An almost impossible thing

While working at the Royal Horticultural Society, Fiona Davison discovered a cache of letters from a young gardener who was denied a scholarship by the RHS, on the grounds that she was female. Appalled and intrigued to find out what became of Olive, Fiona began to research the wider story of early female professional gardeners and discovered a group of pioneers whose struggles against patriarchy changed forever the rights and opportunities for women gardeners. ‘An Almost Impossible Thing’ follows six hitherto littleknown women gardeners in the years before the First World War, and examines their lives in the context of suffragism, collectivism and Empire.