Hooked

by Lee C. Neff

Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat…. Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion, on two cushions, on the arms of the sofa, on the wings of the chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your shoes off first…. Adjust the light so you won't strain your eyes. Do it now, because once you're absorbed in reading there will be no budging you…. Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading….

Italo Calvino

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

It was a blustery, damp March day, and the musty, Renton antique shop did not prove as promising as its recommendation—another failure in the quest to find a dining room table. So I casually asked whether or not the proprietor carried old books.

“Yeah, I have a few—in the basement,” he said. “I bought ‘em at an estate sale last week.”

Mold and cobwebs did not seem too great a deterrent, so I ventured forth. Who knew what buried treasure lay below? The tired, crotchety basement steps led to an unexpectedly large array of dusty books, scattered over several sagging, paisley chairs, leaking their stuffing, and a marred, less-than-antique, library table. The stack of old gardening books might as well have been magnetic north; my hands were involuntarily drawn to their faded spines.

At the time, I didn't appreciate the pleasure I would ultimately find in Hugh Gindlay's Garden Making and Keeping (Doubleday, 1932) and E.J. Salisbury's The Living Garden (G. Bell & Sons, 1935), whose delightful line drawings by Mrs. G.M. Caroe, earn repeated perusal. But I did know that I should revere the copy of the 7 th edition of Gertrude Jekyll's Colour Schemes for the flower Garden which was at the bottom of the pile. I shifted the tottering stack off of Jekyll's back and thumbed through my find. It was well loved, and a bit mildewed in spots, but all of the photographs and drawings seemed intact. I was stunned by my good fortune. And inside the front cover, the price, in pencil, was only $3.00. It was hard to breathe.

I might as well have been a knight on a quest to find the holy grail. My pilgrimage had obviously led me to this holy basement for the purpose of acquiring this treasured relic.

Then, thumbing through my book, I stumbled over an old sales slip. My treasure had been purchased six years earlier, from Bowie & Weatherford, Inc., Booksellers, for $25.00. Oh, my…. Clearly this shop's proprietor had undervalued the wisdom of this most revered garden prophet. It only took a second: I decided not to inform him of his error.

Five minutes later, bearing the guilt of one who had purloined rather than purchased a most precious treasure, I stood outside in the wan March sunshine, trying to calm my heart rate. I opened the Jekyll to the first page of the first chapter and read, “There comes a day towards the end of March when there is but little wind, and that is from the west or even south-west. The sun has gained much power, so that it is pleasant to sit out in the garden, or, better still, in some sunny nook of sheltered woodland.” I was transported….

And hooked. The most serious consequence of my deviousness? I am cursed by the quest. Every used bookstore holds promise; every antique shop, possibility. I have bought old gardening books in Portland , Salt Lake City , Nashville and Philadelphia . Some are irresistible because of their illustrations or photographs. Frances Perry's Complete Guide to Hardy Perennials , for example (Charles To. Branford Company, 1958). Beautiful color plates persuade you that you must grow every plant pictured. Plate 22, picturing Polygonum campanulatum roseum, Acanthus spinosus and Sanguisorba obtusa, is a good example. I would be happy to have its gray-green, pink and mauve tones framed and hung on the wall. And color plate 31, of various chrysanthemums, comes close to helping me identify the unknown variety in my garden; perhaps it is ‘Anne Lady Brockett.'

Other old gardening books are written with such elegance that even weeds take on new value. As Salisbury writes in The Living Garden , “When we try to think what exactly we imply by referring to any plant as a weed, we soon realize that though all weeds are plants that grow where we do not want them, those which we consider most deserving of that term of opprobrium possess a capacity of coming up from seed, or a rapidity of spread by vegetative growth, that renders difficult the task of coping with their natural increase. In any plant we prized highly we should consider this a most admirable and desirable trait.”

Other treasured possessions include a copy of the 3 rd edition of Walter P. Wright's Alpine Flowers and Rock Gardens (George Allen & Unwin, Limited, 1924). It includes many remarkable hand-colored plates by “Nenke and Ostermaier of Dresden” depicting alpines growing in their native habitats. Then there is A Sense of Humus written by Bertha Bamon and illustrated by Clare Leighton, whose work has become increasingly collectible (Simon & Schuster, 1943). Damon writes, “A humusist is a dirt gardener who has found out that the only valuable part of the ‘dirt' in which he gardens is the ‘topsoil'…the layers of sandy stuff and hardpan below are but the table and the floor on which is spread the real food. Knowing that much, a dirt gardener knows that if his ‘dirt' lacks humus and he lacks sense of it, he can buy plants until he is bankrupt and stick them in all over the place until he is exhausted, and no good will come of it. If, beyond this, he has discovered that what is true of his soil is in a figurative way true of his soul, then he has become a higher humusist.”

Damon's wisdom is expressed differently from that of Liberty Hyde Bailey in his Manual of Gardening (Macmillan, 1910), but their advice has similarity. Bailey writes, “The satisfaction of a garden does not depend on the area, nor, happily, on the cost or rarity of the plants. It depends on the temper of the person. One must first seek to love plants and nature, and then to cultivate the happy peace of mind that is satisfied with little.” I work to cultivate that satisfaction. So far, whether plants or books about plants, more is still more enticing.

One of the authors I have most enjoyed collecting is Helen Van Pelt Wilson. I own ten of her books, only half the number she published during her long writing career. One of my favorites is The Fragrant Year: Scented Plants for Your Garden and Your House (M. Barrows & Co., Inc., 1967). It includes inspired drawings by Leonie Bell. About Franklinia alatamaha , Wilson writes, “In a small sunny enclosure, it commands attention for almost three months as the first large bud-pearls unclasp about the first of August and continue until frost. The 3-inch flowers are kid-textured white, crumpled and pleated, somewhat like poppy petals and always cupped. A thick brush of golden-orange stamens lights the center, unloosing a soft, distinctive fragrance, the sweetest of all tea-family perfumes. Buds and flowers nest in radiating leaves, glossy green in August, polished red leather by late September, an amazing combination. The loveliest specimen we ever saw was quite old but dwarfed by over-sandy soil. Taller than wide, from top to bottom the little tree was set with hundreds of open goblets, like so many eggs sunny-side-up.” Irresistible!

The last book Wilson wrote was Color for Your Winter Yard & Garden (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978). In it she writes about hellebores and bulbs, birds and berries, the traceries of deciduous trees, wealth of evergreens and ways to light a winter garden. For Wilson winter is full “of peace and beauty,” “a season of short days and long thoughts.” “Of all seasons I love winter best, the beauty of the snow-covered landscape, the calm of the cold months. Spring is exciting; summer, languorous; fall, an exuberant triumph of color; but in my four-season garden, winter has a final clean-cut charm.” In this “season of short days and long thoughts,” while we wait for that March sun to lure us into the garden more often, digging around in a book shop can provide new inspirations of those coming warmer days.