Sheena Patterson of Oxford Garden Design wonders why it’s women who have green fingers

OK, the headline is a bit misleading. This week’s missive isn’t the gardener’s answer to 50 Shades of Grey but rather more tamely about the gender gap in the garden.

I frequently give talks on garden design to gardening groups and notice that women outnumber men by about four to one in these clubs. If the breakdown of all actual gardeners is anywhere close to this, it is truly a lopsided distribution.

I wonder “Why should this be?”, and “What can be done to help more men ‘see the light?’ ”

Do many men still view gardening as a hobby for women? Is it the flowers? Do they think that caring for flowers is committing some sort of treachery to their sex and the equivalent to eating quiche or tofu – instead of “proper men's food” like bloody steaks and greasy chips?

A survey carried out by Arthritis Research UK found 90 per cent of men and women say they never argue about the garden – except about the costs.

However, the poll of more than 2,000 couples found half of the female partners say they make the decisions about the garden due to their “better taste in plants”, compared to just over a third of the male respondents.

To those men I say for goodness sake “MAN UP” and grow a man’s garden! No flowers permitted. Use only scary looking or butch foliage plants, like the macho fern. As if the name isn’t already masculine enough for this perennial fern, it also goes by the name giant sword fern.

Great for hanging baskets or a low maintenance garden, the macho fern spreads well, and can grow up to a massive four feet tall and six feet wide, lending a tropical look to any indoor or outdoor space.

Believe it or not there is an entire genus of plants whose name literally translates to “misshapen penis”. The Amorphophallus species all grow from a tuber and can look very phallic. The most famous may be Amorphophallus titanum (“giant misshapen penis”), which is shortened to titan arum for the sake of decency, and which has the added distinction of smelling like a corpse.

Most men I know are attracted to bold, architectural plants, exotic and foreign in look, like palms, phormiums, cordylines, agaves, ornamental grasses and sort of “strappy plants”. Bamboo is often a popular choice with my male clients. It makes a strong statement in a garden and given the right conditions will grow like stink. Its appeal may lie in the fact that it is so strong with a greater tensile strength than steel. So, hmmm... manly.

Bamboo is part of the grass family and of all the hundreds of thousands of exciting plants that could be grown in a garden, in my experience, plain, ordinary, green grass mowed in straight lines and not a single other plant in sight is what a lot of men consider to be the ‘perfect’ garden.

I’m not pointing this out because I think we need gender equality in lawn mowing; I just think it’s interesting to notice on a sunny Sunday afternoon, how many of the people that are out mowing their lawns are women!