It is received gardening wisdom that men tend lawns and women plant flowers. This is a good year to see how two exceptional writers on gardens live up to that definition. Our top horticultural columnists, Anna Pavord of the Independent and Robin Lane Fox of the Financial Times, have both published elegant and witty collections of journalism in 2010. Lane Fox’s Thoughtful Gardening (Particular Books, £25) has already been reviewed in The Spectator. For the purposes of male/ female comparison I can record that Lane Fox writes that flower gardening is what interests him, which makes a nonsense of received wisdom. He does not appear to mow much, but he is mad about killing weeds, bugs, badgers and foxes. In the Lane Fox plot it is a constant war on wildlife. Control of the lawn is normal male behaviour. Killing is a full-blown male tendency. I never met a woman who relished any form of extermination.
Lane Fox is also pretty strong on scorn. Designers and grasses he hates, and he owns to enjoying skirmishes with the late great Christopher Lloyd. His book ranges over time (he likes ancient more than modern) and he is a traveller, galloping through a botanical garden in Thailand, or walking above Wengen in alpine meadows. His book is a funny and provocative read, with plenty of authoritative advice on what to grow and how to make it grow.
If reading Lane Fox is a masculine cold bath, Anna Pavord’s The Curious Gardener (Bloomsbury £20) is all warmth and enthusiasm. She likes ‘freedom’ lawns with a flowery sward. No weedkillers. Although she is not squeamish about stamping on snails, she tends to be more organic than prone to spraying, and she notices wildlife a lot.
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