Apology? Adding emphasis? Pay attention?

Anyway, it seems my chief mistake was assuming that a group of accomplished writers (even if "only" garden writers) would all understand the meaning of a relatively common English word. My Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary defines "claptrap," as follows, "(klap'trap') n. Pretentious language; nonsense."

IronBelly, your grandmother should have known better.

There was never any doubt over the meaning of the word field, only who or what it was aimed at. Now I understand it as a warning that anything you were going to say on the subject would be claptrap, or most simply put nonsense, I understand. However the warning was unnecessary, I figured it out for myself.

Yeah, field... you are probably right. Grandma should have known better but she couldn't hear very well. Besides, she was one of those stout Lutherans that Garrison Kellor talks about. If you are going to error -- error on the side of God. (That translates to soap.)

IronBelly

Surprising that no one's brought up the attempts made by garden authors to exploit the supposed different approaches to gardening based on gender.

There are books out there with titles like "The American Woman's Garden" and "The American Man's Garden" (oddly, I think the latter one was written by a woman). None of them seems to have been a wild success, at least based on how often I see them in the regular garden book section as opposed to the discount racks.

Maybe Psychology Today would be more suited to publishing something on this topic as opposed to a gardening magazine.

Hello Eric what a nice surprise to see you over here. Are you not afraid of 'slumming it' with all the exploitation and everything going on?
One thing a writer (at least a writer like me) sets out to do is entertain, a garden writer should be no different from any other in this respect. I am not averse to pretentious language if the need arises or challenging views that some think should be slotted away and marked "Psychology" in red ink. The main thing is that we communicate not, try to show who is cleverest.
Eric may have a point when he suggests that the difference is a 'supposed' difference but isn't it worthwhile to expose this supposition? And how else is it done if do not talk (write) about it openly?

Nah, this isn't any sleazier a crowd than what you'd find over in the design forum. And I recognize a lot of the usual suspects anyway. :)

Openness is groovy, though that wasn't what I was getting at. The point was how someone might exploit the topic you bring up, which has doubtfully energized the gardening public based on the books I mentioned. You might have an easier time getting your proposed article published if you cast your net wider than a strictly gardening audience.

Is "The American Woman's Garden" really a book?? It sounds dreadful. Unpleasantly antiseptic. I'd never buy it. I bet you'd have better luck if you called it something like "The Joyfully Creative and Feminine Abundance Garden." Or what about "The Glorious Goddess Garden: 15 Spiritual Theme Gardens Dedicated to Goddesses. Includes: The Artemis Moon Garden, The Venus Lust Garden, The Athena Attitude Garden, etc."

"The American Man's Garden" is probably all about lawn mowers and Funginex and tomatoes, and maybe how to prune the occasional small tree. It's enough to put anybody into a coma. Me, I'd call it, oh, let's see, how about "The Garden of Pricks: How Make A Million Dollars Growing Cacti, Succulents, and Bromeliads in Fifteen Minutes a Month."

Welcome to the writers forum, Eric!

On checking, I find that at least two titles in the Man's/Woman's garden genre have been written by none other than Rosemary Verey. There's also "A Man's Garden" by Warren Schultz, another title that seems to be vanishingly rare in bookstores.

Elizabeth, you would no doubt enjoy the male gardening website linked below. Their motto appears to be "No Flowers, No Gloves, No Girly Stuff". I kid you not.

Oh my heavens thank you Eric, that just made my day. "Nice melons!" I had to breathe into a paper bag to keep from passing out. "Remember, as part of your Mans Garden you should include time for tinkering with your tools!" They even have t-shirts with the no flowers-no-gloves-no-girly-stuff slogan.

That does it. I'm going to write a whole little series of books for them: The Trucker's Garden, The Biker's Garden, The Techie-Nerd Garden, The Robert Bly Garden, The NFL Garden. I see a vast marketing potential here...

Eric - the link ROCKS!

Can any of us surpass this writing from the Man's Garden Web site?

"Having a pumpkin in your garden will instantly convey a sense of manliness as it slumps in its patch like a giant orange testicle."

It would seem that the growing of giant vegetables and fruits is a heavily male preoccupation, at least in the Western world. How many times have you seen a woman pictured in a seed catalog, proudly posing next to a rutabaga the size of a small car?

Has anyone done a book profiling some of these intrepid growers and their Secrets of Giant Veggies? Now there's an idea with hot market potential.

That reminds me, I've been meaning to write the biography of John A Thompson, Ph.D., D.A., inventor of SuperThrive (tm).

And don't forget the movie rights. Perhaps Russell Crowe could star as the legendary "D.A." who is just a few seedlings short of a flat.

"Gratifies with joy and happiness"? Man, this stuff not only promotes plant growth but World Peace into the bargain.
The disclaimer that comes with bottles of Superthrive also features the best non-guarantee guarantee I have ever seen.

A few years ago, when I was working at a nursery, not everyone I worked with shared my enthusiasm for SuperThrive. One Sunday when I was off several of my more skeptical co-workers called the phone number that's on the label. Unbeknownst to me, the jocular fellows left a message asking how SuperThrive helped end WWII and promotes World Peace. Then they left my name and the nursery's phone number. So first thing Monday morning I get this call:

Him: Hello this is Dr. Thompson. I'm calling for Elizabeth, about World Peace.

Me: World Peace? I'm sorry, I don't carry that rose.

Him: No, I'm calling about the end of World War II.

Me: I'm sorry, I don't have that one either.

Him: You wanted to know how SuperThrive helped end World War II!

Me: Hang on, I think we have a bad connection.

Him: You asked the question. Do you want to know the answer or not?

Me: Hello? I'm afraid you must have reached the wrong person.

Him: How many Elizabeths do you have at that number?

Me: Oh, are you calling about Queen Elizabeth?

Him: Is that what you call yourself?

Me: Sorry, I thought you were calling about a rose.

Him: I told you, I'm calling about World Peace and the end of World War II.

This went on like some kind of Abott & Costello routine until I noticed my fool colleagues rolling on the floor like idiots outside my office. Anyway, the guy's a real trip. Maybe Julia Roberts can play his daughter.

Nah, Elizabeth you are making it up! Funny story though have you ever thought of becoming a writer? I have been in touch with Julia BTW and she wants to play you.

Nope, not making it up! (And Susan Sarandon already got the part.) But maybe next week's topic needs to be screenplays: writing gardening into the movies.

My only Hollywood accomplishment so far is I designed the rose pruning gloves Annette Benning wore in American Beauty. The owner of the Tahoe Glove Company had asked me if I would endorse his gloves in my pruning classes, and I said I wouldn't because I didn't really like them. So he asked me to design a pair I would endorse, and I did. There's only a quick flash of the gloves in the movie, but they're featured prominently on the promotional poster. I've been impossible ever since.

Incidentally, I noticed the DH in that movie never went out and fussed with the roses.

Oh,. look, here are some more femmy gardeners wearing my gloves!

These discussions on gender-based gardens are becoming so boring and facile. There have been a number of discussions like this at the design forum, along the lines of "men like prairie gardens, women like rose gardens". If I read one more time that men like hot colors, women like pastels, I think I'll vomit the Herradura margarita I had last night.

I design both prairie gardens and foo-foo cottage gardens, love hot colors, and loathe pink - I'm afraid to ask what that makes me. I learned gardening from my father, NOT my mother. My father loved roses, and this was a man who butchered cattle in the Chicago stockyards in the 1920s.

What difference does it all really make anyway? Maybe it speaks to some human prediliction of having to classify everything and put everything into nice little boxes.

What difference does anything make? What's the point of talking or writing about anything at all?

You know yogagal the point wasn't really to have a disussion about gender so much as to use it as a subject for a writing exersize, like yoga for the imagination with lots of stretching that kind of thing. It is not difficult to flame someone like me when I set myself up in this way. My wish is that someone would do it in a way that would be a constructive use of this forum (garden writers forum)that's all.

Elizabeth, you completely missed my point. My point was, what difference does it make if a garden is man- or woman- designed, not that writing/discussing anything doesn't make a difference. Of course, writing/discussing something in and of itself makes a difference, how could social change be accomplished, for example?

If a garden "works", for whatever reason, for example, if it has good flow, if it has the right plants for the right place, then who cares if it was a male or female designer. I certainly don't. All I know is that I see more and more men in my gardening classes (and I don't do classes on lawns, killing bugs, or pruning yews into meatballs, which according to some are the "traditional" male gardening interests).

And Tony, lighten up. I'm saying "enough already". Believe it or not, some topics that are done to death, even by garden writers. I know a writer who quit writing about gardens because he said "how many more times can I write the words 'bold sweeping masses' without going nuts?" That's why I only subscribe to one gardening magazine.

Yogagal 'lighten up' has the same effect on me as 'men like hot colors, women like pastels' does you, except I throw a fit before I throw up.
If you have read any of the recent threads here you will know that Elizabeth and I are trying to drag writers into exploring alternative ways of writing about gardening. We hope to avoid the sad consequences mentioned in your last paragraph.
As you feel strongly about this subject, why not write a short piece, same length as mine above, and post it? Be brave, be heavy. There are people lurking to pick up ideas but it doesn't bother me. I was quite surprised to see an imitation of my "What is a garden?" on a web site recently but it was a poor thing.
If you want to carry on a personal discussion in order to sort out some misunderstanding please e mail me privately.

It's the nature of these fora that certain topics come up over and over, and the same discussions do tend to be repeated, sometimes ad nauseum. What's your favorite rose, what's your least favorite rose, do you spray or not spray, what kind of hedge, etc. Maybe I've personally already seen a topic done to death and have no interest in participating or following when somebody brings it up yet again. When that's the case, I just ignore it. It doesn't occur to me to barge in and say what difference does it make, who cares what roses you like or don't like, this discussion makes me so bored I'm going to throw up.

No, it doesn't really matter whether a garden was designed by a man or a woman, or even a machine. Unless you happen to be interested in the ways gardens can express personalities or make statements about the people who created them. In my professional writing, I often focus on how human nature, with all its amusing little quirks and foibles, is a key ingredient in creating a garden. So I find the exercises Tony puts forth very helpful. Maybe I've already seen what some others have to say on a given subject, but I never know what I'm going to say next. You never know how challenging or rich a subject might be until you sit down and try to tackle it yourself. I've actually used stuff in articles I've sold, words or images that I came up with spontaneously and playfully while I was just fooling around with a topic right here in River City.

Nobody here is trying to lock anybody into sexist stereotypes, we've been over and over that. Women can have "masculine" qualities and men can have "feminine" qualities. Anybody can have any combination, ok? Me, I can shoot a 20 gauge shotgun with hairsplitting accuracy, and I can do it backwards wearing high heels. I used to hate pink roses and now I have over 120 of them. I am Woman, hear me roar.

The factoids by themselves mean nothing. The writer's job is to put them all together, trying various fits like a puzzle until we find some amusing patterns that point to a bigger picture. This is a Herculean task. So some of us writers are using this forum, which is kindly provided by Spike with minimal and quite reasonable restrictions, as a playground where we can just fool around, trying on various ideas like costumes, mixing metaphors like mud pies.

Did you come here expecting to read only brilliantly original, heart-stoppingly fresh, Pulitzer-quality finished literature? Ha! Looks like you get what you paid for.

Alright, here is a photo from my very "masculine garden. You might as well speculate on what it says about me and my garden (even though you're bound to be wrong).

{{gwi:1354192}}

I'm late on this thread, but found it interesting. I'm a member of the Southeastern Palm and Exotic Plant Society (www.speps.net). The membership is primarily interested in cold hardy palms and other bold-foliaged exotic plants like gingers, cannas, elephant ears, unusual broadleaf evergreens, bamboo, etc., and many of the members are big time collectors. And the membership is probably 80% male/20% female. I have also noted that some of the members of SPEPS are also big fans of conifers, and the Conifers forum on GardenWeb is heavily populated by males. I would say this suggests that bold foliage gardens are more appealing, in general, to men. However, I also agree that it's not possible to box garden tastes into specific genders entirely.

Real men grow cactus. :-)

Best regards,
Cactus Cowboy
Big Wonderful Wyoming

Hey Cowboy, is that a in your pocket?

I got my Man's Garden iron-on transfer this week and can hardly wait to embellish a t-shirt with it. Remember! "No flowers, No Gloves, No Girly Stuff."

Now I just need a lady with an iron.

;-)

Shoot, I was going to order one myself but I can't for the life of me figure out how to work this dang iron.

What's an "iron"? Is that the thing you dig up dandelions with?

John, I think an iron is a thing they have at the dry cleaners.

johnp, Elizabeth, take the tshirt and the transfer to the dry cleaners pay them to iron. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ironed for about 10 years.

Back to the topic. I think men have a thing about geometry and it screws up thier ability to garden. Straight lines, perfectly round, meatball shrubs. Lines and circles and non-organic forms.

Men don't like little groupings of plants so they change the little groupings to form a straight line. (Yes, it happened here yesterday when they started planting my perennials.) And you should see the hack pruning job that was done in the public areas on my street. Perfect meatballs. Sheesh!

Of course, there are exceptions to this observation and gay men are totally different but that's what I see here.

*donning armor*

You obviously have not seen my sensually curvaceous plantings--and I am not gay. Not at all. (Another cliché down the drain: I wonder how many American men are afraid of expressing their softer side for fear of being considered "gay".)

There are always going to be individual exceptions (I adore my perfectly round lollypop privets! And I can prune them backwards in high heels!), but that doesn't necessarily invalidate a trend or disprove a theory.

The stereotypes are definitely out there in the public mind. When I worked at a nursery in the SF Bay Area, we had trouble getting reasonably priced group health insurance because the insurance industry has decided the nursery trade is at high risk for HIV. I don't know whether this is based on statistics or just on stereotypes, but it was my experience that there were a disproportionate number of gay men working in the field of horticulture and design. I don't have an explanation. And it doesn't seem to be the case here in small-town Louisiana.

I don't know...but I am seriously peeved at my hubby tonight. His attitude is that everything has to be neat and clean. Each bed must have a border, nothing is allowed to grow on a fence, plants cannot overlap and must have space between them, bushes must be kept trimmed (at the expense of future blooms, it seems) and bulb foliage must be removed the *second* the bloom fades.

Sigh.

Pam
pkock@one.net

pkock,

Divide the yard and let hubby have his own (small) space to manicure. You do what you want with the rest!

Hope you don't mind my butting in, folks, because I'm not a garden writer except for the journal I faithfully keep about plant purchases, blooming times, etc., but the forum looked interesting so I stopped by.

And as I cruised through this particular thread, all I could think about all the way through is Claude Monet. His garden is geometrical, to be sure, and very precisely planted, but then stuff spills out over the paths, flowers get all tangled together, those nasturtiums are allowed to run wild, he uses colors that are strong but also very purple/pink/blue, and finally there are the waterlilies.

And perhaps the most anal-retentive gardener I've ever known used to live right next door. HER shrubs all looked like lollipops, her straight-cornered beds were edged with soldiered bricks, her flowers were never allowed to touch as they marched along in neat rows or to get more than 6"-8" tall, and if they dared sprawl, as her 'Johnson's Blue' geranium did, they were ruthlessly pulled and discarded (into my waiting arms)--in short, the "funeral parlor" style of gardening. And then there is my garden, which doesn't have a straight line in it except along the front walk and there I let plants wander off the edges. I think it has structure, actually, but things run together, I like tall spikey flowers as well as billowy soft ones to keep balance, and my colors tend to the pink/blue/purple with the occasional sharp but delicate orange of a poppy maritima just to draw the eye.

This is not to say that my much less structured approach is any better than my neighbor's, but only to say that two women, close friends and neighbors, weren't different kind of gardeners because of gender but because of personal tastes and style. Even when I got her to plant several clematis, she insisted that they be carefully trained up her light post (how can one keep a clematis under control? with strings tied to each piece and pulling steadily upward). I don't know what she called my garden in private but I know she never really liked it any more than I liked hers.

Have a nice Sunday, folks--I'm off to plant a couple of hellebores to replace the 10-year-old beauty my husband inadvertently raked out in last fall's cleanup. He isn't into gardening tools very much except for a rake and I'm grateful that he's willing to do the grunt work while I plant the flowers. And he paid for the replacement plants because he feels so bad about tearing one out.

This "thread" has been more fun (for moi at least) than
a FAWLTY TOWERS episode.
There are some really good writers attendant here.
Wish I'd found the place earlier!

Who was it who said, "In old age, women turn to gardens for solace and fulfillment"?

Some old lady.

The 23 year old Italian stud gardener....

michaelzz gets the prize! LOL

It may be too early for celebrations but 'better early than next week' as some confused old lady said. The garden writers forum will be three years old in December and this thread, yes the one you have just waded through, with 65 posts, is the longest. There have been some near misses, only last month interest dropped off a query after 4 replies there have been several 1's and a zero (started by the same guy as this one). To prove the old lady wrong or at least premature, even maladroit let's try to start another thread to beat this one..anybody got any ideas?

Looks like the one you just started on warnings may be the kicker, once it picks up steam.

I'm curious for an update of the article you will get out of this, ACJ -- I enjoyed the much earlier version, albeit stereotyped. I found myself thinking that in the venue I am interested in, historical gardening, it was men who "invented" the styles, and then women have slowly appropriated them over the last century and a half. I really think it is only since the mid-20th century that "refined" women have thought to stick their hands in the dirt (they might have fancied flowers, but their [male] gardeners grew them), although working class women have always grown crops, herbs, flowers, tended animals, etc. We have such a luxury today, to buy our food and fool around in our gardens, and worry about what gender does what, don't you think?

I also have been wondering if we could start a new thread, using your cooperative article, and have a go at editing...

I can see that I'm months behind on this thread. But that's reasonable since I only recently joined GardenWeb.

Elizabeth, you description of a floozy hibiscus describes my front garden to a T. Nothing like a gaudy, overbearing flower to liven up the place.

Field and others, I must agree that neither gender nor sexual orientation greatly influence gardening style. Several years ago I started my own gardening group (not a club!) fondly called the anarchist gardeners. I made a point to invite both men and women. As I mentally tour all our gardens, I can't honestly see a pattern. Seems we all like various styles. Or, like me, we like many styles and get very confused about whether we're going tropical or staying with Grandma's garden.

Wonderful site, great thread. Thanks for the entertainment.

I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. The individual, and collective wit here is incredible! I'de say my usual, "Thanks, guys!" to show my appreciation, but I wouldn't want to start anything. ;-)

Dove

One of the great things about gardening is that it can teach you so much about yourself! For instance, for a long time I favoured putting soft pinks and mauves and delicate lacy whites together. I still do a lot of my baskets that way. My husband told me he would like me to put in planters with "a riot of color" in them - to be bold and mix all colours together. Of course I told him I preferred to match them and coordinate them. Then I started to experiment - after all I like the colour red a lot and I figured since mother nature puts all her colours together why shouldn't I.

The result was that I started to like to really like the "riot of colour" my husband was talking about. One example is a favourite of mine - Gallardia, or blanket flower - I have never come across any single flower that is so perfect in orange and red - It reminds me of a perfectly constructed work of art, and each one pops up so effortlessly in the garden, and takes my breath away as it does. So I made a perennial garden - with bold oranges, pinks, reds and yellows in a mass profusion - with those adorable favourites of mine "Nasturtiums" too in every colour imagineable.

Then Tony, my hubby, decided to plant a rose garden (like the one we used to have before we had our kids) and one day I asked him "What's your favourite rose?" - to my surprise he said "Double Delight" the two toned pink one - with the gorgeous scent. First of all, I didn't know he would care that much about scents, and second he has often told me that he's not so keen on pink.

So now, we're both contented in our garden, with a combination of masculine and feminine all over the place - each with its own special niche, each adding to the overall look. Our pond has just been finished and the rocks around it contrast so fittingly with the soft and fragile look of the roses.

I love to dig my hands in the dirt, but I can never push a huge wheelbarrow of it myself. My husband can prune, but he wouldn't have my patience with dead-heading all the flowers.

I think gender is in the garden - it's everywhere we look, and we should take it's example. Like nature, we too need to value and embrace the male and female sides of our true selves, why should we ever be afraid?

You can't keep a good thread down eh?
More on gender.
Aruncas is plant that should be in every garden of the undecided. Some Aruncas are male and others female but, in a very modern way, nobody can tell the difference. Do they sneak around under the cover of darkness to do the the dirty deed? Do we see the difference but find it difficult to point out? Should we allow this same, or indisdinguishable, sex carrying on?
Or, is there a lesson. Has the humble, well you know what I mean, Aruncus something we could learn from? It would be simple if the female flower was pink and the male a masculine grey but that would be a distinction in need of justification. I vote the Aruncus as the flower of non gender specific gardening.

My father looked like Gary Cooper and gardened like Monet. His flowers were beautiful and he also arranged them in bouquets to take to friends. If anyone had called him a sissy he would have laughed. He could shoot a fly out of the air with his Colt .45, but he could also grow the biggest zinnias and roses and vegetables you ever saw.
My mother was a gardener and they competed for space until we had two acres of cultivated gardens spilling over one another.
My husband is a gardener and likes things in rows with spaces in between. That is showing the masculine side of gardening.
Most registrations in the Live Oak Society are made by men, so I guess men think it is o.k. to be into trees. They compete to see who has the biggest oak.
This is a strange topic, isn't it?