The forerunner of the Working For Gardeners Association was created in 1899. It has had various names including the Women's Farm and Garden Society (WFGS) and the Women's Farm and Garden Union (WFGU). Its original objective was to improve the employment opportunities for women working on the land. During the First World War, it created the Women's National Land Service Corps (WNLSC) in 1916 and recruited 2,000 volunteers. At the WNLSC's suggestion, the government created the Women's Land Army. In 1920, the WFGU was concerned that after the war, women were not being offered the help that men were. It created a cooperative set of small holdings for women in Surrey. During the Second World War, it organised training. The charity organised training courses for both women and men in 2020 under its new working name of the Working For Gardeners Association.

The Women's Land Army (WLA) was a British civilian organisation created in 1917 by the Board of Agriculture during the First World War to bring women into work in agriculture, replacing men called up to the military. Women who worked for the WLA were commonly known as Land Girls. The Land Army placed women with farms that needed workers, the farmers being their employers. The members picked crops and did all the labour to feed the country. Notable members include Joan Quennell, later a Member of Parliament; John Stewart Collis, Irish author and pioneer ecologist; the archaeologist Lily Chitty and the botanist Ethel Thomas. It was disbanded in 1919 but revived in June 1939 under the same name to again organise new workers to replace workers that served in the military during the Second World War.