Market Gardening.
CHAPTER III
LANDSCAPE GARDENING
This wide field of study is one which women are well suited to, provided they have brains and good taste. In order to be really successful, imagination is required, as well as other qualities that are needed by an ordinary head gardener. No amount of study or training can adapt an inartistic woman to this profession, but given artistic feeling, the power of conveying her ideas to her employers and to those working for her, great possibilities are within reach. Many fail, perhaps, by a headstrong desire to carry out their own plans; they do not regard sufficiently the views and wishes of those for whom they work. A considerable amount of tact is necessary, in order to obtain the confidence of the owner of the garden. Having ascertained his requirements, and made these the centre of the scheme, the woman-gardener’s imagination should help to fill in all details.
MODEL BY MISS A. C. SEWELL OF A CHILDREN’S GARDEN, EXHIBITED AT THE WHITECHAPEL COUNTRY IN TOWN EXHIBITION.
ILLUSTRATION OF WHAT CAN BE SHOWN OF A GARDEN BY MEANS OF A MODEL.
Photograph by Clarke and Hyde.
I assume that the candidate for such a position has had a good general education, and is well grounded in botany and botanical geography. It is necessary that she should be able to draw, and a knowledge of simple plane geometry and geometrical drawing is essential. She must be able to make a sketch plan showing the proposed alterations with their measurements. In some cases, where the employer is not himself a draughtsman or does not read a ground plan easily, the lady gardener may find it useful to have recourse to a different system for conveying her meaning to him.
I have seen a rough model made in cardboard to represent the house, and real soil used to surround it, with little twigs placed here and there in imitation of trees or hedges. This is a somewhat childish means of experimenting upon future alterations, but in cases where the owner is undecided or unable completely to grasp the effect which will be attained by moving soil, or planting trees, the model may be exceedingly useful. The soil can be so easily shifted from side to side with the hands, a tree planted here, a dividing hedge placed there, until the desired effect is attained. Then, too, it may convey well to the contractor (who possibly undertakes the whole alteration) the exact amount of labour that he will have to expend.
Another way of conveying ideas for proposed alterations is by means of a “prophetic drawing.” That is to say, if a rose arbour is to be made, a sketch, with finished details of what it should look like two years hence, when the roses have climbed to the summit of the pergola, may influence the owner in his decision to put the matter in hand. It is important that all these methods of conveying intentions should be studied.