Reviews
"I am very impressed by your ability to research and write about women gardeners from countries and societies of which I knew nothing, like China. And you are very clever at using the lives of women gardeners to illustrate your thesis and then to move on with your text. There is no excess flab at all in what you write. Excellent!
You are very good at seizing on an idea and illustrating it with examples. And you write enough about a person to identify and evaluate their significance, while leaving lots of leads for others to research in future."
~ Charles Quest-Ritson
Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Newsletter
Edited by Gillian Hayward Library Manager
Reviewed by Charlotte A. Tancin Librarian, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
Carnegie Mellon University
March 2022
The bones of this book were research notes left behind after the death of Susan Groag Bell (1926-2015). She was a feminist scholar from the time just before women’s studies programs began, and her focus was on how women’s contributions to society have largely been written out of history. Early on, she used existing resources in new ways, such as showing slides of artworks to point out women’s largely unrecognized societal roles. In 1971 she taught one of the first women’s studies courses and wrote a reading guide for it that would become one of the first academic textbooks on women’s history.
Bell was looking into a lot of different research areas, and back in the 1970s, she began preliminary work around the extensive topic of women and gardens. The project lapsed, and after her death, a Stanford colleague asked Judith Taylor if she would complete the work and bring it to publication. Bell’s project differed from Taylor’s own research, which includes books on California gardens, olive cultivation, plant introductions, and most recently on flower breeders. Still, it appealed to Taylor’s own views on how women were historically sidelined beyond the domestic sphere, for which she has strong feelings. After poring over Bell’s notes for some time, she agreed to take on this project, provided that she could expand it, especially the second half of the work, with her own research.
The result is Women and Gardens, an overview of women’s work in gardening and horticulture – and obstacles to such work. Bell’s scope for the project, which Taylor has kept to here, looked back over 500 years with particular focus on the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was narrowly constrained in terms of race, class, socioeconomics, and geography: women in Western cultures, largely of northern European origins, and mostly in the middle to upper strata of society, with considerable focus on England, some on Europe and North America, and some on other countries. Even with these constraints, the book is very informative and eye-opening. It may seem like parts of this are well-trodden ground, but when Bell was working on this, it was not so. There is original research here, and it is well worth reading her and Taylor’s observations on underlying and overarching societal forces that in many ways kept women out of real garden work and professional horticulture. They also discuss later forces that opened doors for women (often just cracking the doors open barely enough to force a foot in), and how the fight for women’s right to vote and for changes to laws about property rights and similar issues were crucial for these openings. Although this work focuses on a restricted subset of women, it is informative for the larger history that now continues to be researched more widely.
Within Bell’s original outline, the first four chapters of the book lay out historical background, while the last four look at specifics regarding schools of horticulture for women, women in landscape architecture and in ornamental plant breeding, with a short, final chapter on writing. Themes and information from several scholarly disciplines are brought together to describe how women, long the keepers of home gardens and foragers for food and medicine, and historically valued as herbal healers and midwives, were from the Renaissance on gradually displaced from those roles, as medicine, botany, and horticulture were professionalized in ways that implicitly and explicitly excluded women. Naturally these changes, along with other societal forces discussed, also removed such work from the aspirations of girls and women going forward. We live in a time when girls as well as boys can envision themselves as astronauts and presidents, but this book vividly describes the before times, and particularly the last 150 years.
Chapter 1 is about obstacles, and begins by describing male encroachment into fields previously often managed by women: “physic,” herbal healing, midwifery, as well as raising food. With regards to healing and midwifery, the rise of universities and changes in the modes of education for younger children led to separate tracks for girls and boys, which over generations sank any possibilities for women not only to continue in health-related roles but to develop further in them. Yes, there were many new discoveries in medicine and techniques that proved some earlier beliefs and practices wrong or made improvements on them, but these were, in effect, now new secrets only available to men through formal education. Add to those hurdles the powerful hold of the Church on societal roles and expectations, and the burning of women as witches often under suspicion for their skills at herbal healing and midwifery. Obstacles, indeed.
In terms of growing food and flowers, introductions of new plants into European gardens led to new enthusiasms, new knowledge, and a taste for lavish gardens among royalty and nobility. Kitchen gardens were more and more relegated to poorer people and servants, while people of leisure and means enjoyed the “main” gardens. New introductions took a long time to make their way to the wider population. Market gardeners and gardeners for hire were mostly men. “Ladies” were encouraged to enjoy flower gardens but not really to work in them. Some women worked in them anyway, which is another of Bell’s interests. A theme of this book is the way women were increasingly limited not only in their aspirations but also in their perspectives. There was societal pressure and peer pressure on women in the middle and upper classes regarding what was ladylike, permitted, done, or not done. There are good observations about Victorian prudishness in England, how the weight of it fell heavily on the rising middle class, who aspired to be seen as being as good as the upper classes. The middle class was even more determined not to be outdone in terms of “proper” behavior, which included women being pure, uneducated, useless, ornamental.
Chapter 2 looks at 18th-century England. Bell had done considerable research in women’s diaries and letters to show that there were a lot of women working on and in their flower gardens, but not documented in garden histories. Women grew flowers, and men made landscape parks – men owned their land, women did not. Men’s educations and travels exposed them to new ideas and classical accomplishments, which they used in developing their own properties. Patriarchy and primogeniture meant that men owned their gardens and parks, which they passed down to the men in their families, while women’s gardens were ephemeral, even though their activities in gardens continued the work of women in general over centuries. Women, for the most part, did not pass on their gardens to their daughters and grand- daughters – daughters were like branches to break off and graft to the stock of another family. Men were planting for posterity and prestige, while women planted with an eye toward their inner vision and a sense of personal achievement. History recorded large accomplishments and new developments.
Chapter 3 looks at opportunities for women in the face of those and other obstacles. Bell saw gardens as havens for women: an enclosed space between home and the outer world. In the 19th century botany, was becoming a suitable (genteel and non-threatening) object of interest for girls and women, fueled partly by the simplicity of the Linnaean system of classification. Women collected plants and pasted them into albums, identifying them and writing their names. They embroidered plant images and drew and painted plant pictures. Some grew flowers. The bicycle and typewriter provided new opportunities for work outside the home. Some began to work as botanical artists for authors and publishers, sometimes credited as the artist, sometimes paid. Some women wrote professionally on gardening and horticultural topics. Women awakening to new possibilities in these and other areas began to come together to discuss the need for the ability to vote and to change laws about property, rights to children, and other matters. Some significant societal shifts were happening.
Chapter 4 discusses gardening as liberation. 19th-century women were increasingly encouraged to be passive, obedient, and decorative, to raise children, take care of the home, and keep their opinions to themselves. Bell was very interested in how long this situation persisted and how it was eroded; in how long women were hobbled by particular norms and social realities. By the mid-19th century, gardening became an increasing interest for women, especially in the middle and upper classes. In 1896, the new director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, “very reluctantly” hired some women as professional gardeners (the only illustration in this book is the frontispiece photo, “Women gardeners at Kew, circa 1915”). The new women gardeners at Kew were required to attend horticulture lectures and to wear brown woolen knickers at work. During WWI, women were essential workers for public gardens and parks as well as in market gardens and farms. By the early 20th century, two generations of women gardeners, horticulturists, and garden writers had set the stage for modern women gardeners and landscape designers. This coincided with women’s entry into various professional schools, with a “surplus” of un- married and childless women who needed to support themselves in some way, and with the height of the women’s suffrage movement.
All of that history sets the stage for chapters 5-7, about schools of horticulture for women, women in landscape architecture, and women in ornamental plant breeding. This is the larger portion of the book (pages 95-222); chapters 5-7 discuss how women got into those fields and documents a number of examples. You might think, perhaps, that this is the core of the book, and in a sense, it is, although this core would not be nearly as meaningful without the history laid out in the first four chapters. Because of people like Bell, we now have such history brought together, and because of people like Taylor, it and many examples are brought to light through writing and publication. This book is a valuable addition to documentation of women in horticulture and the obstacles they dealt with over centuries. Of course, it is a reminder of obstacles that women in many places are still experiencing.
Chapter 8 is an odd, brief look at writing, and does not really fit the rest of the book, although it was part of Bell’s original outline. An appendix, “Women Rose Breeders in Australia,” supplements chapter 7, presenting in tabular form information compiled by Kate Stanley. And the front cover illustration supplements chapter 6, showing a color photo of a painting, “Celia Thaxter’s Garden, Isle of Shoals, Maine” (1890). The book ends with a dual bibliography of references from Bell’s notes and Taylor’s work, along with an index. Women and Gardens is a fascinating read and is recommended for both libraries and individuals.
Bell’s work for this book was done decades before wider academic perspectives opened up on race, class, gender, and intersectionality. The resulting history outlined here reflects that, and is still important for our understanding of these parts of our larger, shared story. Thanks to Bell and Taylor for giving us this history.
— Charlotte A. Tancin
Edited by Gillian Hayward Library Manager
Reviewed by Charlotte A. Tancin Librarian, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
Carnegie Mellon University
March 2022
The bones of this book were research notes left behind after the death of Susan Groag Bell (1926-2015). She was a feminist scholar from the time just before women’s studies programs began, and her focus was on how women’s contributions to society have largely been written out of history. Early on, she used existing resources in new ways, such as showing slides of artworks to point out women’s largely unrecognized societal roles. In 1971 she taught one of the first women’s studies courses and wrote a reading guide for it that would become one of the first academic textbooks on women’s history.
Bell was looking into a lot of different research areas, and back in the 1970s, she began preliminary work around the extensive topic of women and gardens. The project lapsed, and after her death, a Stanford colleague asked Judith Taylor if she would complete the work and bring it to publication. Bell’s project differed from Taylor’s own research, which includes books on California gardens, olive cultivation, plant introductions, and most recently on flower breeders. Still, it appealed to Taylor’s own views on how women were historically sidelined beyond the domestic sphere, for which she has strong feelings. After poring over Bell’s notes for some time, she agreed to take on this project, provided that she could expand it, especially the second half of the work, with her own research.
The result is Women and Gardens, an overview of women’s work in gardening and horticulture – and obstacles to such work. Bell’s scope for the project, which Taylor has kept to here, looked back over 500 years with particular focus on the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was narrowly constrained in terms of race, class, socioeconomics, and geography: women in Western cultures, largely of northern European origins, and mostly in the middle to upper strata of society, with considerable focus on England, some on Europe and North America, and some on other countries. Even with these constraints, the book is very informative and eye-opening. It may seem like parts of this are well-trodden ground, but when Bell was working on this, it was not so. There is original research here, and it is well worth reading her and Taylor’s observations on underlying and overarching societal forces that in many ways kept women out of real garden work and professional horticulture. They also discuss later forces that opened doors for women (often just cracking the doors open barely enough to force a foot in), and how the fight for women’s right to vote and for changes to laws about property rights and similar issues were crucial for these openings. Although this work focuses on a restricted subset of women, it is informative for the larger history that now continues to be researched more widely.
Within Bell’s original outline, the first four chapters of the book lay out historical background, while the last four look at specifics regarding schools of horticulture for women, women in landscape architecture and in ornamental plant breeding, with a short, final chapter on writing. Themes and information from several scholarly disciplines are brought together to describe how women, long the keepers of home gardens and foragers for food and medicine, and historically valued as herbal healers and midwives, were from the Renaissance on gradually displaced from those roles, as medicine, botany, and horticulture were professionalized in ways that implicitly and explicitly excluded women. Naturally these changes, along with other societal forces discussed, also removed such work from the aspirations of girls and women going forward. We live in a time when girls as well as boys can envision themselves as astronauts and presidents, but this book vividly describes the before times, and particularly the last 150 years.
Chapter 1 is about obstacles, and begins by describing male encroachment into fields previously often managed by women: “physic,” herbal healing, midwifery, as well as raising food. With regards to healing and midwifery, the rise of universities and changes in the modes of education for younger children led to separate tracks for girls and boys, which over generations sank any possibilities for women not only to continue in health-related roles but to develop further in them. Yes, there were many new discoveries in medicine and techniques that proved some earlier beliefs and practices wrong or made improvements on them, but these were, in effect, now new secrets only available to men through formal education. Add to those hurdles the powerful hold of the Church on societal roles and expectations, and the burning of women as witches often under suspicion for their skills at herbal healing and midwifery. Obstacles, indeed.
In terms of growing food and flowers, introductions of new plants into European gardens led to new enthusiasms, new knowledge, and a taste for lavish gardens among royalty and nobility. Kitchen gardens were more and more relegated to poorer people and servants, while people of leisure and means enjoyed the “main” gardens. New introductions took a long time to make their way to the wider population. Market gardeners and gardeners for hire were mostly men. “Ladies” were encouraged to enjoy flower gardens but not really to work in them. Some women worked in them anyway, which is another of Bell’s interests. A theme of this book is the way women were increasingly limited not only in their aspirations but also in their perspectives. There was societal pressure and peer pressure on women in the middle and upper classes regarding what was ladylike, permitted, done, or not done. There are good observations about Victorian prudishness in England, how the weight of it fell heavily on the rising middle class, who aspired to be seen as being as good as the upper classes. The middle class was even more determined not to be outdone in terms of “proper” behavior, which included women being pure, uneducated, useless, ornamental.
Chapter 2 looks at 18th-century England. Bell had done considerable research in women’s diaries and letters to show that there were a lot of women working on and in their flower gardens, but not documented in garden histories. Women grew flowers, and men made landscape parks – men owned their land, women did not. Men’s educations and travels exposed them to new ideas and classical accomplishments, which they used in developing their own properties. Patriarchy and primogeniture meant that men owned their gardens and parks, which they passed down to the men in their families, while women’s gardens were ephemeral, even though their activities in gardens continued the work of women in general over centuries. Women, for the most part, did not pass on their gardens to their daughters and grand- daughters – daughters were like branches to break off and graft to the stock of another family. Men were planting for posterity and prestige, while women planted with an eye toward their inner vision and a sense of personal achievement. History recorded large accomplishments and new developments.
Chapter 3 looks at opportunities for women in the face of those and other obstacles. Bell saw gardens as havens for women: an enclosed space between home and the outer world. In the 19th century botany, was becoming a suitable (genteel and non-threatening) object of interest for girls and women, fueled partly by the simplicity of the Linnaean system of classification. Women collected plants and pasted them into albums, identifying them and writing their names. They embroidered plant images and drew and painted plant pictures. Some grew flowers. The bicycle and typewriter provided new opportunities for work outside the home. Some began to work as botanical artists for authors and publishers, sometimes credited as the artist, sometimes paid. Some women wrote professionally on gardening and horticultural topics. Women awakening to new possibilities in these and other areas began to come together to discuss the need for the ability to vote and to change laws about property, rights to children, and other matters. Some significant societal shifts were happening.
Chapter 4 discusses gardening as liberation. 19th-century women were increasingly encouraged to be passive, obedient, and decorative, to raise children, take care of the home, and keep their opinions to themselves. Bell was very interested in how long this situation persisted and how it was eroded; in how long women were hobbled by particular norms and social realities. By the mid-19th century, gardening became an increasing interest for women, especially in the middle and upper classes. In 1896, the new director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, “very reluctantly” hired some women as professional gardeners (the only illustration in this book is the frontispiece photo, “Women gardeners at Kew, circa 1915”). The new women gardeners at Kew were required to attend horticulture lectures and to wear brown woolen knickers at work. During WWI, women were essential workers for public gardens and parks as well as in market gardens and farms. By the early 20th century, two generations of women gardeners, horticulturists, and garden writers had set the stage for modern women gardeners and landscape designers. This coincided with women’s entry into various professional schools, with a “surplus” of un- married and childless women who needed to support themselves in some way, and with the height of the women’s suffrage movement.
All of that history sets the stage for chapters 5-7, about schools of horticulture for women, women in landscape architecture, and women in ornamental plant breeding. This is the larger portion of the book (pages 95-222); chapters 5-7 discuss how women got into those fields and documents a number of examples. You might think, perhaps, that this is the core of the book, and in a sense, it is, although this core would not be nearly as meaningful without the history laid out in the first four chapters. Because of people like Bell, we now have such history brought together, and because of people like Taylor, it and many examples are brought to light through writing and publication. This book is a valuable addition to documentation of women in horticulture and the obstacles they dealt with over centuries. Of course, it is a reminder of obstacles that women in many places are still experiencing.
Chapter 8 is an odd, brief look at writing, and does not really fit the rest of the book, although it was part of Bell’s original outline. An appendix, “Women Rose Breeders in Australia,” supplements chapter 7, presenting in tabular form information compiled by Kate Stanley. And the front cover illustration supplements chapter 6, showing a color photo of a painting, “Celia Thaxter’s Garden, Isle of Shoals, Maine” (1890). The book ends with a dual bibliography of references from Bell’s notes and Taylor’s work, along with an index. Women and Gardens is a fascinating read and is recommended for both libraries and individuals.
Bell’s work for this book was done decades before wider academic perspectives opened up on race, class, gender, and intersectionality. The resulting history outlined here reflects that, and is still important for our understanding of these parts of our larger, shared story. Thanks to Bell and Taylor for giving us this history.
— Charlotte A. Tancin
Washington Gardener magazine, Nov. 2021 - Vol. 15, No. 9
Is your garden haunted by “Ms. Willmott’s Ghost”? Who is Ms. Willmott and why is her shade hovering about the sea holly and potentilla?
Judith Mundlak Taylor and Susan Groag Bell’s Women and Gardens is revealing: Did you know that some vegetables are “impolite,” and certain women were considered “surplus”? Do you include “weeds” like hellebore or daisy in your compositions, like I do? We have Beth Chatto to thank for the “acceptability” of that, but her contributions have been obscured by traditional histories.
Women and Gardens traces a “U- shaped curve,” like a tulip, a skirt, or
a bosom. The history of women and gardens is curvaceous, say the authors; “not a straight line throughout history.” But 21st-century women are still as ignored as ever, it seems. For instance, Podophyllum versipelle ‘Spotty Dotty’ is a deeply desirable plant—it populates Instagram feeds all over the world—but do any of the captions or hashtags credit still-living, still-breeding Oregonian Janet Egger, its originator?
Women and Gardens features pro- files and vignettes that are academic, yet conversational—erudite, to be sure, but not snooty. On every page lurks an unfamiliar giantess of accomplishment. An intellectual work, but never elitist or stiff, this is a fine book to take along and read on a lunch break or commuter trip, with selections for lifetime learners throughout. You will find yourself learn- ing, but never being condescended to, on every page. Professors should look at this book as a syllabus selection for college-level surveys of the history of gardens.
When I was a little girl, there was one coneflower, and it was purple. Now there are dozens, and in a spectrum of colors and shapes. Dr. Jian Ping Ren, a still-living scientist employed by the PanAmerican Seed Company in California, personally “broadened the range of colors very effectively,” but her work is little known and uncelebrated. Hers is one of the brief, fact-driven entries and profiles of singular women and the singular species they created that fill Women and Gardens.
With a readable voice and a highly contemporary point of view, Women and Gardens is packed with hearty, untold stories, drawing the reader in and on. Co-author Groag Bell was a kind of high priestess of women’s studies texts; she was famous for creating one of the first college level texts about women’s studies in the 1970s.
Pioneers never have it easy, and Mundlak Taylor and Groag Bell remind us of this throughout the text. For example, while women gardeners at Kew received “the same (low) wages as the men,” they had to contend with the “trainloads of salacious men [who] would go to Kew to ogle the women doing their jobs” in trousers. This real-life intersection of sexuality and gardens is completely omitted from contemporary narratives about Kew, but Mundlak Taylor and Groag Bell tell these unknown women’s stories without a grudge or an ideological axe to grind.
Women and Gardens illuminates the dialectic of women gardeners, and the many meaty, hearty stories weave a narrative-driven understanding of the gendered history of women horticultural workers. For millennia, women with families were expected to “grow their own,” and to doctor their families by creating homemade herbal “physicks” and other curatives from the kitchen or yard. Industrialization created the medical profession and from then on, heal- ing was professionalized—and women were displaced, even from midwifery. At this moment, the ”symbiosis between women and their gardens no longer mattered.” This truncation was persistent; it was not until the 1848 American Married Women’s Property Act that the masculine stranglehold on garden works began to crumble.
In the English-speaking world, “millions” of women were unable to marry “for lack of a dowry,” and later, for lack of a mate after the bloodbaths of World War 1. These “surplus women” were trained as the horticulturalists of the future by the Countess of Warwick: “a solid livelihood was a lifesaver for them, offering dignity and social acceptance.” Gardening became a safety valve for women who didn’t fit in a tightly con- trolled society that allowed no “unharnessed” female energy.
Jiang Entian is largely unknown to westerners (the Chinese also love roses), but Women and Gardens does not overlook the jaw-dropping 3,000 rose cultivars Entian bred in the late 20th century (while simultaneously nav- igating Chinese regional politics). Australian breeders of their native Banksia and Xerochrysum are included by name and specialty, while Black women and Africans have, sadly, mostly been ignored. Women and Gardens strives for inclusion and circumglobality.
American Alice Vonk bred the first snow-white marigold, using elementary Mendelian breeding techniques, and gave Luther Burbank himself a run for his money. Vonk’s triumph of the “little guy” is a story so American in timbre, I can’t believe it hasn’t been made into a feel-good hit starring Frances McDor- mand. In an earthquake-prone garden halfway across the world, New Zealander Hilda Hemus Ashworth bred the chocolate-purple Lathyrus odoratus that I prefer—but the seed catalogues would have us believe their varieties sprang up from nowhere. Who will tell these women’s stories, if we don’t learn them from Women and Gardens?
This book is full of the tales and personalities that make history make sense. It tells the stories of these women who haunt our libraries, plant names, and seed catalogs. Compelling and relevant stories are found in this work—stories that demand to be known. Educators and readers should invest in Women and Gardens to engage with and harness the power of these empowering, previously untold legends.
— Charlotte Benedetto
Is your garden haunted by “Ms. Willmott’s Ghost”? Who is Ms. Willmott and why is her shade hovering about the sea holly and potentilla?
Judith Mundlak Taylor and Susan Groag Bell’s Women and Gardens is revealing: Did you know that some vegetables are “impolite,” and certain women were considered “surplus”? Do you include “weeds” like hellebore or daisy in your compositions, like I do? We have Beth Chatto to thank for the “acceptability” of that, but her contributions have been obscured by traditional histories.
Women and Gardens traces a “U- shaped curve,” like a tulip, a skirt, or
a bosom. The history of women and gardens is curvaceous, say the authors; “not a straight line throughout history.” But 21st-century women are still as ignored as ever, it seems. For instance, Podophyllum versipelle ‘Spotty Dotty’ is a deeply desirable plant—it populates Instagram feeds all over the world—but do any of the captions or hashtags credit still-living, still-breeding Oregonian Janet Egger, its originator?
Women and Gardens features pro- files and vignettes that are academic, yet conversational—erudite, to be sure, but not snooty. On every page lurks an unfamiliar giantess of accomplishment. An intellectual work, but never elitist or stiff, this is a fine book to take along and read on a lunch break or commuter trip, with selections for lifetime learners throughout. You will find yourself learn- ing, but never being condescended to, on every page. Professors should look at this book as a syllabus selection for college-level surveys of the history of gardens.
When I was a little girl, there was one coneflower, and it was purple. Now there are dozens, and in a spectrum of colors and shapes. Dr. Jian Ping Ren, a still-living scientist employed by the PanAmerican Seed Company in California, personally “broadened the range of colors very effectively,” but her work is little known and uncelebrated. Hers is one of the brief, fact-driven entries and profiles of singular women and the singular species they created that fill Women and Gardens.
With a readable voice and a highly contemporary point of view, Women and Gardens is packed with hearty, untold stories, drawing the reader in and on. Co-author Groag Bell was a kind of high priestess of women’s studies texts; she was famous for creating one of the first college level texts about women’s studies in the 1970s.
Pioneers never have it easy, and Mundlak Taylor and Groag Bell remind us of this throughout the text. For example, while women gardeners at Kew received “the same (low) wages as the men,” they had to contend with the “trainloads of salacious men [who] would go to Kew to ogle the women doing their jobs” in trousers. This real-life intersection of sexuality and gardens is completely omitted from contemporary narratives about Kew, but Mundlak Taylor and Groag Bell tell these unknown women’s stories without a grudge or an ideological axe to grind.
Women and Gardens illuminates the dialectic of women gardeners, and the many meaty, hearty stories weave a narrative-driven understanding of the gendered history of women horticultural workers. For millennia, women with families were expected to “grow their own,” and to doctor their families by creating homemade herbal “physicks” and other curatives from the kitchen or yard. Industrialization created the medical profession and from then on, heal- ing was professionalized—and women were displaced, even from midwifery. At this moment, the ”symbiosis between women and their gardens no longer mattered.” This truncation was persistent; it was not until the 1848 American Married Women’s Property Act that the masculine stranglehold on garden works began to crumble.
In the English-speaking world, “millions” of women were unable to marry “for lack of a dowry,” and later, for lack of a mate after the bloodbaths of World War 1. These “surplus women” were trained as the horticulturalists of the future by the Countess of Warwick: “a solid livelihood was a lifesaver for them, offering dignity and social acceptance.” Gardening became a safety valve for women who didn’t fit in a tightly con- trolled society that allowed no “unharnessed” female energy.
Jiang Entian is largely unknown to westerners (the Chinese also love roses), but Women and Gardens does not overlook the jaw-dropping 3,000 rose cultivars Entian bred in the late 20th century (while simultaneously nav- igating Chinese regional politics). Australian breeders of their native Banksia and Xerochrysum are included by name and specialty, while Black women and Africans have, sadly, mostly been ignored. Women and Gardens strives for inclusion and circumglobality.
American Alice Vonk bred the first snow-white marigold, using elementary Mendelian breeding techniques, and gave Luther Burbank himself a run for his money. Vonk’s triumph of the “little guy” is a story so American in timbre, I can’t believe it hasn’t been made into a feel-good hit starring Frances McDor- mand. In an earthquake-prone garden halfway across the world, New Zealander Hilda Hemus Ashworth bred the chocolate-purple Lathyrus odoratus that I prefer—but the seed catalogues would have us believe their varieties sprang up from nowhere. Who will tell these women’s stories, if we don’t learn them from Women and Gardens?
This book is full of the tales and personalities that make history make sense. It tells the stories of these women who haunt our libraries, plant names, and seed catalogs. Compelling and relevant stories are found in this work—stories that demand to be known. Educators and readers should invest in Women and Gardens to engage with and harness the power of these empowering, previously untold legends.
— Charlotte Benedetto
Historic Gardens Review, Issue 43, Pg. 39
The (re)evaluation of women’s role in making gardens is fast becoming a subset of garden history. This book’s contribution is to draw attention to the continuity of female gardening practice that ran along side dramatic male-induced changes, such as the interest in landscape parks. While young men went on the Grand Tour and came back with ideas for transforming the family estates, their mothers and sisters were constrained to stay at home and make medicinal and flower gardens.
There were routes to acceptance: women were encouraged to paint flowers (though their work was often unsigned), which was a way in to becoming botanists or teachers. Later many took to writing.
Widows were also allowed to take over their husband’s businesses, particularly where that involved plant breeding.
Bell and Taylor offer an inspiring range of mini-biographies as well as an examination of women’s role in horticulture; and their wide geographic spread covers Australia as well as the more obvious UK, US and Europe — though Joane Pirn’s pioneering work in South Africa could have been included.
— Marie Selwyn
The (re)evaluation of women’s role in making gardens is fast becoming a subset of garden history. This book’s contribution is to draw attention to the continuity of female gardening practice that ran along side dramatic male-induced changes, such as the interest in landscape parks. While young men went on the Grand Tour and came back with ideas for transforming the family estates, their mothers and sisters were constrained to stay at home and make medicinal and flower gardens.
There were routes to acceptance: women were encouraged to paint flowers (though their work was often unsigned), which was a way in to becoming botanists or teachers. Later many took to writing.
Widows were also allowed to take over their husband’s businesses, particularly where that involved plant breeding.
Bell and Taylor offer an inspiring range of mini-biographies as well as an examination of women’s role in horticulture; and their wide geographic spread covers Australia as well as the more obvious UK, US and Europe — though Joane Pirn’s pioneering work in South Africa could have been included.
— Marie Selwyn
Yet again the distinguished horticultural historian Judith Taylor has written a powerful, fascinating, unconventional and quite devastating book on the destruction of the geranium industry in East Germany in the name of a perverted socialism. A very instructive moral tale for our times.
Peter Stansky, Stanford University
Adverse effect of Communism on floriculture highlighted in newly released reference book
Judith Taylor shares ‘A Five Year Plan for Geraniums: Growing Flowers Commercially in East Germany 1946–1989’
SAN FRANCISCO – As many countries today face challenges to their democracy, horticultural historian Judith Taylor offers a brief window into history that could act as a warning for all. In her book titled “A Five Year Plan for Geraniums: Growing Flowers Commercially in East Germany 1946–1989” (published by XlibrisUS), Taylor talks about the fallacies and tragedy of Communism seen through the lens of fragile flowers.
The story is about the persecution of innocent people for the sole crime of owning successful businesses growing flowers in the newly formed Communist East Germany at the end of World War II. The businesses were stolen by the state, some of the owners were sent to jail and one or two of them were even murdered. The government took everything away from them and set hugely unrealistic goals or the infamous “Five Year Plans.”
The effects of communism have been studied in major industries like railroads or agriculture but no one has looked at its effect on floriculture. According to Taylor, the result was devastating. The book is another nail in the coffin of Communism. Professor Peter Stansky of Stanford University commented that this book is “powerful, fascinating, unconventional and a moral tale for our time.”
An excerpt from the book reads:
The dubious experiment in political economy and social engineering known as socialism, which destroyed the functioning of Russia and the Eastern European countries and did horrifying damage to their populations for much of the twentieth century, left its mark on many industries. One industry, which has not received as much attention as other, larger ones, is horticulture with its subsector of floriculture.
“A Five Year Plan for Geraniums: Growing Flowers Commercially in East Germany 1946–1989”
By Judith Taylor
Hardcover | 6x9 in | 242 pages | ISBN 9781984576187
Softcover | 6x9 in | 242 pages | ISBN 9781984576170
E-Book | 242 pages | ISBN 9781984576163
Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble
About the Author
Judith M. Taylor, MD, is a graduate of Somerville College and the Oxford University Medical School. She moved to the United States in 1959 and became a board certified neurologist. She practiced neurology in New York and then retired to San Francisco with her husband, Irvin S. Taylor, MD. Since retiring, she has turned to the practice of history without a license and has written six books on horticultural history as well as numerous articles and book reviews on the same subject. Taylor was the honorary librarian of the San Francisco Garden Club and reviewed one of its library books each month in the club’s “Garden Gazette.” Her books include “The Olive in California: history of an immigrant tree (2000),” “Tangible Memories: Californians and their gardens 1800 – 1950 (2003),” “The Global Migrations of Ornamental Plants: how the world got into your garden (Missouri Botanical Garden Press 2009),” “Visions of Loveliness: the work of forgotten flower breeders (Ohio University Press 2014)” and “An Abundance of Flowers: more great flower breeders of the past” (Ohio University Press 2018).”
Judith Taylor shares ‘A Five Year Plan for Geraniums: Growing Flowers Commercially in East Germany 1946–1989’
SAN FRANCISCO – As many countries today face challenges to their democracy, horticultural historian Judith Taylor offers a brief window into history that could act as a warning for all. In her book titled “A Five Year Plan for Geraniums: Growing Flowers Commercially in East Germany 1946–1989” (published by XlibrisUS), Taylor talks about the fallacies and tragedy of Communism seen through the lens of fragile flowers.
The story is about the persecution of innocent people for the sole crime of owning successful businesses growing flowers in the newly formed Communist East Germany at the end of World War II. The businesses were stolen by the state, some of the owners were sent to jail and one or two of them were even murdered. The government took everything away from them and set hugely unrealistic goals or the infamous “Five Year Plans.”
The effects of communism have been studied in major industries like railroads or agriculture but no one has looked at its effect on floriculture. According to Taylor, the result was devastating. The book is another nail in the coffin of Communism. Professor Peter Stansky of Stanford University commented that this book is “powerful, fascinating, unconventional and a moral tale for our time.”
An excerpt from the book reads:
The dubious experiment in political economy and social engineering known as socialism, which destroyed the functioning of Russia and the Eastern European countries and did horrifying damage to their populations for much of the twentieth century, left its mark on many industries. One industry, which has not received as much attention as other, larger ones, is horticulture with its subsector of floriculture.
“A Five Year Plan for Geraniums: Growing Flowers Commercially in East Germany 1946–1989”
By Judith Taylor
Hardcover | 6x9 in | 242 pages | ISBN 9781984576187
Softcover | 6x9 in | 242 pages | ISBN 9781984576170
E-Book | 242 pages | ISBN 9781984576163
Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble
About the Author
Judith M. Taylor, MD, is a graduate of Somerville College and the Oxford University Medical School. She moved to the United States in 1959 and became a board certified neurologist. She practiced neurology in New York and then retired to San Francisco with her husband, Irvin S. Taylor, MD. Since retiring, she has turned to the practice of history without a license and has written six books on horticultural history as well as numerous articles and book reviews on the same subject. Taylor was the honorary librarian of the San Francisco Garden Club and reviewed one of its library books each month in the club’s “Garden Gazette.” Her books include “The Olive in California: history of an immigrant tree (2000),” “Tangible Memories: Californians and their gardens 1800 – 1950 (2003),” “The Global Migrations of Ornamental Plants: how the world got into your garden (Missouri Botanical Garden Press 2009),” “Visions of Loveliness: the work of forgotten flower breeders (Ohio University Press 2014)” and “An Abundance of Flowers: more great flower breeders of the past” (Ohio University Press 2018).”
— Sue O’Brien, Downers Grove, IL
An Abundance of Flowers is a sister work to Taylor’s 2014 book, Visions of Loveliness: Great Flower Breeders of the Past. In Visions, Taylor wrote about the history of eighteen well-known flowering plants from the cut flower and nursery trades. In Abundance, she considers an additional eight: poinsettia, chrysanthemum, penstemon, gladiolus, dianthus, clematis, pansy/viola, and water lily. Each plant group has its own chapter that includes the origin of the plant; information about its taxonomic classification; biographical information about those who played significant roles in the plant‘s cultivation, discovery and/or commercialization; and information about the plant’s use and significance, both historic and present day.
Because the plants have unique histories all their own, each chapter is a bit varied in terms of format and length. Casual readers might feel overwhelmed trying to absorb all of the information in Abundance at once, and so it seems to me that it is best to read a chapter at a time. By meting out the reading of the chapters, readers can enjoy stories, like the political intrigue involving the poinsettia, which includes a phantom American patent that supposedly kept Mexican growers from capitalizing on the plant’s popularity and economic potential.
Taylor is a meticulous researcher and Abundance is filled with detailed notes and careful citations. She has followed up on urban legends and ambiguous word-of-mouth stories related to the cultivation and hybridization of these plant groups, both in the literature and by way of interviews. Abundance achieves what Taylor intended, restoring the lives and reputations of those who bred and developed these horticulturally-significant plants, but whose more personal stories had been lost over time.
The advanced readers copy that I reviewed did not have an index, and I hope that this is because there is an indexer diligently working to create an index that will direct readers to all of the rich content contained in this work. To cement this work’s usefulness today and in the future, I hope that this critical component is as meticulously crafted as the narrative itself.
For scholars of floriculture and floriculture enthusiasts, this present work, like Loveliness, is an information-rich reference and an important addition to any horticultural library.
— Esther Jackson, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY
There is a whole shelfload of books on the great plant hunters, but remarkably little about what happened to plants after they arrived. Nursery owners and plant breeders have generally been a reticent lot, while the flamboyant showmanship of the exception, Luther Burbank (1849-1926) in California,USA, may have persuaded others since to keep their heads down.
Burbank is simply one of many characters here, men (and the occasional woman) who patiently selected plants or crossed them to produce the vast array of garden plant cultivars we have today. The book starts off with an outline of plant breeding history, followed by the biographies of some notable European and North American breeders; a further part runs through outline histories of 16 genera. This format occasionally results in duplication and does not lend itself to a good readable narrative, but it does make it easy to focus on one character or genus.
Karl Foerster of Germany is here, a name now known by many, but also Louis van Houtte of Belgium, and Victor Lemoine of France, whose contributions to our modern garden and windowsill flora are immense, but whose stories few people know. There is, however, little on the major impact of Japanese plant selection and breeding.
I fear that this interesting book will not get the coverage it deserves - the publisher (an imprint of Ohio University Press) is relatively obscure and the book's design has a distinctly economical feel. However, for anyone interested in the history of garden plants and plantsmanship it is essential reading.
— Noel Kingsbury
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Why breeding a new flower was once morally radical
December 2, 2014
In a typical gardening store you’ll find hundreds of varieties of flowers, all cultivated for specific traits related to qualities like appearance or resistance to pests. The diversity of flowers available today is partly a result of modern genetic engineering, but also partly the result of a very different kind of breakthrough — one made 200 years ago by a small, dedicated group of horticulturists who dared to challenge religious orthodoxy regarding the creation of new kinds of life.
Cross-breeding flowers by deliberately taking pollen from one and dusting it on the other might seem like basic horticulture, but initially it was seen as a morally radical act. “People were heavily influenced by religion and this feeling that only God could create a new flower,” says Judith M. Taylor, author of the new book, “Visions of Loveliness: Great Flower Breeders from the Past.”
Taylor’s book is the story of the birth of modern botany in the 19th century. At the time many naturally occurring flowers were being imported from China to Europe. Among them was a variety of rose that bloomed in the summer and, unlike European roses, bloomed again in the fall. Taylor says the desirable qualities of this rose from China caused the “what-if brigade [to spring] into action. What if we crossed this flower with [another] we like a lot?”
Cross-breeding had been understood at least as far back as 1720, when an English nurseryman deliberately created a hybrid carnation. That was during “the time when the religious embargo was very strong,” Taylor says, and she explains that the nurseryman spent the rest of his life feeling guilty about having trespassed on God’s exclusive territory.
For a long time, farmers had practiced “selection,” taking seed from the best producing plants to use for next season’s crops. But cross-breeding was seen as more meddlesome and taboo. By the mid 19th century, however, horticulturists were growing more daring. At first they released cross-breeds under fake Latin names, to give the illusion of having discovered the plant in nature as opposed to having manufactured it in their gardens. By 1845, Taylor, a retired neurologist with a second career writing horticultural histories, says it was no long necessary to use such ruses, and the race to create new varieties of flowers was on. One of the main figures in her story is a 19th-century French horticulturist named Victor Lemoine who introduced hundreds of new varieties of geraniums, marigolds, irises, peonies, and, most influentially, the “French lilac,” which is still popular today.
Taylor says there is a “straight line from the work [Lemoine] was doing to the modern gardening center.” Then, as now, some gardeners felt the torrent of new varieties was overkill; there were also concerns that important, naturally occurring qualities were getting lost in the rush to create bigger, bolder, heartier flowers. In the mid-20th century, horticulturists realized that in their haste to cultivate ever more gorgeous roses, they’d bred all the fragrance out of the flowers. Thus the “rose rustlers” were born — a “wild, intrepid” bunch, Taylor says, who’d hunt in cemeteries for old rose bushes that still had that rose-like smell.
Today, cross-breeding takes place at a more rapid pace than ever, due to the fact that horticulturists can now tinker at the molecular level. Taylor says that quite often a new variety of flower won’t last more than a year or two before it’s superseded by something else, which raises the possibility that eventually good cross-breeding might simply be about trying to get back to where we started.
— Kevin Hartnett
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"VISIONS OF LOVELINESS: Great Flower Breeders of the Past," by Judith M. Taylor, Swallow Press, $52, 467 pages
“Visions of Loveliness: Great Flower Breeders of the Past” by Judith M. Taylor offers a plethora of encyclopedic information about many almost forgotten European and American floriculturists of the 19th century and the hybrids they created.
Luther Burbank, W. Atlee Burpee and Frank Reinelt are among the noted United States flower hybridizers chronicled.
Divided into three sections, “History of Plant Breeding in Europe and America,” “Important Flower Breeders” and “Plants by Genus,” the book shares insights on how varieties of a number of well-known cultivars were developed, including varieties of lilacs, roses, dahlias, begonias, marigolds, orchids and sweet peas.
A one-page appendix on Benary hybrids, along with end notes, recommended readings and an index are included. Although a number of beautifully colored and black-and-white photos illustrate the book, it would be helpful if there were a few more.
Taylor offers flower lovers a valuable resource that is well-written and extensively researched.
There is no foul language, sexual innuendo or violence described in the book.
London-born Judith M. Taylor is a retired British neurologist currently living in San Francisco. She has also written “The Olive in California: History of an Immigrant Tree.”
— Rosemarie Howard
A dip here and a dabble there in "Tangible Memories: Californians and Their Gardens, 1800-1950" reveals that city budget cuts have been around for a while,and at least one official perhaps took drastic steps to get funds restored. As much fun as it is to read Judith M. Taylor's new book, the absence of stories about women and minorities makes it a bittersweet experience.
One story reveals new dirt on "Uncle John" McLaren, the director of Golden Gate Park from 1887 to 1943. It appears that he just may have driven his city- assigned car into a lake on purpose. The park commissioners had thought to trim their budget by laying off McLaren's chauffeur and having McLaren drive himself. The first morning without the chauffeur, the car went into a lake, and the chauffeur was reinstated.
McLaren comes across as someone who liked to exercise his power. As well as the car story, Taylor relates how he'd have his gardeners plant large trees one day and then replant them the following day 6 inches to the left or right. Or he'd order whole beds of newly installed plants torn out; in one instance the plants had to be returned to the nursery because "McLaren did not care for Griselinia littoralis 'Variegata.' "
Taylor doesn't say when griselinia, native to Australia, first appeared in a California nursery catalog, but she gives the first listings of about 150 other ornamental plants. Maybe griselinia arrived with the first acacia trees, in 1853, brought here by Col. J.L.L. Warren, an "Easterner," who had won a prize for growing the first tomato in Massachusetts.
Dipping into Taylor's book reminds me of a visit with my English grandmother: story after story of the old days, and so much excitement surrounding the exploits of men. Sometimes the tales would end with a comment like "Of course, he'd never let his wife . . .," and then my grandmother would smack out the creases in her apron rather ruthlessly, and pour more tea.
It was Mrs. Charles V. Gillespie -- let's for goodness' sake call her Sarah -- who grew the first acacias from seed in California. She arrived in 1848 on the clipper ship the Eagle from Canton, China, at the age of 33. She lived on Chestnut Street in San Francisco with her husband, "a very worthy soul," according to the late Harry M. Butterfield, a plants man and writer, who died in 1970. Butterfield's unpublished manuscript titled "California Gardens of Memory" is the basis of Taylor's book; she chanced upon it at the University of California at Davis Library when she was researching her first book, "The Olive in California: History of an Immigrant Tree."
On a Friday morning in the fall of 1853, writes Taylor, Sarah Gillespie entered some plants in the first California state flower show, as did Warren. One of the plants she exhibited was Passiflora alata.
But Butterfield overlooked Sarah's passionflower; the first passionflower he lists was a later one. The next year, at the same show, Sarah exhibited 108 new ornamental plants. No one else came anywhere near her volume of entries. Yet Warren's entries that year made it onto Butterfield's lists, and Sarah's didn't. Although she lived for another 40 years, after "her dazzling debut, Mrs. Gillespie disappeared from the public scene as a gardener."
My grandmother might have allowed herself a sigh over Sarah's short-lived fame. Before anyone could comment on the subject, though, there would be a new connection remembered.
So it is in Taylor's book: Sarah's husband was employed as managing assistant to M.D.M. Howard, the manager of William Leidsdorff's estate. William Leidsdorff was the first African American entrepreneur of San Francisco before the Gold Rush. He ran a successful business, and in the 1840s his house on Kearny, near Clay Street, was the only house in town with a garden.
You could sit all afternoon, dipping into this book for stories of California history that surround the new plants that came here. You can enter the book looking for a favorite plant or your neighborhood history or be drawn in by a chapter on the history of the trees on the University of Berkeley campus. What might bring you up short, before you've wandered far, is the fact that Butterfield's manuscript is predominantly about one group of people, European American men.
Between chapters on the gardens in the Sacramento Valley and the gardens of the San Joaquin Valley is a chapter on Stockton, mostly devoted to its founder,Capt. Charles M. Weber. Weber came to Stockton in 1841 and quickly became partners in a store with a Mexican citizen, Don Guillermo.
"Through this partner . . ., who had secured a grant of Rancho Campo de los Franeses containing 48,747 acres on January 13, 1844, Weber was finally able to get a foothold in what later became the Stockton country." He actually got entire possession of all those acres, reportedly "for canceling a grocery bill of about $60," writes Taylor. The text then continues with stories of Weber's "generosity."
At my grandmother's, there would come a point when I'd have to stride out the back door and splash in the mud up some cart track or other. With the fancy tea things left behind I could better imagine that I lived in a different world. Taylor sometimes anticipates such a response to Butterfield's manuscript.
In the chapter titled "Spanish California Gardens," she tells us which books to buy for more modern views of California history: "Legacy of Conquest, " by Patricia Limerick, and Richard White's "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own, A New History of the American West."
I also recommend another book on the West, full of women's stories, "African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000," edited by Quintard Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore. I'm headed out to Golden Gate Park with it right now, to get a fresh perspective. I'll try to avoid sitting under a McLaren-era tree.
Hazel White, October 25, 2003
It's hard to believe that at one point in American history the California black olive was a chic, edible status symbol. Olive trees had been brought to California in the 18th Century by Spanish missionaries, mostly for oil, said Judith M. Taylor, author of "The Olive in California: History of an Immigrant Tree." She said the table-olive business was strictly a cottage industry in 19th Century California.
A scrappy widow named Freda Ehmann changed all that.
Ehmann owned an olive orchard in Oroville, Calif., in the 1890s. Faced with little production and falling olive oil prices, she realized she needed another outlet for her olive crop. Experimenting on her back porch with 280 gallons of olives, she hit upon a curing process that won raves.
No dummy, Ehmann took to the road with her product, signing contracts in markets across the country. Suddenly olives were a national industry.
"A writer described the arrival of [Ehmann's] olives in Indiana. They had a lot of social cachet," Taylor said. "They were the newest thing out of the West."
The demand for table olives grew. In 1912, two brothers, Arthur and Henry Bell, purchased an olive orchard in Reedly, Calif. In 1930, they moved into canning, distributing and marketing their Bell brand, which was the forerunner to today's Bell-Carter Foods Inc. Arthur Bell moved to Berkeley, Calif., to run the packing plant while Henry Bell tended the olive groves.
Like Freda Ehmann, Arthur Bell was a born salesman.
Jud Carter, Arthur Bell's grandson, recalls hearing stories of his grandparents taking the ferry over to San Francisco to drum up business.
His grandmother would sit at the lunch counter and order a "chopped olive" sandwich.
"The waitress would look at her kind of funny," he said. "And guess who came in the next day with a can of chopped olives."
But then Carter's grandfather would also tell restaurateurs that chopped olives were the "islands" in Thousand Island salad dressing.
Clearly, Arthur Bell had vision--and good olive taste.
Marlena Spieler, a California-born and England-based food writer, certainly loves the chopped-olive sandwiches she first sampled as a girl.
"I keep meaning to write a column on them because there are many different types of olive sandwich," she said. "Mine is olive, egg, green onion and mayo on whole wheat with lettuce. Mmmm."
— Bill Daley, Tribune staff reporter
Chicago Tribune, August 31, 2005
————
Actually, there's a great story. And finally, I found the person who knows it best: Judith Taylor, who wrote the other book on olives. She's a retired physician who now writes horticultural histories. In 2000, she published " The Olive in California: History of an Immigrant Tree".
Part 2: The Story
The black olive—also known as the California ripe olive—was invented in Oakland, by a German widow named Freda Ehmann.
In the mid-1890s all she had was an olive grove nobody thought was worth very much.
"She must have been an amazing and remarkable woman," Taylor says. "Because instead of sitting in her daughter's rocking chair in Oakland, she decided to get busy and pick the olives and do something with them."
She got a recipe from the University of California for artificially ripening olives. (Green olives are pickled green— as in, not ripe.)
From a 1918 local history:
"[R]eturning to her daughter's house in Oakland, she turned the back porch into a pickling plant, got some wine-casks, cut them in two, and went to work. Uncertain of the result, she dared not assume the expense of piping water to the vats, so that through all the process of leaching and pickling she carried the gallons of water herself. Passing restless nights, she went to work at five o'clock in the morning, and all through the day and until late in the evening she watched the slow and mysterious changes of the fruit."
Freda perfected the recipe, sold her olives locally, then went East to open up new markets. She scored her first hit in Philadelphia.
Eventually, she had a national business, requiring new orchards, and factories. She kept going back to the University of California for more tips—including packaging.
"When she first went to Philadelphia, she had them in kegs and barrels—just sort of loosely covered, you know," Taylor says. "Not sealed."
Then, glass jars. Because they don't spill?
"Yes, and they're very pretty," Taylor says. "And gradually they developed a technique of sealing the jars effectively. And with that came trouble."
You seal the jar, and what's inside?
"That's a perfect cultural medium for botulism," Taylor says.
In 1919, olive-related botulism outbreaks started killing people.
In August, 14 people got sick after a dinner party at a country club near Canton, Ohio. Seven of them died.
A week later, epidemiologists went to work, interviewing the survivors. Pinpointing the olives as the source of those deaths involved some great detective work. Their report includes:
...the seating chart. X marks the spot where people died:
… and a thorough discussion of who ate what, to eliminate other possible causes. For instance:
Marketplace
And the final, damning conclusion:
"The occurrence of poisoning at the Sebring table can be accounted for only by the ripe olives served at this table."
Among the waiters at the club there is a custom of collecting the delicacies after the diners have finished, and the two waiters poisoned did so collect the left-over olives and ate some of them. Later, waiter C.O. carried the olives to the chef with the request that he "Try one of these damn things, they don't taste right to me." The chef ate two and later died."
The 1919 case didn't involve Freda Ehmann's olives. But a 1924 case did.
The next decade was murder for the California olive industry.
The whole industry switched to a new standard for the ripe California olive.
"It has to be heated to 240 degrees. And only a can would tolerate that, physically—you couldn't do that with a glass jar."
Eventually, California olives came back. In cans.
But Ehmann had long since retired. She was heartbroken.
"She couldn't come to terms with the fact that something she'd done had killed people," Taylor says.
Today, there are just two olive-canning companies in California.
