“The ladies in bloomers who gardened at Kew”: Pioneer professional women gardeners in late nineteenth century England

The arrival of two young women gardeners at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1896 marked a watershed in English history of professional gardening. Assisted by new opportunities in science education for women, especially the horticultural training colleges for women like the pioneering, model campus established at Swanley, Kent, and by the willingness of the director at Kew to conduct the “experiment” of admitting women as gardeners, Annie Gulvin, Alice Hutchings, and the eight other women who followed them to Kew until 1903, demonstrated that their gardening knowledge and skills equalled those of the Kew men. The women students proved that they could obtain senior horticultural posts on completing their training, thus providing role models and inspiration for the rapidly increasing number of professional women gardeners who followed their example. The lives and careers of the Kew ladies confirm the findings of other scholars of the resistance by the male horticultural establishment to allowing women into their profession but nuances the view that it was only middle-class women who were able to achieve this break-through, demonstrating that the more important cause of their success, other than their own personal qualities, was access to a good scientific education independent of social class. This article offers an unprecedented analysis of the pioneering Kew ladies’ backgrounds, education, career outcomes, and impact in the gendered, professional world of horticulture.