Gender and Gardening - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 137

aligned their gardening apprenticeship with the same-sex parent. Keith who does all
the gardening and whose garden is singularly devoted to flowers also came from a
family where tasks had been gendered, 'I mean me father always wa' a keen gardener
but leaning more towards home-grown vegetables and what have you, whereas me
mum always liked her plants.' But in what follows he foregrounds learning from his
mother as a source of knowledge:
Lisa T : And did you learn about flower plants from your mum at all?
Keith : Well I often wondered, you know, I mean when she used to take cuttings and what
have you, she used to show us at certain times of year and I suppose some of it stayed
with me.
Similarly Millie told me that her parents had divided their activities, 'dad was veg,
mum was flowers', but Millie, like her brother, had acquired pea, onion and sprout-
growing success from her father:
Lisa T : And that's things passed down from your father?
Millie : (very definitely) Yes it is, yes. And my brother's the same.
The examples cited here show that there is a history of gendered gardening tasks
and responsibilities which, despite class, is still being lived out. It was the case,
especially among respondents over 50, that women associated themselves with flower
gardening and men with growing vegetables. Moreover gendered gardening carries,
once again in relation to older respondents, the legacy of being sited in the family; the
men and women of the study tended to identify with same-sex parents in relation to
the activities they performed. In these ways, Bourdieu's argument that performatives
adhere to institutional authority is offered credence, since the family as an institution
sanctioned and wielded a powerful influence in relation to the allocation and
performance of specifically gendered tasks. However, work on masculinity (Heward
1996) suggests that social trends have conspired to weaken traditional institutional
bases which have sanctioned traditionally gendered roles. The advent of feminism,
changes both to employment structures and to the family have led to a more fluid and
experimental construction of gender in contemporary culture. These factors might
explain why the younger contingent of my sample were prepared to cite both parents
as gardening influences and to announce that they eschewed staunchly traditional
modes of gendered gardening. In this way, while Bourdieu's argument in relation
to performatives might still carry credence among an older generation, younger
ordinary gardeners were beginning to challenge their gendered practices in the face
of weakening institutions. The tasks and responsibilities associated with masculine
and feminine forms of gardening were showing signs of change.
“I Build it and She Plants it”: Doing Gender and Garden Practices
Jack : I'm the grassmower.