Do we become good gardeners because of the season, our work, or because of what mother taught us? Defining a "good" gardener is not the inference here; it is the garden as a teacher. A garden makes good observers, patient workers, and people with healthy egos behind successes and a hefty dose of humility with failures.
Nature has the upper hand here, after all. More often than not, it is simply a lesson in returning to the basics; the sun, the soil, and water. The plants merely become the player in the things that drive their success.
I have a bit of an obsession with collecting old garden books haunting the shelves of thrift stores and antique markets. Some books are written in the 1800's and some within a generation. When I read through old words of wisdom, I have a bit of deja vu. The same skills and knowledge are there. It is not a new technology or some new thingy to pull weeds. It all goes back to the same inherent desire to get back to the earth.
Early garden writings wrote about observations that became the learning tools. Most old books had few photos or even any ink of vibrant color; they are not the photographed visuals we have become so reliant on these days. Writers of the past used good descriptive wording that painted the pictures. Most information was based on observation, trial, and error.
Well-loved books with handwritten inscriptions of the book owner's name make me imagine what their garden looked like. Penciled numbers or notes written in margins long ago allow me to wonder if it was to calculate compost or how many seeds to plant. Scraps of paper and pressed leaves are also a gift of the past tucked into pages; Julia Cummins, in 1924, tucked an unknown leaf in the pages of The Seasons in a Flower Garden, a handbook for the amateur; was it for identification or simply a bookmark? Every book has tidbits to glean, from garden design to the simplicity of weeding.
An original 1953 Handbook from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens American Gardens is a sourcebook of ideas that shares sound design advice. "Probably the commonest error of the amateur gardener and horticulturist is his failure to recognize the importance of garden design…the plain hard work that goes into an unplanned and nondescript garden might just as well go into a planned one."
A favorite find in a local thrift store for 2 dollars was The New Garden Encyclopedia Victory Garden Edition, from a government-sponsored victory garden program to aid families in wartime. Information on the war effort, "…food is no less a weapon than tanks, guns, and planes." (President Roosevelt), and sketches that lay out ultimate edible gardens.
The 30 pages of Victory Garden tips are timeless; "to produce good food crops, a soil should be of at least average depth, and sweetness, and in good physical condition. Average depth means 8 to 12 inches of topsoil". "Cheap seed doesn't pay" and "Keep tall growing plants to the north and west sides where they will cast less shade on others."
One mantra we always hear: fall is for planting. In the book The Garden of Experience, By the Author of the Garden of Ignorance [that is how the title honestly reads], Marion Cran, in 1919, shares her wisdom. "But the "Awe-time" [her word play on autumn] has come to mean to me also the "hope-time"-for I know now, being a gardener, that I may not linger sentimentally upon the contemplation of picturesque decay, but must gird my loins and turn to good hard work for this is also the planting time of the year. The decline of each summer must carry at its core the promise of hope of next."
Wit, wisdom, and a look into the past, sometimes the search for something new begins with the wisdom of old. Maybe that is why I love those old musty books. Gardens make us lifelong learners, and gardeners' past wisdom reminds us to continually be willing apprentices with nature.