HONOUR TO WOMAN HORTICULTURIST

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 263, 2 August 1941, Page 6

HONOUR TO WOMAN HORTICULTURIST

Commercial Gardeners’ Conference

Special honour to a woman horticulturist was done by the Dominion Council of Commercial Gardeners when, at its invitation, Mrs. Knox Gilmer. opened its annual conference in Wellington. Mrs. Gilmer said she felt that the request to her to open the conference was an honour to women who were doing their best for the war effort. The president, Mr. B. V. Cooksley, introducing Mrs. Gilmer, said she was a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society of England, an executive member of the Royal Institute oi Horticulture, N.Z., president of the Wellington Horticultural Society, and on the Dominion and Wellington executives of the women's War Service Auxiliary. Opening the conference Mrs. Gilmer eaid she came as no stranger, but as a lifetime horticulturist. Her father, the late Rt. Hon. R. J. Seddon, had also been a keen gardener and grower or tomatoes at their home on the west Coast, South Island She still bad the letters he wrote her when absent in Meiiington on Parliamentary duties, instructing her what to do in the garden and glasshouse. Reviewing the possibilities of women s labour in primary production. Mrs. Gilmer stressed her belief in the prineip.e of equal pay for equal work. It wns not intended that women should replace men indefinitely, but that during the absence of male labour overseas, they should fill the gaps and maintain production. She appealed to market gardeners to consider growing new varieties ot vegetab'es to give the public a change. The women who prepared the household meals got a little tired of Having the same vegetables. The growing of new varieties was extensively practised in the United States and England.