HORTICULTURE AS A PROFESSION

FOR THE EDUCATED

IT is not because from earliest childhood I have been an enthusiastic practical gardener that I venture to discuss the future of horticulture as a profession for the educated classes. There are many as enthusiastic, who are also more competent than I. It is rather because for the past six years I have, as honorary secretary for the Horticultural College, Swanley, been in close relation with educated men and women gardeners, and with educated men and women who have employed them; because I have been the agent between the supply and demand for a longer period, and in relation to larger numbers, than has perhaps fallen to the lot of others, in this country at least, that I offer a few deductions from my experience, which I shall be the more glad to have contradicted and opposed, that they are not, on the whole, as hopeful as, until a year or two ago, I had expected them to be.

That we do not turn to sufficient account either our land or our educated classes, is a proposition which has of late years become a commonplace. We send out capital to the farms and gardens of Scandinavia and Belgium, and potential horticulturists to California and New Zealand. In agriculture, with which, except incidentally, I have, however, no concern at the moment, things are in a similar The late Lord Winchelsea put the numbers of those directly or indirectly connected with the land at sixteen millions; Mr. Jasper Moore, M.P., puts the number of actual farmers at 600,000, and yet we pay an annual bill to continental farmers of close on twenty-six million pounds!

case.

The modern idea of applying the advantages of advanced education to the practical work of the garden rests upon the hypothesis that horticulture is a science as well as an art; that it is the application of principles and not of mere physical energy and rule of thumb; that it demands much science, pure and applied, and not merely a cast-iron back with a hinge in it.' Much had been done by individual effort before the modern movement in this direction; and many, both men and women, had pointed the way for the

employment of scientific horticulture to commercial ends; but the establishment of horticultural colleges and technical classes has been the affair of the last decade.

The connection between land-culture and the physical sciences was first established by Sir Humphry Davy, then a young lecturer in chemistry at the Royal Institution. He was shortly appointed permanent lecturer to the Board of Agriculture, and in 1813 he put together the results of his researches in a volume, well-known to students, on The Elements of Agricultural Chemistry. It is interesting to note how he had to meet then, as we have now, the oft-repeated argument as to the superior value of practice to theory.

It is no unusual occurrence [he writes] for persons who argue in favour of practice and experience to condemn generally all attempts to improve agriculture by philosophical and chemical methods. . . . It has been said, and undoubtedly with great truth, that a philosophical chemist would most probably make a very unprofitable business of farming; and this certainly would be the case if he were a mere philosophical chemist, and unless he had served his apprenticeship to the practice of the art as well as to the theory.

Davy himself was no mere philosophical chemist,' and he served his apprenticeship to the art on a piece of ground lent to him for the purpose, at Roehampton, by Mr. Bernard, one of the founders of the Royal Institution, which, in those days, was a philanthropic establishment intended to benefit the condition of the poor. Other experiments, beyond his opportunities, were carried out by the permission of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, and with the help of Mr., afterwards Sir, Joseph Banks.

Like many good things, that old Board of Agriculture came to an end in the gloomy days of the French Revolution, after less than a quarter of a century of existence (1793-1816). So far as I can discover, its legitimate successor in relation to horticulture is the Royal Horticultural Society, which, founded in 1812, somewhat overlapped it in time, though its real activities did not begin till 1859, or perhaps even till thirty years later. Dr. John Lindley, secretary to the Society from 1822 to 1862, has the credit of having raised horticulture from an empirical art to a developed science.

The recognition of the fact that horticulture is a science as well as an art was the ultimate cause of the establishment of Horticultural Colleges and of the various training institutes which have become so active a feature of the work of the County Councils. The art of gardening can only be learnt experimentally and in the garden; the science is an affair, not only of the garden, but of the lecture-hall, of books, and of the chemical laboratory. Its results may be measured in the examination-room, and foremost among such standards of measurement are the examinations of the Royal Horticultural Society. The modern gardener inevitably desires this

hall-mark of modern science, and an analysis of a list of recent successes in these examinations furnishes more or less of an index to the present possibilities and opportunities of horticultural education.

It is perhaps a sign of the times that last year (1898) three of the first places out of 184 were taken by women; the first-carrying with it the silver-gilt medal of the Royal Horticultural Societyby a woman student from Swanley. Following her, and bracketed together, with only five marks less, are six students, one woman and one man from Swanley, and one woman and three men from the Technical School, Stafford. Analysing the first class as a whole, it is suggestive to observe that twenty-eight out of the eighty-seven successful candidates had been prepared at Technical Schools, including a large proportion at Stafford; twenty-four, both men and women, at Swanley; three in Botanical Gardens; and thirty-two (including nine who address from Gardens,' and are apparently professional) by private study.

The Technical Schools, though much more recent in origin than any Horticultural or Agricultural Colleges, have rapidly come to the front, and this year (1899) the first two places in the Royal Horticultural Society examinations have been taken by students from the Technical School, Stafford; while out of the first six women four are from the Technical Laboratories, Chelmsford, where women were entered for the first time last year. Again analysing the first class as a whole, it is significant that there are forty (including six women) from Technical Schools (Stafford, Chelmsford and Holmes Chapel) as against twenty-nine last year, while the number of those whose success is apparently the result of private study is eightyeight as against thirty-two last year, and seventeen of these address from private gardens as against nine last year. Out of the first twenty-five places, ten are taken by students from Technical Schools, eleven by private, and four by Swanley students, as against ten from Swanley last year. No students from Lady Warwick's Hostel appear in the lists of the Royal Horticultural Society.

As has been already seen, no county has done more for the effective training of gardeners than Stafford. The programme of study seems to be very complete, both on the practical and on the theoretical side. The last report shows that fifteen centres in the county hold classes in horticulture, twenty-six have evening schools for practical work, four have classes in bee-keeping, and one an evening bee-keeping school. It should, moreover, be remembered that all this is done in a county having its own special industry of pottery making, which occupies large numbers of men and women, and gives employment alike to those capable only of manual arts and to persons of education and artistic training.

Holmes Chapel seems to be second only to Stafford in point of numerical success. It differs from other Technical Schools in that students are resident on terms, even for those not belonging to the county, exceedingly moderate. Residence at the centre of teaching has of course many obvious advantages, especially for those students of only moderate opportunities for practice and observation. On the other hand, we have an argument in favour of outside, short-course training, such as need scarcely interrupt the ordinary vocation of the student, in the fact that fourteen out of twenty sent up this year for examination from Chelmsford passed well in the first class, and five in the second, and yet their training had been by means of only three elementary courses of three weeks each, and one advanced course of four weeks. That training such as this should bear such good results must be a strong incentive and encouragement to students of a class—and it is one to which many of good education belong-who are unable to afford the cost of a prolonged training at a residentiary college, or even to subtract any considerable length of time from the period when money must be earned.

Perhaps no class of persons represented in the lists of the Royal Horticultural Society's examinations engages one's interest more than the home student, whose achievements suggest to the looker-on a vista of perseverance, sacrifice, and tenacity of purpose, which one must infinitely honour and respect. The very fact of success is demonstration of satisfactory preparation, and at the same time makes it manifest that such training can be achieved without the cost of education at Horticultural Colleges, in districts remote from even Technical Schools, and under various circumstances, which readily occur to the imagination, in which systematic attendance at lectures or classes might be difficult. The large proportion of eighty-eight giving private addresses in a list of 160 who have passed the Royal Horticultural Society's examinations this year shows the extent to which home study is possible.

Much of the science of horticulture may be learnt from books, a fact which the examiners for the society have borne in mind, for they supply a list of works which may be consulted with profit by students and young gardeners not having had the advantage of attending lectures, but wishing to present themselves for examination.' The practice of the art, up to a certain point, demands less. resources than might be supposed by those who have no experimental knowledge of the amount to be learnt and the experience to be acquired in even a small amount of garden: such, for instance, as the practice plots allowed to students at many of the Technical Centres, to say nothing of the poor man's allotment, and the middle. class villa garden, which abundantly suffice for the learning of all the elements of horticulture.

I made careful inquiry last year into about fifty of the cases of home students, with varied and interesting results. A good many depended on the home garden and their own reading; others, having attended lectures where no demonstration was given, have worked out the practical part for themselves, in some cases with very limited space and material for experiment. Observing that five students who had taken good places gave as address a remote village in Scotland, I ventured to write to one of them asking by what means they had obtained the instruction in science necessary to their success, the art of gardening being a second nature to many Scotchmen. The reply was, that being fourteen miles from any technical classes, some working gardeners had combined to receive a course of lessons by correspondence from a private tutor in the south of England, a former Principal of the Horticultural College, Swanley, a method of which they spoke in terms of great indebtedness. What may be done by correspondence-lessons is well known in other branches of study; and it is interesting to note that this same tutor has prepared candidates for Royal Horticultural Society examinations from twenty-five counties, and that all the students sent up by him in 1898 passednine in the first class, twelve in the second, and five in the third, close upon one-seventh of the whole number examined.

I learn from the Secretary of the National Association for the Promotion of Technical and Secondary Education that nearly all the County Councils in England are doing something for the promotion of horticultural education, and of course women are eligible as well as men.' The organ of this society has lately described the methods of such training in six counties, which may be cited as typical, the more suitably that they include none of the schools already referred to.

The provision made is for training by means of classes and lectures, and of practice in demonstration plots and cottage gardens. In Kent there are sixty centres now at work. In Surrey 130 boys and girls are learning horticulture in continuation schools, the number of centres has lately risen from nineteen to thirty, there are 373 garden plots for demonstration, and sixty-five students are receiving advanced instruction in evening classes. In Cornwall seven fruit plots are under cultivation, and 125 lectures have been given to an average attendance of over forty-one persons. In Devonshire twenty courses of practical instruction have been given; in Somerset sixteen centres are at work, and in Hampshire thirty centres, in twenty of which competition has been organised.

That horticultural education has its value for the people seems then to be abundantly recognised, and what is even more, the people themselves abundantly appreciate it. The practical question therefore is-In what way is such training to be turned to account?

VOL. XLVI-No. 273

3 F