Gardening for women

by Viscountess Frances Garnet Wolseley

It is most natural that many should be alarmed and have a strong disinclination to advise gardening as a healthy profession. I cannot help thinking that they may alter their views when they realise fully that it is not hard manual work that is needed of women in this profession. They are not meant to do spade-work like the ordinary labouring man; we have plenty of fine, strong hulking men who do this, but we do need more directing heads to plan out work and guide others. This is what lady gardeners are to do. It has become evident, in recent years, that women have determined to shake themselves free from former occupations and interests. They intend to apply their energy in new directions. Frequently, it must be admitted by all, they are successful. Practical experience shows us that women can acquit themselves with honour and success in games and in the pursuit of sports, which formerly were reserved only for men. Hunting, shooting, golf, cricket, swimming, hockey, climbing and walking are acknowledged to be fields of activity in which women may safely indulge. In Jane Austen’s day such pursuits were considered not only dangerous to health, but likely to produce awkwardness of figure and ungainliness of movement. Physical activity was supposed to unfit young girls for society. Things are changed since then, and although many of us see with regret some loss of feminine softness and charm in occasional specimens of the new woman, we cannot put all the evils to the profession of gardening. There must always, I suppose, be eccentric individuals who exaggerate their peculiarities, but these exist in all professions, and classes.

Much attention is now paid to the physical development of girls and young women in our schools, and we cannot fail to see the immense advantage gained by comparison through this over the results of early Victorian education. We have all, it is to be hoped, learnt that open air life is no longer a privileged form of existence suited only to men. We know that it is, when carried out on sensible lines of moderation, immensely helpful to women. The medical world has lately been awakened to the importance of improving the physique of our young people. Both Sir Lauder Brunton and Sir John Cockburn (chairman of the Swanley Horticultural College for Women) have impressed this fact openly upon the world. We see daily before us leisured women who from lack of pleasant, wholesome interests and bodily exercise, without scope for reasonable aspirations, have become anæmic parodies of the sex. The insidious malady which dogs the steps of a nation’s progress towards highly cultured, unlimited leisure and freedom, masquerades under the old-fashioned term “ennui” or the new-fangled names of nervous exhaustion, break-down, overwork (!), hysteria, decadence.

I believe I am justified in saying that medical men, who can appreciate the often aimless, humdrum existence of many women of the wealthier classes and the debility of those in our large towns, find in gardening a good agent for the removal of such evils. Possibly a year spent in rising early, out in sun and rain, with simple food, pure interests, physical exercise, does more for some than many medicine bottles, rest cures, Swedish movements, and other modern remedies. The same may be said for those who are mentally troubled—insane, that is, in a legal sense. The managers of our asylums are appreciating more each year the benefits to be derived by occupations. In this instance such interests act not only upon the individual, but also upon the health of a nation.

No one who has given the least attention to the advances made in the modern treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis can fail to recognise that open-air treatment has proved to be of immense value to sufferers from consumption, and that by its means cure, in the real sense of the term, may be established. It is a matter of national gratification that this sensible mode of cure should have been initiated in this country, by Bodington and MacCormac, years before it was adopted elsewhere. It is an instance of our national slowness to do what is obviously right, that our Continental neighbours have, till recent years, outstripped us in the perfection of these methods of cure. Our own pioneers, too, have been subjected to ridicule and temporary obloquy. We now know that though outdoor life at high altitudes is especially successful in the treatment of tuberculosis, high altitude is not a necessity. A cure can be effected in the lower altitudes of our own country, so long as the principle is maintained of a constantly “open window.”

Quite recently practical proof has been brought forward by Dr. M. S. Paterson, of the Brompton Hospital Sanatorium at Frimley, which shows that even the success of the Continental patterns of sanatoria can be greatly enhanced by allowing the sufferers to work in the gardens. By giving them this healthy employment they harden themselves, and instead of being confirmed idlers, they leave the institution vigorous in muscle, as well as healed of their lung trouble. The patients, men and women, are encouraged to execute all the lighter duties of gardeners, and the more robust of the men are allowed to excavate and trench ground. All minor ailments, such as nasal catarrh, or “common cold,” bronchitis, sore throat, headaches and muscular rheumatism, are remediable by means of a life regulated in accordance with the principle of the “open window.” It can hardly be doubted, therefore, that if those exercises which take the form of outdoor games are in part replaced by the more primitive and infinitely more profitable ones of gardening and botanical study, the same excellent effects will be realised.

Those who advocate gardening for women do not seek to deprive them of intellectual pursuits through a constant devotion to physical effort. They wish to secure to them the certain assurance of a healthy physical state by moderate devotion to a refined and pleasant occupation. Direct experience is fortunately available to carry conviction on this point to those who consider it with proper calmness and reasonableness. Healthy women who have essayed the experiment of gardening have no sort of doubt as to the beneficial results to be derived from it. Again and again it has been found, not only by devotees themselves, but by others whose training as medical men and women has enabled them to detect any undesirable results, that gardening is little short of an unmixed blessing. One distinguished medical authority who has made the agricultural education of women a life-long study, says that the young women who have taken up gardening as a profession are in consequence “as lithe as panthers and of splendid physique.”

Not only, therefore, does such a life increase muscular development and consequently help circulatory, respiratory, digestive and other normal processes, but it helps to make a healthy mind. If a serious bit of thinking has to be done, a piece of trenching or some purely mechanical exercise will greatly assist the brain. To quote a passage upon digging from Mr. Halsham’s admirable book, “Every Man His Own Gardener,” “You will find that the mind is not merely left free for all the valuable reflections which may occur to it, but that the attention necessary for the job takes up and keeps employed and quiet some subordinate activities of the understanding which in times of repose are often decidedly troublesome.”

I should like to quote a passage, too, from Ruskin’s “Sesame and Lilies,” which seems to me very applicable to the case in point. In showing us the power of woman, he says: “The first of our duties to her—no thoughtful persons now doubt this—is to secure for her such physical training and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect her beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty being unattainable without splendour of activity and of delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its power, it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light too far; only remember that all physical freedom is vain to produce beauty without a corresponding freedom of heart.” Then follows the quotation which we all know so well, and which shows us the “vital feeling of delight” which true love of nature, and all the lovely things in nature, give us—“Thus, then, you have first to mould her physical frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural taste of love.”

I ask what can more readily lead to the fulfilment of this ideal than a life of quiet, peaceful interests in the company of the pure and lovable companionship of flowers? What can bring healthier happiness than watching for those harbingers of the new flower year, the little green heads of Winter Aconite that come pushing so determinedly through the brown earth, and are followed later by little golden heads of flower? What can give greater intellectual and artistic pleasure and scope for imagination than planning the herbaceous border which is to be bright with colour all the year? Careful study and much reading are needed, but happy evenings fly speedily by, as you gaze into the fire and plan a lovely summer dream garden. Then, too, there is the interest of arranging work for others, marshalling the men at your command and apportioning the work to their different characters and temperaments. It is indeed no monotonous, unintellectual life.

A report has been received from one of our modern university colleges where lectures are provided upon various subjects. It tells us that women students are occasionally absent owing to indisposition from lectures and demonstrations upon history and classics, but that they attend with regularity those upon gardening. This is a flattering statement as regards the interest of horticulture.