The Victorian Gardener by Caroline Ikin

Author:Caroline Ikin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Victorian Gardener
ISBN: 9780747814580
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

The Free Gardeners adopted much of the ritual and symbolism of the Freemasons. This apron depicts the gardener’s knife above the mason’s compass and square, while the letters P, G, H and E represent the initials of the four rivers of the Garden of Eden.

Photographed in 1903, Marie Studholme, a popular beauty of Victorian and Edwardian musical comedy, personifies the fashion for hobby gardening among refined ladies.

WOMEN GARDENERS

TO VICTORIAN SENSIBILITIES, gardening was an eminently suitable occupation for a lady, combining fresh air and moderate exercise with self-improvement. Middle-class women took up gardening as a hobby, tending their own suburban patch, and developing interests in the associated activities of flower-arranging, fern-collecting and botanical art. Tools were manufactured specifically for female use, and gardening manuals for ladies were published, giving instruction in garden tasks suitable for women, and advice on planting and colour schemes. John Loudon’s wife, Jane, exceeded the sales of her husband’s horticultural books with her own successful volumes aimed at women gardeners, such as Instructions in Gardening for Ladies of 1840 and The Ladies’ Companion to the Flower Garden, published in 1841. Herself a self-taught gardener, Jane Loudon recognised the need for simple, easy-to-follow gardening manuals aimed at the amateur gardener who was literate and enthusiastic but had little scientific knowledge or practical training.

Although gardening was acceptable as a hobby for women, as a profession it was regarded as unseemly. The garden bothy was a strictly male domain, so a traditional garden apprenticeship was out of the question, and women were deemed incapable of the heavy work involved in gardening. It was not until the last decade of the nineteenth century that women were offered places on horticultural training courses, and even then it was considered an unorthodox career path. Improvements in access to education and the rise of the professional middle classes created a group of young, educated, affluent women in search of an occupation acceptable to their place in society. Their options were limited to the respectable professions of teaching, nursing or working in a shop or office.

By the end of the nineteenth century, women had gained some rights that were paving the way towards equality. Social attitudes towards women were slowly changing, but they were still regarded primarily in their domestic role as wives and mothers. Manual work such as gardening was considered unsuitable for ladies until the advent of the First World War forced a change in attitude. The jobs left behind by men departing for the trenches were taken up by women and provided an opportunity for them to prove their capability in professions such as gardening. The social change that followed in the aftermath of war eventually brought the vote to women and the freedom to pursue a career of their choosing.

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