Judith M. Taylor’s Women and Gardens highlights the depth and breadth of women’s influence on gardens and landscapes in the last two hundred years and reveals many unknown or intentionally ignored facts concerning the roles of women in gardening and their contributions to horticultural science. Over eight chapters that investigate the obstacles and opportunities women have encountered in gardening, this book explores the history of women in horticulture, landscape design, and ornamental plant breeding from the Victorian era to today.
About the Author
Judith M. Taylor is the author of The Olive Tree in California: History of an Immigrant Tree; The Global Migrations of Ornamental Plants: How the World Got into Your Garden; Tangible Memories: Californians and Their Gardens, 1800–1950; and Visions of Loveliness: Great Flower Breeders of the Past.
Praise For…
"Taylor is a characterful narrator, and readers in search of interesting stories about women and gardening will find entertainment and fresh figures in this book." — Sarah Bilston
“Taylor’s book is far more than a horticultural history — it is a restoration of voices silenced or ignored for centuries… This compelling, beautifully researched volume is essential reading for anyone interested in history, gender studies, or the transformative power of gardens.” — The Flora Journal
“‘Women hold up half the sky’—so the saying goes. But they have almost certainly done more than half the weeding, watering, and digging. This book will certainly help set the record straight, revealing and documenting the contribution of countless women through garden history.” — Noel Kingsbury, author of Garden Flora: The Natural and Cultural History of the Plants in Your Garden
“Judith M. Taylor is, without doubt, recognized internationally as today’s foremost horticultural historian. Her body of work ranges across a wide spectrum of horticultural facets. In all her work Judith is relentless in seeking information, irrespective of the language in which it is recorded. Her latest book, Women and Gardens, is especially timely as long-term gender bias, in all fields of endeavor, is being challenged throughout the western world. Judith demonstrates and records conclusively that despite earlier bias, many women have indeed made significant and lasting contributions to ornamental horticulture worldwide for a long time.” — Keith Hammett, past president of the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture
“As in her previous books, Judith M. Taylor expertly sheds light on the historical framework of the horticultural sector, addressing the socioeconomic aspects that influenced its development. The book focuses on how women, throughout the centuries, have been been penalized by male hegemony, which has relegated them to humanistic cultural activity and kept them away from the ambit of science. Horticulture has ancient roots, and the relationship between horticulture and women began with the care of the home and the health of relatives and then evolved into the figurative arts and writing. Only recently have women made forays into science and technological applications of the horticultural sector. Through a significant gallery of women who have worked in horticulture over the centuries in the shadow of men, Taylor highlights the problem of the poor access that women have historically had to the sciences.” — Margherita Beruto, chair of the International Society for Horticulture Science
“Judith Taylor’s book yields a bountiful harvest of stories illustrating the interdependence of gender and gardening. Starting with the history of how women became displaced from their traditional roles as growers of food and medicine, Taylor unearths inspiring and surprising tales of women who overcame obstacles as planters, scientists, landscape designers, and gardening artists and through their work often produced the wider foundations of women's liberty.” — Laura C. Nelson, author of Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea
“Here is a book that brings to our attention the mostly untold story of women who played prominent roles in the development of many aspects of horticulture throughout history. From research to writing, propagation, cultivation, experimentation, design, education, landscape architecture, and so much more, Judith M. Taylor has brought together a cast of characters who helped shape gardens and gardening around the world and through the centuries.” — Wesley Brittenham, former director of horticulture at Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm
“Although the influence of women on gardens is deep and persistent, the role of women in gardening across the centuries has been largely undocumented, except by women themselves in letters and very infrequently in books written by women. This sampling of the history of women in gardens brings together wonderful stories of the effort, skill, and intelligence women have brought to the discipline.” — Judith Phillips, author of The Gardens of Los Poblanos
