Jane Austen introduced Pride and Prejudice with the line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” If Miss Austen wrote about gardening, she would certainly have said, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a good garden must be at loose ends in February.” I am that person and to tie up my loose ends, inspire myself for the new gardening season and transform my home office into something that does not resemble a half-finished archeological dig, I am reorganizing.
When I first started serious gardening on my own property—as opposed to my parents’ places—I made loose-leaf garden notebooks full of clippings from everything I read. Those notebooks have languished now for years on the shelf atop the radiator in my office. They are dusted often and accessed infrequently. I thought that by going through them I might remember my younger gardening self and find some new ideas.
Time and the Internet have changed my habits. I clip much less these days because gardening information has become so easily accessible. The first thing I notice in going through the notebooks is that garden writing tends to be shorter now, with fewer rhetorical flourishes. Individual gardeners may still rhapsodize about clematis, but they have to condense the rhapsodies into a few notes in order to accommodate pictures, how-to information and the shortened attention spans of modern readers.
Like Ebenezer Scrooge, I have a chance to see the past. Twelve years ago, for example, I was very interested in knot gardens and drying flowers, not to mention creating planting schemes for narrow places. I still dream of making a knot garden in the upper back portion of my yard. The narrow space I had in mind when I clipped the article is the area behind my garage, and it languishes still, having recently emerged from under the mountain of downed limbs left behind by Hurricane Sandy. Now is a great time to finally do something with that area. It is perfect for container subjects like begonias and unusual hostas, not to mention heucheras. Nobody sees the space but me, so it has great potential as a secret garden.
As for drying flowers, I am not sure that I will be able to accomplish that anytime soon, but you never know. It depends how long winter lasts.
The clippings remind me that I have coveted tree peonies since I first saw one many years ago. Now I have several, including the yellow “Barzella” hybrid Itoh peony that was the object of my heart’s desire for years. Not all my loves are unrequited.
My notebooks are full of articles about botanical illustration. Not only do I love the beautiful images, but as a frustrated artist, I long to create some of my own. Great garden photography is inspiring in its own right, but I find the best botanical illustrations have a singular lyricism. I took a course in botanical illustration long ago and it taught me a new way of seeing plants; something that has stayed with me and influenced everything I do in gardens. Now, if I could only get back to watercolors and colored pencils. I think I would rather do that than dry flowers, though in the best of all possible worlds I would win the lottery and have time for both.
Even before the current vogue for flowering shrubs, my notebook was full of articles about them. Now I have lots of them and wish I had room for even more. Several years ago I acquired a Japanese kerria, which failed to flourish last year from reasons unknown at the time. My notebook has an article with a starred paragraph about kerria. It reminds me that mine has more shade now than when it was planted. I should move it to save it.
The collected clippings sit alongside some of my first garden reference books—faithful friends like the old Readers’ Digest Guide to Gardening, several specialized Taylor’s guides and one of my favorites, Bill Neal’s classic Gardener’s Latin. Neal was a chef, restaurateur and author who was also a gardener and student of Latin—botanical and otherwise. I often turn to Gardener’s Latin for actual and metaphysical meaning.
The reference books and loose leaf notebooks share space with countless other notebooks in which I have jotted down garden and garden writing ideas. Some have been realized. Many more of them wait for me to take a second look. Now, before the earth warms up, I will make a point of it.
E.M. Forster said– “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer.”
Returning to my notebooks of clippings, my old reference books and journals, helps me re-establish my personal connection to gardening prose and gardening passion. Perhaps it will also make my gardening efforts less fragmentary.