WOMEN GARDENERS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 49, 21 November 1907, Page 3

WOMEN GARDENERS.

Tho " Ladies' Field" has an interesting description of a Women's Agricultural Club in Worcestershire, occupying a fine old Elizabethan manor house, over which is inscribed the date 1585. The club is for both resident'ial and visiting members, and strictly horticultural or agricultural tastes are not essential to membership, though the school of gardening, which is in connection with it, soon tempts members to take an actual interest in Horticulture. Some members join the club with tho express intontioiv of going in for a short course of somo special branch of flower or fruit growing. For instnace, one will take rose growing, another carnation layering, another mushroom production, another peach growing, and another will como for hints on fruit pruning. In these days women find that they can make a more reliable income by becoming specialists in some particular branch of work, and this equally applies to gardening as well as to other occupations. Another class of member is the girl who is about to marry a man with a big estate, and who desires sufficient general knowledge of gardening to give lier confidonco in directing her employees to lay out her garden according to her own taste. In winter there is that very profitable (in England) branch of work called French gardening—that is, the growing of earl.y vegetables and salads in frames, for which extortionate prices are obtainable. It has been estimated that a dish of early green peas costs in London about Bs. a spoonful, so itseems that such industries pay well.