Gardening and women's rights?

Thats twice i've heard mention of the horton centre. I looked it up. Amazed such a place exists. Am definitely going to save up to go in the next two years.

Regarding self seeded potatoes, they can grow from seed but you have no control over the variety that grows as a result. My dad told me some time ago and so I cant remember why that is. Someone else may know more.

I second radishes. Almost impossible to fail.

Wilko is brilliant for veg seeds. Had 100 percent success with theirs even though they are quite cheap. Also do great beginner kits.

Ohh gorgeous thread thank you OP. I am very very unwell and physically not very able at the moment and I miss my garden so much. I’ve gone from building a sandstone patio by hand with DH 3 years ago to unable to weed this year. I absolutely love growing vegetables and the unbelievable taste and freshness you get from growing your own makes it so satisfying. It’s very interesting to know more about the history of women and gardening it’s not an angle I had ever considered so thank you!

I worked in the industry since leaving school at 16 and saw it change from quite unusual for women to be working as gardeners to seeing it far more accepted and women be better supported and encouraged in the industry....

...until you arrived at a level where you actually knew what you were doing and needed to get the men you were working with to listen to you because you had a responsibility for health and safety and getting the job done. I'll never forget driving to head office on the other side of the country with the lad I was supervising, only to have management talk past me and directly to my staff member about the job I was being paid to do. I resigned that evening and started working for myself the next day.

I curtail my enjoyment of gardens to my own and making good money in other people's now. Sad, because it was my whole life.

Here we go - the relevant passage:

"...Practical Instructions in Gardening for Ladies [by Jane Louden], published in 1841... was the first book of any type ever to encourage women of elevated classes to get their hands dirty and even to take on a faint glow of perspiration. This was novel almost to the point of eroticism. Gardening for Ladies bravely insisted that women could manage gardening independent of male supervision if they simply observed a few sensible precautions - working steadily but not too vigorously, using only light tools, never standing on damp ground because of the unhealthful emanations that would rise up through their skirts...

The value of Gardening for Ladies wasn't what it contained so much as what it represented: permission to go outside and do something."

So there you go - we are continuing a feminist revolution right there.

I love gardening and am very lucky to have a massive wilderness to tackle.

It's funny you should conflate it with feminism, as it's something I have been pondering this week. I used an example of the work I'm currently doing on another thread about gender stereotypes, as I've been felling an old and mostly dead 30' hedge (which has involved a lot of chainsaw work!). I've built one small retaining wall in a rockery and am about to embark on a bigger retaining wall for a steep bank, which will involve digging proper foundations and so on.

I love the cycle of renewal and the way that the garden responds to nurturing - which can be gentle (fertilising and mulching) and also quite robust and tough (hard pruning etc.).

We have a vegetable patch in our garden. DH has helped with some of it, but mostly it is mine. I dug out tonnes of bindweed, ground elder and rubble. I dug back in sacks and sacks of compost. I picked the plants and seeds. I put the fence around (DH helped with that one). I decided we should extend it and where, and marked it out. I've weeded it and dug it and watered it.

This year we should hopefully have carrots, broccoli, peas, beans, potatoes (bit of a mystery as they appear to have self-seeded and I do not know how ), peppers, courgettes, butternut squash, pumpkin, strawberries and raspberries - if everything goes according to plan - and I will be very pleased. It is extremely satisfying. I'm still not totally sure what I'm doing, so it's also always a lovely surprise to get something edible out of it . And I find it very calming to know that i can feed our family, if needs be - I can get quite anxious, so having that little sense of self-sufficiency (no matter how illusory) helps.

Has anyone read that Bill Bryson book about the history of the home? There's a very interesting section on gardening and how it became acceptable for women - with a very funny (to modern eyes) but earnest passage from an early gardening book aimed at women, describing digging in careful detail. I will try to find it! And about how revolutionary a concept it was, for naice ladies to be permitted to get their hands dirty.

I’m not really a gardener, but the posts about people’s mental health struggles and especially the poster who had survived a strangling have made me very emotional . I love a garden to look at (as long as it isn’t too colourful) and have many books about gardening but wouldn’t know where to start in real life! Shame, really. Nice that you all are enjoying your gardens and birds. That’s all I wanted to say, really. Thanks everyone for sharing.

Lovely thread. I only have a small garden but love it. Sadly my tomatoes have got blight in the last couple of years so I'm having to give them a break this year. I'd love an allotment.

What a lovely thread.

I finally managed to move out to the sticks and now have a lovely garden, with fields and woods all around. The urge to be surrounded by 'green' felt almost primeval.

I hope this link works - 'From Gardens Where We Feel Secure' by Virginia Astley.

Beautiful album that helped with the longings

Ah, found them, lass - for some reason on a different page to where the link sent me.

Other people's gardens are good for resting in but I never seem to manage it in my own - there's always something that needs doing. Summer evening deadheading pottering is pretty relaxing at least, and when many of the plants are most fragrant. I used to take DD out in her PJs to have an evening sniff. And sometimes a subversive-feeling run around in the twilight or dark.

I love my allotment. Have a fruit cage there with 4 Apple cordons with strawberries underneath and 2 blueberry bushes. Also potatoes onions celeriac mange tout broad beans and French beans

Gardener's Supply and a few other suppliers have rose gloves/gauntlets in extra small. Shipping is very expensive though. Gardening gauntlets are easy to find here because we are blessed with giant mounds of Himalayan blackberries.

My grandparents were avid gardeners. For many years it was my job to go to the top of the pear tree to collect the ones the ladder would not reach. I am still bad at digging despite a lifetime of practice.
Some years ago I came home from the hospital unable to walk unassisted after renal failure and gardening was the sum and substance of my rehabilitation. Gardens are every way splendid whether for resting or working off a temper.

Im loving this thread.

I kill houseplants (not on purpose) and I am hopeless in the garden, but this thread is a delight, and I feel inspired! Living vicariously. All I grow is hydrangeas but they seem to know I love them dearly and always bloom beautifully. I will enjoy looking at all the links and imagining all your lovely gardens and allotments. Great post OP

What a lovely thread. I've spent the afternoon at the garden centre and then pottering about in my garden too. I've really started to enjoy gardening in the last 10 years or so. Waiting for my gooseberries to ripen now 😄

I grow lots of things, not always by design, in our unruly garden. Have enjoyed collecting herbs from the herb beds (grandiose term) to cook with tonight. I love seeing the bees in the garden. A lovely and timely thread - love the book recommendations as well.

Thanks lass, but they only seem to be medium or large. (Probably it's sizeism more than sexism. )

The website actually says the sizes are small and to go a size down from your usual size ! My hands are small.