ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Jane Webb Loudon was one of a number of women writers who helped to transform print media into an area in which women could operate as both producers and consumers. Middle-class woman titles indicate then, both the increasing feminisation of the garden in practical terms, and the configuration of Webb Loudon's role as writer and editor who assists guides and informs her women readers. Women were included as readers for traditional horticultural periodicals and for the Gardeners Magazine in its early years of publication. After the electoral Reform Act of 1832, and the threat of instability posed by Chartism, the interests of the middle classes and the working poor had become more polarised, and the audience for garden publications more fragmented. The Ladies Flower-Garden series which Jane Webb Loudon started in 1838 and which was on sale from 1839 was the first gardening work published under her married name Mrs. Loudon.
