There are always wonderful new gardening books with that are written by skilled gardeners and feature fabulous photographs. However, I cannot help reminding people of some wonderful classic books about gardening.
The two books I recommend are not how-to books. The authors I have chosen were not “garden writers” who devoted their talents to writing about how to garden. Instead, they were writers who gardened and saw the humor, wonder and amusement to be found in the hobby.
First, there is “The Gardener’s Year” by Karel Capek, born in 1890. He wrote with his brother, Josef Capek, who provided the humorous line drawings that add a delicious reality to Karel’s garden adventures.
Karel Capek was born in what is now the Czech Republic and was known as a playwright, essayist, publisher, literary reviewer and art critic. He was best known for his science fiction including the 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) and gave Josef the credit for coining the word “robot.” Capek was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, but alas, he never won.
Karel Capek complained about weather predictions, cursing that “complaints, swearing, snuffling, saying brrrrr and other incantations have no influence on the weather.” In the spring, he struggled to find a place in the flower bed where the campanulas had run loose, then the monk’s hood and tradescantia, before he found a spot for his tender seedling. But two days later, he realized he had planted it on top of the evening primrose.
All through the gardener’s year there are challenges, arguing over the proper names of the flowers in the garden and insisting that a Latin name raises the plant to a state of dignity. There are prayers for rain, or for sun, or just on certain plants; that there will be dew, no wind, no snails and that once a week, liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven. Like all good gardeners, Capek talks frequently about the soil, leaf mold, humus and all the kinds of soil, “light as feathers, blond or black … and other diverse and noble kinds of beauty.”
Capek suffered from spinal disease most of his life, and died at the age of 48. It is not hard to think of him musing about his eventual death.
“A rose in flower is, so to speak, only for dilettanti; the gardener’s pleasure is deeper rooted, right in the womb of the soil,” he wrote. “After his death the gardener does not become a butterfly, intoxicated by the perfumes of flowers, but a garden worm tasting all the dark nitrogenous and spicy delights of the soil.”
The witty Beverley Nichols, born in England in 1898, spent his life writing plays, novels, non-fiction, columns for the newspaper and books for children. His prolific writings included books about his gardens that I have always loved.
“Down the Garden Path,” his first book about life in his first garden, was published in 1932. His foreword explains that he “believes in doing things ‘too soon’ as did Columbus and Beethoven and Shelley who all created ‘new born beauty, all flights of the spirit’ that had never existed before.” In his book, he wants to capture the ecstasy of being in the garden and the humorous memories of all the follies of his beginning.
Like Capek, Nichols felt the pleasure and power of “digging one’s own spade into one’s own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?” One of his great projects, he writes, was making a rock garden “without any plan, without even an adequate preparation of the soil. … When you are making a rock garden … you must be bloody, bold and resolute.”
There are unexpected rewards and joys. “It was not ’til I experimented with seeds plucked straight from a growing plant that I had my first success — the first thrill of creation — the first taste of blood. This surely must be akin to the pride of paternity.”
Nichols’ first book was followed by “A Thatched Roof,” “A Village in a Valley” and “How Does Your Garden Grow?” A garden must always be shared, and Nichols’ books always include his life among his neighbors.
I confess to being an anglophile. I read British mysteries and novels of the 19th century, and I began learning about gardening from British garden books, which of course, were not very helpful for a New England garden. Still, I am delighted by the long, elaborate explanations of minor events that Nichols set before me.
In these books, I see my own garden’s newborn beauties, my own failures and follies, and my own laughter.
Pat Leuchtman has been writing and gardening since 1980. Readers can leave comments at her website: commonweeder.com.