‘In 10m homes throughout Britain this morning, householders will breakfast and then potter out into the garden,’ starts the Observer’s 4 July 1965 report on the contemporary gardening boom. It’s not a wholesome account of a simpler time, evoking your grandad’s sun-warmed raspberries or the delicate ephemeral scent of sweet peas; rather it’s the story of how gardening became a chemically enhanced big business.
This uncomfortable hindsight read describes how science was taking the place of sweat and old-fashioned expertise (laughingly deemed ‘muck and mystery’ by horticultural chemists according to the journalist, who took a tour of the Fisons research centre). ‘Sales of chemical fertilisers make up 10% of the gardening market,’ the article explains. ‘Forty different products are devoted to the onslaught on greenfly and black fly… The pursuit of the slug alone provides a £500,000 annual market.’
