Gender and Gardening - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 139

divided up: 'Before I had got beyond the introductory phrase, “I'm interested to
know how responsibilities are divided in the home”, it often happened that whoever
I was talking with, woman or man, would break in with “Oh we share everything.”
It seemed something that confirmed a loving relationship, to believe all work is
shared' (1985, 216); and Gray in her study of the domestic uses of the VCR found
that couples tended to insist that labour in the home is shared (Gray 1992). In fact,
when I asked one of my interviewees Keith how labour was divided, he fell to the
same discursive strategy, immediately following it with a contradictory statement,
'Well, it's shared. I would say I do the majority of it.' Yet what unifies Cockburn
and Gray's research and my own, is that when men and women co-habit, labour is
divided - men and women perform different tasks. Cockburn, for example, found
that once the interview moved to the individual tasks in question she unearthed a
different version of events and a starkly conventional delineation in terms of the
chores done by men and women began to emerge. Similarly, Gray found that, 'for
the majority of women the home is first and foremost a work place' (1992, 54) but
she found that in some cases if men did become involved in 'sharing' the housework
they betrayed through their use of language who they really considered housework
to belong to; one man for example called it helping with, ' her vacuuming and
dusting' (Gray, 1992: 50).
One of the findings in Cockburn's interviews has particular resonance for one of
the structuring principles of gendered labour in my study. Writing of an interview
with one couple she expresses surprise, 'we arrived finally at a hobby they shared:
upholstery. Ah, I thought. Something that both of them do? “I repair the wooden
frames, she puts on the fabric”' (Cockburn 1985, 218). In fact this kind of divide
between men and women's gardening tasks is a common feature of the textual images
of gardening in the contemporary media. The advertisement for the Mantis garden
maintenance system featured in a 1998 edition of Gardens Illustrated for example,
shows a conscious will on the part of the company to include women in an advert
for garden technology. However, there are still only three women alongside five men
in the illustrations where the models wield the tool. More significantly, the man in
the advertisement is shown using the system for structural maintenance and heavy
ground work, whereas the woman is relegated to the more decorative, 'finishing off'
tasks such as edging and planting. In terms of the co-habiting men and women I
interviewed, from both middle- and working-class households, it was predominantly
the case that men provided structure using tools and technological machinery and
women created decorative effects.
Thomas conceded he had discussed the garden design with his wife Lena but, he
told me, 'I would do the manual work.' He then proceeded with a comprehensive list
of the hard landscaping he had done in the garden, he had: erected trellis, constructed
the paths, built a retaining wall and had done any necessary tree felling. While
maintenance was 'shared' Thomas was responsible for trimming the high hedges
which bordered the garden. Lena took responsibility for pruning and growing herbs.
Similarly in the case of Millie and Jack, Jack was 'grass-mower' and did 'any heavy
work that needs doing' while Millie 'does all the planting.' Anne told me that when
her ex-husband Richard had lived with her, she had relegated heavy tasks, such as
digging out old roses from the garden, to him. Yet it is interesting to note that after