Gardening methods remain unchanged

When the earliest colonists of America came to this country bearing their hopes for a better life, they brought along with them seeds and cuttings or slips of plants they grew in their European gardens. This plant material was brought in an endeavor ensure survival for the colonists – to whatever extent possible in a largely unknown environment. The earliest Americans, it would turn out, were subsistence farmers. Yet having those familiar plants from their homeland must have provided much comfort in a strange and rugged land.

Today, the reverse is true: many gardeners derive a great deal of pleasure growing plants from exotic and diverse points from around the globe. Indeed, today the garden is a veritable melting pot. English sweet peas grow alongside Japanese shiso, French fillet beans, Shanghai Pak Choi and red Russian kale. Italian parsley brushes leaves with Egyptian onion and Lebanese squash while sparkling blue flowers of Chinese forget-me-not dance in the wind with Kashmir lavatera.

Thanks to the exchange of goods on a global level and to the savvy, technology and productivity associated with the commercial horticulture trade, gardeners have available to them an incredible diversity of plant material. Although we produce a much more extensive collection of plants in our gardens today, the way we garden – particularly the way we undertake vegetable gardening – is much the same as it was in the days of early America.

Certainly we make use of high-tech modern tools and gardening accessories, but the ways in which we lay out our gardens reflect centuries of tradition. In fact, many of us garden using the methods of our parents, grandparents or elders. We tend toward symmetrical, manageable garden plots. We place plants in narrow parallel rows or in wider beds that may be worked upon and from which produce may be harvested from both sides. Sometimes we place these beds in a quadrant arrangement with shared pathways running between the individual beds. This gardening style dates to the medieval period (476 B.C. to circa 1450) and the English Tudor period (1485 to 1603.)

Ancient as it is, our traditional garden arrangement makes good sense and requires little alteration much because we garden for the same purpose as those medieval gardeners. Whether grown to achieve a greater level of self-sufficiency or for pure visual enjoyment, at its most fundamental level, growing a garden is a study in harnessing nature. The act of gardening is an attempt to make order in an environment that threatens and poses on at times a moment-to-moment basis utter chaos. Certainly there is potential for infinite peace in the garden, for great beauty and unrivaled joy, but likewise, there is great potential for havoc, destruction and devastation.

And so each year at this time, when the seeds begin to sprout at an unprecedented rate, with their tender new leaves shimmering not just green, but many hues from the rainbow, we should pause to reflect on this timeless miracle of life embodied in the tiniest seeds. Here we are living in a modern age, on a most extraordinary continent and all we must do is apply the most fundamental of substances – water – to these precious seeds and life emerges and thrives.

Naturally, when early Americans settled on this continent, the understanding of the world was much more narrow then it is today. Today a vast array of our collective knowledge extends beyond our own atmosphere, out into the universe, out into an infinitely large and unknown environment which exhibits potentially unlimited chaos. Whether we are the most astute scientist or the most simple worker, one of the most comforting and common acts we undertake is gardening: binding unruly Nature close to us in an effort to increase our control and improve our productivity in a trying environment.

Gardening is no small undertaking. It’s not hobby or a means of livelihood that comes with any insurance of success and or which provides any guarantee of bounty. Yet, it all begins with the simple and extraordinary miracle we share in form of germinating seeds from the world over.

This, indeed, is timeless and worthy of reflection.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941 or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.