128 WORK UNDER GLASS 



Then, getting ready for the vegetable customers, 

 are boxes full of mint, whilst recently-sown onions 

 and leeks have still brown paper spread over them 

 to deaden any too speedy glare of light. Tomatoes 

 also are rapidly growing foliage. As visitors go 

 round these two houses, I sometimes detect a look 

 of hesitation on their faces, a passing doubt as to 

 whether the pathway is wide enough to allow them 

 to walk without brushing plants off the corrugated 

 sheets that form the temporary staging. Only a 

 path eighteen inches wide has been allowed in 

 places, because it is so important to house all the 

 plants that we possibly can accommodate. The 

 students, being young and slim, find the path 

 sufficiently wide for utilitarian purposes, and, as 

 this alone is considered, honoured guests must take 

 their chance. 



Later in the year, when arums have played their 

 part and are out-of-doors, lying resting on their 

 sides, the staging in the market-houses is discarded. 

 Small pebbles that the pots stood on are put into 

 bags to be kept until they are wanted again, the 

 corrugated sheets are placed outside, and then, 

 within the houses, market-beds are deeply dug for 

 sweet-peas, tomatoes, chrysanthemums, or what- 

 ever the crops may be. 



When I am shown perhaps ten or twenty large 

 glasshouses in some private garden, I sometimes 

 feel a pang of regret that so much labour, so much 

 money is expended without giving either much 

 pleasure or assistance to any one. A market-house 

 is what I should like to see in every private garden, 

 and probably as time goes on and each year we learn 



