Several estates and market gardens take women as pupils, but the training is only practical. Very few women earn an independent living as gardeners; market gardening is usually considered rather hard work for women, and, besides, requires capital, and no woman has hitherto obtained a superior situation in any of the larger gardens, public or private. When they obtain a post they are usually paid less than the men for the same work.
Upon the whole, gardening in Denmark does not seem at present to be a very recommendable career for women who have to earn their living by it. On the other hand, many women now study it for use in their own homes. Thus there are State-aided courses for cottagers’ wives and daughters both at Kjarhave and at a few other schools. Teachers go through a course of gardening in order to be able to teach in the school gardens.
GERMANY
I am permitted to publish the following extracts, and they have been kindly put into English for me by a friend. They give an interesting description of the commencement of a school which is now one of the most famous in Germany. I am told, upon good authority, that posts for lady gardeners are easily obtained; in fact, that the demand is greater than the supply. The salaries vary from 400 marks to 2,000 marks and free living. The posts are chiefly in private gardens, sanatoria, and house-keeping schools.
DR. ELVIRA CASTNER’S SCHOOL OF POMOLOGY AND HORTICULTURE, MARIENFELDE
By Marie C. Vorwerk
In 1877 a German lady-student was living in the American seaport of Baltimore. She loved in her leisure hours to seek the harbour and watch the ships come and go. One day in autumn she saw with astonishment, from a train of perhaps fifteen to twenty coaches, an immense quantity of small square boxes unloaded and brought to a ship. On inquiry as to their contents, where they came from, and whither bound, she was told they were apples from California, destined for Germany, and that this fruit was sent every year in increasing numbers to Germany and other European countries.
STUDENTS AT THE SCHOOL OF POMOLOGY AND HORTICULTURE MARIENFELDE, NEAR BERLIN.