Mary Keen

Pretty maids all in a row

With one notable exception, the best horticultural books this year are written by women. Mary Keen explores the gender divide in gardening

issue 11 December 2010

It is received gardening wisdom that men tend lawns and women plant flowers. This is a good year to see how two exceptional writers on gardens live up to that definition. Our top horticultural columnists, Anna Pavord of the Independent and Robin Lane Fox of the Financial Times, have both published elegant and witty collections of journalism in 2010. Lane Fox’s Thoughtful Gardening (Particular Books, £25) has already been reviewed in The Spectator. For the purposes of male/ female comparison I can record that Lane Fox writes that flower gardening is what interests him, which makes a nonsense of received wisdom. He does not appear to mow much, but he is mad about killing weeds, bugs, badgers and foxes. In the Lane Fox plot it is a constant war on wildlife. Control of the lawn is normal male behaviour. Killing is a full-blown male tendency. I never met a woman who relished any form of extermination.

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