The San Francisco call., 1905-02-19
GARDENS COST
MANY MILLIONS
English People Spend Coin
Freely to Provide Fine
Surroundings for Homes
SOME FAMOUS ORCHIDS
Army of Men Employed That
Country Shall Blossom
as the Proverbial Rose

It has been said that there are q
score Of noblemen In the United King
dom who spend more every year on
their gardens than would pay the Off
cial salaries of the entire cabinet; and,
extravagant as the statement may ap-
pear, it Is well within the limits of the
truth.
Further than this. there are, ON the
best authority, more than 5000 seats Of
the mighty or at least Of the rich,
the gardens Of which cost their owners
anything almost from $2500 a year up
ward, while there are as many more
which demand between $1,000 and s2600
a year for their maintenance. OF these
10000 British gardens an annual sum
estimated at over $10,0O0,0o0 is spent for
labor alone. and another round mil
lion pounds at least goes in the pur-
chase OF seeds, plants and manures.
and the general upkeep Of the gardens
and glass houses.
It is difficult and, perhaps invidious
to say which are the most costly gar
dens In Great Britain, but among them
are certainly those Of Trentham hall.
Welbeck abbey, Lord Bute's gardens at
Cardiff castle, the orld-famous gar
dens Of Chatsworth and those Of the
Rothschilds, on which gold has been
lavished like water.
One gets an idea Of the extent Of such
gardens as these when he reads that
the kitchen garden at Welbeck covers
thirty acres. that the houses In which
peaches, apricots and nectarines are
grown stretch ~ 10 Ia
and that to stock them costs 80 much
as $4,000. When a millionaire sets his
heart on making himself lordly pleas
ure garden he recks little of the cost
Not long ago a rich man in the north
of England discovered that one section
of his gardens was rendered useless
through exposure to the keen east wind
This was not to be tolerated, said the
great man, and to keep the. eastern
winds from trespassing he planted
thousands of Scotch and Norwegian fir
trees to act as a screen, paying as
much as $25 for individual trees. This
little whim cost him nearly $10O, 900,
but he considered himself amply re-
warded by seeing his wilderness turned
into paradise of flowers.
In such gardens as these 1t Is quite
usual to employ as many as seventy or
eighty men and boys, so that a cabinet
minister's yearly salary may easily go
in wages alone.
1t is said that there are 900 country
houses in Great Britain, each of which
employs staff of over fifty men; of
these, 200 employ between eighty and
150. while sixty of them employ over
200; and the large majority of all these
male servants are gardeners Of one
kind or another.
In addition to the cost of labor there
are repairs and alterations of houses,
furnaces to be fed, walls built for fruit
growing, nets for protection, tools to
buy and replace, and-often the most
costly item of all-seeds and plants to
purchase. Baron Schroeder is credited
with having spent 100000 on his COL
lection of orchids, and Sir Trevor Law
renee with an expenditure of $15e,000.
Joseph Chamberlain has thirteen
glass houses containing, roughly. 5000
plants, many of them of great value
and gathered from almost every part of
the earth where orchids are to be
found. The plants are arranged in diff
ferent houses according to the time Of
Towering, so that the succession of ex-
quisite flowers never fails the whole
year round. Each plant bears its num-
Der as well as it's name, and 1t is said
that Mr.. Chamberlain knows every one
of his floral pets.