logo-cropped

Nottingham’s independent bookshop | 14a Long Row, Nottingham NG1 2DH | 0115 8373097

Sunday Afternoon Tea: the radical lives of women’s pioneering gardeners, with Fiona Davison FULLY BOOKED

Sunday Afternoon Tea: the radical lives of women’s pioneering gardeners, with Fiona Davison FULLY BOOKED
Sunday, 3rd December, 2023    
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
*Five Leaves Bookshop
14a Long Row, Nottingham, NG12DH
Bookings closed

This event is now fully booked. By all means email us on bookshop@fiveleaves.co.uk to go on a cancellation list. Writing this in October so the chances are high we will have cancellations by December!


‘Gardening, taken up as a hobby when all the laborious work can be done by a man, is delightful, but as a life’s work for a woman, it is almost an impossible thing.’ Sir Joseph Hooker, 1817-1911.
While working as Head of Libraries and Exhibitions at the Royal Horticultural Society, Fiona Davison came across a cache of letters from a young gardener who was denied a scholarship by the RHS on the grounds that she was female. Intrigued by what happened to young Olive, Fiona began to research the wider story of early female professional gardeners and discovered a group of pioneers who battled derision and prejudice to change expectations of what women gardeners could do.
An Almost Impossible Thing follows six women gardeners in the years before the First World War, and examines their lives in the context of suffragism, collectivism and Empire. Although gardens are often seen as a refuge, a place to escape from the troubles of the modern world, this book looks back to a period when British gardens were an arena for radical and far-reaching experiments. A time when the ability to cultivate land was mobilised by a group of convention-busting women who wanted to change the world.

Fiona Davison studied history at the University of Oxford and joined the RHS in 2012 as its Head of Libraries and Exhibitions. Fiona is also the author of The Hidden Horticulturalists: the untold story of the men who shaped Britain’s gardens.
Advance booking is essential. Ticket price includes afternoon tea and cake.







With thanks to Little Toller Books

Bookings

This event is fully booked.