MORE THEN HOBBY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 229, 28 September 1938, Page 9

MORE THEN HOBBY.

MARKET GARDENING.

AIRMAN-RIDER'S WORK.

GAVE UP BANK CAREER.

(Special.—By Air Mail.)

LONDON", Sept. 5. Every morning the Man Who Nearly Won the Grand National—the Hon. Anthony Mildmay, 29-year-old son »t»H heir of Lord Mildmay of Klete—picks up a hoe and works side by side with labourers at his market garden nurseries on the 2000-acres estate at Shoreham, Kent, which father has mads over to him. Five years ago this 6ft. 3Jin. airmanrider was making a career for himself in a bank. Then, because he "wanted to live in Kent and wanted to develop the estate." he threw it up for a healthy open-air life and went to the Golden Green Nurseries at Tonbridge. There he studied market gardening I under Frank Harold Baxter. At the end of a year he left to develop a sevenacre portion of his father's estate which was just unused grassland. With him went Baxter. Now they are controlling a flourishing market gardening business which agricultural experts regard as a model.^ Mr. Mildmay said: "This is very much more than just a hobby. "I plan to develop much more but I am determined to go slowly and surely. for I see no reason why farming should not pay." Close to the nurseries is a roadside fruit stall, where, during the summer the takings average £100 a week. So successful h«ve they lieen that Mr. Mildmay is branching out and har- taken over the farm of one of his father's tenants for dairy farming. "We produce here every year about ten tons of tomatoes, many thousands of lettuce*;. 2- r >.ooo chrysanthemums large quantities of other vegetables a '' flowers." Mr. Baxter said, i, "We have five men and two g» I working hero permanently.