Gardening and women's rights?

[SuperLoudPoppingAction]

There are three things keeping me relatively sane at the moment. One being discussion with like-minded women who are passionate about women's rights, another being (surprisingly, as I am dysphraxic and a bit crap at it) swimming.
The most reliable, though, is being out in my garden. I love being in nature generally. If I had more energy I'd like to go on walks more, but I've been fairly knackered lately.

The cyclical nature of planting, growing, harvesting etc feels very significant to me.
Also, the fact that I can make mistakes and that everything will still basically be ok is so lovely. It's an antidote to anxiety that I feel with loads of other stuff.

I've had such lovely conversations with women about gardening. One woman gave me some of her tiny gooseberries from her allotment and I made chutney with them. Another woman told me that parsley only thrives in a household run by a woman.

Alice Walker talks a lot about gardening. alicewalkersgarden.com/2010/10/in-search-of-our-mothers-garden/
Susan Brownmiller [[http://www.nycitywoman.com/the-feminist-gardener/]]
I love this as well. www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/03/margery_fish_s_we_made_a_garden_is_a_feminist_manifesto_disguised_as_a_gardening.html
"a harmonious, informal, frothing sort of a garden, its borders filled with “green” flowers, its shady corners crammed with hellebores, primroses, epimediums, and, most important of all, her beloved snowdrops."

I keep thinking about how important it is to experience a Space of One's Own. Even if it's a terrarium with a couple of air plants in it (like in my last house, where the garden was not private enough for me to enjoy it).

It's not going to revolutionise gender politics in itself, but is nurturing a connection to nature something that anyone else connects with feminist politics?

What an interesting thread - I had never really given a thought to gardening as feminism but it does make sense.

My DH and I garden together but we have our different strengths and I definitely do all the planning for the garden. I was made redundant a couple of years ago and was off work for ten months - the garden stopped me going completely mad as there was always jobs to do or things to try.

I love the idea of doing a medicinal herb garden - must try and find a book on that.

I have what I call a medicinal herb garden but all my herbs are in amongst the shrubs and trees, and I also grow pickable veg in amongst it. I also have loads of mints and herbs in pots around the courtyard.

For my medicinal herbs, I pick a load in the spring; including a lovely plantain that I have growing in the borders; I pick that, garlic chives, normal chives, lemon balm, lime balm, lemon verbena, lovage, thyme, oregano, and any other edible leaf that I can find - wash it and dry it and then dehydrate the lot. Crumble it into a jar and that becomes my go-to jar to add to all stews, pasta sauces etc for the rest of the year. I also pick all the wild garlic, dehydrate it and have a garlic jar.

I grow two varieties of oregano, in one wooden box. Throughout the summer, I pick that, and use lemon verbena and garlic chives with basil, olive oil and whizz it up for a small jar of pesto. It is flipping gorgeous.

I am a gardener. I love growing food and useful things (basket weaving, gourds, dye plants, herbs). Is there a board on mumsnet for gardeners? I would love to cruise it.

I agree it is a very feminine calling. We remake the world by applying gentle pressure. Pull a weed here, let it go wild there. Everything becomes ripe in its own time.

It's been incredibly spiritual for me. This year my government heavily restricted the sale of codeine and I was absolutely distraught. I have migraines and severed period pain, i used to take codeine only twice a month or so but on those days it was a GODSEND. We all know how seriously doctors take women's invisible pain, i figured it was pretty unlikely they'd give me a prescription for "like, whenever". I was beside myself, not knowing how I would get through days of work in agony with no relief and all the petitions in the world are no match for the medical lobby. Around the same time, my whippersnipper broke and the weeds in the corners of the yard got quite long. Then some started to flower. Lovely soft blossoms in purples and reds. Turns out they were a kind of poppy. A very specific kind of poppy, the sort you might use for breadseed. I don't worry about the availability of codeine any more. This sort of thing has happened 3 other times and I'm pretty sure my garden is literally magic at this point. I love garden, garden loves me back.

Thanks for those links Popping :)

www.gardenorganic.org.uk/weeds/ribwort-plantain I would love to find this plantain - in Germany you can buy it dried for sore throats. My wild seed mix claimed to have it but it's so random (well - not random but linked to weather, season etc) what comes up from those things.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gardening Gardening section of MN - it's quite busy

Superloud, there’s loads of that plantain round where I live. As children we used to, ‘fire’ the tops at each other.

I would love to find this plantain

That's the one I have cultivated [well, found in the border and left well alone]. If I manage to catch any seeds I'll save them for you.

That's brilliant!
www.heilkraeuter.de/lexikon/spitzweg.htm I always thought it was unique to Germany because I could never work out what it was called in English.
That link makes it sound quite amazing.

Lovely thread. It's out of print now, (but lots of second hand copies around) The Virago Book of Women Gardeners is worth looking out for. They did an illustrated edition that's particularly nice. They also published Gardening Women a few years ago. I've yet to get my mitts on that one but it looks good - it's a history of women and gardening.

Spitzwegerich, I have seen it here in West coast Scotland but nowhere near as much as I have seen where I grew up in Germany. The soil and the amount of water is very different between the two places. At home it grows on dry, nutrient poor land
There is seed available for under a pound on Amazon.

This is a nice thread! This is the first year that I've had a garden to plant things in, the learning curve is steep but I'm enjoying it, and getting some nice tips and suggestions from women friends.
I've started by planting a veg patch growing the few veggies my family will eat (courgettes, squash, broad beans), something that I hope will become a lavender hedge, and some random shrubs around the place.
I saw this a couple of weeks ago, might be of interest: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst-castle-garden/features/gardening-women-exhibition-at-sissinghurst-castle-garden

Lovely thread. I like it almost as much as I like gardening. I'm going to think of everyone cooling off in the soil when things become too much.

i just clicked on that link and it denied me access because 'inappropriate' eh???

We have an allotment and a garden, and I have a love hate relationship with gardening.
I do enjoy doing it, but it can be a chore.
DH usually blinks first in the spring and starts preparing and planting stuff, as I hate the cold, but once he's started I usually have a mad planting week and put a lot of work in.
I like the bit between planting and full on harvest where this just pottering and a bit of weeding and tidying to do.
After that, weeding, mowing and picking can become a bit of a chore.
We share the work, but there's a woman next to us who does everything alone and seems to love it, she has a perfect, pristine plot.
And a woman opposite who has a less cared for plot, but still keeps on top of it.
There's probably an even split between men, women and couples.

If anyone feels like getting academic about women and gardening, there is also this coming up in Oxford in October: torch.ox.ac.uk/call-papers-study-day-women-gardeners-c1500-2000

Inconstant, was it my link to the Sissinghurst thing that got blocked? How weird if so. This is some of the text:
"By the middle of the 19th century, there was growing awareness of women’s lack of rights in property, marriage, work, and especially, suffrage. Alongside the fight for the vote, attitudes were shifting towards the acceptance of - particularly middle-class - women’s right to train for careers. This exhibition follows the evolution of women’s horticultural education, the establishment of training schools and colleges that ran parallel to, and involved women gardeners in, the suffrage movement. These pioneering establishments laid the foundation for the wealth of professional opportunities for women in horticulture today, something reflected across the National Trust’s properties – including in the history of Sissinghurst.

Although middle-class women in the 19th Century were unable to become professional gardeners, many were keen amateur botanists studying plants in their gardens and the surrounding countryside. This was an acceptable accomplishment even for married women. Lydia Becker (1827–1890) went further than most in her studies, winning a Gold Medal from the Horticultural Society (later the RHS) for her collection of dried plants. In 1864, she published Botany for Novices. Two years later, she became interested in suffrage after John Stuart Mill presented his first petition on it to the House of Commons. After that, she devoted her life to the fight to get women the vote and is seen by most as the first female leader of the suffrage movement. However, her links with botany were never forgotten and she was frequently lampooned in the press where her large figure, plaited hair, and steel-rimmed glasses made her an easy target for cartoonists.

The Gardening Women exhibition runs from Sat 5 May - Sun 21 October and is open between 11am - 5.30pm, with last admission at 4.45pm. Normal admission charges apply.

I planted a neglected corner of my garden today with (English sourced) wildflower seeds and thought of you all.

I gave my lovely neighbour some broccoli plants, and felt like part of the gardening sisterhood. She gave me some strawberry plants last year. 'Tis nice

Where I grew up, parsley would only grow in the household of a witch, so same thing really OP :-). My garden gets me through life, when the days are shortest and everything seems to have died, new life is already sprouting and life is beginning again.

Oops, it wasn't OP who mentioned parsley was it . I'd better get some sleep.

I just came inside from feeding, watering and verbally encouraging plants in our small inner city back yard, which my lovely DP manages to make very beautiful. In summer I go out there first thing every day. There are lots of birds including a blackbird that pipes up at 3.30am on the dot.

puddock
Sorry just seen this. Yes it was.I was on a work pc so thats maybe why but still cant see how its inapropriate

Great thread.

I love my garden, and have accepted that I will never be able to make it bend to my will, instead I have to bend to it. It's a new experience for a lifelong control freak, but one that brings real joy and magic to my life.

From each winter, spring emerges with something new I've never noticed before, and seeing life come from 'nothing' is like the world's best trick.

Being out there makes me endlessly happy and calm. My husband sees it as a chore, with a definite beginning and end whereas I see it as a continuum...

I love that there is no pressure, some things go well, others not so much but you learn a little more each year.

Could wang on all day so I'll stop but this has been a lovely thread to read, thank you OP

Yes yes yes. I love this.. so lovely to hear about your green spaces!

I have a small concrete yard in rented house so cant do much to it but i have grown a few different flowers and peas from seed this year! My dream is a big garden or an allotment!

Its so lovely to experience the journey from seed to flower!! I find it magic!

I was involved in a community garden in the city i used to live in and one of my favourite things about that is hanging out with other women.. conversing and getting stuff done!