To John MacPherson   29 September 1869

Melbourne botan Garden,

29. Sept. 1869.

Sir

Being aware, that it is intended to entrust the Gardener Mr W. Fergusen¹ with administrative duties in the botanic Garden, I have the honor to solicit, that you and your honorable Colleagues will be pleased to reconsider this proposition and allow me to express a hope, that this intention will not be carried into effect.

Not having had the opportunity of expressing views on this measure, before it was alluded to in Parliament, I beg leave to point out the reasons, which render the proposed new arrangement inexpedient.

The appointment of a special superintendent over the horticulture of the department could only be regarded as a censure on my administration, and this, I feel I have not deserved after 13 years service as honorary Director and after sinking a large sum of my private means also into this branch of the service. I can confidently assert that the means available were always devoted to the most urgent lasting works in the garden, required at any time, while work of less importance was postponed. It was always my aim to give precedence to utilitarian and industrial culture, while less attention was bestowed on mere ornamental cultivation, though 2 greenhouses and extensive borders are teeming with beautiful plants. In this direction of labor I kept the requirements of a young country in view, where the extensive distribution of new industrial plants, such as Cork Oaks, American nut trees, Assam and Chinese tea &c, is needed far in preference to the ephemerous show of florist flowers, involving heavy expenditure for which at the end of the season is nothing to show.

In reference to supposed landscape gardening, I would beg leave to remark, that this simply means grouping plants according to taste; for this no law can be laid down, and I am satisfied, that the many handsome groupings and distributions of plants on the lake, the ridges on lawns or ferngully would not have excited such manyfold admiration, had the Director not displayed some taste and foresight in his operations. The gardeners of the establishment are moreover, at least several of them, quite equal in talent and experience to the one, who aspires to a superior position in the botanic Garden, and it would be a manifest injustice to the employees, who are for a series of years in the public service and with whom not any fault can be found, to supersede them.²

In reference to future embellishment s of the garden I beg to draw the kind attention of the honorable the Ministers to my last annual report.³ In that Document I have pointed out, that Statues might be purchased at any time, while the loss of a season in planting useful trees cannot be regained. For the play of fountains, I have no Yan Yean water, the cost of working my Yarra engine for mere scanty irrigation being in labor and fuel already £200-£300; but in some portions of the ground I should have pressure enough for working any fountains, which might be erected.⁴ Yet as long as the drives from the City bridge over and along the base of the ridge are not yet formed, the construction of mere ornamental works ought to be deferred.

It remains for me yet to explain, that the formation of a flood-dam this winter and spring at the expense of £800 had to a large extent to be carried out by garden-labor, only £300 being available for public works. I regret not, that I withdrew so much garden labor for this substantial and lasting improvement, which served its purpose already last week; because the opportunity for working with horses and carts in the bed of the Lake did not occur since 30 years and will, we trust, never occur again. The formerly brackish water will in future be nearly fresh and available for garden use and good soil is by this work stored. Some clemency should also be shown under the circumstance, if florist culture did not get quite its full share of attention during this year. In reference to the proposed intention, to make the surveillance of the existing forests and the raising of trees in woodless districts a duty of my Department, I beg respectfully to point out, that to render any measures in this direction worthy of a great Government and adequate to the requirements of a large country, it will be needful to pass a special bill through Parliament, in as much as only by legislative enactments the present destruction of extensive forests by fires and axes can be prevented. A well organized special department can only effectually manage interests so important to the state, and such a department will need large endowment. It is scarcely necessary for me to remark, that the Government will find me always ready to aid in the creation and preservation of forests, measures which I have urged in various of my writings for years.

In reference to the principle of divided authority I would beg leave to remark, that such in an establishment like mine is utterly inapplicable. Phytographic and horticultural duties are as closely interwoven, as the correspondence, connected therewith and cannot practically be separated, however easy it may appear in theory. There can be only one responsible head, recognized by the Government, the Parliament and the public.

In each division of the Garden I have a trained professional gardener entrusted with his special duties. I am responsible for his work, and he gets his orders direct from me. Unskilled labourers can not be sent into the conservatories, the forcing houses, propagation pits, seed magazine or among the better plants of the borders. My system of working and superintendence, which I adopted in 1857, has worked well and economical.

Strange to say, it seems not at all understood, that the botanic Garden forms only a part of the establishment under my care. The Garden may now well be kept for £2000 or less annually, if not much progressive work is undertaken, as now waterpipes and drainpipes are laid, extensive iron fences and manyfold buildings erected, and many miles of walks and avenues have been formed, and as plantations are already established over nearly the whole of the area (almost 400 acres).

If however from 60,000 to 80,000 plants annually are to be raised for the Church grounds, school reserves, cemeteries &c (and many select plants among them,) such as already tower up at Parliament house &c, then some additional fund is clearly needed. In all this the garden is well provided since years with an efficient staff and needs no addition and new expense by the employment of an overseer. The maintenance of the Museum, the literary work, the Laboratory for industrial researches must necessarily involve some expenditure; all these are kept at modest terms and produce an ample and substantial return. It was not through the absence of a head gardener or some such Official, who would consume the wages of two or perhaps even three working gardeners, that not all was carried out here yet, that could be desired; nor was it for want of knowledge, or want of superintendence or want of assiduity; it was, because the fund was inadequate for what was needed. In the Adelaide botanic Garden £3000 are spent annually on 40 acres, and yet no extensive distribution of plants takes place there to public institutions, nor exists there a laboratory or a literary branch and no great Museum of plants. The estimates for Kew-Garden submitted to the House of commons have in one of the last years been fully £40,000 (forty thousand) and yet the area is not greater than mine and⁵ there is no great distribution of plants and no laboratory work. For buildings is separately provided, the £40,000 being the annual ordinary garden-vote, of one particular year and in comparisons the low English wages must be taken into consideration.

In conclusion I beg of you and your honored colleagues not to submit me after my 22 years arduous uninterrupted and disinterested labors in Australia to the humiliation of forcing on me a new official, simply because that official was to have been employed elsewhere and cannot enter on the engagements, for which he was selected; more particularly as his services might so easily be employed otherwise. I claim this consideration also, because the measure would involve a deep public censure, which I have not deserved, because no injudicious expenditure nor waste of labor nor ignorance nor indolence in my establishment can be shown, because it would introduce an objectionable and circumlocutious system of divided authority, because I have been to a great extent the originator of the garden myself, because it would be an injustice to the older employees of the establishment, because no saving of my own labor as erroneously supposed could be effected by the proposition, as the whole department is well organized and in excellent working order, because no monetary saving would be effected but an extra expenditure would be unnecessarily incurred. Under these circumstances I trust, that the deep injury inflicted unexpectedly and defenceless on me already in Parliament, and which neither all members of Parliament nor all organs of the press deem merited, will not be continued or even made permanent.

I have the honor to be,

Sir, your very obedient servant

Ferd. von Mueller.⁶

The honorable

J. M'Pherson, M.L.A., Chief Secretary⁷