Onward and upward

Jill Severn

Photo by Anna Schlecht

If there are any among you who have not read Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White, I strongly suggest that you do so this winter. Why? Because it’s wonderful.  And even if you have already read it, reading it again is a comfort on a long winter evening, regardless of whether any children are present. So are any and all other books by E. B. White; he wrote fine essays and several other children’s books.

He also had the good judgment to marry Katharine S. White, who worked as an editor at The New Yorker for 34 years, starting at its founding in 1925. In 1958, she moved from editor to writer, and her debut article was a quasi-literary review of garden catalogs. Eventually, she wrote a series of New Yorker articles on gardening that are collected in a book called Onward and Upward in the Garden.

The book, published two years after her death in 1977, opens with a loving introduction by E. B. White, generously laced with quotes from her writing.

“‘Say you have a nice flower like the zinnia,’ she wrote, ‘ . . . clean-cut, of interesting, positive form, with formal petals that are so neatly and cunningly put together, and with colors so subtle yet clear, that they have always been the delight of the still-life artist. Then look at the W. Atlee Burpee and the Joseph Harris Company catalogs and see what the seedsmen are doing to zinnias.’ There followed a gentle rebuke of the trend toward making flowers bigger and fancier.”

And he describes her taste: “She had a fierce loyalty to the common gifts of nature: goldenrod, pussy willows, dandelions, violets, wild flowers. . . She preferred the simple to the ornate, the plain to the fancy, the relaxed to the formal, the single to the double, the medium-sized to the giant.”

She was not a botanist or a gardening expert, but a sturdy New England woman of a certain age who took gardening to be a natural, almost inevitable part of life. And from that point of view, she felt free to both celebrate and disparage those with superior expertise but, in her view, inferior sensibilities.

She was no anarchist, but she did rebel at most of the garden rules of her time, and the rules she most adamantly rejected were those of “The Flower Arrangers,” who occupy two chapters of her book. She truly starts at the beginning: “Flower arrangement . . . has been going on since long before the birth of Christ. The evidence is there in the scenes on Egyptian vases and in tomb murals, in the patterns on early Persian carpets and brocades, in Greek sculpture . . .” She goes on with two full pages of history before getting to her pet peeve, which is the National Council of State Garden Clubs. Their “so-called accredited judges,” she writes, “do not usually approve of glass containers through which the stems of flowers can be seen, especially if the stems cross one another.”

By the end of the chapter, I was hoping that those “so-called accredited judges” were hanging their heads in shame and embarrassment, along with nearly all those who take more than ten minutes to put flowers in a vase. She made an exception for Japanese practitioners of ikebana, a highly disciplined, stylized approach to flower arrangement laden with symbolism. She admired them, but scoffed at their American imitators.

This is a book for people who like excellent writing, opinionated women, and deep connection to the natural world that comes from many decades in the garden. It is available from several online booksellers for as little as $4.59, and probably in our local libraries.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com