314 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
seventy. Of those who complete their training, about eighty 
per cent, keep up their gardening, and of these about forty 
become private or jobbing gardeners, about ten take to 
market-gardening, about ten become teachers or lecturers, 
and about twenty garden in their own homes, or otherwise 
lead open-air lives. 1 Other teaching centres have since been 
opened, and the number of women who take up gardening as 
a profession is on the increase. The movement is not confined 
to this country, but there are women’s horticultural colleges 
both in Europe and America. 2 The very idea of a lady being 
employed as a head-gardener, with men and boys working under 
her, was so astonishing that the suggestion naturally met 
with much opposition, but the able way in which ladies have 
discharged the multitudinous duties of such a position is 
already disarming criticism. 
Another new departure has been the introduction of “ Nature 
Study ” into the school curriculum. Children of the poor and 
rich alike are taught to understand some of the elementary 
facts connected with plant life, and not unfrequently to the 
theoretical is added a practical lesson in a garden attached to 
the school. The movement began with the idea that if a more 
intelligent appreciation of Nature was impressed on country 
children, they might be less reluctant to quit the rural districts 
and crowd into the towns. It is now being worked inversely 
also. Town children are taught about the country, and even 
in such populous districts asY Stepney or Ratcliffe Highway 
small children dig their plots of ground and plant and water 
and weed under the auspices of the Borough Council. All this 
tends to diffuse the love of flowers and gardening. The interest 
that has been awakened through the beauty of the parks is also 
far-reaching. Shows of chrysanthemums, a smoke-resisting 
flower, and widely cultivated in the poorer districts of towns, 
are arranged in many of the London parks, Victoria, Finsbury, 
1 In 1908, 10 Swanley students obtained posts as teachers or lecturers 
or were put in charge of school gardens; 12 became head-gardeners ; 
10 singlehanded or under-gardeners; 3 market-gardeners ; 7 companion- 
gardeners or for temporary or jobbing work; 2 were working in 
their own gardens. 
2 See the book on the subject by the Hon. Frances Wolseley, 1908. 
