Garden writing

Writing about gardens takes a variety of literary forms, ranging from instructional manuals on horticulture and garden design, to essays on gardening, to novels. Garden writing has been published in English since at least the 16th century.

Engraving from a 1774 edition of La pratique du jardinage, a treatise on gardening by Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville.

Classification

Atkinson suggests a two-part division of garden writing, at least in the 19th century. On the one hand, she notes, some garden writers produced utilitarian guides on garden maintenance and horticulture. On the other hand, garden writing also included higher-brow works on the "pleasures of landscape aesthetics".[1]

Early history

Published writing about gardens in English dates back at least to the mid-16th century. The first version of Thomas Tusser's poem Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry was published in 1557, and William Lawson's The Country Housewife's Garden followed in 1608.[2]

In France, Antoine-Joseph Dézallier d'Argenville first published La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (French for 'The Theory and Practice of Gardening') in 1709. It had been translated into English by 1728.[3]

19th century

Colour plate from Some English Gardens (1904) by Gertrude Jekyll.

The Victorian era in the United Kingdom saw significant changes in gardening practices, fuelled by new technologies such as the invention of the lawn mower and imports of exotic plants from the far reaches of the Empire.[4] Garden writing, particularly in magazines, grew in prominence along with these developments, driven in part by middle class gardeners in suburban developments keen to make good use of their land.[4]

In Britain, designer and scholar Gertrude Jekyll published widely on gardening.[4] Jane and her husband John Claudius Loudon, both botanists, worked together on a number of treatises concerning horticulture, including several encyclopedias on the subject.[5] John Loudon also edited the The Gardener's Magazine, which brought information and commentary on gardens to a popular audience.[6] Andrew Jackson Downing's magazine The Horticulturist was an analogue of Loudon's Gardener's Magazine in the United States.[6]

Seaton describes Henry Arthur Bright's A Year in a Lancashire Garden (1879) as a "garden autobiograph[y]",[7] noting that it is structured like a series of diary entries as opposed to a treatise or reference work.[8] Atkinson argues that Charles Dudley Warner's memoir My Summer in a Garden (1871) is a foundational work of garden writing in American letters.[9]

20th and 21st centuries

In early 20th century America, garden writing targeted at amateur gardeners frequently appeared in the popular press during what Clayton calls the "golden age of magazines".[9]

Jamaica Kincaid, a novelist, gardener, and garden writer, has published a number of works on gardens. Her My Garden (Book) (1999) uses gardens as a lens to explore diverse themes including colonialism while providing advice and instruction on garden management.[10]

Atkinson identifies Richard Powers's 1998 novel Gain as an example of late 20th-century literary fiction that takes gardening as its subject.[11]

Works of garden writing

• Bright, Henry Arthur (1891) [1879]. A Year in a Lancashire Garden. London: Macmillan.
• Hill, Thomas (1563). The Profitable Arte of Gardening.
• Hill, Thomas (1608). The Gardener's Labyrinth – via British Library.
• Jefferson, Thomas (1766–1824). Garden Book. Manuscript held by the Massachusetts Historical Society.
• Kincaid, Jamaica (1999). My Garden (Book). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-28186-6. OCLC 41049724.
• Lawson, William (1637) [1608]. The Country Housewife's Garden. London: Anne Griffin. hdl:2027/osu.32435004189916.
• Tusser, Thomas (1878) [1557]. Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. London: Trübner.
• Van Zuylen, Gabrielle (1995) [1994]. The Garden: Visions of Paradise. 'New Horizons' series. Translated by Paris, I. Mark. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500300558.
• Warner, Charles Dudley (1871). My Summer in a Garden. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Company.

See also

• History of gardening
• List of professional gardeners
• Pleasure garden

Notes

1. Atkinson 2018, pp. 20–21.
2. Dann 1992, pp. 234, 248.
3. Rogers 2011, p. xiii.
4. Bilston 2008, p. 1.
5. Dann 1992, p. 234.
6. Clayton 2000, p. xv.
7. Seaton 1982, p. 74.
8. Seaton 1982, pp. 76–77.
9. Clayton 2000, p. xiii.
10. Fidecaro 2012, p. 85.
11. Atkinson 2018, p. 20.

Sources

• Atkinson, Jennifer Wren (1 August 2018). Gardenland: Nature, Fantasy, and Everyday Practice. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1vhtrjm. ISBN 978-0-8203-5318-0. JSTOR j.ctt1vhtrjm.
• Bilston, Sarah (2008). "Queens of the Garden: Victorian Women Gardeners and the Rise of the Gardening Advice Text". Victorian Literature and Culture. 36 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1017/S1060150308080017. ISSN 1060-1503. JSTOR 40347590.
• Clayton, Virginia Tuttle (2000). The Once and Future Gardener: Garden Writing from the Golden Age of Magazines, 1900–1940. Boston: David R. Godine. ISBN 978-1-56792-102-1.
• Dann, Christine (1992). "Sweet William and Sticky Nellie: Sex Differences in New Zealand Gardening and Garden Writing". Women's Studies International Forum. 15 (2): 233–249. doi:10.1016/0277-5395(92)90103-3.
• Fidecaro, Agnese (2012). "Jamaica Kincaid's Practical Politics of the Intimate in My Garden (Book)". In Pratt, Geraldine; Rosner, Victoria (eds.). The Global and the Intimate: Feminism in Our Time. New York: Columbia University Press. JSTOR 10.7312/prat15448.
• Rogers, Elizabeth Barlow (2011). Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries. Boston: David R. Godine. ISBN 978-1-56792-440-4.
• Seaton, Beverly (1982). "The Garden Writing of Henry Arthur Bright". Garden History. 10 (1): 74–79. doi:10.2307/1586853. JSTOR 1586853.