THE FEMININE TOUCH?

Does your garden have masculine or feminine style, and does it even matter? Head gardener Benjamin Pope unpicks gardening's gender stereotypes

- Benjamin Pope

Back in the spring of 2009, I had the pleasure of meeting Beverly McConnell, a formidable Antipodean plantswoman, internationally known for her garden Ayrlies in New Zealand. While showing her around the garden where I work, she remarked on the bountiful May display: “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but this garden feels very feminine.”

I smiled and replied that I didn’t mind, but I was slightly taken aback. As we carried on the tour, I quizzed her gently on what she meant by ‘feminine’, but it was only as the weeks passed that I wondered about the first part of her comment. As a man in my late twenties, should I have been offended that my work had been described as feminine?

Throughout history, the stereotypical gender roles that have existed within industry and society have also been present in horticulture: men hunt and gather; women care and tend. For horticulture, this has meant men have traditionally been the gardeners and plant hunters, while women used the crops and worked with floristry.