Whether you consider yourself a gardener or a horticulturist, all that really matters is the joy of creating a beautiful garden, says Monty
I have noticed that I am increasinglyreferred to in newspapers, online and, for all I know, in conversation, as a ‘horticulturist’. This grates. Not so much because it is wrong – I will come to that in a moment – but because I absolutely do not think of myself as anything but a gardener.
It is a word that I had not come across until five years ago when I was filming gardens in America. We were about to interview a brilliant and charismatic man who ran a magnificent 30-acre garden in South Carolina, and asked what job title he would like us to use. “Senior Horticulturist”, came the reply. The result was immediate consternation. None of us had come across the expression before. The director politely pointed that ‘Head Gardener’ would have much more immediate resonance with a British audience? He did mind. So Senior Horticulturist it was.
Now you might say that this is simply another example of how we are divided by a common language. You say ‘tomahto’, I say ‘tomayto’. But there is much more to it than that, all of which I find fascinating because it is all bound up with how we use language.
It turns out that ‘gardener’ has been in common use since 1300, while the word ‘horticulture’ w1as first recorded in the 1670s, with the first r ecorded use of ‘horticulturist’ 150 years later, in 1818.
It is significant that ‘horticulture’ with its overtones of applied science and learning, and clear differentiation from agriculture, was first used only a few years after the establishment in the 1660s of The Royal Society, in which members were pioneering the sharing of scientific experiments, and rejecting – at least in terms of science – the hitherto absolute laws of religion.
In the 18th century this process continued and by 1818 – with the arrival of the first horticulturist – there was a steady flow of new plants arriving in Britain from all over the world that required new methods of care and study. Gardening also became hugely popular for the growing middle classes during this first half of the 19th century, with the great John Claudius Loudon publishing (and mostly writing) The Gardener’s Magazine which was, in 1826, the first periodical devoted to horticulture. His wife, Jane Loudon, wrote widely for women gardeners and was the first to do so. In other words, gardening was expanding hugely throughout this period acr
