Henry Mitchell on Gardening by Henry Mitchell Susan Davis Allen Lacy

Author:Henry Mitchell, Susan Davis, Allen Lacy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

Weather Soon Withers a Gardener’s Innocence

THE SOONER THE GARDENER loses certain kinds of innocence the better, and there is no better place to begin with than the weather.

There is a type of spring, terrible and wonderful at once, in which January and even February are disarmingly mild, only to be followed by weeks of incredibly cold days in which the earth itself seems to shrivel and go dormant.

Those who love the daffodil and follow its odd fortunes know all this quite well. In the days before civilization collapsed and the Royal Horticultural Society gave up its daffodil yearbooks, we could read (ten years out of eleven) how terrible the season was.

In 1969, for example, “Although this has been the latest flowering season we have had for many years, at one time it looked as if it would be one of the earliest.” As a result, “it was obvious that we should not have any outdoor flowers” for the daffodil show in early April. “I have never seen such frost damage, it really was quite frightening,” and every contributor rattles along with the same tone of injured righteousness. Beneath all the complaints is the sense that the weather has been not only bad but unfair. And wicked.

So you wonder how, in such a season, there can be photographs of daffodils that seem to have grown in Paradise.

No sooner does a contributor to the yearbook complete his accusations and lamentations than we find the surprising comment, “The very odd daffodil season therefore lasted twenty-four weeks.” A few pages further on, “almost certainly the finest display of exhibition daffodils ever seen.”

So which was it, the worst season, with unbelievable frost damage and unspeakable weather, or a season presenting the finest display of top-quality daffodils ever seen in this world?

Both, of course. The season that was going to be the earliest in years was the latest in years. There were no flowers to be seen in early April, the date of the great show. So of course at a later improvised show there was “the finest display ever seen.”

In a perfect season many flowers are mediocre, and in a terrible season many flowers are of unearthly beauty. In the spring garden, things even out. The most perfect springs are heavy with bitter disappointments; the worst springs are bright with startling perfections.

The kind of innocence that is best lost quickly is the simple-minded belief that spring will be lovely. It will not. It will be dreadful. The equally stupid innocent belief that in a cold dismal spring everything will be wretched must also be outgrown, as again and again we are obliged to acknowledge “the finest display ever seen.”

These paradoxes are by no means the hallucinations of unbalanced gardeners but the straight and true reports of steady judges with unmatched experience.

When the gardener loses (as his experience sooner or later forces him to lose) his innocence and sweet dreams about the spring and the daffodil season, he then is able to detect in the real world of outrageous weather and dashed hopes the finest display ever seen.

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