Class, Taste and Gardening - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 115

different vocabulary for describing garden space. Often gardens were referred to
as 'land'. Some used the acreage of their land as a descriptor of their garden, 'The
garden is about one and a half acres,' Hugo told me. And Rosemary said, 'We've
always had land':
Maud : I couldn't bear to live in a flat and not…
Rosemary : Have any private land (laughs).
Maud : … be able to open your door and walk into the garden. Gardening just comes
naturally when you've lived in the country.
In these ways, the garden was implicitly regarded as both a cultural and a property
asset and, as Savage et al. remind us, what characterises the historical formation and
reproduction of the British middle-class is its ability to recognise, store and transmit
such assets (Savage et al. 1992, 17).
The middle-class gardeners had access to the resources horticultural knowledge
affords and this took various forms. Several of them were entirely at ease with the
Latin nomenclature of plant species and genus and this was exchanged quite casually
in everyday conversation. 'We're fond of viburnums,' Hugo told me 'but we also
have lots of the usual: cotoneaster, pyracantha, spiraea, philadelphus …'. David, a
biology teacher at the local grammar school was interested in plant reproduction and
disease, so he was able to speak with confidence about plant 'stamens' and 'ovaries'
and processes such as 'photosynthesis'. And Anne and Phoebe were interested in
the medicinal uses of herbs and they were very knowledgeable about some of the
poisonous chemical constituents of herbs and plants. In short, these gardeners were
conversant with the kinds of gardening cultural capital that could be exchanged for
high returns in the 'right' circles.
Interestingly, in contrast to the working-class gardeners - who clearly valued and
worked hard to maintain both the friendship links, through plant exchange and the
look of the street by having a tidy garden - the middle-class gardeners left the local
community unmentioned. What mattered to them was the establishment of social
links beyond the local. Indeed these gardeners by varying degree have accrued social
capital: Maud and Rosemary were members of the Northern Horticultural Society,
(note too that the following remark demonstrates a social link with someone in the
legal profession) 'Well it was Mr Inneson, Mr. Inneson the solicitor who invited Pop
to join, so we've always maintained it since.' Maud had a long-standing relationship
with flower arranging societies, 'I first went on my flower course in 1957,' she told
me, 'and I went to the Constance Sprye School for a five day course which they put
on for teachers.' Almost all the middle-class gardeners I interviewed mentioned that
they had purchased plants at Harlow Carr (based in Harrogate, with all the class
connotations that Harrogate brings). And several of them mentioned purchasing
plants at certain specialist garden centres. Indeed for some purchasing plants was
described as a form of connoisseurship: