In order to encourage the opening of local drying centres to process the material in preparation for sending it to the pharmaceutical companies, the Vegetable Drugs Committee recommended that small loans be given to the WI County Herb Committees so that they could set up drying rooms in village halls and the like, and then recoup the cost of the loan by selling the dried material. Once dried, herbs were taken to the County Federation central collecting depots – where a trained person was needed to ensure that the drying had been done properly – whence they were mainly dispatched to Messrs Brome and Schimmer in Southwark. Brome and Schimmer paid for these culinary and medicinal herbs on a sliding rate according to their rarity and utility.
Each year, after consultation between the Vegetable Drugs Committee and the pharmaceutical companies, the list of genera required changed to some extent. Miss Elizabeth Hess, who sat on this committee for part of the war, recalled later that the government was very anxious that those people collecting poisonous plants should know exactly what they were doing.56 Children were not allowed to collect belladonna, for example. To try to limit the amount of misidentification of herbs, Kew also organised the distribution of forty sets of cigarette cards57 with colour illustrations of wild flowers; these were given to the volunteers from pharmacy colleges whose job it was to instruct WI members and other volunteers. There were short broadcast talks on the subject, as well as talks and demonstrations round the country by members of a panel of experts.
Miss Hess’s expertise as a trained horticulturist made her a very useful collector. In the spring of 1942 she was given the task of finding a ton of broom flowering tops. She knew that the native broom (Cytisus scoparius), which yields sparteine sulphate, grew in a particular ten-acre plantation near Brandon in Suffolk. She could not find any of the usual volunteers, so she made a personal approach to the senior pupils of the two Thetford grammar schools. Thirty teenagers agreed to give their time over the Easter weekend. They worked in teams, which became predictably competitive with each other, and in four days managed to pick and stack four tons of broom tops, earning themselves five shillings per hundredweight, or £20.58 Mr Allen of Stafford Allen, which processed the drugs, had written to the Acting Director59 at Kew in December 1941, saying that he did not have a great deal of faith in Boy Scouts and Women’s Institutes – in other words amateurs – as collectors. On this occasion, at least, he must have had to eat his words.60
A few potentially poisonous or unusual native plants – aconitum, belladonna, foxglove, henbane and thorn apple – could never be supplied in sufficient quantity by wild collection, so were specifically grown for pharmaceutical use in scientific institutions such as Kew and the John Innes Horticultural Institution, as well as in large private gardens like Exbury, which were overseen by expert owners and experienced gardeners.
The collection of herbs, both culinary and medicinal, continued throughout the war and just beyond, although the urgency diminished in the later years as foreign countries came back once more into Allied hands. Sir Arthur Hill had seriously overestimated the capacities of mainly amateur and untried volunteers, in particular to pick the right parts of the right plants, often in remote places that were difficult to get to, and to dry them efficiently in less than ideal circumstances. The sheer number of different plants required,61 some of them, like meadow saffron (Colchicum), quite local in their distribution, added to the collectors’ difficulties. Nevertheless, worthwhile work was done at a time of great need, and participation in such an obviously useful activity remained a source of pride to those involved; however young, they had contributed something valuable to the war effort, and they never forgot it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KEEPING ON KEEPING ON
THE TWO YEARS that followed VJ1 Day on 15 August 1945 were, in a number of significant ways, a dreadful time for Britons. True, victory meant peace at last after six weary years, but the demobilisation of the forces was a slow and piecemeal affair, and when they finally got home, service personnel found a very changed physical and economic landscape.
Britain’s blitzed towns and cities required a great deal of reconstruction. Three quarters of a million houses had been badly damaged or destroyed. Many historic buildings had also been reduced to rubble, or were finished off by demolition squads. Materials to repair blitzed dwellings or build new ones were in very short supply. Concrete bunkers, barbed-wire entanglements and forbidding notices disfigured the coastline, city parks and the countryside.
The civilian population was shabby, grey, thin and very tired. There was not much to cheer them up, since there was little to buy in the shops, even if they had money and coupons to spare. The abrupt end of Lend-Lease in August 1945 meant that factories were forced to produce goods for export rather than home consumption in order to generate foreign exchange and pay back the Americans.
There was also precious little for anyone to do in their leisure time and few places to go. Even the weather conspired against them, for January and February 1947 was the snowiest and coldest winter for many years. Matters were made worse because all fuels were severely rationed. People remember feeling everlastingly cold. Only the gradual implementation, between 1944 and 1948, of what came to be known as the Welfare State brightened the prospects for a population that had so enthusiastically embraced its foreshadowing, the Beveridge Report, in 1942.
To add to the communal misery, bread and potatoes were rationed for the first time in 1947. (How Lord Woolton must have disapproved.) Other food supplies were also tight, the shortages exacerbated by the need to try to provide help for shattered European countries. As a result, in August 1946, the Central Office of Information2 sent the BBC a memorandum, prompted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries’ ‘Dig for Victory – Over Want’ campaign, the name given to the post-war push to keep gardeners producing fresh vegetables and fruit.
According to the COI, the 1946/47 campaign would have two main objects:
(i) To ensure the continued cultivation of vegetable production on existing allotments and, so far as is practicable, to ensure that further allotments are taken up.
(ii) To secure, by more efficient production methods, an increased output from allotments and gardens, especially during the winter months.3
There was a world shortage of bread grains, so farmers had been asked to cultivate a further half a million acres for arable crops, both to provide bread flour and to feed livestock. These were acres which had, partly at least, grown vegetables during the war. So, just at the moment when kitchen gardeners thought they could lay down their hoes, they were told that the need was more urgent than ever.
The memorandum went on:
Since the end of hostilities the production of vegetables by private enterprise has declined and the proposed campaign is intended to re-awaken the public to the gravity of the food situation in relation to vegetables; to stimulate those who have continued to cultivate their allotments and gardens and to encourage those who have, with the conclusion of hostilities, devoted their energies to re-designing their gardens for the growth of flowers, etc., to renew their efforts in the cultivation of vegetables.4
This was probably a pious hope, particularly as the monthly magazine that the Ministry of Agriculture was proposing to issue in order to support the campaign would cost gardeners 6d, and had to be sent away for. The memorandum proposed ‘Dig for Victory – Over Want’ weeks, and announced that there would be film publicity as well as advertisements in newspapers. The BBC was asked to help with broadcasts. However, the anticipated cost of the enterprise was only £30,000, so it was plainly a much scaled-down affair. Apart from Fred Streeter mentioning the campaign once a month in his ‘Fruit and Vegetables’ wireless talk, the BBC does not seem to have been much inclined to promote the government’s efforts. It was hardly surprising. In the slang of the time, everyone was thoroughly ‘browned off’.
Despite that, the Defence Regulations that empowered local authorities to let land for allotments, together with th
e suspension of restrictions on keeping pigs, hens and rabbits, survived the expiry of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Acts in February 1946. Indeed, they were not allowed to lapse until 1951 because of the pressing need to maintain food production at as high a level as possible.
The figure of three million allotments that Robert Hudson had so optimistically envisaged early in the war had never been anything like achieved. Indeed, it was never much more than half that number, and even that began to decline as peace beckoned, despite the pious intentions of 96 per cent of allotmenteers and 86 per cent of private gardeners who responded to an MAF survey in 19425 to continue food production after the war.
Approximately half a million allotments had disappeared or ceased to be cultivated by 1947. This was mainly due to the rush by local authorities to reclaim the ‘non-statutory’ sites, so that they could build much-needed houses on them, and not just in the big cities that had been bombarded. But there was something else at work here: the allotment seemed intimately associated with the war, upon which most people understandably wished to turn their backs. As the wartime community spirit, born of adversity and a compelling common purpose, gradually seeped away, allotments became almost exclusively the province of older men, who had rediscovered their misogyny now that no one was telling them that everyone had to pull together. By the 1950s, women were far less commonly seen on allotments. As for children, many of them could not wait to give up picking caterpillars off the brassicas. Allotments were associated with ‘make do and mend’ – many an Anderson shelter found its way to an allotment site to be used as a makeshift tool shed – monotonous diets and austerity. More and more allotments became neglected and unkempt, making them progressively less attractive to the disengaged. And there were other factors. Frozen food, for example, was playing an increasingly important role for the housewife: if you could buy peas which, when defrosted and cooked, were as good as, if not better than, those you picked from your allotment, there was less inclination to go on battling with pea moth and greenfly. By 1955, there were only 800,000 allotments; all the wartime gains and more had been lost. School gardens likewise declined after the war, in some places made back into playing fields immediately, in others continued with for a few years yet.
So much for amateurs, who had the choice whether to cultivate a garden or not. The position of established (and would-be) professional gardeners was uncertain and anxiety about future employment widespread. On 6 April 1944, the government had announced plans to provide training for fit men and women released from war service, and this was targeted at agriculture and horticulture as well as other types of industrial employment. A game of ‘pass the parcel’ then ensued between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Labour as to who should arrange this training. In the end, the Ministry of Agriculture took on the responsibility and a conference was organised in March 1945, which included the usual interested parties.6
This conference attempted to look into the future prospects for professional gardening. The members estimated that there were about 80,000 full-time gardeners in post before the war, and anticipated that, in future, rather fewer would be needed for private gardens and estates but that there would be ‘a steady increase in the demand for gardeners in public parks, sports grounds of institutions . . . and cemeteries’.7
As far as training was concerned, Wisley, Kew and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, agreed to instruct men with some previous experience, Kew and Wisley suspending their student gardenership scheme until the supply of government trainees was exhausted – although they did take back those former students whose studies had been interrupted by the war. The conference decided that most training of demobbed novices would have to be done in twelve-month placements at carefully selected horticultural establishments and gardens, with the funding split between state (40 per cent) and employer (60 per cent). The RHS put a notice in the July 1945 issue of the Journal, giving a brief outline of the Ministry’s scheme, and asking Fellows in England and Wales to offer suitable placements if they could. In the event, the Society was more proactive in this matter than were parks administrators, who had to be chivvied. The government scheme started in March 1946. However, it is doubtful whether this initiative made a great deal of difference to the number of trained gardeners.
In 1944, the Ministry of Agriculture had also sought advice, separately, from the Horticultural Education Association about the training of ex-service personnel as ‘jobbing’ gardeners, i.e. men (and they were mostly men) who worked part-time in a number of gardens. The Association was keen to make clear to the Ministry that gardening was not some kind of soft option – ‘Gardening is not light work unless the jobs are specially chosen – the light jobs are few in number and in most cases the employers of jobbing gardeners do the light work themselves’ – and it recommended a minimum of a year’s instruction in a public park or garden, or in a commercial firm which specialised in jobbing gardening and landscaping work.
In a conclusion which shows a lively appreciation of the difficulties, the Association’s Secretary, a Mr G. C. Johnson, wrote:
HEA council hopes that if a scheme is initiated, possible trainees will not be given an unduly optimistic impression of the prospects of jobbing gardening. War-time demands and wages can be no guide to what can be earned in the post-war years. Persons judged to be unsuitable for other jobs by reason of low intelligence, or poor physique should not be encouraged to take up this type of work.
Though sensible, this was bound to be a vain aspiration. He continued: ‘Lastly, to make a success of jobbing gardening demands initiative, a good general knowledge of gardening operations coupled with hard work, and ability and willingness to humour the whims of their prospective employers, who often need help, but not guidance.’8 How right he was, but such pessimism did not augur well for a successful initiative.
At the end of hostilities, the prospects for Land Girls and other female gardeners were even less promising, since many had to give way to returning male employees, especially in commercial operations, and they were not included in any post-war retraining scheme. To add insult to injury, Land Girls were given neither a medal nor any kind of official recognition, or indeed any of the post-war benefits such as resettlement grants to which even civilian auxiliary workers were entitled. Post-war benefits for the WLA were something for which Robert Hudson had fought in Cabinet, but he had come up against the adamantine opposition of Winston Churchill, amongst others.
The Land Girls were not impressed. As one of them wrote: ‘I joined in June 1939. I have lost my pre-war office job . . . my sole souvenir of five and a half years’ loyal service is a rather battered scarlet armlet – not even a discharge badge.’9 The shabby treatment of Land Girls prompted Lady Denman to resign from her position as Director of the WLA in protest, much to her colleagues’ consternation, since she was the public face, and driving force, behind the organisation. In the end, after questions in Parliament, and lobbying, Land Girls were allowed to keep their greatcoats and the government contributed to their benevolent fund. That was all. The WLA was disbanded in November 1950. In 1951, when Lady Denman was invested with the Grand Cross of the British Empire, the King told her, ‘We always thought that the Land Girls were not well treated.’10 It was not until many years later, in 2008, that the 30,000 surviving Land Girls and members of the Timber Corps received a specially designed commemorative badge and certificate.
At one point during the war, Lady Denman had been called down to Longford Castle in Wiltshire to arbitrate in a dispute over wages between Land Girls working on food production for the Earl and Countess of Radnor. Some years after the war, the Dowager Countess wrote:
I remember standing beside our beacon fire on VE night in 1945. We were telling ourselves that the miracle had happened; we were all alive, the house had not been bombed, the troops in it were British and not German, we had won the war! Nevertheless, in all the rejoicing my husband, speaking as the owner of a country house, said to me ‘Now our p
ersonal problems begin.’11
The Radnors were by no means alone in feeling a sense of chill foreboding. The country houses and their gardens and parks which had been requisitioned by the government for wartime duties had fared extremely badly. Even those not substantially damaged by heavy war machinery and careless servicemen had not had anything spent on their fabric for six years. Without the kind of maintenance that was routine in peacetime, these estates degenerated very quickly. Those parts of gardens no longer used for food production became hopelessly overgrown even more quickly than the wallpaper curled or the plaster fell. As the garden historian Miles Hadfield put it: ‘The largest, most magnificent house can, with central heating and little else, remain uninhabited with little harm for many months. But an untouched, even merely unmown garden, can become an almost irrevocable wilderness in weeks.’12 That may be a little melodramatic, but the general point is a good one. For some gardens, the point of no return had arrived even before VJ Day was celebrated. For many others, it was only a few short years away.
The owners of requisitioned country houses could ask for government reparations for damage actively caused, or which had come about as a result of lack of maintenance, but that did not solve the real problem, which was the disappearance of the workforce. Servants never returned in pre-war numbers, partly due to rising wages, which made them often unaffordable, and partly because of their own widened horizons. Wages had risen by 50 per cent during the war, while prices had only increased by 33 per cent. Farm rents were low, so land was not generating much wealth; meanwhile this was a time of dizzying hikes in death duties and other taxes. By 1947, supertax on the wealthy had reached 90 per cent. The landowning classes were broke and getting broker. The last thing they wanted was unsustainably large wage bills to perpetuate a way of life that, even to many who were born to it, seemed increasingly anachronistic.
A Green and Pleasant Land Page 31