Every quarter I receive a copy of the excellent English garden journal, Hortus. It is a serious publication, full of long-form articles about all aspects of gardening. Its hallmarks include black and white drawings—no glossy photos—and high literary and horticultural standards. To my knowledge, there is nothing quite like it published in the United States and it fills the ever-widening gap created by the shrinking pages and lack of content diversity in American gardening periodicals.
Most issues of Hortus feature essays by Charles Elliott, a retired American book editor, now living in England. I always turn to the Elliott essay the minute I open the journal and they never disappoint, combining erudite observations on a wide array of horticultural topics with a leavening dose of humor.
Now some of those short pieces have been anthologized in Why Every Man Needs a Tractor (Frances Lincoln, 2011). Elliot touches on the whimsical in his essay, “Imaginary Plants,” exploring mythical botanical specimens that spring up everywhere, from the pages of H.G. Wells’ novels to Edward Lear nonsense rhymes. On the serious side, the author veers into the consequences of sacrificing science at the altar of ideology, exploring the tragedy of Nikolai Vavilov, the twentieth century Russian agronomist who lost his reputation (at least in the old Soviet Union) and ultimately his life because his espousal of modern genetic theories put him at odds with one of Stalin’s most-favored courtiers, the “barefoot scientist” Trofim Lysenko.
Elliot deals with practical gardening as well, expounding on garden villains like Japanese knotweed and the Hessian fly; as well as subjects as diverse as plant names and seed germination. He ends the anthology with elegant musings on change and the aging of plants, garden structures and gardeners.
Like the best books of garden essays, Why Every Man Needs a Tractor begs to be savored in small doses—say one or two essays a night—to prolong the pleasure. Elliott’s prose and perspective are tonics to the gardener’s soul.