Garden stroll

We enjoyed yesterday's gorgeous weather by visiting several private gardens as part of a benefit for a charitable organization. This type of event is probably 90% female, and I couldn't help but note how the emphasis was strongly oriented to herbaceous plants. This probably sounds sexist, but why do you suppose women generally have more interest in flowers rather than trees & shrubs? It's kind of baffling to me.

Good question.

Maybe you are looking at it the wrong way- I might ask why men are generally less interested in herbaceous plants ; )

Or...

"Why don't women like woodies?"

"Why don't men favor posies and pansies?"

Ponderances of proximity and propinquity to the Pacific...

Let's expand and expound upon that, Pseudo my man - I think...

Could there be anything in the imbedded delayed gratification of planting a tree - knowing that it will be some time (possibly years) before the reward of performance and pleasure occurs - that parallels and equals what men experience?

Could there similarly be something in the (relatively) immediate climactic penultimate eruption of excitement and joy from growing most herbaceous species that provides a mirror into the many shades of the fairer sex's soul...

I feel compelled to compare it to the sowing of wild oats versus the nurturing and day by day care of raising children.

I like both herbaceous plants and shrubs/trees. Herbaceous plants certainly take less patience to see them come to fruition though. As a generality, I think women have more patience than men, which would contradict your initial query of why women have more interest in herbaceous plants.

Sally and Seq both have compelling points. My garden would be incomplete without woodies, they are the backbone...the foundation, if you will to my landscape. To expound on Both previous points and to include this ponderance; I wonder if more females than males delight in growing plants from seed?

Interesting though Mipii. I think it also becomes somewhat of a generational thing too. My generation wants everything now, so for both male and females my age, we might be less willing to grow something from seed than someone of an older generation.

What is the basis for your original idea? You may be correct, but survey results could be helpful. I'm not sure that I have a preference. It is an interesting question to ponder and I appreciate your willingness to pose it.

I'm a guy, by the way, and I would also suggest that one's preference might be influenced by things like garden size and, for me, level of gardening experience. I've been seriously gardening for only 10 or 12 years and for the first few years I paid attention almost exclusively to trees and shrubs because I needed to establish a foundation. Next came herbaceous plants, although I've continued to add/move/remove all of the above in the quest for gardening pleasure.

Haha...I like your style backbean.

Quote: "although I've continued to add/move/remove all of the above in the quest for gardening pleasure"

are you thinking what I'm thinking Seq?- that adding/moving/removing is the essence of gardening pleasure.

My take is a little different... I do the adding. Mother nature does the removing.
My version of the cycle of life.

This message was edited Jul 1, 2015 6:54 PM

This is an observation based on going to scores of private gardens over the past twenty years. I always try to reach out to the gardener to pick their brain and get a feel for the history of it. I'm just curious I suppose.

(chuckle @ Weerobin)

Haha...very true in your case Wee.

Thanks, Pseudo. I tend to agree with your original assessment, but as I thought about it I began to wonder what the numbers really are. I guess that's what you were doing already with your post.

Adding/moving/removing is indeed the essence of my gardening pleasure. Mother Nature has done a fair amount of removing for me as well although I have needed to remove a lot of unwanted plants, especially privet and kudzu, in order to make a garden.

I like the original question but the more I think about it the more confused I get. That may be a generational thing too.

Not sure but I think this forum might have about 50:50 male:female frequent posters? Anyway it feels more equal than some others where I hang out.

Several years ago my young neighbor began coming over to "help" me in the garden. He was still in diapers at the time. He loved the flowers, the brighter the better. Suddenly now he is 10 he does not want a pretty flower in his lapel, it seems he got teased. Now I have to show him non-flower things like insects, to go along with his new masculine identity. Kind of a shame, really.

Pardon me for offering the most boring of ideas about Pseudo's question. Women might like shrubs and trees a lot too, but we don't always wield chain saws,dump trucks full of mulch, ladders, pickaxes, pruners, and all the other tools that might be needed to care for them. Flowers are so much easier and they give you pretty things to put on the table.

LOL!!!

Why do women make clothes and men make furniture ? (broad generalities) Both take skill and hand work.

Back to the traditions...heavy lifting...amputations...

"Have you met my neighbor Lefty? He's a cabinetmaker. His wife's a seamstress - Sew."

This is hilarious.

Am I weird? Last I checked I was female, and I don't sew.

As a person who has had a LOT of trees and shrubs at her former residence that she installed and has since moving personally installed nine viburnums, four oakleaf hydrangeas, 3 fothergillas, 36 roses, two large deutzias (I did have an acer griseum professionally installed - I planted my first one), I guess I have reacted to the lousy installation I have gotten from "professionals", learned to do it myself, and use lots of leverage and Craftsman tools (the BEST).

I always thought that you install shade trees first (largely because of the time they take to make an impact), ornamental trees second (love them because things like smokebushes, lilacs and prunus make an impact fairly quickly), shrubs and shrub-like plants like ornamental grasses third and perennials last. I planted annuals for years while trying to figure out which perennials to use. Then interplant with bulbs as the finishing touch.

Maybe I now get why I get strange looks when I wield chainsaws and drills, climb tall ladders, and use various pruners of all sizes, lawn mowers and snowblowers. Let me tell you, the men in my neighborhood respond with part fascination, part horror, and part admiration (the latter from a fireman who is married to a female fireperson). The male halves of my garden client couples get all goosebumpy and big eyed when I open my trunk and they see my garden tools. "Can I try this out?" is a popular question.

But I must confess that I have never wielded a pickax.

It looks like I just got a third one. The person who referred me to my first client can no longer handle the assignment. I have been presented as a substitute. A person with a huge garden in multiple sections.

Looks like I'm going to start working weekends. Physically taxing, but I love it. I'm nuts. I go across the street to the yard of the neighborhood mensch fireman and deadhead his new roses and pull a few weeds (he is very easy on the eyes, especially in his battalion commander uniform). And I locked myself out of my house two days ago and he used an ingenious means of getting me back in without destruction to my house.

I have a standing massage therapy appointment every two weeks (they sharply discount for regulars), and the community college 15 minutes away has a program for massage therapy - and they need bodies to work on. The program has three semesters, and they charge a nominal fee for students to work on you. I just got a 90 minute massage from a third semester student from the new increased price of $45, up from $30. This is a person who is about to go into private practice. I am limited to one a month, and the last two were at 8:15 at night but I slept like a baby afterwards both times. So I get it done three times a month because otherwise I would probably be in traction.

But hey, it beats the heck out of the psychological abuse you get on most jobs in the corporate world. I'll never go back!!

Hey Donna, I have no doubt you can do just about anything in the garden :) In fact, if we're going to talk about woman power, I DO wield a pickaxe because that is how I loosen the rocks. Getting these out of the middle of the peony bed was my weekend activity.

Interesting topic! Chances of offending someone are high but we are tough and can be nice to one another (I hope).
I had an idea about this. I think maybe in our culture we now celebrate women who cross traditional gender barriers, and wield chainsaws (my favorite is my Sawzall so I don't have to maintain the chain). So women are gradually doing more things that men used to do, plus they have often kept up with traditional women's things too (planting pretty flowers). Still, a lot of power tools were designed by men for men, and are often a bit big and heavy for me, even though I am relatively tall and strong. But my Dad never taught me to use them.
But it seems to me that there is still a lot of cultural pressure on boys to not do girlish things. It is less than it was, but is clearly still present. So the imbalance is more that men are avoiding the herbaceous plants, rather than women are avoiding woody plants.
Smart men might use this to their advantage, as they can surround themselves with smart active women in a gardening or horticulture class...

All Right! Gotta get a pickax.

I know men who are reluctant to use tools because their fathers made them feel they couldn't do it, and it stuck. I have a good friend who is like that. He hates tools and won't use them. He hires someone to do the kinds of repairs I do. But I did have a cheat. The Helpful Hardware guys at Ace Hardware. They have been wonderful about explaining to me how to do projects, and they do it in a very encouraging way. I grew up in condos - someone else does the maintenance. But the wonderful man who built my house explained all kinds of things to me, and I wrote them down. And got comfortable. When nice men see that you are really eager to learn, they are incredibly kind and generous with their information. I don't know where I would be without the kindness of about a dozen different gentlemen who enlightened me. I do think it's easier for a woman than a man to walk up to a man in a hardware store and say that she has a project but is clueless about how to do it.

Computers. When I had problems with computers, I would ask the nearest male, because he probably knew more than I. But about a year ago I had a ton of problems, and Microsoft and Staples and the like want a ton of your money. That's when I discovered "All Experts". Well, I didn't really discover them. I have been an "Expert" on the Perennial forum for a couple of years. So I went on and consulted a computer software expert in India, who helped me for several days, fixed all the issues, and guided me to software that would protect my computer. In the course of doing that, and at no cost, I finally came to understand how my computer really functioned, and didn't have that "if I push this button it will blow up" feeling. I actually gained an understanding of software (wow, me?) and learned that there are some wonderful people out there.

I now know how to tinker with my lawn mower. When it doesn't function, I know what to do, because nice people explained its quirks to me. The same with my snow blower.

There is a lot of cultural pressure on both sexes. Doing things or not doing things does not involve right or wrong. A lot of the time it is an issue of comfort level, and I know how that feels, because mine used to be low.

One funny thing. Growing roses used to be considered a "manly" thing because of the chemicals involved. A lot of exhibitors were men, which meant growing hybrid teas, and to exhibit hybrid teas, you practically had to nuke them with chemicals that are now banned. But wearing masks and gloves and sun protection was not "manly". And getting a tetanus shot, as I did, was for sissies. People lost limbs from infections they got being pieced by thorns and not treating the punctures. If you go to local rose societies you will find that the overwhelming number of members are men over 70.

And so it goes...

Oh, I think that men used to predominate in many high level pursuits, like rose growers, chefs etc because striving like that used to be in the domain of men. Women were supposed to take care of home and family, not have ambition.

Well, good thing there were folks like Gertrude Jekyll, Beatrix Farrand, Marian Coffin, Lucy Braun, Mary Wharton, Julia Child, Marie Curie, Enid Yandell, and possibly a host of others who saw their way through such things and blazed a trail. I bet any of you could name a few or score.

I read about many of these kinds of women in little biography books that I used to carry home by the dozen from the Carnegie Library when I was in early grade school. Insatiable, I was.

Much of what is different today is that such things and people are discussed for inspiration, rather than ridicule or curiosity or stereotyping.

My 83 year old mother was recently observed on a stepladder cleaning her gutters/downspouts during a bout of heavy rain - alone at her home of nearly 50 years. Indomitable to a fault, she was a full time housewife to 10 of us and my cantankerous late father after completing her pharmacy degree at the University of Wisconsin (proud Badger class of '53).

In all her free time (!) she gardened. Loved her a flock of flowers, many of which she propagated from her mother's garden in Wisconsin - and still shares with us today. We had most of the bones (trees, shrubs) already in place when we moved to Kentucky, but she has added favorites as editing and vacancies created spots.

I think that there is a blend in all of us, tilting one way or another at times, but always a quest for some type of balance. Except maybe those people who remain in Wisconsin...

Mom, ever vigilant with replanting the front spring shrub border at Silver Hill (Malus 'Orange Crush', stage right).

VV - a high five to your Mother - she rocks!

Yes she does. And still makes regular runs up the road to relatives - northern Illinois and eastern Wisconsin.

Glad she brings back beer, cheese, and sausage for the rest of us young'uns...

Lol, what a Woman! You come from good stock VV, give her an extra special hug next time you see her. Beautiful house VV and a great looking Malus.

I'm firmly in the camp that believes culture plays an outsized role in all of this. Not to get too political here, as this discussion has remained remarkably free of that, but I believe we are steered into the conventional masculine and feminine roles at a very early age. It's why little Bobby was expected to mow the lawn and older sister Judy washed the dishes. All I can add to this is that I am so happy these outdated gender roles are slowly but surely being cast into the dust bins they belong.

I was raised by a single mother and three older sisters, which no doubt greatly influenced my views on this and a host of other issues. My brother, who was the oldest and recently passed away, was far more influenced by the "manly" presence of my father, who took cantankerous to a whole 'nother level. There's no one way to find balance in life, but I'm sure relieved the women in mine have helped me get there.

I couldn't agree with you more, Pseudo. If you are really lucky (or perverse) the stereotypes don't take. When I as five years old I was given three presents. The first was one of those horrible baby dolls that you are supposed to feed with a bottle of water that comes out the other end so you can look forward to feeding and cleaning babies when you grow up. I "forgot" to take it home.

I was given a toy ironing board and iron. I tossed the iron, turned the ironing board upside down, attached sheets to the part that had been a stand, pretended it was a sailing ship and took my dolls on adventures around the house.

The third was an orange Tonka dump truck. Yeah! My favorite toy. I hauled my dolls over land after they got off the ship.

My sisters later told me that I was the ringleader in making up adventure stories for the dolls. I didn't remember this, but I think my parents (especially my mother, who took 11 years to get her BA, working one semester and going to school the next because her parents were willing to pay for college for her two brothers but not her) was an inspiration. Her brothers never took the parents' up on the offer to pay for their education, so my mother, who went on to get a Masters at 40, was the only member of her family to get a higher education. This is a woman who was born in 1925. Yes VV, my Mom rocked too.

I agree with that last entry, Pseudo and I think that Pistil's experience with the neighbor boy is probably more common than examples like DonnaMack, who I greatly admire. I think it is more acceptable these days for women, especially, to do jobs/activities generally considered to be 'man's work' but I don't think that the expectations have really changed all that much.

I hope it is changing in the sense of girls being taught to use hand and power tools if they are interested. My wife had never used more than a hammer and a drill before we met (we were in our 40's). But I have a well equipped wood working shop and she know feels comfortable using power equipment to make things (stools, benches, and more) which are of use to us. She also has learned to use draw knives, chisels, and scrapers to make wooden spoons. Very empowering and I love to see her feel good about something she's made.