The Gardens Of The British Working Class - Margaret Willes

[Calurix]

Hi,

Has anyone read the book mentioned in the title? I would like to buy a copy of the book but at the price it would be beneficial to know if it is recommended.

If the homestead is the wrong location please move this post (I was Swithering between here and other chatter)

Regards,
Calurix

 

[Joonsy]

I can’t offer an opinion on the book as I haven’t read it, it sounds an interesting read though and covers over four hundred years of history up to today. http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780300187847 During the Second World War my grandfather grew roses and was so passionate about them that he absolutely refused to build an air raid shelter as that would have meant digging them up, during air raids the children would all hide under the kitchen table instead not that that would have done any good.

 

[rik_uk3]

My grandmother's shelter was half buried with soil over the top and she grew things on it.

 

[boatman]

In studies such as The English Yeoman: in the Tudor and Stuart Ages by Mildred Campbell the point is made that there was two way traffic between the gardens of the propertied aspirational working class and those of the aristocracy with the exchange of plants and recipes for herbal treatments and the like.

The reduction of garden sizes in new housing developments today is a scandal. Some years ago it was calculated that in terms of farm gate prices the gardens of a new housing development were more productive than the agricultural land covered by that development.

 

[Joonsy]

The reduction of garden sizes in new housing developments today is a scandal.

absolutely, that is very true, the failure of the high-rise flats the sprung up everywhere in the 1960s proved that.