A Woman's Hardy Garden

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1903. Excerpt: ... CONCLUSION CHAPTER XVI CONCLUSION *T^HE character of professional gardeners seems to be changing. They have become more perfunctory, more stubborn, more opinionated, until now it is a really serious question with them of "the danger of a little knowledge." To find a man who combines sobriety and a good disposition with a fair knowledge of his business and a real liking for it, is a difficult matter. Where but one man is kept to care for vegetables, flowers and lawn, he is more than likely to have little interest beyond potatoes or corn, or to be good at raising small fruits, and to consider everything else he has to do as so much waste of time. When first married, one of our gardeners was a German who took no interest in flowers, and planted half the vegetable garden with "kohlrabi" and "korn salad." We had never heard of these delicacies before, and did not care for them. I remember also his telling me that one kind of flower was enough to raise anyway. If a young man with an elementary knowledge of gardening can be found, who wants to learn, is strong, willing and intelligent, it is better to supply most of the brains yourself. You will find your own wishes more apt to be carried out than by the gardener who "knows it all," and seems to resent what he calls "interference" on the part of his employer. I remember, when a child, seeing my father's gardener walking about in the early evening after his supper, smoking a meditative pipe, tying up Roses or spraying plants, and often setting out seedlings after sundown. He was never idle; he loved his work and attended to it. But now it is rare indeed to see a gardener, after hours, going about his work; autre temps autres moeurs. Remember always that it is the overcoming of the difficulties in the gardener's way, the determination to suc...