Commercial Gardens
Accounts have reached me lately of the almost startling success of
country-house gardeners who have been persuaded almost of necessity —to put their walls and beds to commercial uses. In some places neigh- bouring farmers have been led by such examples to allot more fields to horticulture, including both flowers and vegetables. I know of striking examples, both of special bargains and more general success, from shires as far apart as Cornwall and Cumberland, and from the Eastern Midlands._ Since even the expert farmers are often rather ignorant of horticulture, there is even demand for women gardeners who have been specialty trained. A notable transition in agriculture—not to wider fields and more machines, but to the more intensive forms of petité culture—seems to be in process.. One reason, doubtless is the shift to a more vegetarian diet. People begin to realise that large quantities of beef--described by who will be ninety next month, as " scorched corpse "—are- not essential to- health and male strength. In relation to a starving world, it is dOubtless _unfortunate that the flower-growers .(especially of Scabiousei)- earn bigger profiti than the vegetable-growers. Aesthetics arc too, strong, for dietetics,,as a touring French farmer once said to me: " Everything in Eiigland is for beauty," a pleasing tribute, except to the hungry.
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