Who wears the trousers in your garden?
Although modern times have seen changes in the roles of men and women in the house and in the workplace, couples tend to settle into an arrangement that suits their needs or abilities. Does this play out into the garden, we wondered.
Let’s take the household. Who decides on the décor, the colours and the furniture? And who does the decorating and moves the furniture in?
In the garden – who decides on the layout, chooses the plants and puts them in? And who gets the tidying, the landscaping and the dreaded lawn mowing to do?
It was our guess that the move from indoors to outdoors carries a lot of the same tasks and responsibilities with it.
A poll of more than 2,000 couples found that the ‘grunt work’, as it was called in a Daily Telegraph article, is usually done by the men, whilst women do the design work such as choosing colours. Women consider that they have better taste and knowledge of plants and the survey found that twice as many women as men take on the role of selecting them.
Just as women often choose house interiors, the survey showed that they continue this role out into the garden, choosing garden furniture and other decorative features.
The survey was carried out by Arthritis Research UK who found that, despite the imbalance, both sexes were generally content with the roles that they had naturally settled into.
Where men came out on top was in the physical hard work – strength still rules it seems and tradition lives on. Men do the digging and mow the lawn whereas women do the lighter work such as weeding or plotting plants.
The main change over the years has been in the area of machinery. With improved technology and lighter weight equipment, it has opened up areas like mowing and hedge cutting to women prepared to have a go.
When Gabriel Ash customers visit our Chester showroom to choose a new greenhouse there are always smiles all round – because the fun and benefits are on both sides, especially if you use our assembly service.
The post Who wears the trousers in your garden? appeared first on Gabriel Ash - Gardeners Corner.