GARDEN FINANCE
Today I am going to the garden center to buy two spools of twine. I will be purposeful and single-minded, immune to the charms of blooming plants and sexy gardening equipment. No matter what happens, I will not come home with a blue-flowered agapanthus, a new rosebush and a couple of flats of annuals that I was forced to buy because they were marked down so much. That was last time. This time will be different. This time I will at least make sure to remember the twine.
Some well-disciplined gardeners will feel superior when they read this, but I know I am not alone in my acquisitive tendencies. At least half the gardeners I know admit to having plants that originated as unintended consequences of routine trips to the garden center.
Maybe that is why I feel so much empathy for the late English garden writer Beverley Nichols. In his book, Down the Garden Path, Nichols describes going to his favorite garden accoutrements dealer for a simple sundial. Several hours later he was the proud owner of eighty yards of stone balustrade, salvaged from a defunct estate. It all seemed perfectly reasonable to him at the time, though I don’t recall any further mention of the sundial.
The balustrade ultimately led to a few perfect stone columns and additional terracing in the garden plus new plants to go along with the architectural pieces. Nichols, being a well-bred Englishman, never gets down to discussing pounds and pence, but makes it clear that the cost was substantial. Unfortunately, the balustrade was far from being his only garden-related indulgence and he was similarly extravagant in fitting out his house. In time this led to increases in what the English so euphemistically call “the overdraft”. The increasing overdraft, combined with high taxes, led Nichols, after ten years in residence, to sell his estate, “Merry Hall”–balustrade and all. The buyer, if he or she had any sense of aesthetics, had to have been enchanted by the perfectly designed garden. Nichols went on to buy a semi-detached cottage and set about creating a whole new horticultural paradise. I suspect that the only thing that kept the overdraft under control was the smaller size of the lot.
Spending exorbitant sums on plants and planting schemes is a great tradition. French King Louis XIV spared no expense on the gardens at Versailles. After the French Revolution, the Empress Josephine stocked her country home, Malmaison, with thousands of the choicest and most exotic plant specimens available, regardless of cost. She accented her private botanical garden with water features, follies and greenhouses, a habit that reportedly left her in debt most of the time. Historians relate that Napoleon would chide her about the high cost of her plant mania, reducing her to tears. The dust-ups ended quickly, however, and the acquisitions continued. Fortunately Josephine was able to keep Malmaison after her divorce from Napoleon and lived there until her death. A liberal pension helped ensure that the greenhouses stayed warm and the flowers were well tended.
Ellen Willmott (1858-1934) inherited a large fortune, but over the course of a long life in horticulture, she managed to bankrupt herself. Like Josephine, Miss Willmott subsidized plant hunters and commissioned books. Willmott’s was The Genus Rosa, published in 1907. It was, in its time, the definitive work on the subject.
Miss Willmott had an estate in England, plus homes in Italy and France, all stocked with gardens and gardeners. At one time, she reportedly had at least one hundred gardeners in her employ. Even in the days before health benefits and withholding taxes, this must have been a hefty payroll. Her English estate was home to over 100,000 different plant species and cultivars. Sad to say, the property, Warley Place, was sold right after her death to pay off Miss Willmott’s debts. Today there is nothing left of the magnificent garden.
Some people might find the experiences of Nichols, Josephine and Willmott depressing. Not I. Studying such extreme examples of garden mania makes me realize just how restrained my plant purchases really are–even give n the fact that I was not blessed with a large fortune to fritter away on gardenalia. I often remind myself that Ellen Willmott and Beverley Nichols were single and could indulge their hobbies without having to answer to anyone but their bankers. Josephine had the same freedom after her divorce from Napoleon. I, on the other hand, have a husband, and he needs some amount of spare change to finance his coin collecting habit. I moderate my expenditures to accommodate his, which is probably why our relationship–and my garden–have lasted longer than Napoleon and Josephine.