I wasted more than a year. The thing looked quite hopeless. I left my
garden to the cats, the jobbing gardeners, the caterpillars, and the
other pests.

Of these the worst and most dangerous is perhaps the jobbing gardener.
As the law stands at present you may kill a caterpillar, but not a
jobbing gardener.

Coming on the wrong day--and he never comes on the right day if he can
avoid it--he brings with him a mixed scent of beer and lubricating oil.
If the weather is wet, he sits in the potting-shed and smokes. If it is
fine, he may possibly mow the lawn. He prefers to mow part of it and
then to get on with something else, leaving it like a man with one side
of his face shaved. He takes no sort of interest in the garden, and
candidly there is no reason why he should take any interest. He only
sees the place for a few hours every week, and he would not see it then
if he were not paid for it. He has untruthful testimonials, very dirty
and decomposed, in his coat pocket, and he is aggrieved when you sack
him. This is quite reasonable. A jobbing gardener who attends to the
gardens of A, B, and C naturally steals something from A's garden to
sell to B, something from B's garden to sell to C, and something from
C's garden to sell to A, and thereout sucks he no small advantage. When
he gets the sack there is nothing left for him but to steal your
secators. He never forgets to do that. I will not say that even in my
regenerate condition I never employ a jobbing gardener. There are days
when it seems a fine, manly, and primitive thing to do a piece of
digging or to mow the lawn. There are more days when such operations
seem rather in the light of a nuisance. One would always sooner direct
than perform. But the jobbing gardeners who come to me now are under
supervision, and are compelled to do things that they hate most in the
world--such as putting away their tools when they have finished with
them.

I am not particularly fond of the expert and regular gardener either.
Generally he has the luck to be a Scotchman and is a man of few words
and great knowledge. But his knowledge is always better than his taste,
and he debases an art into a science. His ideals would not fit a London
garden, and his feeling for colour is often wrong and poisonous.

The horticulturist-and-florist debases a science into a commerce. I have
found him useful and shall continue to do so. He saves me trouble. I
will deal with him, but I absolutely refuse