A Joy of Gardening (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)

By Vita Sackville-West and Ulrich Baer

Vita Sackville-West's charmingly written practical advice for gardeners selected from her immensely popular gardening column in The Observer newspaper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warbler Classics
• Release date: Aug 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959891888

Vita Sackville-West

Vita Sackville-West was an English author and poet who is best known for her novels The Edwardians and All Passions Spent, and is notable as the only author to twice win the prestigious Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature (in 1926 for The Land and in 1933 for Collected Poems.) Sackville-West and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, also a writer, had an open marriage, and her passionate relationship with author Virginia Woolf served as the inspiration for Woolf's Orlando. A member of the British peerage, Sackville-West led a life that could have inspired Julian Fellowes's Downton Abbey, as she was forced to relinquish her family's estate, Knole, upon her father’s death. Sackville-West died in 1962.

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A Joy of Gardening

First Warbler Classics Edition 2023

First published in 1958 by Harper & Bros., New York

Afterword © 2023 Ulrich Baer

Biographical Timeline © 2023 Warbler Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher, which may be requested at [e-mail].

www.warblerpress.com

isbn

978-1-959891-87-1 (paperback)

isbn

978-1-959891-88-8 (e-book)

A Joy of Gardening

Vita Sackville-West

A Selection for Americans

Edited by Hermine I. Popper

Afterword by Ulrich Baer

Contents

Editor’s Preface

Spring

A thin little grove

Woodland things

Pans of bright flowers

A race of little irises

An up-to-date aid to horticulture

Bearers of romantic names

Daylilies are obliging plants

A dignified and comely magnolia

A hint from nature

Growing Alpines in tubs

A serialized grape vine

The foam of spiraea

An Alpine meadow

Clematis are almost perfect climbers

Moral tangles

Not in the least reptilian

Very small gardens

Amiable and floriferous shrubs

Water is the making of a garden

For the bamboo-minded

Scented flowers

Some flowering currants

Killing slugs humanely

Risk an acacia in a warm corner

The habit of pot gardening

The secret of anemones

A selective and intelligent weed-killer

It is all a question of shape

Ruthless intentions of future discipline

Summer

Generous old roses

The provenance of delphiniums

A man who collects baths

Peruvian lilies are oddly named

An obliging iris

A vertical garden

Ixias are a God-given present in June

The astonishing growth of certain roses

Remembered delight of mertensia

Familiar prettiness

The temperamental gentian

Garden ornaments

Herbaceous borders have had their day

A true myrtle

Full-bosomed trollop of a rose

In place of herbaceous borders

Foxtail lilies, aristocrats of the garden

It sometimes pays to treat plants rough

The peculiar psychology of daphne

The village flower show

Plants that take happily to shade

Where did Gabriel get a lily?

Blue pool of lobelia

The advantages of a thicket

Roses with a touch of romance

A ribbon of a path

Foliage plants

Landscape gardening on a small scale

The imperial Chinese bellflower

A good word for dill

Bulbs I can’t resist

Bringing a summer look into winter

The family of the sages

Wild sunset colors

Autumn

The French idea of gardening

A ribbon of Alpines

Lilacs of loose delicacy

Simplify

Growing fruit trees in pots

A garden well schemed

In favor of the quince

The tinies of the tulip family

Long-flowering shrubs

Good gardeners take trouble

Plants that take happily to layering

Taming a steep bank

A truly perpetual rose

Some members of the arbutus family

The pocket-handkerchief garden

Shrubs for kind climates

Adding interest to an old hedge

A knot garden

Time to take cuttings

Blossoms for the bleak months

Poplars make lines of gold overhead

Trees for autumn color

Si jeunesse savait…

The small greenhouse

Forcing lilies of the valley

Winter

A handy and intimate garden

Bulbs for indoors

Mid-winter-monath

The self-contained world of bees

Christmas presents for gardening friends

Some roses not often seen

Christ’s herb

The modest Persian cyclamen

Propagating mistletoe

A garden composition

Shields of transparent armor

Seed catalogs are my undoing

Growing annuals from seed

Tricksy ingenuity with gourds

Joke plants

Gardening methods of yesterday

Advice about African violets

A rose of any other name

The way with cyclamen

Chincherinchees have their value

The perverse behavior of plants

Winter aconite varnished yellow

Reflections on planting

Cheerful resisters

A wint-pring corner

Afterword by Ulrich Baer

Biographical Timeline

Index

Editor’s Preface

T

he pleasures of

a garden book are much like those of a good cookbook. In both cases the reading can be done for its own sake, or to conjure up visions of future triumphs, or as a prod to immediate action. It is no accident that so many good gardeners are also good cooks: Both enjoy the aesthetic pleasure of a functional pursuit. Miss Sackville-West writes about gardening like a very good cook indeed.

Although these pieces were originally written by an Englishwoman about English gardens, this is a book for Americans. It is, in the first place, a prime example of a characteristically American enthusiasm, progressive education: It makes learning a pleasure, and its suggestive ideas tempt the reader inexorably on to learning by doing. England, moreover, is the source of our greatest gardening tradition, and of all the contemporary English writers about gardening none is more justly admired for her vision, style, and good sense than the writer whose London Observer articles are signed V. Sackville-West. Chiefly, however, the reason for bringing A Joy of Gardening to Americans is that the gardens of the two nations resemble each other more closely than most people realize. This is true not only of the herbaceous borders and rock gardens that our British ancestors carried across the ocean along with their language and their law. It is true, as well, of the many trees and shrubs that flourish on both sides of the Atlantic. It is true of the enemies that attack them. Above all, it is true of the shape and pattern of the well-built garden, the architecture of plants about which Miss Sackville-West writes so eloquently.

Of course there are differences—more moisture in England, for example, and generally narrower extremes of temperature. And these differences account for certain variations in method and result, for certain limitations in the mutual use of plant materials, for certain discrepancies in matters of time. But in terms of range—which is the only judicious term to use in connection with horticulture—it is safe to say that the British climate resembles that of the East Central Seaboard and Northwest States more closely than those resemble their neighbor states in the semi-tropical south and the icebound north. And the area of tolerance for British plants here spreads far beyond these boundaries. Nor is the traffic one way: Many American natives have traveled east to find a second home in England.

It has been possible, therefore, with a minimum of alterations to assemble from Miss Sackville-West’s perceptive essays on gardening a selection of pertinence to large portions of the United States. Priority of choice has gone to those pieces that would be of interest in all parts of the country. Where exceptions exist—such as plant materials that cannot survive northern winters—internal evidence should reveal the fact to the reader. The regional bias of an editor whose gardening life has been spent in the north­east is perhaps inevitable; but an earnest effort has been made to hold it in check.

Anyone who wants to put Miss Sackville-West’s precepts to action—and anyone who doesn’t has stronger powers of resistance than the editor—would do well to refer to a good garden encyclopedia for details about hardiness and special cultural requirements. Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Gardening, Bailey’s Manual of Cultivated Plants, Rehder’s Manual of Cultivated Trees and Shrubs, the American Rose Society’s Modern Roses, and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s Plant Buyer’s Guide have all been invaluable in determining that no plant material has been discussed in this book that is not to be found somewhere in the United States. Miss Elizabeth Hall, of the New York Botanical Garden, and her assistant Mrs. Alletta Fredericks, have made what might have been a tortuous research chore a simple delight by their resourceful guidance through the library shelves. Special thanks are due to T. H. Everett, Horticulturist of that Garden, for bringing his voluminous knowledge of both the English and the American way of gardening to play on the manuscript.

Many of the differences in the gardens of the two nations are actually matters of habit—old customs and short memories that lead us to plant certain things, to place certain plants in juxtaposition, and to overlook other equally felicitous materials and patterns. If this book revives some forgotten images, and stimulates American gardeners to new enterprise, it will have served its purpose well. In any case, it cannot fail to bring pleasure.

White Plains, N.Y.

H.I.P.

Spring

The beginnings of revival

T

he first months

of the New Year can be the most unpleasant months in the calendar but they do bring some consolation in the beginnings of revival. Crocuses and other small bulbs appear, miraculous and welcome; they are apt, however, to leave a blank after they have died down, and it is for that reason that I suggest overplanting them with some little shrubs which will flower soon after.

I visualize a low bank or slope of ground, not necessarily more than two or three feet high, perhaps bordering some rough steps on a curve. You stuff and cram the bank with early-flowering bulbs, making a gay chintz-like or porcelain effect with their bright colors in yellow, blue, white, orange, red. Amongst these, you plant the little shrubs I want to recommend. Corylopsis spicata and Corylopsis paucifolia are two of the prettiest and softest, hung with yellow moths of flowers all along their twiggy branches. They are natives of Japan, and are related to the witch-hazels. They seldom grow more than four feet high and about as much through; they need no pruning, and are graceful in their growth, pale as a primrose, and as early. Another little companion shrub on the bank would be Forsythia ovata. The big bushy forsythia is well known, but this small relation from Korea is not so often seen. It is perfectly hardy, and makes a tiny tree three to four feet high, flowering into the familiar golden blossoms, a golden rain pouring down in companionship with the Corylopsis after the bulbs have died away.

If you have room in your garden at the top of the bank or slope, I would urge you to plant Cornus mas, the Carnelian cherry. This cornel or dogwood produces its yellow flowers early, and is one of the best flowerers for forcing indoors. A big full-grown tree of Cornus mas is a sight to be seen, as I once saw one growing in a wood in Kent. It towered up fifteen feet and more, smothered in its myriads of tiny clusters, each individual flower-head like a bunch of snipped ribbons. If at first it seems a little disappointing and makes only a thin show, do not be discouraged, for it improves yearly with age and size, and one year will suddenly surprise you by the wealth of its blossom. It also produces long scarlet berries which you can, if you wish, eat.

A thin little grove

There is often

a strip of ground in a garden which cannot be put to good purpose without more labor than we can devote to it. It may once have been a lawn, which means mowing; or a long border, which needs weeding and upkeep; or merely a strip along the boundary fence in the garden of a new house, hitherto uncultivated, which demands some treatment to turn it into something better than a rough waste. I had an idea for such a place, which should be both pretty and labor-saving.

The shape does not matter so very much; it could be rectangular, square, or even circular, though I fancy a long narrow rectangle would give the best effect. What is important is that it should be flat, and that the ground surface should be level. No bumps; no depressions. You then plant it at regular intervals (say fifteen feet apart either way) with young stripling sapling trees, straight of stem and twiggy of head; it will be important to keep the stems clean of growth so that you can always see through and between them. A thin little grove is what I have in mind. The silver birch with its pale bark would be ideal, especially in a light or sandy soil; the linden, for any soil; the whitebeam, whose underside leaves show silver in the breeze; and even young oaks, round-topped and grown as standards.

The question will then arise of what you plant underneath. Since the heads of the little trees will be very green, the accent should be on emphasizing the greenness. Turf is probably impossible, because of the mowing, and anyway I think one should aim at a brighter green than that. I have a great weakness for sweet woodruff; it does not object to shade, it remains green from April until the autumn, it can be grown from seed, and it would make a dense cushion rather like those enormous eiderdowns (duvets) that one finds in old-fashioned French hotels. I would also plant some patches of greenish flowers; for instance, the green and silver Star of Bethlehem; the wood anemone; lily of the valley; and, for later in the year, some clumps of Solomon’s seal and the sweet-smelling Smilacina racemosa. I am not quite sure about these last two: they might be too tall, and might interrupt the vistas between the straight little trunks. Obviously such planting must depend upon individual taste, but of one thing I feel sure: that all color must be excluded. It must all be green and white; cool, symmetrical, and severe.

Woodland things

The dogtooth violets

should now be coming into flower, so this is the time to study these curly objects and to decide if you would like to order some for planting next autumn. There will probably be a fine display of them at the flower shows. Of course one must expect everything to look better at a show than it will ever look in one’s own garden. The exhibitors have chosen their best specimens and have arranged them in a very becoming bed of moist dark-brown-velvet peat moss, showing them up to their best advantage.

The dogtooth violets should be there, beneath the great flowering cherries and almonds of the spring. They are small, they are low, they are humble in stature, not more than six inches high, but with their beautifully mottled leaves and reflexed petals like tiny martagon lilies they are more than worthy of their place. Some of them are natives of central Europe, some of North America; they belong to the lily family and have nothing to do with violets. Dogtooth is because of the tuber, which is white and pointed like a fang. They prefer a little shade; light woodland is ideal for them; they like some sand and peat moss or leaf mold in their soil, which should be moist but never waterlogged; they dislike being moved, so leave them alone for years once they have settled down. I have seen them flourishing and increasing even under beech trees, where few things will grow. You can get them in white, pink, purple, and yellow.

The trilliums, or North American wood lilies, also called the trinity flowers from their triangular shape, flower a little later but enjoy the same conditions of shade and soil. Claret-colored, pink, or white, they grow to about a foot high and have the advantage of lasting a very long time, which seems to be true of most woodland things, I suppose because they do not get burnt up by a hot sun. The trilliums are very striking, and a group of only three or four makes quite an effect. They, as well as the dogtooth violets, are ideal not only for woodland planting but also for a cool shaded place in a rock garden. The claret-colored one is Trillium erectum, the pink, Trillium stylosum. The white one is Trillium grandiflorum, which in its native home is known as wake robin, a name we commonly give to our wild arum or lords-and-ladies.

Pans of bright flowers

At this time

of year, or even earlier, a few pans of small, brightly colored flowers give vast pleasure. No need to be ambitious, for even half a dozen pans on the staging of a small greenhouse produce an effect of clean brilliance, which I suppose is enhanced by the light coming on all sides, and overhead, through glass; and also because each bloom is unsmirched by rain or soil-splash, unnibbled by slugs, and unpecked by birds. Furthermore, the grayness of the stone chippings with which you will, I hope, have sprinkled your pans, throws up the colors into strong relief. Ideally, the pans should be whitewashed, for no one can pretend that the red of a flowerpot is pleasing, or of