A History of Gardening, 1800-1960 (Hardback)

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Angela Youngman has a new book out: A History of Gardening, 1800-1960: Transforming Gardens Across Two Centuries. Youngman is a seasoned author, whose books are always worth reading – and this book is very good indeed. I’m a historian with no interest in putting my pinkies in the soil or ricking my back by pulling up tough shoots, but my sister used to be head gardener at a castle and I wanted to assess whether this book would make a good birthday present for her.

The first few chapters tell us what it was like to be a gardener during this period (spoiler: it was better to be a head gardener than an underling). I learned from the chapter on female gardeners that Jane Austen’s mother was good at cultivating potatoes. The author Maria Edgeworth (unjustly neglected in the C21st) writes about “digging up, trenching, manuring my garden” in the 1830s. I enjoyed reading that Swanley Horticultural College admitted women to mixed-sex classes in the 1890-s but appointed a ‘supervisor of ladies’ to accompany them to lectures. Numbers rose from five in 1891 to thirty-four in 1895 and it is gratifying to read that, six years later, Swanley decided to focus purely on women. However, with fees at £80 per annum, only upper middle-class women could afford it.

A couple of chapters discuss Urban gardening and garden styles, e.g. ferns and rockeries. If you had suggested, a week ago, that I would be interested in the spread of garden gnomes, I would have been somewhat sceptical. However, I can confirm that the history of Sir Charles Isham and his gnomes is fascinating. I loved the description of his group of 3” high gnomes on strike with placards. Yes! I’d have those in my garden!

Chapter 6 onwards mostly gives us a fairly chronological history of the symbiosis between gardeners and the commercial aspects of gardening: the phenomenal growth of gardening magazines and their eager readership. There are side-journeys into the highly dangerous world of plant-hunting and an emphasis upon how exotic foreign plants were in the C19th. Frederick Sander, for example, had over sixty greenhouses devoted to orchids. When you realise that less than 1% of bulbs sent back home by plant-hunters survived, the prices that the rich were prepared to pay for really rare (in Europe, at least) plants become understandable, as does the phenomenal impact of the Wardian case.

The Wardian case is one of several examples of (to our modern eyes) incredibly simple inventions that changed our environment. The Wardian case is (at its simplest) an air-tight glass bottle, filled with damp moss. It allows plants to be sent by sea and to survive without watering, despite changes in air salinity and temperature. Although we all know what a lawnmower looks like, imagine the impact upon a world that relied upon men available and willing to swing a scythe. Without the lawnmower, we wouldn’t have a lawn for almost every house.

We read how the philanthropic classes were convinced that giving “the poor” access to gardens would turn them away from the demon drink and other bad uses of their little leisure time and less money. Youngman posits a convincing argument that they were right. That is just one of so many of Youngman’s gently-made arguments that make this book so worthwhile. (And yes, I’ve bought a second copy for my sister because I want to keep this one!)

NetGalley, Colin Edwards

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Really loved reading about the history of the gardeners, and I kept thinking how much I wish I could share all of it with my grandma. She had a huge garden when I was growing up, and while she would not have read the book (not the best reader), she would have loved hearing all about it... Definitely would recommend this and will be looking for more books from her in the future.

NetGalley, Rebecca Stewart

This was a very lovely read.

This was a topic that I did not know much about, although I enjoy gardens and mini gardening, I feel like I learned a lot.

In this book, Angela Youngman talks about many things related to gardening during this era from gardeners, to personal gardens, public gardens and even shows and tourism. My favorite chapter to read was the third chapter,,“The Rise of Female Gardeners”. We may associate gardening a lot with both genders and flower gardening even more with women but as we can see from this chapter, the women actually started to play a role later on which is during this time period. Without giving much spoilers, there are many interesting instances in this book, some are still related to women, that may surprise the reader which I think made the book very enjoyable.

One thing I also enjoyed were the literary and other type of media references. I believe this also helps to form a connection with the general audience as well. Youngman also mentioned many newspapers and especially gardening journals which peaked my attention.

There are also pictures, although black and white, at the end of the book which were nice to look at.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to anyone, especially if they have at least a bit of interest in gardening. However, even without the gardening element, there is still much to learn from this book for its time period.

NetGalley, Melisa Aras