Will you have the kindness to give a novice your opinion of the morality of a gardener receiving a discount from nurserymen for his own benefit. On finding that my gardener had purchased for me some very poor plants, I was induced to make inquiry, and found that he had been allowed a discount for his own benefit which did not appear on my bill. To my notions of mercantile correctness, this did not appear to be quite an honest transaction on the part of the nurseryman, inasmuch as it held out a temptation to the gardener to purchase where he could obtain the largest discount, or rather fee. for his custom, without regard to the interest of his employer.

As mercantile and horticultural integrity however may not be synonymous, I thought I would inquire what is the practice in this respect among nurserymen generally. I find many who are always in the habit of allowing this discount to gardeners for their own benefit, assigning as a reason that gardeners are themselves obliged to bear their own travelling expenses, and that it is no more than right that they should be paid for their custom. I find other nurserymen again, who say that it would be decidedly to their interest to induce gardeners in this way to buy of them, but that they have uniformity refused to do so, because they could not quite reconcile the transaction with their notions of integrity, and that they were also unwilling to do anything of which an employer would disapprove if he knew it."

* See an interesting essay on ivy in Vol. IV, page 252

Now this difference in practice left me still in the dark, so I wrote to an old and intimate friend in the nursery business in England, begging him to tell me what is the practice there. He says very frankly and in confidence, so I will not mention his name, that it is a uniform practice to allow such discount to gardeners, but that they generally make it up by a slight extra charge upon the plants. So I find that we novices, who do not know sufficient to purchase our own plants, are obliged to suffer in some measure.

I am half inclined to make it a rule with my next gardener, that I shall have the benefit of all the bargains he can get out of the nurserymen . In my ignorance of the rules of horticultural trade, I may however be wrong in my notions,, and should like very much to have your opinion and that of gentlemen employing gardeners, as to the correctness of these things. Tours very truly, A Lover of Flowers.

Remarks - If a gentleman don't take interest enough in his garden to purchase plants himself, or won't pay his gardener's travelling expenses when he sends him to select them, he cannot fairly complain if the gardener gets his rights by a commission from the nurseryman.

But the system is a bad one, because it leads to a kind of premium paid by the nurserymen to get custom; the result of which is, that the gardener goes to the nursery where he can get the most commission, instead of that where the best plants and trees are to be found. En.