Hannon writes:

I really got a charge from reading Aservant’s post about chefs. While I foreswore I would never work in the “food service industry” and never have, I have great appreciation for Aservant’s sentiments and thoughts on the subject. My own work in another hands-on, unseen and “all labour” industry as a nurseryman is similar in some ways, especially in the technical knowledge and skill that only comes from experience. But it has nothing like the minute-to-minute demands of a kitchen. Still, I would wager that making good money – that is, a wage that allows homeownership at some point and obviates the wife earning wages-  is more difficult growing and selling live plants, mainly because of the low value people assign to them. 

Next time you visit a “nursery”– it could be a Home Depot garden center– look at the prices and think what it would take to produce that item, even on a large, efficient scale. Independent nurseries with any vitality to them have grown all too scarce.

I have not noticed any particular PC transformation in my field but I can tell you that the practitioners who really know their stuff are men, with very rare exceptions. It is arduous grubby work for the most part and obviously there is no chiffon ceiling or whatever it is called when women are celebrated for breaking into another realm traditionally populated by men. Depending on the given subfield, the intellectual demands tend to attract men and I don’t think this has changed much over the years. As you wrote recently, women tend to inhabit the middle areas while men gravitate above and below, and so it would seem to be with flowers and plants.

For the general population plants are a dalliance at most; for the plantsman (an indispensable English term) they are just as challenging to master as the culinary arts. As in the latter, there are many levels, from bedding annuals by the millions to African violet operations to specialists catering to collectors of rarities. Still, are there any advanced level or prime time TV shows about plants and flowers? [Laura writes: Interesting point.] No, there is no “Hell’s Garden” or “Top Plantsman.” The gardening we are fed on in this country is the equivalent of a KFC franchise in East St. Louis. People are at least aware of gourmet food. Outside of a few specialized areas like orchids or bonsai there is a near-total lack of awareness of what can be grown, and even in these cases the knowledge base is often rudimentary.

I suppose my complaint is more general, that the consumers of plants and flowers are not what they were when I was growing up. I can remember both men and women, often older, toiling away in the garden with keen attention and great satisfaction: staking delphiniums, planting marigolds each spring, pruning peaches, saving seeds. Now these activities seem comparatively rare. They have given way to “landscape design,” an abhorrent concept but one that can be pursued with degree in hand, or perhaps a few containers of straggly tomatoes on the patio. Maybe it is part of the general trend of the common man having enough so-called wealth to farm out just about every chore that used to be done by husband and wife, or the kids or extended family. Whatever  the cause of us shying away from labor-intensive works we are poorer for it and it shows in the places we live. It only takes a few households on a block to indulge the gardening instinct to change the scene completely. We make a lasting mental note of such neighborhoods because they stand out in representing something traditional, harking back generations. Few are unmoved by a plot of dahlias blazing away in a front yard in July, or an arbor on the front walk burdened by climbing roses or purple wisteria in full bloom. 

Somewhere we have failed to sufficiently pass these simple pleasures and values onto younger generations. They should be growing (no pun intended), not receding. From a cultural perspective this should be one of the most enjoyable, though far from effortless, diversions to correct.

Laura writes:

Planting, or rather a culture of planting, naturally follows from certain metaphysical undercurrents. Gardens require human roots and intimacy with place, a respect for manual work, civic virtue, and a desire to transform the ugliness that always exists. It’s so simple we often don’t see it. Planting is not just pragmatic or useful or even ornamental. It’s a way of living and a deeply satisfying one. There are certain aspects of reality uncovered in relation to plants. They lead their silent and busy lives with us. The garden is almost infinitely allegorical. As Andrew Marvell put it in his poem “The Garden:” 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!

The problem is, most people focus on the results instead of the process. I don’t think the decline is quite as bad as Hannon suggests, but it still seems the vocation of gardening has suffered and there’s something profoundly decadent about its loss. This “total lack of awareness of what can be grown” is real. It gives the lie to our notion of ourselves as being an advanced society. Modern schools pass on none of the basic skills. They approach botany purely as an academic subject and they generally always will. On Sundays, I see packs of cyclists passing by, riding incredibly expensive bikes in expensive outfits. For all that hard work, they have nothing to show for it but muscles. Why don’t they plant something instead? It’s good exercise too. It probably has never occurred to them. The truth is, there are no advertisers pushing the simple joys of planting.

 Big business has been amazingly successful in undercutting one of the cheapest of pastimes. A man who lives near me was planning expensive landscaping for his front yard. His mother came from Poland to visit. She was mystified. Why don’t you plant potatoes, she asked him? Not many people want potatoes in the front yard, but I think she made a good point. Why didn’t he just plant something himself? Generally, it seems many people have been cowed into thinking they can’t do it themselves and over time this creates a loss of tradition and skills.

It is not quite as bleak as Hannon describes in my part of Pennsylvania. People line up for blocks at local plant sales in May, wheeling their wagons over each other’s shoes. It’s true there are the other extremes: the people who spend absurd amounts of money on look-a-like landscaping and those who cultivate grass and nothing more. Also, many people seem to believe it is only possible to grow vegetables on a farm. It amazes me how much money is spent on travel. For so much less money, people can make their own homes and yards possess the enchantment of the places they visit.

                                                            — Comments —

Lydia Sherman writes:

Why spend money on gas for lawn mowers when you can make the lawn produce food? We turned a lot of our mowing area into vegetables. They are beautiful and can fill in corners and make semi circles here and there, surrounded by flowers. On a historic garden tour, I noticed cabbages growing inbetween flowers around edges of houses, and potatoes filling up back yards. One man in a modern neighborhood filled his back yard with berry bushes, which spilled over the fence to his neighbor, who was allowed to pick on his side. We filled our mowing area full of food last year and hope to do more this year. It makes a lot more sense when you consider that, like chickens, it pays you back for the effort and the cost. A lawn just takes and takes and most people dont sit around admiring it that much.

Laura writes:

Lawns are far too common. They are expensive swathes of either back-breaking labor or chemical dependency. Yes, they are nice in some areas, but they have been oversold to an unsuspecting public that is largely ignorant of the less expensive and more satisfying alternatives. Even potatoes.

Laurence B. writes:

It’s like Pascal said, “Man was lost…and saved…in a Garden.”

Hannon continues:

OK, I will admit there are some garden and plant lovers out there. I am told there is a tremendous garden show phenomenon in Philadelphia and nearby areas as you indicate. Also, Tucson, Portland and parts of Texas are quite plant savvy (which is not quite the same as garden savvy). Florida and Hawaii stay busy as you would expect. What is puzzling though is the radical contrast between Los Angeles-San Diego and the Bay Area around San Francisco. The former were essential nursery areas until the 1960s when it started to become impossible for owners to resist selling to developers– they could make more money on such a sale than they could from the revenue of years of plant sales in many cases. Still, there is a solid horticultural community in San Diego, much more so than in LA with quadruple the population and essentially the same great climate. Too many distractions perhaps. In fact, that seems to be the guiding principle of Los Angeles culture: distractions.

The Bay Area is saturated with real plant aficionados and keen gardeners by contrast. The botanic gardens there– UC Berkeley Botanic Garden, Strybing Arboretum, Tilden Regional Park– all reflect the almost Anglophile nature of the population’s relationship to plants. I don’t know if you have an equivalent situation on the eastern seaboard. San Francisco is the smart set culture in so many ways, albeit hyper-liberal, while LA is a sea of indistinct sprawl lacking cohesiveness and city pride or identity. And yet both are multicultural paradisos! How can it be?

Laura writes:

That’s interesting about LA, given all the money there, but it is a more status-conscious place and that seems to bode ill for gardening. This may be off-base, but don’t cloudy places attract more passionate gardeners? The Bay area is cloudier. As you said in your initial post, gardening (as opposed to planting) is contagious and individuals have a powerful influence. That has been the case in the Philadelphia area ever since John Bartram and his 18th century botanical expeditions. There have been patrician families such as the Duponts and Morrises, and wealthy businessmen such as Adolph Rosengarten, who left Chanticleer, from which the above photo is taken. It’s impossible to overestimate their effect on the subculture and local tradition.

You mentioned sprawl. The cheapest, easiest,quickest and most eco-friendly remedy for the hideousness of sprawl, as well as of urban blight, is plants. This is already seen in some places where wildflowers are planted on median strips.

Hannon writes:

I think you’ve hit on a strange but true common denominator, that status-conscious areas are a death-knell for advances in horticulture. A depressing revelation. Status-conscious people are basically lazy; they eschew any real work to achieve status among their peers, so the work itself has no value and the subject of any said work is similarly irrelevant. Only the status itself is valued. Something tells me this ties into the discussions on gnosticism going round these days.

What is it they say about six degrees of separation? I am acquainted with a history buff relative of John Bartram, who is one of my early American heroes though I know too little about him. There is a very good mail-order nursery called Plant Delights in North Carolina that sells something called “Bartram’s Ixia.” It is a very rare bulb discovered in Florida by John Bartram.

The painful truth for those who care about cultivated plants is that they are ultimately ephemeral, transient beauties whose persistence in our gardens can never be assured. I have given this subject a great deal of thought and when making analogies with art or antiques or other things people collect and value, the aspect of nurturing a living thing in perpetuity does not sound like much fun to most people. Plant a tree, watch in grow and outlive everyone you know, fine. Fail with a bed of tulips, no big deal. But rarer or more obscure flowers– which are by far the majority of the variety in cultivation– must have a support group, as do the orchids, or they will make just the occasional appearance. Some will go away forever. I say this in the sense of anthropocentric loss since we know so little about ex situ conservation and can do very little except create reserves.

I would offer this also, that there is a distinction to be made between those gardeners, collectors and garden designers who make an outstanding difference and the majority who are happy to turn-in work that is merely satisfactory. Such a distinction must be true in all fields of course, but it is difficult for outsiders to see it in an occupation they have not considered as obtaining much respect, or status.

I’ll have to think more about your fog idea. I do think excellence in these areas has to do with international centers of trade, whether in Japan, ancient Persia, England or New York.

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