Dinah Hazell - The Plants of Middle-earth: Botany and Sub-Creation

Tolkiens Middle-earth is inhabited by many unfamiliar creatures and peoples, among them Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Ents, and, not least, Halflings. Each reader forms a personal vision of these characters, and artistic efforts (even Tolkiens) to capture them cannot meet all imaginations. Yet Middle-earth feels very real to its armchair travelers, and one of the main reasons for this familiarity is Tolkiens landscape. Once you have passed through the forests of Ithilien, gasped at the beauty of the mallorn in Lothlrien, and smelled the homely grass and blooms of the Shire, you can never again pass through wood, glade, or garden without thinking of Middle-earth and suspecting (or perhaps wishing) that Elves may be near. Tolkiens plant world is the bridge between Bilbos garden and ours; unlike the fantastic warg or balrog, nasturtiums and oaks are easily visualized.

Tolkien the medievalist and philologist based his Elvish and other languages on those he knew, such as Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, Old Norse, Welsh, Finnish, Latin, and Greek. Curious readers who explore Tolkiens scholarly world may discover that the name of the lofty wooden platform, flet, is Middle English for floor, that the derivation of mathom is Old English mum, meaning treasure or gift, and that names like Thorin Oakenshield, Durin, and Gandalf are found in the Icelandic saga the Elder Edda. Similarly, his botany derives from familiar surroundings. Despite his magical plants like athelas and elanor, most Middle-earth flora comes from Tolkiens England.

Middle-earthitself a Middle English appellation, middelerd, and Anglo-Saxon Middangeardis at core medieval, and in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien preserves and transmits English cultural expression and value, still resonant and relevant to moderns. Readers are usually so absorbed in the tale that they are unaware that their travel through Middle-earth is also a journey through a repository of centuries-old oral and written tradition. Tolkien drew together the threads of myth, folklore, imagery, and motifs on which English-speaking culture is built and wove them into a great epic for our time, and his botanical life plays a substantial part in that creation. Many of Middle-earths plants evoke beliefs of powers and qualities found in flora, and Tolkiens landscapes have a character of their own, integral to plot and literary construction. A gardener and plant lover, Tolkien drew on traditional lore to enrich the history of his created world. Yet the plants still grace the modern world, appreciated for their beauty and restorative virtues; we can enter part of Tolkiens imaginative vision in our own yards. My California English gardens structured herbaceous borders, tangled cottage beds, fragrant herb garden, and withy fence host many of the plants found in Middle-earth.

This project is the product of thirty years of reading and loving The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and combines my two main passions: medieval English literature and culture, and gardens. My intent in writing this book is to create an environment that will enhance the readers perspective during future journeys along the roads and through the forests of Middle-earth, and to provide a place for reviving the memory of those trips.