History of Gardening: Medieval [6min]

What does gardening tell us about the past? Recent research into gardening habits suggests that little has changed over the years: men grow prize-winning vegetables, obsess about the lawn and lay a bit of decking whilst women potter in the borders enjoying the whiff of fragrant flowers. When the writer Jenny Uglow looked into the history of gardening she found that medieval monks and nuns conformed to such horticultural stereotyping. Katy Hickman went to Jenny's house in Canterbury to find out what her garden could tell us about the past. Her Little History of British Gardening is published by Chatto and Windus.