Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2008 | Page 68

life

GARDENING

Alan Titchmarsh
Don't forget to read Alan's regular column in the
Sunday Express - S Magazine every Sunday.

Mother nature
From queens to land girls, Alan
unearths the history of women gardeners
past and present -and explains why
they're a growing inspiration

Photo by Niall McDiarmid

H

istorically it was
always the girls that
did the gardening.
Way back in our
huntergatherer past you can
bet your bottom dollar that,
while stone age man was
off doing the he-man stuff
hunting, bashing and fishing
-it fell to his other half to do
the dirty work gathering
-so she'd be closer to the
family cave just in case
caveman junior started
chucking his toys out of the
pram . It was exactly the
same with medieval peasants;
while the men-folk were off
doing the macho poaching,
swine-herding or ploughing
fields, back home the little
woman would be tending
her herbs, ready to knock up
a quick bowl of pottage or
tub of gruel when her man

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staggered home exhausted.
It wasn't just food; in the
absence of handy corner shops,
supermarkets or all-night
chemists, early housewives also
grew the raw ingredients for all
the various household products
they needed, from cleaners
and nasty-niff neutralisers
to flea powders. And guess
who'd have grown the clove
pinks, alecost and other herbal
flavourings that went into
the mulled ales and wines at
the gardens of wayside inns?
Not the landlord, you can
be certain, but his missus.
Sexist? Not really, more
like practical division of
labour. The reason we know
more about "men's work" is
purely because they were the
ones with the education, the
opportunities and "proper
jobs" outside the home, so

they wrote their experiences
down, and history tended to
leave lady gardeners' lights
hidden under their bushels.
Oh, there were the odd few
exceptions. When the wives,
mothers or mistresses of kings
were keen on gardens we know
about it, since their interests
tended to start new fashion
trends for the well-to-do.
Mary, of William and Mary
fame , began the craze for
hothouses when she imported
her particular passion for
tender evergreen plants to
Hampton Court after she and
William inherited the throne
of England - they've been

known as greenhouses for
that reason ever since . And
George Ill's mother, Princess
Augusta, started the first
serious botanical collection
in the country in her garden,
and founded what we now
know as Kew Gardens -the
Princess of Wales glasshouse
there is named after her,
and not Princess Diana,
as most people assume .
But behind a good few
of the famous historical
gardening gents, I'll bet, were
a fair few good women. Take
John Gerard, the author
of the famous Gerard's
Herball, published in 1599.

A Beth Chatto garden

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