Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 2 (2022), p. 317

This book, ‘a first attempt at a history of cottage gardens in Scotland’ investigates the lives of the rural poor and their endeavours to survive via their cottage gardens. Cottagers and their struggles to feed themselves, their diet and how this changed over time, their abodes, their hard lives and attempts at moral improvement of their lives by landowners and writers are all examined. If the book is a sketch, as the author claims, then it is a detailed one rather than a mere outline. Rice’s stated intention to answer four questions is admirably fulfilled: what did having a garden mean for the standard of living of rural workers? Did their gardens have other meanings for them apart from the supply of food? What were the expectations of landowners and employers with regard to the gardens/gardeners? What conditions had to be met to produce a well-tended plot? This is done with very few manuscript sources – not surprisingly, ‘barely any evidence remains’ – and Rice relies heavily on printed and official records to uncover the story she tells. She puts to good use worker-writers such as Alexander Somerville’s Autobiography of a working man (1848) and the anonymous verse Clodpole (1858), perhaps bringing such writers to a wider audience.

While cultivated cottage gardens provided sustenance for a family living a knife-edge existence, lack of work, crop failure, insecurity of tenure and the common practice of flitting (especially for farm servants) all meant real hunger was a constant companion to their lives. The cottage garden was a buffer. However, farm servants rarely had the inclination to tend a garden. After a day of 12–16 hours that only changed with the 10-hour legislation in the mid-nineteenth century (though even that did not take into account grooming and suppering time), who would have had the energy to have tended a garden plot large enough to feed a family, and especially if the plot was on unproductive, thin soil? Interestingly, the gardens of weavers and miners were tended, partly as a way of relief from being cooped up for hours in their respective employments. Nevertheless, whatever the occupation of the cottage dweller, their generally conservative outlook, lack of skill and equipment, all conspired to unproductive gardens. Encouragement to garden, not least as a way to moral improvement (it kept the labourer away from the public house), came from writers (though the first handbook for Scottish gardeners did not appear until 1851 when Robert Adamson’s The cottage gardener was published), and landowners. The latter were keen to staunch the rural exodus of labour and established competitions and shows as a paternalistic encouragement to stay. From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, competitions with prizes for the best kept cottage and garden, often supervised and judged by the landowner’s gardener, became increasingly popular: Rice mentions the Fife show in 1880 which was attended by 12,000. However, for those still neglectful of their gardens there was always the threat of eviction: it would be interesting to find any cases of actual eviction.

The variety of vegetables grown expanded as cottage gardens became places of competition, as did the growing of flowers, which were only rarely seen in the early part of the period covered by the book, at which time cottagers usually only cultivated a few of the same vegetables, particularly kale and the hugely important potato, which certainly helped to feed the family. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, particularly in rich soil areas, crops such as carrots, onions, savoys, and turnips were grown, as in Forgandenny, in Perthshire, where this was done from the 1790s. Gardeners producing such crops ensured a good diet for their family, giving Scottish labourers a reputation for being well fed, when compared with their English equivalent. Flowers adorning the front of the cottage, rather than the useful but noisome midden of the period up to c.1850, were also encouraged after the mid-nineteenth century, following the Victorian mania for floral display.

There is only slight mention of poaching. This could have been given more space, since it was a widespread activity which provided a precarious source of meat for many of the rural poor, and rather than the landowner turning a blind eye as stated in the book, his gamekeeper was a constant potential threat. Rice also does not discuss outright how close labourers were to starvation, especially if they had no time or aptitude for gardening, or their gardens were too small to produce enough to feed the family adequately.

Rice points out that garden size was critical: too small and cultivation was not worth the output, too large and landowners feared gardeners would become independent by selling surplus produce. Thus, ideally ‘The garden needed to be a safety net, no more’. Gardens become smaller towards the end of nineteenth century, a half-acre in c.1800 became an eighth of an acre in the 1890s. This reduction reflected changing food supply as well as a drop in the cost of living: food was becoming more available via grocery wagons (though not necessarily better quality, for instance cheap sugar, white bread and treacle were available in this manner).

The history of cottage gardens in Scotland, a ‘largely undiscovered territory’, has been given impetus by this book. Rice points out that there is no example of a reconstructed worker’s cottage garden in Scotland which would, ‘open a gate into the world of the kailyard and the cottager’s garden’. Probably the most important aspect to the book is to lift the latch on that gate. It is a seminal work, and hopefully, it will stimulate many years of fruitful research.