Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/170

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166
HORTICULTURE.

enforce, of not defacing or injuring, what they come to admire.

It is the opinion of many lovers of flowers, that their cultivation must necessarily be expensive of both time and money. We are authorized by the owner of this noble garden, to say, that it need not be so. His original purchase of what has since become a possession which the most accomplished florist might covet, was only a few hundred feet, made twenty years since, when just entering on commercial business. Though he had at that time no capital to spare, he felt that daily exercise among the plants that he loved, would be beneficial to his health, and resolved on the establishment of such a system. For this, his first investment in land, he gave six notes, payable in the same number of years.

"These notes," he says, "then troubled me much, as I doubted whether I should be able to pay them at maturity. But at the expiration of six years, I had cancelled them all, and this encouraged me to enlarge my domain to the amount of thousands instead of hundreds. As it was necessary for me to apply myself continually to business, during business hours, I then adopted a plan of early rising, which I have ever since persevered in. My practice for years, was to be at the garden, from half past three to six in the morning, and this gave me an opportunity, in the best and most quiet part of the day, unnoticed, to visit the grounds and mature my plans for their extension and improve-