Was ‘Gardening for Wives’ the only book to bring sex into the garden?

If a trawl of my browsing history should ever reveal a search for “erotic gardening books,” let me explain.

It was all done as research for this column. I was wondering if Gardening for Wives was the only book to bring sex into gardening.

It was published by Corgi Mini-Books in 1967 and was aimed at “the wife who is prepared to help ‘him’ in the garden say between washing up the mid-day meal dishes and preparing the tea.”

But the author, Bill Simpson, gets into the erotics in the first paragraph of the introduction. Describing Eve as the first great floral arranger, he writes about "the subtle way in which she placed the fig leaf, a floral arrangement so simple, exciting and provocative that I've yet to see a more effective one".

Then he lets rip. “You can mass all your orchids, and gardenias, but one lady with one fig leaf correctly attired will have more allure and magnetism than all of Kew and Wisley Botanic Gardens.”

Actually, that’s the end of the eroticism in the book – I checked – and he gets on with the more down to earth business of getting his “sweet ladies”, as he calls his readers, into the garden.

Those reluctant to undertake weeding and other tedious tasks should “just think of the compensations, such as a nice, healthy, schoolgirl complexion for one, and saving a fortune on fancy soap for another”.

He describes a time when “every third man you met was a gardener, or the son of a gardener, with a wealth of experience at his fingertips”.

By the late 1960s, broader opportunities and low pay had driven gardening out of fashion with these men. And he issued a call to wives to save the situation.

Heavy work

“Just imagine a country full of well-kept front and back gardens. All you have to do is spend a few hours a week helping ‘him,’ doing those jobs you can manage so easily and well.”

He ("he" and "him" are in italics throughout the book) is firmly in charge and certain jobs might be tricky for the ladies.

For instance, "Should he buy in specie roses other than those mentioned here then let him look after them because there is an awful lot of light pruning needed on certain types."

You can’t have ladies ruining everything with those big fingers.

He does the heavy work too. "Get him to give you a small piece of ground ready dug by the beginning of April," he advises his readers. And if he hasn't bought fertiliser "buy a packet from your local sundries man".

Raking the lawn he likens to “brushing your hair and you know how invigorated that makes your scalp feel”.

If I had been reading that book in the late 1960s would I have noticed what we might now regard as the sexism in it? I simply don’t know. Our attitudes are so often invisible until they are reflected in the mirror of a later era.

Flowery eroticism

I don't want to be unfair to Simpson – and it's part of that invisibility of attitudes that Gardening for Wives was written by a man.

It’s interesting that he harks back to an era in England in which every third man was a gardener, which I don’t believe, and that he is writing for a world in which married women didn’t go out to work.

But nearly 40 per cent of married women in England were working outside the home by 1960 – although getting sacked when they became pregnant was a routine occurrence.

By the time Gardening for Wives came out, the campaign for equal pay for women – for instance in the car factories – was gathering force.

So Simpson was writing for a world that didn’t exist and was recalling an era that had probably also never existed.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, so far as I can see this was the only gardening book to introduce itself with a blast of flowery eroticism.

If I am wrong, do get in touch, citing your sources.

Pádraig O'Morain is credited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email: pomorain@yahoo.com