The best gardening writers remind us gardeners why we do what we do, and invite us to think about how our labors fit into the bigger scheme of things.
Allen Lacy, my favorite gardening writer of the past century, died just over a year ago, on Dec. 27, 2015, at the age of 80. The anniversary of his death seemed like a good time to open my dog-eared copy of his “Home Ground, A Gardener’s Miscellany” (1984), his first volume of essays, and steep my mind in his offhand wisdom.
One of the many things I love about Lacy is his personal story. Born in Dallas, Texas, in 1935, he got a hands-on introduction to gardening at a tender age, after he bit his third-grade teacher on the ankle. The ankle-biter was fortunate to be put under the benign supervision of another teacher, Ruth Harkey, who happened to run a small nursery where she bred bearded iris. For many years, Lacy worked for her after school and on weekends, spending some of his earnings on plants for his own garden. “Mrs. Harkey taught me the elements of hybridization,” he explained in a 2013 email exchange with the blog Gardeninacity, “and I was hooked at the idea of interfering with nature to bring something new into being.”
Lacy eventually earned a Ph.D. in religion and became a philosophy professor, gardening all the while. His sideline career as a garden columnist started in 1979 almost by accident. He was a frustrated novelist, and to ease his despair, his wife suggested that he write an article for Horticulture magazine. That article was published and caught the eye of a Wall Street Journal editor. He wrote for the Journal from 1979 until 1985, and for the New York Times from 1986 until 1993.
Lacy’s writing is personal and subjective, lyrical and carefully crafted. His subjects range from old-fashioned bonfires, garden journals and obscure horticultural treatises to compost, cutting gardens and muskmelons. He wrote passionate tributes to all sorts of plants, including Oriental lilies, hibiscus and butterfly weed, whose strange collection of common names includes “Indian nosy” and “pain in the side plant.” And these examples barely hint at the contours of his curious imagination.
In one of my favorite essays, the poignant “Status Quo Ante,” he tells the story of planting his “first real garden as a family man” at a house where he lived in Harrisonburg, Virginia., and returning to the place many years later to find out how his garden had fared. “The garden wasn’t there,” he writes. “There was only grass and a clothesline out back. Next to the driveway there was a Red Radiance rosebush and a clump of iris by the water faucet. Nothing else. I had no more made a lasting impression on that piece of earth than a swimmer can alter the ocean by moving through its waters.”
Another essay, “Copper Beech and Blue Atlas Cedar,” laments the all too common practice of planting trees in spaces far too small to accommodate their eventual mature size. “Copper beeches and other large trees are grand opera;” he wrote, “what people with small gardens need is chamber music, small and graceful trees like oxydendron and redbud and Japanese maples of any sort at all.”
When asked if he had a favorite garden, he told the blog Gardeninacity: “Although this garden or that may be striking or impressive, what I most admire is the human urge to take an empty or an ugly site and transform it into a human artifact.” He explained that in his hometown of Linwood, New Jersey, he created a small arboretum on what he described as a “real estate eyesore,” the former site of an electrical substation that had been razed, leaving a bare unimproved lot. Certainly he would approve of the many “guerrilla gardens” that have taken hold in unforgiving urban areas.
For Lacy, gardening was a way of life. “Gardening is not a hobby, and only nongardeners would describe it as such,” he wrote in “The Inviting Garden: Gardening for the Senses, Mind and Spirit” (1998). “There is nothing wrong with having hobbies, but most hobbies are intellectually limited and make no reference to the larger world. By contrast, being wholeheartedly involved with gardens is involvement with life itself in the deepest sense.”
This year, treat yourself to a collection of Lacy’s essays. There are several to choose from, including “Further Afield: A Gardener’s Excursions” (1986), “The Garden in Autumn” (1990) and “In a Green Shade: Writings From Homeground” (2000).
Last week I wrote a feature for the Gazette about the Local Farmer Awards program created by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation. Saturday. you can celebrate our wonderful local farmers at Northampton Winter Fare, an annual event sponsored by CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) to promote farmers who grow or produce food for the winter. Winter Fare will take place at the Northampton Winter Farmers’ Market at Smith Vocational School at 80 Locust S., from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. There will be vendors, food demonstrations, music, activities for kids and, of course, fabulous food. The event is free and open to the public.
Mickey Rathbun can be reached at foxglover8@gmail.com.