After a few years I bought nine acres more, adjoining the first field, and two years ago I bought another small field of four acres. A few years ago I was able greatly to improve our water supply, and to put up an engine for pumping all water used in the houses, and to build a second cottage for workmen. My original staff consisted of one labourer; it is now about nine men and boys. Last year I was able to add a large tomato house 100 feet by 30 feet, and a small fernery.
Whilst living here the neighbourhood has become a residential one, and consequently a good deal of trade has come from the immediate locality.
A good many people are glad to have their gardens superintended, or to have suggestions about the laying out of their borders.
I cannot say I have ever found it a very remunerative undertaking; it has certainly been a laborious one, but to me it has been immensely enjoyable.
Other crops we grow out of doors are gooseberries, raspberries and currants, and large quantities of roots, such as pansies, polyanthus, wallflower, forget-me-not, for spring bedding. Among the out-of-door flowers for cutting the chief are: narcissi, chrysanthemums, roses, carnations, violets, gypsophila, sweet-peas, marguerites, dahlias, astors, coreopsis, mignonette, gladioli, Spanish iris, pæonies, scabious, alstromœria, daisies, and many others. We also have a number of herbaceous plants and a good many shrubs to supply retail customers.
I am, yours faithfully,
A. Bateson.
CHAPTER X
THE MEDICAL ASPECT OF GARDENING FOR WOMEN
Anxious parents often ask whether gardening is a really healthy occupation for their daughters. These doubts, shared by many, are perhaps not so easily dispelled as, at the outset, might be supposed. We are all prone to view with suspicion any project which has for its purpose the fitting of women for the more arduous tasks of life. “For men must work and women must weep” is what we are accustomed to hear. We know that amongst all primitive peoples it has been found that women are capable physically of carrying out hard work in the open. We have evidence to prove that crofter women, those engaged at coal-pit mouths, women peasants in France and Germany, North American Indians, African races and the aborigines of Australia, are not less long-lived than their more favoured sisters in leisured countries. Amongst civilised races, however, the principle is upheld that only light tasks are relegated to women, and surely so it should be. The charm of woman lies in her softness and gentleness. Must we not preserve this above all else?
Thus the father of a family views with alarm the profession of a gardener, when it is first suggested to him for one of his daughters. It seems undesirable to him that she, who has been accustomed to gentle living and refinement, should lead the monotonous, solitary life which he pictures it to be. He sees her, in imagination, constantly weeding and digging amongst plants, without leisure during the day for any of the relaxation to be found in mental employment or development, and returning home at night physically exhausted. Her mother thinks that rough exposure to all weathers will play havoc with a good complexion; visions of a brown sunburnt face, or a wrinkled parchment one, knotted fingers, stiff joints, uneven shoulders, rise up to alarm her. Many are the prophetic croaks that the young girl hears about rheumatism and age before its time, or misgivings as to the results of digging and trenching and the bad effect they may have on back and hip muscles. I know one young woman who was so frightened lest she should develop a huge hump on her back from stooping, like the old road-mender whom she met daily, that she always laid down quite flat on her bed, during rest hours, to counteract any harm that might be likely to come to her.