Читать книгу Writing the Garden - Elizabeth Barlow Rogers - Страница 9

Half a century later, as Victorian attitudes toward woman’s place were beginning to relax, Frances Garnet, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley (1872–1936), could go one step further than Jane Loudon in terms of encouraging women to become gardeners. In 1902 she founded the College for Lady Gardeners in Glynde, Sussex, a school to educate female students to do the same kind of horticultural labor—digging beds, preparing the soil, planting, weeding, watering, harvesting—that was the traditional domain of men. In opening the door of the previously all-male world of horticultural employment to women, she was well ahead of her time. (It was not until 1932 when Beatrix Havergal started the Waterperry School of Horticulture that a handful of women followed the founder in achieving recognition by the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society.)

When Wolseley wrote In a College Garden (1916), the world around her was rapidly changing. World War I had brought to a close the period when houseguests strolled along gravel paths set between wide planting beds bordered by clipped hedges and tea was carried by servants across verdant lawns to people lounging in wicker chairs in the shade of ancient trees. Sounding very much like the headmistress she had been before turning the operation of her college over to a former student who ran it according to the strict principles she had established, she reflected on her creation of “a garden complete enough to afford ample preparation to those women who wish to make a livelihood by gardening.”

Like Mrs. Jane Loudon, Viscountess Wolseley felt it necessary to attire the female gardener “in the way of dress which is neat and yet essentially becoming and feminine.” She believed that the student uniform should be simple, practical, and tidy, describing it thus:

It consists of coat and skirt, khaki in colour, because the earth here, having so much lime in it, is light-coloured, and therefore does not show upon drab-coloured cloth. Over this when busy [the students] wear a Hessian canvas apron containing roomy pockets for knife, raffia, tarred twine, and many other requisites that a gardener has constant need of. The skirts are what are called ‘Aviation’ ones, and are cut so that in windy weather, although they are short, they always cling neatly to the figure. Brown boots and leggings are below, and students are thus able to walk in and out of rows of cabbages or other vegetables and plants on a rainy day without having that heavy, wet, and tiring drag which is the drawback of an ordinary skirt. . . . A white shirt and brown felt soft-rimmed hat complete the uniform, so that only touches of colour come from the hat and silk sailor tie, and both these are red, white, and blue, which are the colours of the College.

Portrait of Viscountess Wolseley. In a College Garden by Viscountess Wolseley, 1916.

In a College Garden can be considered a professional memoir, whereas Wolseley’s Gardens: Their Form and Design (1919) is aimed at advising a new generation of small-property owners on the art of garden making. Covering all manner of subjects—entrances, formal flower beds, garden ornament, hedge-enclosed garden rooms, kitchen gardens, rock gardens, topiary, treillage—it is a clear expression of the Arts and Crafts style of garden design, a blending of architectural form, historical tradition, and sophisticated floriculture.