NEW WORK FOR LADIES.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 114, 10 November 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEW WORK FOR LADIES.

The lady market gardener may shortly have a rival (soys the London Daily Mail) in a sweeter and more attractive branch of agriculture. People who ought to know say that there is a great opening for Jady "scent- farmers" and growers of sweet herbs. The- idea should be essentially pleasing to the feminine mind ; the very name of "scent farmer I .' . conjures tip ,a dream of fragrant perfumej and certainly the cult of the sweet lavender and the tending of the modest rosemary should be more attractive than cutting cabbages and digging up potatoes. All that is wanted is pluck and a small amount of capital. .Most modern women possess the former, and the latter is not impossible to raise. Lind, of course, ia. the principal difficulty, as rents are high within striking distance .of London. For the raising of lavender the soil ( .should be a nice, deep sandy lotim, pre.ferably over-lying chalk. Forty pounds is the sum required to lay out, an acre and prepare the young plants. The return the first year is* not great, but an acre of lavender ia good condition will yield £50 in a season. , English lavender is the sweetest in the world,~and the demand for it is great. It is a hardy •plant, and needs but little cultivation. There is a typical scent farm at Wallington, near Croydon, and, according to the Lady's Pictorial, there is no question of ' its financial success. For miles round the Crystal Palace to the Epsom Downs are fields of blue-purple lavender. The growirig of rosemdry and the" more plebeian peppermint is, too, an occupation with-vnoDSy iin it. When the prVjecfc of lady scent farmers was placed before the manager of 'the Erasmio Company by a Daily* Mail representative the other day, he was pleased with it. "Very nice work for gentlewomen," said he, "and . there's loney in it if only the mpre delicate perfumes, such as violet and lily-of-the-valley, are left alone."

Of all the other perfumers and herbalists consulted on the subject, Messrs.' Rimmel's manager was alone unsympathetic. "A beautiful dream," he said, "ending in the Bankruptcy Cnuvl-. " . '