Violet’s Journal
S UNDAY , 4 TH S EPTEMBER , 1927
My first week as a student of the Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women has passed in a blur and it’s a relief to be able to sit down for a few minutes at last and write up my impressions. So much for my resolution to keep this journal on a daily basis! It’s been all I can do at the end of every day to drag myself upstairs to my room and collapse into bed. Marjorie is the same. We scarcely exchange a word before falling into the deepest of sleeps, and then my dreams are filled with Miss Morison’s lectures on the care of glasshouses and the best ways to propagate herbaceous perennials.
Even though today is Sunday, I’ve come to the Royal Botanic Garden to explore the glasshouses, which are on a far grander scale and filled with infinitely more exotic specimens than those at the gardening school. I’m writing this sitting on a bench in a corner of the Tropical Palm House, beneath the fronds of a tall Bermuda palmetto. Outside, beyond the white ironwork and towering panes of glass, a biting autumn wind is tousling the heads of the trees, turning the maples scarlet and making the sweet-chestnut leaves tumble. But in here the air is more pleasantly balmy than the warmest of summer days back home on the shores of Loch Ewe (and with the added bonus of being without the swarms of midges).
A young man was sitting on this bench. I nodded to him as I sat down and he took off his cap and wrung it in his hands, betraying his discomfort at my presence. His hair was the reddish brown of a conker and there was grime beneath his fingernails, although the skin surrounding them was clean. His hands had the chapped appearance of having been well scrubbed with soap and water – a condition with which I am rapidly becoming all too familiar myself.
I took out my sketchbook and began to draw the palmetto with its clusters of ripening berries. When I paused to remove my coat – the heat of the glasshouse beginning to make my skin prickle – from the corner of my eye I caught the young man looking at my efforts. I turned to face him and held out the sketch. He blushed as pink as a beetroot. I couldn’t help noticing the warmth in his hazel eyes when he finally plucked up the courage to meet my amused gaze.
‘You have an interest in plants?’ he asked. He couldn’t disguise the surprise in his voice.
I suspect I couldn’t keep the pride out of my own voice as I replied, ‘I’m a student at the School of Gardening for Women.’
Instantly, his demeanour changed and the air around us seemed to cool a few degrees along with his expression, despite the muggy warmth of the glasshouse. I supposed he must be one of those people who disapprove of young ladies dirtying their hands, or perhaps he agreed with those who say we take jobs from young men who need them and would be better off staying in the kitchen where we belong.
‘You draw well enough,’ he said. I couldn’t place his accent precisely, although his words had the brusque edges of the Scottish east coast about them.
‘It’s most kind of you to say so,’ I said. I nodded towards the palmetto. ‘That particular specimen is the oldest one here. It was moved to this location from the old botanic garden on Leith Walk nearly a hundred years ago.’
I’d gleaned this fact from one of Miss Morison’s lectures in the preceding week, but rather than receiving it with polite interest, the young man abruptly got to his feet. He settled his cap back on his head and bid me a gruff ‘Goodbye’, before disappearing into the undergrowth of the tropical forest surrounding us. I heard the door bang shut behind him as he left and caught a glimpse of him hurrying along the path, pulling the edges of his jacket together and stooping slightly against the buffeting of the wind.
I shook my head at his incivility and finished my sketch, then settled down to writing up this journal. The first week of the course has passed in a blur of new names and faces, and my mind is full to bursting with Latin botanical nomenclature as well as the challenges posed by lectures in bookkeeping and chemistry. We have to attend evening classes in those subjects at the College of Agriculture, requiring a lengthy tram ride into George Square at the end of an already long day’s toil.
Miss Morison insists upon her students learning all aspects of horticulture and takes a most pragmatic approach. She has told us of her own career, which began when she became one of the first practitioner gardeners at these very same botanic gardens at the turn of the century. It was the prejudice she encountered here that prompted her and her colleague, Miss Barker (sadly no longer with us), to start the Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women. ‘It is up to you to prove our male counterparts wrong in their assertions that you lassies are welcome to come and play in the garden, but the “tall and braw laddies” – as they like to call themselves – will pity your struggles with the spade,’ she told us on our first day. ‘We are no fair-weather gardeners at this school, and we have no use for dilettantes and dabblers here. You will dig and plough and plant and hoe, just as the men do, even though you do so in skirts. We have already proven ourselves their equals, joining our suffragist sisters on the march to winning the vote so very recently. It is up to you to do justice to the women who have gone before you, to prove yourselves worthy of their efforts and to keep opening new doors for those who come after you.’
Next week we begin the practical classes too at Corstorphine. I look forward to the introduction to ploughing – having already made the acquaintance of the School of Gardening’s resident plough horse, a stocky grey named Bessie – as well as getting to grips with the market garden, where the season’s fruit and vegetables are ready for harvesting.
Manuring is on the syllabus as well, though I reserve judgement on just how exciting that particular topic will be.