Gardening: Part 1 – Holiday gifts for gardeners

There are many good places to look for that special gift, whether large or small, if one of your recipients is a gardener. We might begin with websites and/or catalogs since sending for things usually takes longer than old-fashioned purchasing in person. We can then go on to local places worth a visit.

One of the best presents for a gardener, I think, is a good book and there are many to choose from. If you go to discountbooksale.com and type in Gertrude Jekyll’s name you’ll find a small gold mine, all ranging from $14 to less than $30. (By the way, in the Mispronunciation Department, I just encountered a new one. The “e” in her name is a long “e” unlike Mr. Hyde’s best buddy. Who knew.) Jekyll was an influential British garden writer who, during her lifetime, designed over 400 gardens; it’s fun to encounter one of the true grandes dames of the garden world.

E. B. White, one of the most influential modern American essayists, worked and wrote for the New Yorker magazine most of his adult life. When his wife, who was a devoted gardener, died, he wrote a book about her and her garden, “Onward and Upward in the Garden,” actually a posthumous love letter. The book did indeed change my gardening life, but when I read the first of the three copies I received for gifts that Christmas, I was really annoyed. Not only did she employ a full-time ancient Italian gardener, who apparently knew everything there was to know about everything, but she had a three-legged folding garden stool which she carried around with her, sat down on when she wished and then pointed to what she wanted done. And he wrote this with a straight face? Or pen, as the case may have been. Pointed? Sitting down? At someone else? And he calls this a gardener? I was outraged. I knew what a gardener was. I was one, and my hands and nails and knees were full of dirt and peat moss. Ughh.

Then I thought it over. If Mrs. White could get away with it, why couldn’t I? I put an ad in the Reporter, found not an elderly, experienced Italian gardener, but a young, inexperienced Shelter Islander, Stephanie Needham actually, who then for many years was my gardening right hand. She formed her own company in time, went on to know much more than I do and now when I don’t know the answer to something, I ask her. So books can change your life in more ways than one.

One of the best gardening series ever, I think, was the “Time-Life Encyclopedia of Gardening,” published by Time-Life Books in 1971. Any of the three volumes, “Bulbs,” “Perennials” or “Annuals” would be a great gift. You can still find new copies (it’s no longer in print) at amazon.com for less than $5. The volumes on shrubs, light gardening, ferns and succulents are also excellent. And you must admit, the price is right!

Or —  if you read this column regularly you know what I’m going to say —  find some empty-paged but beautifully bound diary-type book that could serve as a garden journal and give that. Then when I rant on about how important it is to keep a garden book, your recipients can smile smugly and make an entry in theirs.