Women gardeners to be held in memory
21 February 2012
A researcher is hoping to jog memories of a little-known school for women gardeners in Edinburgh at the turn of the 20th century with an appeal for the relatives of former students to come forward.
The Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women merits hardly a mention in the history books, yet was educating female horticulturalists for about 15 years during a time when professional women gardeners were virtually unknown and often disapproved of.
'It's sufficiently recent that there must be someone out there whose grandmother, mother or aunt attended the school,' says Deborah Reid, who is looking into the history of the school as part of her research into the role and influence of women gardeners in Scotland.
She believes the school was the only one of its kind in Scotland. Its founders, Annie Morison and Lina Barker, were themselves graduates of Swanley in Kent, where the first women gardeners to work at Kew also trained.
Annie and Lina became the first female 'practitioner' gardeners at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh in 1897 before going on to found the school in 1903. Originally at Inveresk, the school later moved to Corstorphine, then a village but now on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
The school initially met with resistance from those who believed women should not be gardeners as they 'could not dig any more than they could hit nails on the head'. Among its graduates were Madge Elder, who went on to work for the Priory in Melrose and on the Duke of Buccleuch's estate at Bowhill and later became well-known for her writing about the Scottish Borders.
Anyone with information about the school can contact Deborah Reid on 0131 667 3362.