Garden Writers of Old (Part Two)

Several women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries contributed significantly to the field of horticultural writing. Listed below are the profiles of a few whose works I've found helpful. (And the best part is that their books have been republished and can be found relatively easily!)

Celia Thaxter

Celia Thaxter's book "An Island Garden", originally published in 1894, has become a classic in North America. Interestingly, Thaxter considered herself a poet, not a garden writer, and this book was her sole horticultural contribution. What a delight it is, 'though!

Thaxter lived in Massachusetts, but travelled every summer to an island off the coast of New Hampshire, where her family owned a summer resort. It was there that she did all her gardening, and she succeeded in creating a quite beautiful little garden in rather harsh conditions. It is her experiences in creating and nurturing this garden that form the core of her book.

Not only is her book a pleasurable read ( I devoured it in one sitting!), but it also provides invaluable information on plants popular at the turn of the century, and of growing practices of the time.

Helena Rutherford Ely

Sometimes called the American equivalent to Gertrude Jekyll, Helena Rutherford Ely wrote her first gardening book "A Woman's Hardy Garden" in 1903, followed by two other similar books in 1905 and 1911. In "A Woman's Hardy Garden" she urged a move away from the rigid Victorian gardens dominated by tropical annuals to more informal beds filled with a mix of perennials and annuals for continuous waves of colour. She especially favoured hardy native plants. This approach was a quite radical departure from contemporary gardening fashion and, like the writings of Robinson and Jekyll in England, significantly influenced garden style in North America. Her writing is straight-forward and informal, filled with helpful gardening snippets of the time and (most importantly for heirloom gardeners) lists of turn-of-the-century plants for the garden.

Louise Beebe Wilder

No discussion of influential garden writers would be complete without the inclusion of Wilder. An American, born in 1878, she contributed her most significant works in the 1930's. Books such as "What Happens in My Garden" (1935) and "The Fragrant Path" (1932) were wildly popular and are now considered classics. Her writing presents a unique (and welcoming) combination of informality and horticultural specificity. For example, whereas Rutherford (above) might write about the beauty of Lychnis or Chrysanthemum, Wilder provides extensive lists of plants by precise botanical name. "The Fragrant Path", in particular, is a wonderful resource for those wishing to bring fragrance back into their gardens.

Margery Fish

A more recent horticultural expert, Margery Fish gardened at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, England from the late 1930's until the 1960's and wrote a number of gardening articles and books during that time. One of her most well-known contributions was "We Made a Garden", published originally in 1956, in which she documented the efforts of she and her husband to create a cottage-garden from scratch. Margery had a delightful, self-deprecating style of writing, and she became a much-loved and admired garden expert. Many still visit her gardens at East Lambrook, and her works are worth reading to gain insight into the formation of an English cottage-style garden.