Spencer Heath Archive

Item 259

Random dictation for Spencer MacCallum in humor of his entreating Heath to write a garden guide presenting the underlying principles instead of only empirics as is usually done.

No date

     Gardening, contrary to popular report, is probably the very oldest profession. And it is to be presumed that garden guides are perhaps the oldest literature. Not that Adam and Eve depended on any guidance of this kind; theirs was more divine, at least until they fell out of favor and had to resort to much less fruitful land and, perhaps, to a guidance less divine. Some believe that Adam came to depend on Satan for his horticultural instruction. This is perhaps borne out by the exasperating inadequacy of garden guides (at least most of them) down to the present day. Their authors usually profess experience. On this basis they tell the novice a great deal about what to do, but mighty little as to why. This leaves him helpless, dependent on the letter of his guide. The gardener himself is in part responsible for this; all too often he is impatient of understanding and looks only to results. Ends, and not means, are his principal concern.

     In gardening as in everything else, there is the artist and also the craftsman. Beauty inspires the one, necessity motivates the other. The gardener who loves his work loves the beauty in it, and of this there are two sources, that which enters into the receptivity of his spirit, and the beauty that responds only to the eagerness of his rational mind, – the joy of widening and deepening his understanding of the little world of life that takes form in beauty under his hand. However, for the very practical gardener, we must come down to earth, the mother of all things that live. The true gardener is not content merely to rest on it as some day he must rest in it. He wants to fondle it, to tickle it, even to caress it. Hence it must be worthy of his love.

     The first requisite for a good garden is good earth. For a plant lives two lives, half of it hidden from the sun and upper air, the other half drinking and basking in the energy from the sun in which the earth is bathed.

                                           /Breaks off/