬ 
chanics to those of horticulture. Fortunate are 
the flowers if he is country-bred, and to be 
pitied if he has been raised in the city. 
N some places the old family gardener still 
exists, perhaps too illiterate to read or prop¬ 
erly pronounce the names of the flowers with 
which he works such wonders, and skeptical 
Should Be and What He Often Is—11 is 
Relations to Ilis Work and Employer 
ELLEN P. CUNNINGHAM 
of everything in print, declaring that you can 
put anything in books but not in gardens—if 
he can help it! He respects only bought or 
home-grown plants, ruthlessly destroying, no 
matter how beautiful they are, all native vege¬ 
tation which he calls wild, saying self-right- 
eously that he is “a poor hand to save weeds”. 
Seldom visiting flower shows to absorb new 
ideas, he sees no necessity for replacing old 
plants and shrubs with improved new varieties. 
He has never heard of color schemes, yet by 
familiarity with local soil, climate and the 
family taste he is enabled to produce satis¬ 
factory results of a certain kind, and he is so 
devoted to his flowers that he will spend por¬ 
tions of even Sundays transplanting tiny seed¬ 
lings with his pen-knife. Surely such a man 
can say “I count not hours by dollars, but 
with flowers”. To this class of gardeners we 
owe a lasting debt of appreciation for faithful 
service to the best of their ability. They toiled 
early and late, in heat and cold, rejoicing in 
the pleasure of the family as much as in the 
beloved flowers. 
The garden consultants- often highly edu¬ 
cated women who assist in ordering and ad¬ 
vising as well as in the manual work of plant¬ 
ing, are a new type of gardener. And then, 
our large estates are especially indebted to the 
scientifically trained private gardeners who 
have come from Denmark, Germany, England, 
Scotland, etc., w’here a man aspiring to be¬ 
come a superintendent is expected to serve 
years of apprenticeship before assuming the 
larger responsibilities. In the United States 
one of the well-known seed houses said that 
scarcely any young man applying for a posi¬ 
tion wishes to go as an assistant; every one 
wishes to be a head gardener, with high wages. 
\\T HY are intelligent, trained private gar¬ 
deners so scarce? Mr. William N. 
Craig, President of the National Association 
of Gardeners, offers several answers. First, 
that the war has depleted the ranks of gar¬ 
deners, as of other professions. Second, that 
salaries for superintendents have not risen pro¬ 
portionately to pay for less skilled workers, 
and many expert men have gone into more 
lucrative occupations. Third, it is increasingly 
difficult to recruit the ranks of gardeners from 
American boys who are unwilling to give so 
many years to preparing themselves profes¬ 
sionally. Nurserymen and market gardeners 
are not considered at the moment. 
Evidently, if high standards of gardening 
are to be maintained, more of our young people 
must be interested in scientifically training 
themselves as horticulturists and as managers 
of large and small estates. Nature study 
classes and school gardens are awakening spe¬ 
cial powers of observation and emphasizing 
the practical value of patience and diligent 
perseverance. As the minds of the boys and 
Rightful 
girls expand, let us further open their eyes to 
the joyous possibilities of self-expression in 
outdoor life, before youth is stilled in the 
commercial confines of the city where, amidst 
the ever-increasing roar of industry, the call 
of the country is heard too late. Public and 
private enterprise must combine to throw 
searchlights on the path to be chosen, revealing 
the mysteries of science as related to horti¬ 
culture. Even soil, when discoursed upon by 
such a man as Professor Button of the Farm- 
ingdale, L. I., State School of Agriculture, 
teems with history, science, poetry and re¬ 
ligion, as he explains how destinies of nations 
depend upon the character of their soil, and 
how, by altering it scientifically, the trend of 
civilization is changed. Furthermore, poetry 
and religion draw their inspiration from the 
beauty of bloom issuing from the soil. 
NCE the desire to study gardening is cre¬ 
ated, how is it to be gratified? Glimpses 
at home and abroad show some of the methods 
of training gardeners. In Europe there are 
special schools. In England alone, last sum¬ 
mer, Miss Elizabeth Leighton Lee, Director of 
the School of Horticulture for Women at 
Ambler, Pa., visited a dozen of the many 
schools for women in Great Britain. On the 
Continent, familiarity with three modern lan¬ 
guages is sometimes required, and a health 
certificate, as conditions of admission to 
classes, thus hinting at the high standards for 
gardeners. 
In this country, in addition to the public 
opportunities offered by colleges and botanic 
gardens, the garden clubs are not only edu¬ 
cating thousands of their members in practical 
planting of public and private grounds, but, 
like the Woman’s National Farm and Garden 
Association, are giving scholarships for the 
training of women gardeners. For two sum¬ 
mers a new departure has been successfully 
made by Mrs. James Duane Livingston, who 
opened her place, “Garden Home”, at Barn¬ 
stable, Mass., to young women coming from 
such elaborate homes that the multiplicity of 
gardeners and domestics prevents the future 
mistresses of estates from learning gardening 
and household management. 
Another opportunity for training is offered 
by Mrs. Samuel T. Bodine of Villa Nova, Pa., 
whose extensive estate and eminent superin¬ 
tendent-gardener, Mr. Alexander McLeod, 
have formed an exceptional combination. 
Young girls are received here for practice and 
instruction, are partially paid while learning, 
and have model housing accommodations. Mr. 
C. T. Crane’s estate, at Ipswich, Mass., has 
also employed young women under the super¬ 
intendent-gardener, Mr. Cameron. An Oc¬ 
tober conference at the Massachusetts College 
of Agriculture is said to mark a new epoch in 
(Continued on page 62) 
