No fixed rules for obtaining employment can be laid down. Ambition and keen desire to get on will steer best to the right channel for seeking work. Several municipal authorities are willing to employ women as landscape gardeners. Should it be possible for women to make a success of private garden designs, it would surely help towards their appointment to larger spheres of landscape garden work. The laying out of parks, squares, and garden cities could be handed over to them, and what a large source of interest this would be.
It is unfortunate that we in England attach so little importance to the study of forestry. In none of our agricultural colleges is it taught in the same thorough way as in Germany. A great future might be open to a lady who studied this subject. It might be possible to induce a consulting forester in England, Scotland, or, better still, in Germany, to take a pupil. This subject, if fully mastered, would be of the greatest use in carrying out large alterations in public parks or private grounds.
To any lady with a love of nature, the possession of taste, and possibly the wish to improve and add to the beauty of our English country homes, this branch of gardening will greatly appeal. What a pleasurable sensation it is to see a lovely picture growing daily more like the plan that was roughly sketched out. How satisfactory to watch the building up of that stately terrace beneath the house, which puts the finishing touch to the beauty of the building itself. Without a terrace, the house would appear insignificant and poor—now it seems to have grown in dignity and stateliness. What pleasant days, too, can be spent in noting the happy results of garden-making, such as we see in the great yew trees of Levens, the grand Avenues of Le Nôtre, at Versailles, or the clever grouping of trees in many an English park. Here we, who come some two hundred years after, reap the full benefit of what then had the appearance only of a flat field dotted with stiff little baby trees. We can follow the old plans and ideas, but by using quicker growing materials it is possible to develop a picture under our eyes.
THE HANGING GARDENS, RATTON PARK, SUSSEX.
LAID OUT BY THE HON. MRS. FREEMAN-THOMAS.
Photograph by Pictorial Agency.
CHAPTER IV
JOBBING GARDENING AND FLORAL DECORATION
Often, as we drive through London suburbs, we see remains of some former stately Georgian house. Perhaps, a hundred and fifty years ago, when it was built, it stood isolated, with only a quiet country village near by. In the gardens were hedges of rosemary and lavender, fruitful pear trees were trained upon high walls, a slender little lady in a flowered brocade made sweet pot pourri with pink rose leaves. All that now remains of the garden is a small Adams summer house, built up into the wall, having a quaint shaped Dutch roof. A charming outlook it was when “My Lady” watched for “My Lord” riding home from London. All that now brings to us a touch of romance is the undisturbed yew hedge and a few box-edged formal beds. The garden has been divided off into villa plots.
Everywhere these villas spring up. We see long roads of them in each suburb; in seaside towns, watering places, and golfing centres we find them too. Each house has a garden, which is not necessarily large enough to supply the family with vegetables, but usually a small, level lawn is contrived for tennis or croquet; and a small portion near the road is kept gay with flowers. It is amusing, as we walk along, to compare taste in gardening at Clarence House with that displayed next door at Highclere Villa; to note how preferable is the natural arrangement of well-grown tea-roses in one, to the star-shaped beds of stiff geraniums in another.