526 COTTAGE GARDENS ASSOCIATION. 



sitting at his work, but to the ordinary labourer who is 

 standing or walking as well as working all day it is 

 laborious and distasteful, and it involves a serious loss of 

 time to both. 



Where towns are large, and land in their immediate 

 vicinity is usually dear, a cheap railway fare to some 

 appropriate spot would be a boon, and is probably one 

 which railway companies might be disposed to grant. Nor 

 am I sure that railway companies might not be disposed 

 otherwise to aid the association. The unoccupied land 

 adjoining many railway stations is wisely allowed to be 

 cultivated by their employes, and they have other unused 

 spaces which might be available for cottage gardening^ 

 due provision being made for the safety of their traffic. 



Land taken for cottage gardens should be free from 

 the proximity of large trees, although a certain amount of 

 shelter if without shade and root intrusion is usually an 

 advantage. If water is come-at-able so much the better, 

 as crops are often starved and sometimes lost for want of 

 water in dry weather. 



As to the QUALITY OF THE LAND, the richer the 

 better. It certainly should not be of that poor material 

 known as a hungry soil. If not rich, it should at least be 

 a soil that will answer to the application of manure at the 

 hands of those who may choose to apply it. Poorness of 

 soil is, however, of least importance in the vicinity of large 

 towns, as manure there is usually cheap, and sometimes of 

 no money value whatever. Land taken for cottage 

 gardens should not be of a character that becomes too hard 

 at times to be worked by manual labour ; hence strong 

 clays are objectionable ; on the other hand, soils too loose 

 and porous at the surface, or so near to sand or gravel that 

 rain passes rapidly through them, are equally objection- 

 able ; what is commonly understood as a medium loam is 

 the best of all soils for cottage gardens. It should, if 

 possible, be a soil that will work at all times. The 

 cottager, whose time is not often at his own disposal, 



