Jane Loudon taught a generation of Victorian women to dig, sow, graft and prune for themselves. Instructions in Gardening for Ladies sold 1,350 copies on the day it appeared in 1840.
Loudon (1807-1858) came to horticulture through her husband, the landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon, and through John Lindley's lectures, which she attended knowing almost nothing about plants. That memory of being a beginner shapes the whole book. She explains why a bed is dug as well as how, adapts every job to the strength and the clothing of the woman doing it, and assumes her reader has never held a spade. The chapters carry her through stirring and manuring the soil, sowing seed, propagation by layers, cuttings, budding, grafting and inarching, pruning and training, the kitchen garden and its fruit trees, the flower garden, lawns and shrubberies, rockwork and fountains, container-grown specimens under glass, and a month-by-month calendar of operations.
It was a landmark. More than 200,000 copies went out over the following decades, and few single volumes did as much to make gardening a respectable and practical occupation for women in Britain. Read now, it is also a clear window on how a well-kept nineteenth-century garden actually worked, and a good deal of the advice on soil, propagation and pruning still stands.
This edition features:The 1840 text that taught Victorian women to garden, from stirring the soil to the calendar of operations
Step-by-step guidance on sowing, layering, cuttings, budding, grafting, inarching, pruning and training
Chapters on the kitchen garden, fruit trees, the flower garden, lawns, shrubberies and rockwork
Advice on window gardening and on the management of plants under glass in a small green-house