Histories and Context - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 17

Gibberd's Garden 'Marsh End' in Harlow. 2 Rather, their gardening was drawn
from what most families in the post-war period could access: largely commonplace
plants set into creative local aesthetic arrangements. From photographs and from
what I have managed to learn from my mother, grandma loved hybrid tea roses, in
particular the famous apricot yellow 'Masquerade' and the lilac pink 'Blue Moon'.
She also enjoyed hydrangeas (mop-head as opposed to the less frequently seen
lace-cap variety - now prized by middle-class gardeners), 'pinks' and spring bulbs.
The garden had cheap and cheerful 'bushes' such as forsythia. And bedding plants
played an absolutely key role, in particular nemesias, night-scented stock, alyssum
and blue lobelia were brought back from Wells's and were enjoyed every summer.
But while my grandmother brought back bedding plants during the summer months,
the shrubs at Bentley Avenue had either been moved from the gardens of family or
friends or they grew from cuttings. The bank of mop-head hydrangeas, the ones I
am standing in front of in Figure 2.2, came from cuttings placed straight into the
ground. Resources, for working-class families, have always been an issue. For as
my mother was keen to stress, the family never visited garden centres - they simply
'didn't have 'em in those days'. The lack of economic resources had some bearing
on what the family could 'have' in terms of trees, flowering shrubs and plants; in
some instances the garden was about 'making do'. But while council houses and
gardens were designed to a template, the garden at Bentley Avenue was not simply
the sum of commonplace parts. As mother was keen to tell me, grandma liked to
have a few things that were: 'a bit showy, for people going past, to show you had a
knowledge. My mother liked to have things that were classy, upmarket. She was the
only person on that estate that 'ad a magnolia tree.'
Yet while class was central to the visual look of the Thornton garden, gender
had an equally important bearing on aesthetics. The garden seen in Figure 2.1
was mostly the product of grandma's choice and management. Grandad had no
involvement in the garden's look, nor, my mother told me, did he have very much
to do with the labour that kept it maintained. Employed as a master-plumber until
his early seventies, grandad worked for six days a week. Consequently, it was my
mother and her older sister Ella who 'put plants in, did the lawn and kept up to
it', since grandma was too frail to labour. Consequently, the aesthetics at Bentley
Avenue were centred around the plants and planting designs grandma liked. While
Stoney Lane council estate was comprised of standardised houses and gardens, there
were important differences in how individual gardens were planted and arranged.
Grandma's choice of aesthetics could be distinguished from Mr. Moore's garden
next door. His use of the garden rested entirely on re-creating the tightly patterned
bedding arrangements found in municipal park designs. He had carefully manicured
lawns and beds filled in summer with low level impatiens, marigolds and white
alyssum that would be cleared out and left bare each autumn. In this way, Mr Moore
brought a specifically public aesthetic to his garden. By contrast, grandma liked
showy, ornamental, feminine plants and flowers. While the tiny detailed frailty of
2 Marsh End, Harlow, Essex is, 'generally regarded as one of the finest examples of
late twentieth century modern design' (Brown 1999). It was made for Sir Frederick Gibberd
(1908-1984), architect, landscape architect and town planner.