198 
SUPPLEMENT  TO 
March  9,  1899. 
JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND 
LOOKING  BACKWARD. 
In  the  late  “forties’’  I  see  myself  entering  the  gardens  of  my 
father’.s  employer,  a  large  cotton  manufacturer,  at  a  place  twelve 
'miles  N.E.  of  Manchester,  and  on  the  western  slopes  of  the  Pennine 
range  which  forms  the  backbone  of  England,  hardening  was  not  the 
proposed  avocation  mapped  out  for  me  by  my  parents.  My  father, 
who  was  the  accountant  of  the  works,  had  intended  training  me  uj) 
to  his  profession,  so  that  eventually  I  might  be  able  to  take  his  place. 
A  severe  illness,  caused  in  large  measure  by  too  close  indoor  confine¬ 
ment,  induced  my  parents  to  alter  their  plans,  and,  in  consultation 
with  my  master  and  mistress,  who  always  took  a  special  interest  in 
me,  brought  about  my  admission  into  the  gardens. 
I  had  always,  from  my  earliest  years,  had  a  taste  for  gardening, 
from  the  time  I  grew  my  first  pot  plant — a  Musk — in  an  old  cracked 
teapot  of  my  mother’s,  and  pruned  her  pot  Kose  so  effectually  that,  as 
she  ruefully,  but  laughingly  said,  “It  must  be  well  pruned,  for  there 
is  only  the  stump  left.”  The  gardener  I  was  put  under  was  one  of 
the  good  old-fashioned  type — a  Yorkshireman,  essentially  a  practical 
man.  He  was  one  of  the  best  men  I  have  ever  seen  with  all  garden¬ 
ing  tools,  and  specially  with  the  spade.  He  was  no  book  man — he 
rather  scoffed  at  writing  gardeners ;  but  he  was  the  best  herbaceous 
phntsman  in  our  neighbourhood,  and  a  florist  of  the  old  school  whose 
Javourite  flower  was  the  Pansy.  He  taught  me  how  to  know  a  good 
flower  when  I  saw  one,  and  as  to  shrubs  of  all  kinds,  evergreen  and 
deciduous,  his  knowledge  of  them  was  like  Sam  Weller’s  of  London, 
“  extensive  and  peculiar  ”  and  thorough. 
Being  always  a  reader,  and  a  frequenter  of  the  booksellers’  and 
newsagents’  shops  somewhere  about  the  beginning  of  the  “  fifties,”  I 
made  ray  first  acquaintance  with  the  then  Cottage  Gardener,  and  from 
it  I  got  visions  of  a  larger  world  of  gardening  than  up  to  that  time  I 
had  any  idea  of.  I  read  each  weekly  number  from  first  page  to  last. 
I  read  them  again  and  again,  and  the  writers’  personalities  became 
clearer  to  me  each  week,  so  that  Kobert  Errington,  Donald  Beaton, 
Robert  Fish,  Thomas  Appleby,  and  others  became  my  personal  friends 
with  whom  I  held  converse  week  by  week,  and  to  whom  I  looked  up 
with  the  reverential  awe  of  a  young  hero-worshipper.  My  first 
communication  to  the  Cottage  Gardener  was  somewhere  about  the 
year  1854. 
In  1856  I  came  into  Nottinghamshire  to  be  gardener  to  Mr. 
William  ISanday,  the  great  Leicester  sheep  and  Shorthorn  breeder,  and 
my  facilities  for  advancing  in  gardening  were  there  strictly  unlimited, 
rhe  encouragement  to  go  on  to  higher  things  was  of  the  heartiest,  and 
through  all  these  years  I  occasionally  dropped  notes  to  “  our  Journal,” 
generally  under  the  pseudonym  of  “  Excelsior  ”  or  my  own  name.  I 
liave  stayed  m  the  county  all  through,  the  last  twenty-six  years  with 
iny  present  employer,  Mr.  Frederick  Wright,  J.P.,  of  Lenton  Hall, 
Nottingham.  Notts  is  a  county,  I  consider,  good  enough  for  any  man 
to  live  in,  and  its  beautiful  county  town,  or  city  now,  is  one  w’nich 
draws  out  daily  more  and  more  my  admiration  and  love.  My  later 
writings  as  “  An  Old  Provincial  ”  will  speak  for  themselves. — 
N.  H.  PowNALL,  Lenton  Hall  Gardens. 
P.S. — After  concluding  the  writing  of  these  notes  the  Journal  brings 
word  of  the  death  of  one  of  the  most  valued  contributors  of  the  “  sixties 
and  seventies” — “Wiltshire  Rector.”  He  was  one  of  those  writers 
whose  gentle  spirit  put  such  a  charm  into  all  he  wrote,  and  whose 
“  gay  wisdom  ”  enlightened  his  words,  and  drew  to  him  the  love  of 
leaders  of  all  degrees  of  gardening  life.  It  is  no  disparagement  to 
the  other  writers  of  the  time  to  say  that  he  was  the  first  to  be  read  as 
soon  as  the  Journal  was  opened.  We  are  the  poorer  to-day  by  his 
death,  and  I  am  sure  we  shall  all  unite  in  saying,  ‘  Make  him  to  be 
numbered  with  Thy  saints  in  glory  everlasting.” — N.  H.  P. 
MODERN  VEGETABLES. 
Whilst  we  find  seedsmen’s  lists  overcrowded  with  the  names  of 
new  varieties,  or  selections,  of  diverse  vegetables,  we  have  to  look  for 
distinctions  and  improvement  in  actual  growth.  But  the  modern 
development  of  vegetables,  if  slow,  has  been  sure,  and  if  the  variations 
or  improvements  have  been  slight,  yet  have  they  been  invariably 
progressive.  It  is  difficult  to  define  the  advance  seen  in  the  novelty 
of  this  year,  as  compared  with  that  of  last  year,  but  if  we  compare 
the  best  latest  with  the  best  of  twenty  years  ago,  then  is  the  advance 
most  marked.  How  specially  this  is  so  is  well  evidenced  at  our 
exhibitions,  when  collections  of  vegetables  are  staged,  showing  not  only 
the  highest  of  existing  excellence  in  variety,  and  also  the  highest  art 
of  the  cultivator,  but  even  also  the  most  advanced  taste  in  setting  up 
or  in  arrangement ;  so  that  whilst  a  fine  collection  is  a  work  of  taste  in 
display,  the  production  is  a  work  of  art  in  culture,  and  the  superb 
variety  is  the  evidence  of  long  work  in  cross  breeding  and  in  selection. 
We  have  in  these  modern  days  such  splendid  products  that  it  is 
only  natural  to  ask  whence  can  come,  or  in  what  form  will  come 
COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
other  improvements.  Most  certainly  they  can  be  only  infinitesimal 
if  for  no  other  reason  than  that  existing  products  are  so  superior  that 
little  room  for  advance  remain's.  To  what  an  extent  have  garden 
Peas  developed.  The  old  round  whites  and  blues,  hard  and  flavour¬ 
less,  and  not  great  croppers,  yet  to  our  progenitors  valued  varieties, 
are  fast  passing  out  of  cultivation,  more  because  there  are  so  many 
of  the  richer  flavoured,  sugary,  wrinkled  Marrows  to  supply  our  needs. 
We  have  delicious  wrinkled  vaiieties  for  onr  earliest  as  well  as  for  our 
latest  needs,  and  for  all  the  long  season.  We  have  the  dwarf,  medium, 
or  tall  in  height,  and  in  every  case  of  the  finest  excellence.  What 
beautiful  pods  are  now  seen  on  exhibition  tables,  how  long,  well  filled, 
green,  and  of  the  most  perfect  form  and  high  flavour.  No  mere 
Lrge  pods  will  pass  muster  now,  because  there  are  such  splendid 
varieties  that  are  fitted  for  the  table  of  the  gourmand,  and  are 
equally  at  the  command  of  the  poorest. 
What  a  change  has  been  effected  in  Cauliflowers  too,  and  with 
the  help  of  the  dwarf  earlies  and  of  the  late  giants  we  can  have  thes'- 
for  consumption  aiul  for  exhibition  for  a  long  season.  How  solid  are 
the  heads  nov.',  how  white,  how  easily  produced,  and  how  fine  and 
effectual  are  they  on  the  exhibition  table.  A  generation  ago  no  one 
could  show  such  Cauliflowers,  and  for  so  long  a  period,  as  gardeners 
now  can, 
Few  vegetables  exhibit  development  more  markedly  than  does  the 
Onion.  The  Liliputians  of  older  days  have  become  the  Brobdignagians 
of  the  last  years  of  the  century.  No  longer  are  bulbs  weighed  bj' 
ounces;  they  have  become  so  big  that  their  weight  is  counted  by 
pounds.  Ailsa  Craigs,  Records,  Exhibitions,  Lord  Keepers,  Ne  Plus 
Ultras,  Excelsiors,  and  many  of  others,  vie  one  with  another — that  is  if 
they  be  distinct — in  producing,  under  what  are  also  modern  conditions 
of  culture,  bulbs  that  are  not  only  of  marvellous  dimensions,  but  of 
Fig.  50. — Mr.  N.  H.  Pownall. 
remarkable  beauty  in  form  and  of  matureness  and  solidity.  Truly  wc 
seem  to  have  reached  in  Onion  production  to  a  point  beyond  which  it 
is  difficult  to  pass. 
But  whilst  even  the  few  things  named  serve  to  show  how  much 
the  modern  cultivators  excel  the  old  growers  in  productive  skill,  just 
as  the  products  themselves  show  their  great  advance  on  earlier  ones  ; 
none  shows  this  advance  in  variety,  and  in  culture,  as  does  the 
Tomato.  Here  we  have  a  product  that  has  leaped  from  comparative 
worthlessness  into  marvellous  popularity,  and  is  now  one  of  the 
most  valued  of  highly  cultivated  vegetables.  Not  a  gardener  in  the 
fifties  could  have  dreamt  of  the  popularity  in  store  for  the  Tomato, 
