Interesting topic to resurrect.

Several comments above point to perhaps some real difference between North America and Europe in regard to this stereotype, at least at this point in time.

I say this considering myself fortunate to be both a European (Brexit aside: British) and a North American (Canadian).

My neighborhood has several men gardeners, some completely in charge of the garden and some working with their spouse in the garden. DH is unfortunately not one of them but is helpful doing whatever when I ask for help. He took good care of maintaining the gardens while I recovered from back surgery. Our newspaper often features gardens including many with men as sole gardeners. So perhaps as many have said above the commenters are ignorant, or as I like to say, uneducated. Means the same but sounds less rude. Perhaps a comment back that many of the plant breeders are men will prevent future such comments.

I get the same types of comments regarding my woodworking. Can't believe how many times on tours of retirement communities people ask my husband, who doesn't do woodworking, if he want to see the workshop and are amazed when he tells them that I am the one interested in workshops.

I'm learning.

"Horto-sexual"; I couldn't understand it on-line. An iTunes type thing?

I'd say that "hortisexual" in the context of "The Dry Garden/Drought Tolerant Freaks and Oddities" is a merchandizing/sales strategy.

To me it says more about the merchants/gardeners than their plants.

Also, it may be true that flowers are the reproductive parts of plants but so what?

This old thread was revealatory

all these years I though Rhizo was male! And I'm sure it's because she is most active on the tree forum. There could be no other reason. Really, I've embarrassed for myself!

Pffft, when the horticulture industry and media ceases to be dominated by men in managerial/supervisory roles, with women relegated to menial work, then you can whine about how 'unfair' it is that men are not automatically raised to the top for loving 'flowers'.

However, I will state that hybridising and breeding, as well as that ridiculous 'giant vegetable' thing are always dominated by men...must be some sort of womb envy.

Flora - at an amateur level, I will agree that horticulture is not gendered...but until we have more than the odd token woman in a senior position in such conservative, backward looking institutions such as the RHS (and I do not mean as camera fodder), whining men wanting some sort of penile respect (and all us women to sigh, shake our heads in sympathy and agree) can sulk off for eternity.

Marie, lol!

UPDATE:

I'm 35 and love gardening

No, really, we're all effeminate gay flower boys. Especially the aforementioned management employees of multi-million dollar production nursery and garden center operations.

And women that use power tools are of course Butch in doing so. Before being essentially invalidated in later years by miserable back trouble my girlfriend used to operate motorcycles, mowers, tractors, trucks and power hand tools.

Got my love of gardening from my mother who was a very kind, thoughtful and conscientious individual. She was also combat ready when required and (when younger) rode sidecar in motor cycle racing with her Dad.

A terrible, article though, Rouge...and absolutely peak guardian inasmuch as it offers only the tiniest insight into the social, cultural and political issues which explains the very real lack of young gardeners...while the bulk of it is the usual solipsistic and witless drivel which is basically a pat on the back for being so....edgy and unique.

I have to agree with Camps on this one. I found myself just glossing over that article as one would with a superficial piece. Not that everything has to be majorly issue-driven, but there are some very important factors at play here. And don't get me started on one of the most overused and abused words today: "diversity"!

Yup, I do realize it isn't Shakespeare in quality. It caught my eye as it was current and might generate more posts in this thread.

True, it is a 'lifestyle piece but the Guardian still likes to claim to be a seriously political journal (although afraid it lost any rights to claim leftwing credentials)...and there is a failure to even mention the eviscerating of further education, along with less tangible but equally worrying issues connected to housing, community, employment prospects, loss of skills and respect...and the horticultural industry is seeing a serious shortfall in recruitment.

No reflection whatsoever on you Rouge - thanks for posting. Hopefully, Embo and GG, who are both active in the industry, have some illuminating insights.

The article may not be my kind of reading (it's a bit too soppy (?)), but I'm confused about it evoking explicit negative feelings.

I say that as an older person, a male (subject of thread) and a reader of the Guardian (at least the international edition) as well as other on-line newspapers.

Things change. In Victorian and Edwardian times gardening was a trade and "professional" (not the right word) gardeners, I assume, were then most likely to be men. Nowadays, potential customers chose rather to spend their cash on electricians, plumbers and the like. I'd say (non-gardener) folk often still do like beautiful, well-maintained gardens, but they are unwilling (don't have the time) to do the work on a garden themselves and are unwilling (unable) to pay for it to be done by others. And, of course, others may have other interests.

The unwillingness (or inability) of taxpayers (through their elected officials) to maintain gardens in some public parks, at least here, is presumably related.

Re Education, I have taught high school students, some Botany and Horticulture, including installing and maintaining a large school garden over about 15 years. I believe that my mother through the example of her diligence in the garden and through her appreciation of plants, was the one who oriented me to gardening and that in a way that no formal Education could.

Still, the old adage: "gardens die with their gardener". And on the other hand, whatever the perceived problems at this time are, I'd be very surprised if all forms of gardening die out.

There is always a fear of making broad generalizations but my personal observation over the years is that gardening IS becoming less and less of interest to the younger generation. Until they buy their first home :-) But even that tends to be less about gardening - the hands-on activity - and more about landscaping. The major exception is edible or vegetable gardening, which seems to draw from all age groups.

The typical student in horticultural school is middle aged. And without question, most nursery shoppers in my area are middle aged or older. I don't have a ready explanation for this other than to observe there are far more other activities to occupy the younger generation's time and interest than there were when I was that age - technology being a prime example, as well as all manner of other outdoor activities they can enter into as a family with shared interests. And at least in my relatively affluent region, there is a lot of disposable income, so lots of travel, ski holidays, water sports. No time to mow no stinking lawn!! They hire someone to do all that for them!!

This is a very personalized and regional assessment so not going to be equally applicable in all areas. And we do see some younger folks getting excited about gardening, like our friend Heruga :-) Just not as many as there might have been say 20 years ago.

And as to men not liking "flowers", that's just nonsense! Many of the best gardeners I know are male, as are many of my best gardening buddies.

I'm a guy whose love of flowers and gardening goes back to before I can remember. I was teased mercilessly about this when younger but did my best to just ignore. Now at 55 really I could care less what anyone thinks about this or pretty much anything. I have seen this same passion for gardening in both men and woman and now understand it is like a force of nature. It is completely pointless for someone to criticize or have an opinion about a force of nature.

This reminds me of an anecdote that the gardener/media personality Alan Titmarsh recounted in an interview once.

It was in his early days of television when he did a gardening slot in a daily, lunch time, magazine programme. He said that at the end of each run of episodes, he would pick flowers from his own garden, make them into posies and bring them in for the entire production staff/ cameramen/ lighting engineers/etc.

He described how at first some of the men would have great difficulty accepting their flowers from him. There would be lots of shuffling of feet, lots of "Ah, um, oh yes, um thank-yous. Lots of sideways glances. But as the years went by, some of those men, started to tell him how they looked forward to their flowers. How they were different from the usual presenter to the crew presents and that they appreciated them.

So attitudes can change..... sometimes.

Daisy

I can commiserate and relate to being patronized. I am a female furniture maker who owns and uses way too many tools .The guys at the lumberyard took a few years to stop patronizing but they have.They used to try to point me to their troubled boards hoping I would be dumb enough to buy them. Then they saw me looking for cups and straightness and flipping for good grain and color matches and possible tension wood. I have felt that I been looked at as a dyke, or as an interloper in the mens locker room or other sacred place. I have joked about wanting a small pink router formed for a small hand . I have bought flowered tape measures so my husband would not steal them. They were of inferior quality, so I stole his when mine broke. I can joke about this but I can also understand how outsiders will fault your gender for your perceived differences. IT is dumb,... just plain dumb. and has the broadmindedness of a mole in a tunnel. I am lucky that my clients do not feel this way. Keep on doing what you do. I do like to garden with a chainsaw.

outsiders will fault your gender for your perceived differences...

And your colour, your accent, your appearance, your background, your sexuality...

Pity.

Camp, that was a glorious takedown of The Guardian, or at least of that article. It was quite insipid. But in fairness (sort of) to that newspaper, media offering "only the tiniest insight[s]" into the real factors behind the subject of an article or TV segment seems like an epidemic problem these days. Everything is geared towards enabling short attention span readers to skim through the article as quickly as possible and move on. Which of course leads us - connections connections (!) - back to the reason serious gardening will continue to atrophy as a hobby...whether practiced by men, women, or those who are indifferent. I mean, who are we kidding? Can anybody say the overall market for collectible plants, looked at broadly to include mail order/retail/wholesale, and taken as a rolling average, is as strong as it was pre-2007 recession? Or ever will be? I am SURE that in 10 years, 70% of the nurseries I've patronized in the last 24 months - of any type - will not be around. And will not be replaced. To take a single example, Mclean Nursery...a nursery that focuses on eastern hybridized and selected hollies? Who's going to take up that charge? A certain amount of "prestige" plants will always be available - perhaps to a smallish sliver of the wealthy to help distinguish their gardens, and themselves, from the hoi-polloi. (Sorry, music lovers, but I think this sort of "refined snobbery", is the only thing that keeps a lot of classical music afloat, especially opera. Almost no one attending actually enjoys it in the way that say, Joe and Jane Q Public enjoy their football, association or gridiron. There are sound sociological observations to readily prove that, but I'm already way off topic! But obviously, even that kind of snobbery has a limited shelf life: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-rivera/opera-in-america-is-it-ci_b_5005929.html) But the notion that future aging empty nesters, will take up gardening in the same lucrative way their pre-baby boomer predecessors had...seems utterly ridiculous to me. I already see this with the range of older adults I'm aware of. (i.e., older than myself, going back to my childhood) The gardeners I knew as a kid and who partly inspired me, were the older cohort of my parent's friends, and are almost gone now. The people who would have been becoming empty nesters 10-20 years later...none of them took up gardening. And in fact for the most part, I think we are going to see downsizing and de-countrifying, if you will, as a trend. Some friends of my parents recently built a lavish pile in one of those storied rural parts of the country, where the elite have long be known to congregate. But _3_ other retired couples in the same group of friends are actually leaving and selling their post-retirement trophy homes, and are teasing the one couple about being crazy to have built that house at this point in their lives. These are all people who can easily afford weekly cleaning ladies and lawn care contractors. It's not a matter of money at all, it's just, they probably think "do I really want to be a ghost rattling my chains in a house with 5000 sq ft., 1+ acres of land, 6 bedrooms, for that once a year when the grandkids come visit?" In fact the most patrician, old money couple I knew personally from my own life, not via my parents - built a quietly majestic colonial manse on 10 acres outside Charlottesville, back in the early 2000s. They did the whole have a large perennial border thing...I remember the plants I brought them as a house warming (garden warming?) gift. (had a paid part-time gardener/handyman, of course) They said at the time they would retire there, but it only lasted about 10 years before they sold it, packed the Steinway and the oil paintings of their Dartmouth board of visitors ancestors LOL - and moved to a condo in Alexandria, VA. Got tired of the rural life, apparently.

Middle age is when many are landscaping their first house. Old age is when many need to be near medical facilities and other senior services. I'm thinking about downsizing, trying to find something I can afford within an in town setting myself. However little old places in the nearest version of an urban center have apparently been selling lately for over $900,000.

"Middle age is when many are landscaping their first house." Yep and before the era of "smart" phones, "adults who play Wii/Xbox" (a wholly fascinating phenomena about which I'm surprised more hasn't been written), DINKs, facebook of course, helicopter parenting, etc. etc. - all of the other distractions to take up people's time these days...some of them would really pour a lot of time and attention into it. Gardening might be a genteel pastime in a world where nobody sets aside time for genteel pasttimes.

There are, fortunately, patches of exception to what I'm talking about. Annie's Annuals seemed to have an amazingly young crowd, as nursery patrons go. But it's hard to use the bohemian Bay Area as much of a barometer for anything else going on in the rest of the country, especially these days.

Off topic, but in the hopes someone will know, whatever happened to Kevin, Aachenelf? Haven't seen him in ages but didn't think about it till rereading this thread.

Back on topic, my great grandmothers on my mother's side instilled a love of gardening, so much so that I got a BS in Horticulture (as a love affair, more than a career, because there isn't much to do with the degree). I still love it almost thirty years later and still sowing seeds, dividing, etc.

I can say almost without exception that all my design clients are in their mid 40's or older. Most older ;-) In fact, retirees constitute the largest portion of my client base. Many are also relocating from some other area of the country (this area is attracting huge numbers of transplants!!) and while they were active or enthusiastic gardeners in their old location, they are unfamiliar with the plants and growing conditions here. But still, the watchword is "low maintenance" - most do not express a wish to be out tending to their gardens constantly, if at all........landscape maintenance outfits are a booming business in this area!! The one exception to this is that a healthy percentage also want some sort of edible component to the garden, often raised beds. A small veggie plot and a few colorful seasonal containers is about the limit of their gardening interaction. Everything else is hired out.

This tread reminds me of an old (deceased)friend who immigrated from Denmark in his youth and founded a florist business in New York city. He married another Dane and they had eight children. All the kids worked in the shop as they were growing up and became quite capable creating the large arrangements required for weddings and funerals. All the children eventually were sent to a church college in the Midwest. The florists in that town soon realized what a trained labor force was available and waited for the next child to appear. All eight were able to help support their education. All went on to professional careers, but none in horticulture

Lol. This discussion is great. As one person said: I really enjoy seeing the growth of plants overall and it is not just about the flowers. I do also adore the flowers though, and the vegetables, and the seed production, and outsmarting the pests, etc etc. I am also a gay man. So I guess I have an excuse. But would it matter if I was straight or not? Who f*cking cares? I played football in junior high and high school and watch some sports and do other things that would be considered "manly" so I guess I am down to cross all the boundries and be an enigma. But I am just being myself and if I happen to blow a few minds across the way: so be it.

I say do what you want as long as it isn't hurting anyone else and to hell with the critics. Someone will appreciate you.

Mmm, I think the nearest US equivalent to my hometown might well be somewhere like Seattle -although Cambridge is relatively small, it punches above its weight, class-wise...which is a blessing and a curse. Enough money around to guarantee a decent income for an idle jobbing gardener such as myself...but also too expensive for said jobbing gardener to afford without the massive bonus of cheap rented social housing...unless I was to leap into design/build mode which I hate. OTOH, having designed and built a number of gardens (when I had ingrate offspring with ever open mouths), I have managed to wheedle ongoing maintenance jobs out of what I tend to consider are 'my' gardens...which obviates any need whatsoever to fumble about with software, watercolours, graph paper...and as for the actual hard graft of building (shudder). Also, I can pay the rent and bills with 3 days labour as long as I never go on holiday, buy stuff apart from food or eat out - so no sacrifices whatsoever.. Even so, earning enough in the industry...like many skilled trades, has become much harder - general wage stagnation and years of low interest has caused a huge demographic shift in home ownership...gardens are a huge luxury as more people are squeezed into tiny apartments...the future is worryingly opaque.

My entire family proved to have no resistance whatsoever to this persistent, over-enthusiastic flower lover and have simply caved, one by one (although the youngest attempts to be 'edgy' by claiming succulents as his 'thing'). This also has its pluses and minuses...as the garden which was once my sole preserve has been rudely invaded.

This is pretty much the mindset of most homeowners in my immediate area: middle aged family members (kids in college and last year of high school) with more $$ than is imaginable to lower middle class (and self-employed) me recently purchased a large waterfront home on a large property with an existing professionally designed and very complicated/sophisticated landscape. They have zero knowledge of plants, gardening and landscaping and also minimal interest - soon after purchase, we did a 3 hour tour of the property so I could ID for them what they had. They had never heard of 90% of the plants :-)

That is entirely as far as their involvement with their garden goes. With the purchase, they inherited a very skilled team of professional gardeners that visits once a week to groom and maintain the property.......much the same as the cleaning crew that comes in twice a week to groom and maintain the interior.

With smaller properties, there is usually less frequent attention from 'gardeners' and more of a focus on a simpler, low maintenance landscape but the same level of interest and involvement from the homeowners. The garden/landscape is considered decoration or just window dressing for the home - not at all something to be actively engaged in.

When I was growing up in the 70's I had to hide my love of plants. I remember kids climbing into a tree and a woman saying "oh, that poor tree" and my classmates muttering disparagingly "plant freak!" I tired (unsuccessfully) to hide it from my friends. Even in the 90's, in the orchid club, my (gay) friend teased me about liking the "girly" flowers. Now that I'm of a certain age, I say "who the f*** cares what people think ", but now it seems much more acceptable, even cool, trendy or even sexy for guys to be into gardening (I'm thinking of a couple of recent articles showing particularly handsome bearded "hipster" plant breeder/designers). There is a big difference in how gardeners are portrayed theses days, perhaps influenced by environmental awareness. I think it is still predominantly the expectation that men grow vegetables, or if they are on the fringes, to grow cacti and succulents, or native plants, but for the most part, I don't think people bat an eye much now at men who like to grow the (formerly "girly") flowers.

Yes, I have wondered often about Kevin (aachenelf) -- he just "disappeared" one day...

I think the trend now is edibles, not so much ornamentals, at least in my area. Now, I'm not talking about the filthy-rich who can hire a whole team of gardeners and fly in fresh pineapple from Hawaii on a whim, here - I'm talking about lower- and middle-class folks. It's super-trendy to be into vegetable gardening with brownie points for having your own chickens. Personally, I think this is great! There's a whole generation of people who have lost touch with where food comes from - I was at a conference and one of the speakers made a joke: He asked a kid where steak came from, and the kid said "Meijer" (a local super-store). It was funny, yet it's not... So, to have the pendulum start the backward swing toward people being involved in growing food is nothing but good - be it one's own plot, a community garden, a school garden, whatever - it's all good, it's connects them with nature. That's the only way to really learn and appreciate (and dare I saw even be in awe) of the beauty that is nature.

Re: male gardeners: I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm glad DH doesn't want to be involved in the landscaping/flower beds/design. Sure, I want him to appreciate it, but I want creative control. So it works out great - he does the heavy labor, I do the designing/planting. :0)

Off topic, but in the hopes someone will know, whatever happened to Kevin, Aachenelf? Haven't seen him in ages but didn't think about it till rereading this thread.

"Aachenelf", "ispahan", and "wieslaw59" are 3 notable GW members that have not posted in very long time :(.

Every so often I start a thread hoping to find them somewhere in GW:

eg Where are they?

Didn't Wieslaw59 get banned? Or am I totally mistaken?

Lots of "bans" on these forums are temporary and there are easy 'work arounds'.

We all hope they are each healthy.

And how about GW member and contributor karin_mt? I don't think I recall her posting lately?

Yep, I kinda miss Wieslaw. Without over-generalising (much), the US insistence on politeness in all things is really lacking in the plant obsessed European gardener. We (ahem) 'enjoy' a more robust criticism of plants and planting styles which can be interpreted as personally insulting...given our often intemperate and blunt language. Not that it is ever so simple either. An example. It is perfectly OK to admit to loathing a particular plant as long as no-one has already claimed it as a favourite. So I can complain bitterly about the measly charmless toad lilies...but not if a forum member has already declared their undying love for them...as it is then 'bad form'. At least this is my (possibly befuddled) continental reading of forum exchanges. I am making a bit more of an effort to be civil...but in my early days, I charged ahead with blazing opinions, left, right and centre...as did Wieslaw...and normally, this would be a starting point for heated and spirited debate. There is no question that there are some glaring social and cultural differences between the US and Europe...and I am still uncertain where Canada sits on the tricky issue of criticism. Probably not as relentlessly positive as the US and nowhere near the noirish Scandi gloom prevalent in Wieslaw's circle. My only excuse is being a lippy northern Brit (completely different to the soft and pampered south).

Campanula, I don' t think you are correct re 'wieslaw's' reason for leaving. I think a fair generalization is that gardeners are very proud of their...gardens. 'Wieslaw's' was/is spectacular and (s)he posted many pictures detailing the many incredible plants in his/her domain (sorry I don't recall, if I every knew, W59's sex). When we are in a snit over something someone here may have posted I think we just take a break for a bit but do come back. And in any event I am sure there are enough different folk in these GW forums so that no one feels isolated. (Again I just trust the truancies of the members mentioned aren't health related).

"Without over-generalising (much), the US insistence on politeness in all things is really lacking in the plant obsessed European gardener."

"I am still uncertain where Canada sits on the tricky issue of criticism. Probably not as relentlessly positive as the US"

Well Camp without over-generalizing (much) we Canadians are thought of internationally as supremely polite and are often the butt of jokes for it, especially by comics in the US and Canada. We are considered nice and perhaps a bit meek and mild. Please, thank you and sorry are constant in our vocabulary. True for all, no not even close. We have our fair share of loud, obnoxious, opinionated and rude people just like every society has a marvelous mix.

Am I offended when you malign Toadlilies, screaming orange Papaver orientale...not at all. If we all liked the same plants and placement of - now that would be troubling.

There's also some "glaring social and cultural differences" within North America. Still you can always find kindred folk here whom you feel very comfortable with.

Still, I would suggest that there was, statistically speaking, more of a tolerance (rather appreciation, even understanding) of personal eccentricity in the UK, than in North America, and I'd tend to associate it with some British Victorian attitudes.

One stereotype here seems to be that Canadians don't rock the boat. And there's no doubt that a city like Toronto is a very multicultural, very multiracial and quite a congenially let-and-let-live place to live in (that is if you can afford to).

I'd say most of our fellow Canadian friends are too polite to either participate in or take much exception to, let's call it, "strong talk". Still we do have friends and relatives, with flamboyant characters which we appreciate, who can be extremely entertaining with words.

For me, the loss of Wieslaw was a real loss for this Forum.

@LaLenoxa,

what a great compilation of men & flowers.

@ rouge21: I'm quite sure that wislaw is a guy. 'Cause a funny story of his stuck in my memory- at leats I' 96% certain that I remember correctly:

there was a neighbour, a gardening lady who would come by and press some pink flowering plants on his wife (he fled when that person approached) as they had no/very little pink in their garden. And enquire about all those other Lovelies she had given them. DW then would mumble something: they didn't make it and the neigbour thought of W as the worst gardener on the planet as he killed all those lovely pinky plants....

Oh yeah, guy for sure. Gender is not always obvious..(Rouge, for example - couldn't swear either way) .but I was pretty clear W was a man.

I guess the above compilation does serve to get attention.

Thinking about this, I have as many men gardener friends as women. My Mom was no gardener. She used to say" why don't you go out and play in the dirt with your Dad" ?

I’m 16 and male, And my best interest is gardening, Nature, basically anything that grows. It is true though that some think it is girly of you to like Plants. it’s annoying but I ignore it. 😁

Good for you! Stick to your convictions.

welcome HU-589583661. Are you a new member here?

HU-589583661 just be fiercely yourself always and everyone will respect you for that. Mostly I have always been like that but only years later realized that it works. You are way ahead of me.

Have been growing all types of plants and flowers since I was a young boy. It has been my lifetime passion and profession. Flowers do not threaten my masculinity!

Here is a picture of me at 9 yrs old. This picture was taken 51 years ago! I would ride my bicycle to an orchid range that wasn't too far from my home and buy plants with money saved from birthdays and Christmas.

Found some old papers in my desk and in the folder were my report cards saved by my parents from elementary school - one teacher wrote in the comment section that I was extremely good at talking about plants while giving a book report, but I really needed to expand my horizons! So I did - horticulturally!!

Yes I just joined! thank you guys for the support! 😊