by Andrea Widburg
The Royal Horticultural Society has been holding London-based flower shows since 1833, with gardening fanatics strutting their stuff. In 1912, the show solidified at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where horticulturalists compete annually in several categories, re-creating magical (or not) gardens over a couple of days at a fairground. This year’s flower show, however, was riven with dissent because—horrors!—the vagina-themed (yes, vagina-themed) women’s garden was…designed by a man.
One would think that a gardening show would be a magical wonderland of happy people creating beauty. However, as with any competition, it’s not. It’s vicious. (For a sweet romance novel that culminates at the vicious event, I recommend Katie Fforde’s Wild Designs.) The stakes are high for horticultural businesses, since a win at Chelsea means big bucks (prodigious pounds?).
The best-in-show compete for titles such as “Garden of the Year,” “Small Garden of the Year,” “Best Balcony and Container Garden,” “Best All About Plants Garden,” and “Best Construction.”
Of course, it’s not just about the garden, it’s about the theme! This year’s winners included “The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden,” “The Flourish in the City” garden, the “Little Garden of Shared Knowledge,” and the “Ode to Endurance” garden. As the old song from “Gypsy” says, “ya gotta get a gimmick, if you wanna get applause.”
This year, the “Best Construction (Show Garden)” award went to the Lady Garden Foundation for…well, I’ll let the designers explain it to you:
The garden is designed to captivate, spark curiosity and open up uninhibited conversations about gynaecological health. It aims to break down stigma and enable conversation by creating both intimate and more open spaces for people to talk.
Surrounded by beautiful planting, the centre of the garden is fully immersive. Taking inspiration from the Basque artist Eduardo Chillida, the central structure echoes the artists [sic] ceramic sculptures, providing a safe and enveloping space where sunlight and shade change throughout the day. A winding path leads visitors through richly planted borders, where shifting colours envelop five sculptures, each representing one of the five gynaecological cancers. From a central pool, water flows gently through deep rills, guiding the journey onward, into intimate nooks with secluded seating, then widens into a communal space for open and honest conversations. These contrasting environments are designed to break the silence, foster connection and ultimately help save lives #SILENTNOMORE.
How…ahem…moving. I definitely want to go into a garden dedicated to gynecological cancer and vaginas—and one, moreover, that is sustainable!
The designer, Darren Hawkes, explained how he approached the project:
“As a husband, father, and son to important women in my life, I want to help expand awareness amongst men and women, break taboos and shatter the silence to help save the lives of women in future generations,” Darren Hawkes.
That’s very uplifting. But wait just one minute there! A “husband, father, and son”? Is this…a man? Or maybe he’s a transman, which means he can claim a female identity if it suits him.
Nope. Definitely a man. The picture in this article (which may be behind a paywall) and his voice establish his bona fides.
Now, some might say that there is no person better suited to appreciate a woman’s gynecological virtues than a straight man. But that’s not how the feministas saw it. Instead, there was, as the British say, a row:
The Lady Garden Foundation’s Silent No More garden featured skin-coloured curved structures, pink flowers and calming purple hues to embody a place where women could “open up uninhibited conversations about gynaecological health”.
But for many female gardeners, the message was lost when they discovered the designer was a man.
Bunny Guinness, a gardener and former Chelsea judge, told The Telegraph she saw it as a “missed opportunity” to showcase women in a male-dominated industry.
She said: “I think it would be so much nicer to have had a woman up there getting the gold medal for women: There are more women gynaecologists, it’s a woman’s thing.”
Others echoed her. Claire Coulson, a horticultural writer, acknowledged that the garden was “stunning,” but foolishly added, “I do think a woman should have designed it. … Then we would be talking about those five cancers that it’s based on and not the fact that a man designed it.” It’s you women who decided to make it about the designer’s sex. You could have kept the focus where it belonged—on health risks unique to women.
As it turns out, it’s not just about Hawkes’s temerity in designing a beautiful, award-winning garden dedicated to women’s health. The real bee in the bonnet is that women tend not to be the big winners at the show. The feminists are claiming overall bias because they volunteer more often than men to help set up the show, but men are more often the designers in the winner’s circle.
So, writes the same article, “The Royal Horticultural Society has attempted to rectify the gender imbalance.” And if you look at the winner’s circle this year, they certainly succeeded.
Of those designers photographed, there are 11 women and two men. Amusingly, if you click on the winning gardens that don’t include a photo of the designer, they’re all men (including Hawkes). Men are still allowed to win, as long as they hide their faces in shame.
The real shame is that the woke mob is destroying the venerable Chelsea Garden Show, just as it destroys every other Western institution it touches. Merit be damned. Quotas will be imposed until all men and wrong-thinking people are banished.