May 21, 2021
Today we celebrate an English writer who loved gardens and
created a one-of-a-kind grotto as a clever way to connect his home
and garden.
We'll also learn about a writer who created a space he called Tao
House Garden.
We hear an excerpt about the haves and have nots - when it comes to
gardens.
We Grow That Garden Library™ with a book about philosophy inspired
by the garden.
And then we’ll wrap things up with the story of a writer who loved
yellow roses but was not complimentary when it came to the
poinsettia.
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Important Events
May 21, 1688
Today is the birthday of the British poet, critic, gardener, and
satirist Alexander Pope.
Known for his poetry and writing, Alexander Pope is less remembered
for his love of gardens. Yet Alexander was a trailblazer in terms
of garden design and originality. He designed the impressive
Palladian Bridge in Bath, and, along with the great Capability
Brown, he created the Prior Park Landscape Garden.
Alexander once famously said,
All gardening is landscape painting.
Inspired by the gardens of ancient Rome, Alexander’s garden
featured both a vineyard and a kitchen garden.
But the most memorable feature of Alexander’s property was his
grotto. The grotto came about because a road separated Alexander's
home and garden. To connect the two, Alexander cleverly dug a
tunnel under the road. The tunnel created private access to the
garden and inadvertently became a special place all its own:
Alexander’s grotto - a masterpiece of mirrors, candles, shells,
minerals, and fossils.
Alexander described the thrill of finishing the grotto in a letter
to his friend Edward Blount in 1725:
"I have… happily [finished] the subterraneous Way and Grotto: I
then found a spring of the clearest water, which falls in a
perpetual Rill, that echoes thru the Cavern day and
night.
...When you shut the Doors of this Grotto, it becomes… a camera
obscura, on the walls [are] all the objects of the river, hills,
woods, and boats… forming a moving picture...
And when you… light it up; it affords you a very different
scene: it is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of
looking-glass in angular forms... when a lamp ...is hung in the
middle, a thousand pointed rays glitter and are reflected over the
place."
Over time, Alexander's home and grotto became a tourist
destination. Visitors were stunned by the marvelous grotto that
connected the villa and the garden. They had never seen anything
like it.
Alexander himself knew the place was special, and he once
wrote,
"Were it to have nymphs as well – it would be complete in
everything."
After Alexander died, the new owners of his property were so
annoyed by the attention that they destroyed both the garden and
the villa.
Today, plans are underway to restore the grotto to its former
glory.
May 21, 1922
On this day, the Pulitzer prize was awarded to Eugene O'Neill for
his play "Anna Christie."
Remembered as one of America’s greatest playwrights, most people
are unaware that Eugene O'Neill was also a gardener.
After becoming a Nobel laureate in literature, Eugene used his
Nobel prize money to buy over 100 acres in the San Ramon valley.
There, Eugene built his hacienda-style Tao Home and Garden in 1937.
Taoism influenced both the home and the garden. A Chinese
philosophy, Taoism focuses on living in harmony with the Tao or
“the way.” Tao House Garden features paths with sharp turns and
walls that are blank.
Today, the National Park Service is working to restore the home
built by the "father of American theatre” - now a National Historic
Site. The entire property was designed to promote harmony and deter
bad spirits. Visitors often comment on the peaceful nature of the
site.
Fortunately, the O’Neill family garden designs were well
chronicled. Eugene’s wife, Carlotta O’Neill, designed the
landscape, and she wrote about the gardens in her diaries. Carlotta
especially loved white- and pink-blooming flowers. After raccoons
kept killing their koi, Carlotta turned the pond into a flower bed.
Incredibly, there was just one other owner of the property
after the O’Neills left in 1944.
But during the seven years, the O’Neill’s lived in harmony at the
Spanish Colonial Style Tao House, Eugene created some of his most
famous plays such as "Long Day's Journey into Night" and "A Moon
for the Misbegotten," among other works that made him an American
literary icon.
In the 1980s, the intimate courtyard garden was restored with
cuttings from the original Chinaberry tree along with magnolia,
walnut, and cherry trees. There are pots of geraniums and garden
beds filled with birds of paradise, azalea, and star jasmine -
Eugene’s favorite plant.
The orchards and idyllic gardens around the house are beautifully
sited on a hilltop over the San Ramon Valley and offer impressive
views of the valley and Mount Diablo. The property is as
spectacular today as it was when the O’Neill’s lived there -
calling to mind a quote from A Moon for the Misbegotten, where
Eugene wrote,
“There is no present or future--only the past, happening over
and over again--now.”
Today, the Eugene O’Neill Foundation hosts an O'Neill festival in
the barn on the property every September. The annual play is
professionally acted and produced. You can bring a picnic dinner
and eat on the grounds.
Unearthed Words
Each of us has his own way of classifying humanity.
To me, as a child, men and women fell naturally into two great
divisions: those who had gardens and those who had only houses.
Brick walls and pavements hemmed me in and robbed me of one of my
birthrights; and to the fancy of childhood, a garden was a
paradise, and the people who had gardens were happy Adams and Eves
walking in a golden mist of sunshine and showers, with green leaves
and blue sky overhead, and blossoms springing at their feet; while
those others, dispossessed of life's springs, summers, and autumns,
appeared darkly entombed in shops and parlors where the year might
as well have been a perpetual winter.
― Eliza Calvert Hall, American author, women's rights advocate, and
suffragist from Bowling Green, Kentucky, Aunt
Jane of Kentucky
Grow That Garden Library
Philosophy in the Garden by Damon
Young
This book came out in 2020, and I love how the publisher introduces
this book:
Why did Marcel Proust have bonsai beside his bed?
What was Jane Austen doing, coveting an apricot?
How was Friedrich Nietzsche inspired by his ‘thought tree’?
In Philosophy in the Garden, Damon answers these
questions and explores one of literature's most intimate
relationships. The relationship between authors and their
gardens.
Now for some writers, the garden is a retreat, and for others, it's
a place to relax and get away from the world. But for all of the
writers that are featured in Damon's book, the garden was a muse
and offered each of these writers new ideas for their work.
As someone who features a garden book every day on the show and
loves to feature garden writers who found their inspiration in the
garden, this book is a personal favorite of mine.
This book is 208 pages of authors and their gardens. And the
philosophies that were inspired by that relationship.
You can get a copy of Philosophy in the Garden by Damon
Young and support the show using the Amazon Link in today's Show
Notes for around $8
Today’s Botanic Spark
Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart
May 21, 1955
On this day, Truman Capote’s first musical, House of
Flowers, closes at Alvin Theater NYC after 165
performances.
House of Flowers has nothing to do with flowers. The
plot centers on an evil brothel owner, Madame Fleur, and her
attempts to murder the fiancé of her star girl, Ottilie. Madam
Fleur has her men kidnap the young man, seal him in a barrel and
toss him into the ocean.
Truman’s House of Flowers was the first
theatrical production outside of Trinidad and Tobago to use the
instrument known as the steelpan.
Today, most of us remember that Truman Capote
wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But he also wrote the
introduction to his friend CZ Guest’s garden book
called First
Garden: An Illustrated Garden Primer.
CZ Guest, born Lucy Douglas Cochrane, was an American fashion icon
and garden columnist. She authored three garden books and three
garden planners. In 1990, she came out with her own line of organic
fertilizer, insect repellant, tools, scented candles, and soap -
all of which were sold at Bergdorf-Goodman and Neiman-Marcus.
Writing about CZ, Truman affectionately wrote,
"There, with her baskets and spades and clippers, and wearing
her funny boyish shoes, and with her sunborne sweat soaking her
eyes, she is a part of the sky and the earth, possibly a not too
significant part, but a part."
Truman Capote is remembered for this famous garden saying:
"In my garden, after a rainfall, you can faintly, yes, hear the
breaking of new blooms."
In 1957 for the Spring-Summer edition of the Paris Review,
"I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses--which is sad
because they’re my favorite flower."
Finally, in the Jay Presson Allen play "Tru," Truman throws away a
Christmas gift of a poinsettia, dismissing it by saying something
Truman actually said,
“Poinsettias are the Robert Goulet of botany.”
Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener.
And remember:
"For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."