Women and Gardening

Feilding Star, Volume X, Issue 123, 23 April 1889, Page 3

Women and Gardening

In the course of his article in the in Neteenth Century on " The Fruitgrowing Revival," Mr Morgan (the editor of the Horticultural Times) makes the following remarks on fruitgrowing as a uew field for women's industry: — " A woman is at home in a garden. The physical work connected with dressmaking, telegraphy, typewriting, and all the other departments of labour open to women is much heavier than. is required for the bulk of horticultural operations. In growing flowers, for example, the minute care anil attention necessary aie by no means unfitted for women, while in fruitgrowing the same lenark applies to v great extent. The healthfulness of horticultural occupations is well known, and even working in hot houses does not, with ordinary care, perceptibly affect gardeners, who are notoriously ionglived men. There is absolutely no reason why the fruitgrowing extension movement should not open up an avenue of employment for women and, it is significant that among the applications for ad uission to the Horticultural College at Swanley were several ladies. In Ainei ica tberj are, according to the statement of a Chicago florists' paper, over 62,---000 women eu gaged in the cultivation of fruit, while some of the most successful orchardists of California are of the same sex. From my own observations I find that women are more Hucee.-sfiil in fruitgrowing than men; they have more of the ''divine quality of patience" as Jeremy Taylor puts it. The most successful fruit- giower I urn acquainted with is the wife of a friend ; while yet again in bottling aud preserving surplus fruit-- ai important branch of pr -fitat>le horticulture — women are much more expert than our own sex. There is a great opening for the utilisation of female labour in the art that " doth mend Nature,' and I trust that we shall soon see a traiuing class in horticulture attached to South Kensington and other educational centres."