The Radical Lives of Britain's Women Gardeners

Gardening with the RHS

Royal Horticultural Society

Home & Garden, Leisure, Hobbies

4.4 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the release of Fiona Davison’s new book – An Almost Impossible Thing: The Radical Lives of Britain’s Pioneering Women Gardeners – we decided to dedicate this week’s show week’s show to women in the garden. And in that vein, we’re exploring the potential for gardens to be empowering, educational, equalising, and radical spaces. Fiona shares a story from her book about two women from over 100 years ago who show that the roots of ecological gardening run further back then we may realise. Psychotherapist, writer, and gardener Marchelle Farrell reveals how her English country garden helped her get to the core of a question that had troubled her throughout her life: What is home? And finally, garden historian Twigs Way joins us again to give the inside scoop on an early and influential gardening school for women. But, If you’re looking for more advice-oriented content – fear not! Throughout the programme, we’re giving story-specific gardening tips. An Almost Impossible Thing: The Radical Lives of Britain’s Pioneering Women Gardeners Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside – Finding Home in an English Country Garden Vine Weevils Autumn-interest shrubs Study & Learn at the RHS

Transcript

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0:00.0	Get your tickets for the greatest show in Earth at an RHS garden near you.
0:05.1	Where nature puts on an unforgettable performance of colour and fragrance.
0:09.3	The scenery changes many times in one season and our finest trees will happily play the part of...
0:14.7	The best hiding place ever.
0:17.4	Booth!
0:18.2	Put your day out of dreams in the hands of the experts.
0:21.6	It's the greatest show in Earth.
0:23.7	At an RHS garden near you.
0:25.5	Book tickets online for discounts, plus under fives go free and under 16 to five pounds.
0:44.6	Hello, I'm Suzanne Moss, the Director of Learning and Public Engagement at the RHS.
0:48.1	I'm joined today by our head of libraries and exhibitions.
0:49.8	Fiona Davidson. Hello, Fiona.
0:51.4	Oh, it's lovely to be here.
0:59.6	So aside from education, one of my personal passions is garden history, 18th century, 19th century gardens and collections.
1:08.4	So today I am very excited to be journeying back in time to explore some of the roles that women in particular have held in the garden in this period.
1:12.2	So Fiona, you've just published an amazing book about this called An Almost Impossible Thing, The Radical Lives of Britain's Pioneering Women Gardners.
1:18.1	And I've been reading this over the past couple of days. It's such an amazing book. It's so
1:21.7	inspirational, exciting, informative. These women were just incredible people. So let's jump right in. Can you set the
1:29.3	scene for us a bit and tell me a bit about the roles that gardens could play in women's lives?
1:35.0	Well, as you know, women have been gardening for centuries, but until relatively recently,
1:42.2	I mean, a blink of an eye in historical terms, gardening professionally was pretty much impossible, hence the title, because the training was apprenticeship based. So you'd start, you know, as a 12-year-old boy and live in a single-sex bossy as you worked your way up through the garden departments but obviously that wasn't available to
2:01.2	women so it's kind of like looking into how did that all change and how did women get into
	...

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