Legendary garden designer’s life empowers modern women
January 24th, 2008, 4:09 am Hobby Shops
Hers is a story of a woman abandoned by her husband at midlife — they would never divorce — who found the courage to remake herself out of the scraps of a passionate hobby. Though her gardens — many still intact — are innovative, it is Lindsay’s story that captivates the gardeners with whom landscape historian Allyson Hayward regularly speaks. “These are women in the 50- to 80-year-old range,” says Hayward from her Massachusetts home. “Every one of them responds to the strength Norah showed as a single woman who had to support herself,” says Hayward, author of a new book, Norah Lindsay: The Life and Art of a Garden Designer. Despite the passage of nearly a century, not much has improved for women who have spent an extended period of time outside of the work force caring for family but who have lost their main source of income through divorce, separation or widowhood. Only 74 percent succeed in re-entering the work force; only 40 percent make it back to full-time employment; and a disproportionate number work at low-wage jobs, earning less than $20,000 a year, according to statistics gathered by Women Work!, a national network for women’s employment. But Norah Lindsay had passion on her side. “Gardening kept her going. It was an outlet for her creativity, a way to be with her friends,” says Hayward, who spent 10 years following the footsteps of her subject to gardens all over England and Europe. What Norah Lindsay did with her gift took real courage: She went to work at dawn for the people in whose drawing rooms she had been entertained the night before. “She wanted to maintain her life in that house and her circle of friends. She didn’t have the financial reserves to keep it going without working. What she did was very tough to do,” Hayward says. Norah Lindsay’s beloved Manor House was ultimately sold to wealthy publisher David Astor, a son of Waldorf and Nancy Astor, just before Lindsey succumbed to cancer in 1948. She died believing, mistakenly, that the sales agreement would allow her to return to Manor House when her health improved to execute yet another redesign of its gardens. “There were times in Norah’s life when there was not much joy,” says Hayward, “but she always had joy in her garden.” Susan Reimer is a columnist at The (Baltimore) Sun, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
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