Various strands of politics ran through the French gardening craze.
Most clearly, it is no coincidence the craze began in the months immediately following implementation of the Liberal government’s small holdings legislation.[1] In 1908, making a living from the land was an inescapable topic and the headlines that prompted the craze were one part of the Daily Mail’s strategy for turning this interest to its commercial advantage. [2]
From this perspective the French gardening craze can be seen as an expression of the vigorous land reform debate in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Responses to the Great Agricultural Depression were widely discussed and solutions proposed for urban unemployment and rural depopulation, small holdings among them.
Small holdings provided the context for much of the more serious press discussion of French gardening.[3] Could small plots of land be made to pay? Commentators tried to disentangle the reality from the Daily Mail’s hyperbole and assess what it might have to offer the nation’s agriculturalists. The Daily Mail had lied through its teeth about the system’s profitability and there were sometimes angry exchanges on that topic and persistent attempts to uncover the financial reality.
Several French garden owners had a social welfare agenda and it is interesting to observe them participating in the national debate on small holdings. For example, they can sometimes be identified lecturing on agricultural co-operation and the development of rural credit banks, topics which were thought to be critical for the viability of a widespread small holding community. [4]
[1] The Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1907, which introduced a statutory duty for county councils to meet the demand for small holdings, came into force on 1 January 1908. The 1907 Act was consolidated with older legislation becoming the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908.
[2] There were others, most notably a competition to find a tenant for the Daily Mail Farm, a 14-acre small holding in Lincolnshire.
[3] For example, Northumbrian, ‘Small Holdings. How to make them Profitable’, Reynolds Newspaper, 5 April 1908, p.2
[4] ‘Intensive Culture and the three C’s’, Whitstable Times, 13 November 1909, p.5