Gardening Women: Their Stories from 1600 to the Present

by Catherine Horwood

From Flora, Roman goddess of plants, to today's gardeners at Kew, women have always gardened. Women gardeners have grown vegetables for their kitchens and herbs for their medicine cupboards. They have been footnotes in the horticultural annals for specimens collected abroad. They taught young women about gardening twenty-five years before women's horticultural schools officially existed. And their influence on the style of our gardens, frequently unacknowledged, survives to the present day. From these triumphs to the battles fought against male-dominated institutions, from the horticultural pioneers to the bringers of change in society's attitudes, this book is a celebration of the best of the species -- gardening women.

Catherine Horwood looks at women's association with plants over the centuries, exploring its wider social significance and telling the stories of ordinary women with an extraordinary passion for horticulture.

Genres: History, Gardening, Nonfiction, Nature

436 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just barely made it through this! Given the subtitle, I actually was really hoping for an overview of Elizabethan gardening and then onward, but instead Horwood arranged her book topically so that content was split up and scattered. I spent quite a bit of the book vaguely confused about which century we were talking about.

I feel like her transitions are not great. About the time you get invested in one woman gardener’s story, she moves on the the next one and the first is never to be seen again.

There are plenty of fascinating tidbits and quotes, and many (many) female gardeners discussed. I wish she didn’t have an axe to grind about Women Were Unappreciated Throughout History. It doesn’t improve the book.

I feel like a good editor could help her completely restructure this content, but that would be a lot of work!

[Sophie E Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspirational

[Denise Musson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of women gardening through the ages was fascinating and shows not enough is known about those women who have made real contributions to gardening styles, and plant development

[AskNezka · Rating 3 out of 5]

A general narrative history with each chapter a different entry (woman) and age.

[Elayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I didn’t read this book in any great detail but did dip in and out of it, reading a chapter here and a chapter there, and found the chapter on the systems of plant classification in the early 19th century especially fascinating.
There was rivalry in the nineteenth century between the followers of Carl Linnaeus who came up with his ideas in the second half of the 18th century, and those who followed Augustin Pyramus de Candolle.
The Linnaean system set up an hierarchical scheme of genera and species with stamens and pistils - the male and female sexual parts of flowers.
In contrast de Candolle thought that flowers were non-sexual and thus those who were more prudish in Victorian society preferred this system. He set out a morphology of the plants as a whole with monocotyledons and dicotyledons which is still used.
John Lindley who was a Professor of Botany at London University favoured de Candolle and therefore wanted to separate what he considered to be ‘drawing room botany’ from botany as a natural science. He thought that Linnaeus’s system had resulted in botany becoming an ‘amusement for the ladies rather than an occupation for the serious thoughts of man’.
So are all we lady gardeners just amusing ourselves? And is it a serious occupation for us as well as men? Why can't it be both?

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed with this book, mostly because it contained little in the way of new information. The majority of women gardeners discussed in this book have been dealt with elsewhere. For example, the author's discussion of Ellen Willmott merely catalogued the well-known facts about Miss Willmott (and, much to my irritation, raised the usual anecdote about how Eryngium giganteum 'Miss Willmott's Ghost' got its name). I would give anything to be able to spend time in the RHS Lindley Library to search the existing papers about Ellen Willmott. Yet the author did not use this wealth of original research material, instead relying upon secondary sources.

For those interested in reading a general treatise about women in gardening, then this book would be a good choice. If you want more detailed information about women gardeners, there are better sources elsewhere, imho. Check out'The Virago Book of Women Gardeners' edited by Deborah Kellaway, 'Down-to-Earth Women' by Dawn MacLeod and 'Virgins, Weeders & Queens: A History of Women in the Garden' by Twigs Way

This book is attractively designed and has some good photographs (not enough, in my view, to warrant the hefty price).

[Catharine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for research really. Interesting but it could have been SO much more.

[Laura Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a history book. It has good moments, but overall, It's a little dry.