University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET SALE OF TREES AND SHRUBS.

The street-trade in trees and shrubs is an ap-
pendage of "root-selling," and not an inde-
pendent avocation. The season of supply at the
markets extends over July, August, September,
and October, with a smaller trade in the winter
and spring months. At the nursery gardens, from
the best data I can arrive at, there are about twice
as many trees and shrubs purchased as in the
markets by the costermongers. Nor is this the
only difference. It is the more costly descrip-
tions that are bought at the nursery grounds.

The trees and shrubs are bought at the
gardens under precisely the same circumstances
as the roots, but the trade is by no means popu-
lar with the root-sellers. They regard these
heavy, cumbrous goods, as the smarter costers
do such things as turnips and potatoes, requir-
ing more room, and yielding less profit. "It
breaks a man's heart," said one dealer, "and half
kills his beast, going round with a lot of heavy
things, that perhaps you can't sell." The street-
dealers say they must keep them, "or people
will go, where they can get roots, and trees, and
everything, all together." In winter, or in early
spring, the street-seller goes a round now and
then, with evergreens and shrubs alone, and
the trade is then less distasteful to him. The
trees and shrubs are displayed, when the mar-
ket-space allows, on a sort of stand near the
flower-stand; sometimes they are placed on the
ground, along-side the flower-stand, but only
when no better display can be made.

The trees and shrubs sold by the costers are
mezereons, rhododendrons, savine, laurustinus,
acacias (of the smaller genera, some being highly
aromatic when in flower), myrtles, guelder-roses
(when small), privet, genistas, broom, furze
(when small), the cheaper heaths, syringas
(small), lilacs (almost always young and for
transplanting), southernwood (when large), box
(large) dwarf laurels, variegated laurels (called
a cuber by the street-people), and young fir-
trees, &c.

The prices of trees vary far more than
flower-roots, because they are dependent upon
size for value. "Why," said one man, "I've
bought roddies, as I calls them (rhododendrons),
at 4s. a dozen, but they was scrubby things,
and I've bought them at 14s. 6d. I once gave
5s. for two trees of them, which I had ordered,
and there was a rare grumbling about the price,

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though I only charged 7s. 6d. for the two, which
was 1s. 3d. a piece for carriage, and hard earned
too, to carry them near five miles in my cart,
almost on purpose, but I thought I was pleas-
ing a good customer. Then there's myrtles,
why I can get them at 5d. a piece, and at 5s., and a deal more if wanted. You can have
myrtles that a hat might be very big for them
to grow in, and myrtles that will fill a great
window in a fine house. I've bought common
heaths at 1s. 3d. a dozen."

The coster ordinarily confines himself to the
cheaper sorts of plants, and rarely meddles with
such things as acacias, mezereons, savines, sy-
ringas, lilacs, or even myrtles, and with none of
these things unless cheap. "Trees, real trees,"
I was told, "are often as cheap as anything.
Them young firs there was 4s. 6d. a dozen, and
a man at market can buy four or six of them if
he don't want a dozen."

The customers for trees and shrubs are gene-
rally those who inhabit the larger sort of houses,
where there is room in the hall or the windows
for display; or where there is a garden capa-
cious enough for the implantation of the shrubs.
Three-fourths of the trees are sold on a round,
and when purchased at a stall the costermonger
generally undertakes to deliver them at the
purchaser's residence, if not too much out of
his way, in his regular rounds. Or he may
diverge, and make a round on speculation,
purposely. There is as much bartering trees
for old clothes, as for roots, and as many, or
more, complaints of the hard bargainings of
ladies: "I'd rather sell polyanthuses at a
farthing a piece profit to poor women, if I could
get no more," said one man, "than I'd work
among them screws that's so fine in grand caps
and so civil. They'd skin a flea for his hide
and tallow."

The number of trees and shrubs sold annu-
ally, in the streets, are, as near as I can ascer-
tain, as follows — I have added to the quantity
purchased by the street-sellers, at the metropo-
litan markets, the amount bought by them at the
principal nursery-gardens in the environs of
London:

                     

Firs	9,576 roots
Laurels	1,152 "
Myrtles	23,040 "
Rhododendrons	2,160 "
Lilacs	2,304 "
Box	2,880 "
Heaths	21,888 "
Broom	2,880 "
Furze	6,912 "
Laurustinus	6,480 "
Southernwood	25,920 "