Vivian Swift's "Gardens of Awe and Folly": A Book review

Very personal reflections of nine gardens

It dawned on me the other day that I haven't posted a book review in ages. I think I've written maybe 4 or 5 reviews over the past 5 years so this review will be my sole contribution for 2016. (Half joking). This makes some sense because, frankly, the majority of gardening books don’t appeal to me. I ignore topics and titles, for example, dealing with city or urban farming, “the 100 best plant combinations”, do-it-yourself landscape construction projects, “frugal” gardening, etc. I find them usually pedantic, parsimonious, simplistic and, worst of all, boring.  I’m more drawn to stories about people who love gardens and/or particular plants to the point of obsession, grief, ecstasy, or lunacy. (Eric Hanson's Orchid Fever which I reviewed several years ago comes to mind.) Could such emotions be found in Vivian Swift’s latest book Gardens of Awe and Folly: A Traveler’s Journal on the Meaning of Life and Gardening? ((2016). New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury USA).

Book cover of "Gardens of Awe and Folly" by Vivian Swift.
(Source: http://bit.ly/20s66Hu )

I found this title intriguing. You see many gardening books along the lines of “the top 100 gardens to visit before you die” but a book about “gardens of awe and folly?” About seeing gardens that are frivolous, inside jokes, whimsical, unsuccessful and worse of all in this day and age, don't grow vegetables? Can one possibly find the “meaning of life” in such a silly space? I’m naturally drawn to incongruities, disconnects, aberrations and the occasional hyperbole inside and outside gardens so Swift’s new book seemed promising, as far as titles go.

If you are expecting detailed and factual descriptions of typical “awe-inspiring” gardens (according to Western garden writing) like Sissinghurst, Versailles, Villa Lante and other heavyweights, it’s best to place Swift’s book back on the library shelf or off your online shopping cart (I mean, who goes to the library anymore these days?) But if you're more adventurous, consider going on a very personal journey and visit nine gardens in the U.S., Europe and South America with the author. Some of these gardens are better known than others on the itinerary but each has a special story for Swift. She tells us as much in the opening lines of the book:

“If all you ask of a garden us What?, then all you’ll probably get in reply is a planting list. But ask, instead, Why? How? When? And, most of all, Who?, and then you’re in for a nice, long conversation. This book is a collection of the conversations I’ve had with nine gardens that had a lot to say.” (p. 1)

Beautifully rendered water colour paintings produced by the author herself capture how each garden holds a unique and special place in Swift’s heart and imagination to an extent that mere photographs cannot. Her travelogue covers the time spent with friends or by herself in very different locales and contexts: an overly contrived Japanese garden in Long Island, New York; a solitary visit to Edinburgh Baroque garden during the “gloaming” hour; the feeling of saudade experienced in a moonlit Brazilian garden. There is wonder, sadness and wry humour throughout her “travel notes” (her comparison of New Orleans to Cleveland is gently withering.) We come across people, places and gardens once lost, now reclaimed; their stories forgotten then remembered. I think gardeners (and especially garden-makers) know this instinctively: Every garden tells a story, regardless how small or large, simple or complex it seems at first glance. Sensitive garden visitors can pick up on this too by putting away our plant lists and, dare I say/write, asking owners and custodians questions.

Gardens of Awe and Folly comprise of nine short stories about small gardens that seem unrelated in location, style, and plantings yet are connected to Swift since each has given her, in her words, a “wow” moment and an epiphany in its own way. I know exactly what she means by that. A “wow”, a revelation, a new story to tell others. I experienced these moments in a classical Chinese garden in Suzhou, a tropical garden in St. Lucia, under an ancient ginkgo tree at a local park with my young daughter. I’m sure you have felt the same spending time in your own garden or visiting another. And that story has been told ever since we’ve been on this planet, conceiving and wrestling gardens out of nothing.

But Swift sums it up much better:

“No matter how grand or miniscule, every garden has a meaning all its own; but every garden, everywhere, has a common reason for being, in that it was made in homage to this wondrous Earth that has given life to very Eden we’ve ever imagined.” (p. 166)

Helpful words to consider as we go into yet another growing season, wherever you are.

Good gardening advice from the 1870s

I haven't reviewed a book here in a while. I've done two in the past:

• Eric Hansen's "Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love. Lust, and Lunacy
• Trea Martyn's "Elizabeth in the Garden: A Story of Love, Rivalry, and Spectacular Design"

which you can take a look at. The gardening (or garden-related) books which really interest me have stories with unusual characters and their relationships with plants. Gardens are often just stages on which these characters perform their plays. The types of books that absolutely disinterest me are the gardening "how-to" ones, especially "how to grow vegetables and/or fruit as organically and cheaply as possible." Now, not to come across as a curmudgeon, I understand for the majority of newbie gardeners who are taking the plunge with their shovels and wallets into the wild and woolly world of growing fresh food will find such information useful. Education is always a good thing, especially if one learns that "gardening" can encompass more than growing turf and using bags of weedkiller and synthetic fertilizers. I just can't fathom reading two hundred plus pages about this--not very entertaining.

What I did find interesting is a book I recently borrowed from my city's public library titled "Pleasures of the Garden: A Literary Anthology" edited by Christina Hardyment (2014, The British Library, London.)

Source: http://www.amazon.ca/Pleasures-Garden-A-Literary-Anthology/dp/0712357203

During last month's abysmal weather, the various poems, letters, magazine articles, and excerpts from essays and novels in this book transported me to warmer climes across the centuries. I heard my version of the voices of Homer, Pliny the Younger, Voltaire, Gertrude Jekyll and many others extolling the virtues of this plant or criticizing the hubris of that gardener. It's reassuring to read that people were catty about what grew over their neighbour's fence many centuries ago! Things haven't changed that much...

One particular passage caught my eye. It was written and published recently (well, relatively) and has a tone that is somewhat wry and ironic to 21st century readers. It's an excerpt from A Summer in a Garden written by an American amateur gardener and (professional?) humourist Charles Dudley Warner. He was a contemporary of Mark Twain and as you read the passage, it's not too difficult to pick up Twain's voice in Warner's writing. 

A Summer in a Garden reports on Warner's gardening at his place called Nook Farm, near Hartford, CT. You may find the language a little outdated, sexist, and overtly religious but try to find the humour in what he writes about. (Put in context, I imagine his readership was likely composed mainly of other white, affluent males in Connecticut like himself!) It's part practical gardening advice and  part Sunday sermon but more than a few of Warner's observations are amusing, witty and uncomfortably accurate if you're slogging away in the garden. After all, human nature and Mother Nature haven't changed appreciably over the centuries.

After reading what follows, it's very possible that you'll think about weeding in a different way!

Here's Warner's passage from Hardyment's book, pages 148-150:

"The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to him as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there. To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.

However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.And there is a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownership of it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the World. He belongs to the producers. It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing more than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawn even with great satisfaction; for there is nothing more beautiful than grass and turf in our latitude. The tropics may have their delights, but they have not turf: and the the world without turf is a dreary desert. The original Garden of Eden could not have had such turf as one sees in England.

There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up, goes into the man who stirs it up. The hot sun on his back as he bends to his shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrant loam, is better than much medicine. The buds are coming out on the bushes round about; the blossoms of the fruit trees begin to show; the blood is running up the grapevines in streams; you can smell the wild flowers on the near bank; and the birds are flying and glancing and singing everywhere. To the open kitchen door comes the busy housewife to shake a white something, and stands a moment to look, quite transfixed by the delightful sights and sounds. Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obligated to, is nearly equal to the delight of going trouting...

The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy and the higher virtues, hope deferred and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimes to alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of character, as it was in the beginning.

The first pleasant thing about a garden is, that you never know when to set it going. If you want anything to come to maturity early, you must start it in a hothouse. If you put it out early, the chances are all in favor of getting it nipped with frost. And, if you do not set out plants or sow seeds early, you fret continually;knowing that your vegetables will be late, and that, while Jones has early peas, you will be watching your slow-forming pods. This keeps you in a state of mind. When you have planted anything early, you are doubtful whether to desire to see it above ground, or not. If a hot day comes, you long to see the young plants; but, when a cold north wind brings frost, you tremble lest the seeds have burst their bands. Your spring is passed in anxious doubts and fears, which are usually realized; and so a great moral discipline is worked out for you...

The most humiliating thing to me about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man. Nature is prompt, decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plants with a vigour and freedom that I admire; and the more worthless the plant, the more rapid and splendid its growth. She is at it early and late, and all night; never tiring, nor showing the least sign of exhaustion... There is no liberty in gardening. The man who undertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued. He felicitates himself that, when gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest and of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of his seeds. It is a green anticipation. He has planted a seed that will keep him awake nights; drive rest from his bones, and sleep from his pillow. Hardly is the garden planted, when he must begin to hoe it. The weeds have sprung up all over it in a night. They shine and wave in redundant life. The docks have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeper than conscience. Weeds have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is to do a moral action. I feel as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and the weeds lengthen. The hoe is an ingenious instrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength a t a great disadvantage. Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back,-- with a hinge in it."

Pleasures of the Garden: A Literary Anthology

This collection of classic garden writing presents the garden as place of solace in our busy world, a retreat for lovers, and even an earthly paradise. Bringing together a wide range of voices from across the centuries and around the globe—from Pliny in first-century Italy to Robert Louis Stevenson in nineteenth-century Hawaii—Pleasures of the Garden features fiction and poetry, memoirs and letters, all in celebration of gardens

Written by: Christina Hardyment

Published by: British Library

Date published: 04/15/2014

ISBN: 978-0712357203

Available in Hardcover

The education of a Toronto gardener

I'm a dummy, are you?

Our little secret, ok?

I was celebrating a birthday party at my brother-in-law's place and I happened to come upon "Landscaping for Dummies" lying nearby.  Browsing through this very useful and accessible book with its readily identifiable black and yellow cover, I thought about my own education of gardening, horticulture, botany, landscape design and other plant-related topics. Maybe it's due to writing this post in late December but around this time, I usually think about the year that's ending to remember what I've learned about gardening, my business and, most importantly, about myself. And year after year, I've always remarked "boy, what a dummy you are!"


I think being inquisitive and a voracious reader helps with this once ego-bruising self-reflective exercise. As a by-product of creating my gardening business from nothing but a concept and running it alone for almost ten years, I've been forced to learn about the exciting areas of marketing, sales and client services (and don't get me started with accounting!) This isn't a post on entrepreneurship (although that would be interesting for the very few readers who have their own businesses or are thinking of creating them); rather, I'm writing about how the lessons of lifelong learning, making mistakes, and admitting ignorance often written as advantages in many business books can also be translated to gardening.

So, let me ask:

• do you strive to ask questions and seek answers about what happens in your garden?
• do you accept making mistakes easily and without a lot of soul-searching when you garden?
• do you admit that there's a vast amount of knowledge (botanical, horticultural, whatever) out there waiting to be discovered, evaluated and often discarded?

I think if you've answered "yes" to one or some of these questions, then congratulations, you're a dummy or on your way to becoming one! And to me, that's a good thing because perfection in the garden can never be achieved. (The story of Adam and Eve made sure about this!)

What books have been influential in making me a dummy gardener? Here are my first three earliest books that helped me on my way:

Perennials for Every Purpose by Larry Hodgson

Seriously, I've read this book from cover to cover dozens of time. It's no wonder I love perennials due to this great resource as the author isn't shy about describing a particular genus' strengths and failings.

Residential Landscape Architecture by Norman K. Booth and James E. Hiss

Residential Landscape Architecture: Design Process for the Private Residence was the required text for my college Landscape Design course and introduced me to the process of creating functional landscapes. One bonus is that the text is very readable to a dummy like me!


And lastly,

Manual of Woody Landscape Plants by Michael Dirr

Known as simply "the Manual", Dirr's classic got me through two years of Plant Identification classes and beyond. The author's breadth of knowledge and horticulturally-snippy comments are worth the effort of carrying this door-stop of a reference book. You'll feel like a big time dummy after working from A-Z of Dirr's magnum opus.


This is my last post for 2014 so for next year,  I wish that you:

• don't stop learning
• continue questioning conventional wisdom
• view gurus and icons suspiciously
• plant whatever you want

in and outside of the garden.

So for the few dozen readers out there, thank you for reading my blog in 2014 and I hope you'll stick around with me in 2015. 

Peace!