Perényi - Green thoughts: a writer in the garden

Copyright 1981 by Eleanor Pernyi
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Random House, Inc. in 1982.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Atheneum Publishers, Inc.: James Merrill, from From the Cupola from Nights and Days. Copyright 1966 by James Merrill. Reprinted with the permission of Atheneum Publishers; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.: from Henry James at Home by H. Montgomery Hyde. Copyright 1969 by Harford Productions Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.; International Creative Management: from The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly. Copyright 1944 by Cyril Connolly. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: from Journals of Andr Gide by Andr Gide, translated by Justin OBrien. Copyright 1947 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; Oxford University Press: from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, translated by Ivan Morris. Reprinted by Permission of Oxford University Press; Rodale Press, Inc.: reprinted from The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening 1978 by Rodale Press, Inc. Permission granted by Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, Pennsylvania 18049; A. P. Watt Ltd. and William Heinemann Ltd.: from Mapp and Lucia by E. F. Benson. Reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd. and William Heinemann Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pernyi, Eleanor Spencer Stone, 1918
Green thoughts.
1. GardeningAddresses, essays, lectures.
2. Organic gardeningAddresses, essays, lectures.
3. GardeningUnited StatesAddresses, essays, lectures.
I. Title.
SB 455.3. P 47 1983 635 83-47805
eISBN: 978-0-307-76966-4

v3.1

I have had only two gardens in my life. The first was a large rather mournful park in the style called a jardin anglais on the Continent, attached to my husbands castle in Hungary. A jardin anglais, contrary to what you might think, has no flowers: it is an adaptation of the English landscape style, all grass, winding walks and forest trees. Those wanting a little color might find it in the formal rosary planted around a wrought-iron gazeboor feast their eyes on three tremendous mounded beds cut into the south lawn and filled first with tulips, then with annuals in serried ranks and municipal colors, lastly with cushion chrysanthemums. All these were raised in the greenhouse, which also sheltered a collection of tropical plants in tubs that in summer were brought out and disposed artistically about the grounds or stood on trestles by the entrance to the castle. No flowers had ever been grown for the house, nor was there any question of a flowering plant being taken there in winter. It would have died of cold.

My efforts to change all this met with limited success. Like Elizabeth in her German garden, of whom I often thought, I was up against a tradition, that was totally opposed toindeed had never heard ofthe wife of the Herr Baron grubbing among the flower beds. English duchesses can cover themselves with dirt and lose their diamond rings among the peonies. In central and eastern Europe such conduct was excused only if one was a foreigner, and then only barely. Unlike Elizabeth, I had an indulgent husband but unlike her, too, we were poor, much too poor to embark on ambitious remodeling schemes, which anyway would have had to fight a savage climate, for we lived under the brow of the Carpathians with winter winds that seemed to come straight from Siberia. Nevertheless, I managed to make the beginnings of a perennial garden and to plant a host of bulbs. But even as I did so, the first guns of World War II were booming on the other side of the mountains at our backs, in Poland. I could hear them while I worked, and the premonition I had then was fulfilled. I knew I wouldnt see my plantings come to maturity, and I didnt. The property is now a state farm, the castle, minus most of its looted furnishings, a museum; that part of old Hungary is now incorporated into the Soviet Union.

My second garden, as readers will see, is on the Connecticut coast. I took it up with reluctance, not because it was less grand than my Hungarian one, but because I am one of those unfortunates who when they lose something they love cant immediately replace it with a new model. I grieved over my lost garden and all that went with it, and I didnt want, ever again, to be attached to a piece of ground. But it didnt work out like that. Gradually I did become attached. Gardening became my avocation and greatest pleasure. But I am no horticultural expert and wouldnt want to pass myself off as one. All I can claim is some thirty years of amateur experience, which is to say that I know something about a lot of things and not enough to call myself a specialist in any. I grow herbs but am not an herbalist, roses but am not a rosarian. I havent a greenhouse.

Why, then, presume to write a book about gardening? The simplest answer is that a writer who gardens is sooner or later going to write a book about the subjectI take that as inevitable. One acquires ones opinions and prejudices, picks up a trick or two, learns to question supposedly expert judgments, reads, saves clippings, and is eventually overtaken by the desire to pass it all on. But there is something more: As I look about me, I have reason to believe I belong to a vanishing species. Gardens like mine, which go by the unpleasing name of labor intensive, are on their way out and before they go, I would like to contribute my pennys worth to their history.

The four encyclopedias I most regularly consult are: The Royal Horticultural Societys Dictionary of Gardening in five volumes (including the Supplement), 1956 edition, published by the Oxford University Press; Hortus Third, in one 1290-page volume, compiled by the staff of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortatorium at Cornell University and published in 1976 by Macmillan; Wymans Gardening Encyclopedia, by Donald Wyman, published in 1971 by Macmillan; the Time-Life Encyclopedia of Gardening, of which I own twelve volumes (they may have added some since my original purchase), all but onePruning and Graftingwritten by the late, beloved James Crockett of Crocketts Victory Garden fame. They were published between 1971 and 1978. In my text these are referred to respectively as the R.H.S., Hortus III, Wyman, and Time-Life.

ANNUALS

Plants that flower, set seed and die within a single season, they can perform prodigies in their brief lives. A morning glory will throw a blue mantle over a small building in no time, tithoniums and castor plants make hedges tall as a man by midsummer. All annuals require full sun for most of the day and their flowers to be regularly cut offone reason I prefer the tall, which give me flowers for the house, to the short, which dont but have to be deadheaded anyway. For once annuals are allowed to set seed, they are finished.