About this item
From the golden age in English history to today’s gardeners and designers, this volume recognizes women’s contributions to gardening in Britain and around the world spanning more than four centuries. Despite growing vegetables for their kitchens, tending herbs for their medicine cupboards, and teaching other women about the craft before agricultural schools officially existed, women have been mere footnotes in the horticultural annals for specimens collected abroad. These pioneers’ influence on the style of gardens in the present day is illustrated here in a style both accessible and scholarly. Presenting a rare bouquet, this collection shares the stories of more than 200 women who have been involved with garden design, plant collecting, flower arranging, botanical art, garden writing, and education.
About the Author
Dr Catherine Horwood has written widely on British social and cultural history, and her latest book, Gardening Women: Their Stories from 1600 to the Present will be published in the UK by Virago in May 2010.
A passionate gardener, she has won many prizes for her gardens which have been featured in books and magazines internationally, and was for many years an assistant organiser of the National Gardens Scheme, of the famous 'Yellow Book' gardens open for charity, in the London area. She now gardens high on a roof in North London and firmly on the ground in Suffolk.
Before raising her family, Catherine was a journalist on UK magazines including Good Housekeeping. She returned to further education in her forties and is now an honorary research fellow of the Bedford Centre for the History of Women at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her PhD was 'Keeping Up Appearances. Clothes, Class and Culture, 1918-1939'. She has been a visiting fellow at the Yale Center for British Art, and, in 2007, was awarded the Ernestine Richter Avery Fellowship at the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA.
In addition to her books, she regularly writes articles and book reviews for leading UK publications and newspapers, and gives talks on her favourite interests of gardening and dress codes.
Photo credit: Charlie Hopkinson
