CHAPTER IITHE TRAINING REQUIRED
There are various ways of obtaining the necessary training to be a lady gardener. Both at home and abroad numerous colleges and schools exist where young women are well instructed in all branches of Horticulture. A college course is necessary, but if a girl is not more than twenty years of age (and it is advisable that she should not be much younger when she commences her training) it will help her to be apprenticed for a year or two first in a private garden. Should she prefer, it will be better still to spend two years at a small school where instruction is more individual and personal than in a large college. Here the students are few in number, and carefully selected, and it is possible to learn in the same way that the working man learned, when he began as a garden boy. The pupil will be ordered to do menial jobs, such as turning manure, wheeling refuse, sweeping leaves, or mowing a lawn. This comparative drudgery mustbe gone through in order to understand how to direct others. Even wheeling a barrow full of soil and washing out pots is interesting if the heart be in the profession and there is the wish to succeed.
In a private garden or small school, too, it will be possible to follow the ultimate use the pots are put to, after they are washed, and the reason for each operation will be more easily made apparent than is the case in a large college, where lectures and theoretical classes are sometimes put before practice. When there is a large number of students, too, it is impossible that all should take part in each operation. Personal interest in the garden is apt to be lost sight of, and teaching becomes a “demonstration,” where the expert does the work, and the students look on. They cannot thus learn in the only thorough way, by working themselves.
In a college course, hours are often suited to the requirements of expert lecturers, and students are apt to ignore the fixed hours of work observed in a private garden. I have known students to whom it never occurred that it might not be agreeable to the family to hear the sound of raking on a gravel path outside the breakfast room, and who were unconscious of its being an offence against garden etiquette for them to shout remarks tofellow students across the flower beds. Then, too, fixed school holidays, which are necessary in large communities, sometimes interfere with the possibility of seeing certain operations performed.
I therefore strongly advocate a course of manual work, like that of the garden boy, as an introduction to more serious training. This routine work will enable the pupil to understand college lectures, when the time comes to attend them. Theoretic teaching can then be applied to the treatment of soil and plants.
Not possessed of the strength and facility for manual work of a man, the girl student must make up for this deficiency by intelligent reasoning. She should follow closely in the footsteps of science, and have a reason for each operation. What is heard in the chemistry laboratory has to be applied in practice in the garden. When the dismal herbaceous border, upon which so much money has been spent, is seen, the cause of failure will be known. After all the talk, trouble and expense, why does it lack colour? Surely some ingredient in the soil is missing—dress it with lime, put more manure or leaf mould, as the case may be.
I believe that some people imagine that a lady gardener is intended always to remain at work amongst the swept-up leaves and gardenrefuse! But if her intelligence is not sufficient to make her soar speedily beyond the powers of a £1 a week man gardener, she had better take up other work, for she certainly cannot compete with him in physical strength.
A course of study for two or three years, such as I have described, is certainly not too lengthy. Each plant, shrub, tree, goes through the same phases once in each year. Although these processes are repeated year after year, they may be subjected to variations of weather and temperature. Different treatment is probably necessary each year. Time only can show this. Books teach much and so also do lectures, but only when supplemented by practical experience, will they make a competent gardener.
The intending girl-gardener should make up her mind from the beginning that she must spend money on a three years’ course of training. It should be taken in the way that best suits the individual case; there need never be regret for the money spent upon it. It is only by skill and knowledge that employment will eventually be secured.
Therefore the beginner should do some practical work in a garden, and cram botany, chemistry, and physics into her head. When she has a free day, or if other opportunity occurs, visitsshould be made to other gardens. Then it will be possible to learn the names and habits of new plants, and, by studying a different treatment of them, the powers of observation will be increased.
After college training an effort should be made to get a subordinate paid post, for whatever branch of Horticulture it is decided to specialise in. No attempt should be made to superintend a large garden until, as they say of children, the student has learned “to feel her feet.”
I propose to give a short account of the different branches available from which a selection can be made. It will be convenient to divide them into two classes:—
A. Which require training and education only:—I.—Landscape Gardening.II.—Jobbing Gardening.III.—Head gardener in a private garden.B. Which requires capital as well as training and education:—Market Gardening.
A. Which require training and education only:—
I.—Landscape Gardening.II.—Jobbing Gardening.III.—Head gardener in a private garden.
I.—Landscape Gardening.
II.—Jobbing Gardening.
III.—Head gardener in a private garden.
B. Which requires capital as well as training and education:—
Market Gardening.
Market Gardening.