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These are only some of the gardening staff who worked at Ardtornish early last century. Wages were low and hours were long. Apparently the road to Ferry which is nearly 3 miles long was hoed once a week.
There was a policy of thoroughly training young local lads for a few years, enabling them to find employment elsewhere. The training at Ardtornish was highly regarded and some of the trainees subsequently attained senior horticultural positions elsewhere.
Seated on chairs are the Head Gardener who would have been trained somewhere like Kew Gardens and the housekeeper. Many of the men would stay in the bothy, looked after by the housekeeper. The glasshouse in the photo is still standing (just) and is used for growing bedding plants followed by tomatoes.
Large amounts of fuel were used to heat the various glasshouses and crops would be grown out of season regardless of the expense. Even the frames were heated. One of the novelties around this time was to graft a tomato plant onto a potato plant (they are close relatives) so a crop from below and above the soil was achieved at the same time. I have not heard of this being done at Ardtornish - they probably had more sense.