From the archive

A look back at the Observer Magazine’s past

‘In 10 million homes throughout Britain this morning, householders will breakfast and then potter out into the garden,’ starts the Observer’s 4 July 1965 report on gardening. It’s not a wholesome account of a simpler time, evoking your grandad’s sun-warmed raspberries; rather it’s the story of how gardening became a chemically enhanced big business.

Science was taking the place of sweat and old-fashioned expertise (laughingly deemed ‘muck and mystery’ by horticultural chemists at 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.’

In pictures, white-coated scientists mark out precise squares of lawn to nuke and pore over petri dishes and a man on a ride-on mower contemplates a range of new-gen garden potions: ‘Kil, Flay, Slug Doom, Flourish, Retard, Growmore.’

Perhaps this felt exciting in 1965. Science might perfect a ‘selective grasskiller,’ the article suggests, or finally create a blue rose (‘a perverse dream that has haunted rose growers for a generation’). It’s grimly interesting to read ‘The one neglect now is the vegetable garden – frozen foods have made it less necessary.’

There’s a cursory note of caution: ‘The long-term effect of persistent chemicals on the soil is to some extent unknowable.’ Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which sounded the alarm about pesticides in 1962, gets a brief mention. Now, with the flying insect population down 60% in the past 20 years, we’re reaping what the 1965 gardeners and scientist sowed.

On a cheerier note: the feature comes with a pleasing double dose of nominative determinism. It’s written by a Maureen Green with pictures by Brian Seed.