The Lady Garden
21.08.2023 - 12:03
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
The Body Shop has announced that it is creating its first show garden at RHS Chelsea this year. It’s called The Lady Garden, designed to pay homage to its “founding feminist principles and activist roots”.
All of the plants in the garden were chosen for their traditional use in the treatment of female health issues. Along with the garden features, the plants are being sourced locally to minimise their carbon footprint. When the show is over, the garden will be relocated to the Body Shop HQ in Sussex, to take up permanent residence among the existing biodiverse and bee-friendly landscaping.
Designer Jennifer Hirsch (Dip.Hort.Kew) has incorporated elements that symbolise the female body and women’s strength and support of each other. The aim is to promote discussion of social taboos and issues of female empowerment.
“Everything about the garden has been chosen for its ties to femininity, including the soft-scaping, majority of the artisan contributors, and even myself as a female botanist.”
This couldn’t be a more timely topic, as it is becoming increasingly evident that the world is currently designed for men, and that a lack of understanding of the female body is affecting women’s health. Social media abounds with men mansplaining to women the difference between the vulva and the vagina and getting it wrong. Gynaecologist Jen Gunter is on a mission to debunk the guff that comes out of Goop and educate women on how their body works. Women and girls in the UK suffer from period poverty. Around the world, regressive policies are restricting access to sex education, contraception and abortion because men think they have the right to dictate how women use their bodies.
So The Lady Garden gets a big thumbs up from me. As you can
The website greengrove.cc is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.