Garden-for-sale classification requires distinct horticultural cultivation; ordinary mixed-farm land cannot be split for separate assessment.

Land can be treated as a garden for the sale of produce under rule 8 of Schedule B only where it forms a distinct and reasonably permanent unit of horticultural cultivation. A single mixed farm worked as one unit could not be split notionally into scattered garden areas for separate assessment, because there was no real geographical or operational separation. Arable land cultivated by ordinary agricultural methods also did not qualify merely because it produced crops or fruit commonly sold from farms; the character and intensity of cultivation, not the nature of the produce alone, was decisive. The assessment treating part of the holding as a garden was therefore unsustainable.

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Issues: (i) Whether a single mixed farm worked as one unit could be split into separate parts for assessment, one part being treated as a garden for the sale of produce under rule 8 of Schedule B to the Income-tax Act, 1918. (ii) Whether arable land cultivated by ordinary agricultural methods and used for crops and fruit commonly grown on farms could be classed as land occupied as a garden for the sale of produce.

Issue (i): Whether a single mixed farm worked as one unit could be split into separate parts for assessment, one part being treated as a garden for the sale of produce under rule 8 of Schedule B to the Income-tax Act, 1918.

Analysis: The statutory scheme treats land occupied as gardens for sale of produce as a distinct category from land occupied for husbandry. A garden under rule 8 must have some fixity, continuity, and distinctness of occupation. Where the whole holding is worked as one mixed farm by the same staff and methods, with no real geographical or operational separation, the Commissioners cannot notionally carve out scattered fields and treat them as a separate garden unit.

Conclusion: The holding could not properly be split on the facts found, and the purported garden area was not separately assessable under rule 8.

Issue (ii): Whether arable land cultivated by ordinary agricultural methods and used for crops and fruit commonly grown on farms could be classed as land occupied as a garden for the sale of produce.

Analysis: The relevant distinction is between horticultural cultivation and ordinary farming. The nature of the produce alone is not ative, because many vegetables and fruits are now ordinary farm crops. What matters is the character and intensity of the cultivation, together with the permanence and unity of the area. On the findings, the land was cultivated by ordinary agricultural methods, with ordinary farm labour, as part of a mixed farm, and the crops were part of normal husbandry rather than a distinct horticultural undertaking. The supposed ancillary farming operations were in truth ancillary to the farm, not to any true garden.

Conclusion: The arable land was not land occupied as a garden for the sale of produce within rule 8.

Final Conclusion: The assessment treating part of the mixed farm as a garden for the sale of produce was unsustainable in law, and the appellant was entitled to be assessed on the footing that the holding remained a single farming unit.

Ratio Decidendi: For rule 8 of Schedule B, land can be treated as a garden for the sale of produce only if it forms a distinct and reasonably permanent unit of horticultural cultivation; scattered portions of an ordinary mixed farm worked by ordinary agricultural methods cannot be notionally aggregated and assessed as a garden merely because they grow produce commonly sold from gardens.

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