Histories and Context - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 18

certain bedding plants were important, she prized flowers that traditionally signify
femininity through their form, colour and perfume and she loved flowers that could
be cut and taken indoors. For example, she loved the dainty shapes of double lilac
and the elegance of magnolia; the perfume of lily of the valley and roses and she
grew anemones because they could be cut and taken in to the house. According to
my mother's account, grandma's garden tastes were hardly surprising, given that she
liked the things that women have historically been constructed to desire (Coward
1984; Sparke 1995). She liked delicate jewellery, English perfume such as Yardley's
'Bond Street', good clothes and fine fabrics of lace and silk and she was fond of prints
typical of the period - such as, to use my mother's words - 'big rose-blown designs'.
Figure 2.3, which shows grandma and grandad in the lounge in 1966, illustrates my

Figure 2.3 Grandma and Grandad, 1966

point. The photograph shows grandma in a silk floral dress and she wears a jewelled
necklace. She also had a small collection of china, including 'ornaments' decorated
with porcelain roses, carnations and pansies. My grandmother, an ordinary, middle-
aged woman in the 1950s, enjoyed the look, feel and fragrance of women's things;