The chores of the April-garden
are put off by the constancy of spring showers.
A gardener’s skill is put to the test by the vagaries of the season
which determine the needs of the plants.
The spring bulbs such as tulips are peaking while fallen tree limbs of
winter are yet to be gathered. The
sudden explosion of the yellow-flowered forsythia reminds the gardener that
soon the fire-storm of weeds will over take his best laid plans. All of a plantsman’s plans are waylaid by the
irresistible enticements of new plant varieties, colors and forms found at
local garden centers and nurseries.
Every gardener lives to add just one more plant to his or her landscape
palette. In gardening there is no end to
addition, multiplication, division and weeding.
There is not enough time to
manage the change a-foot in April’s garden and no days more to be added to the
list of work. The frantic sense of
impeding incompletion is off-set by the thrill of this year’s show. Gardening is a race against time.
In this race to get the eternal work
of gardening done are plant species which time and experience has shown to hinder
and mar our attempts at artistic perfection that we call beauty which inform
our senses. Invasive plants and pests spring
up and compete with unwary, inexperienced gardeners. The weeds win when order disappears and
randomness reigns supreme; the gardener wins when patterns in design and
relationships of species are maintained.
Some landscape literati know that garlic mustard spritely blooming and
the soon-to-become-ruthless early growth of multiflora rose, bespeaks of
endless war against the invaders for years to come. Perhaps the frosts of early April have kept
the insects at bay, but in the warmth of spring’s sun, protected by a blanket
of soil, the larva of the Japanese beetle stirs. The race is endless and ultimately
unwinnable, and the costs in time and resources irreplaceable, but the gardener
as manager of his surroundings is an optimist.
Every gardener comes to spring trying to overcome the pervasive lack of
time and the evasive nature of garden pests, the shock-troops of nature’s
onslaught, an invasion of harmful, damaging species from outside the garden.
Thrown out of Paradise, equipped with a spade,
rake and hoe the gardener prepares to return by recreating Eden using the
knowledge of horticulture. The guide to
success, the instruction book on how to establish relationships that produce a harvest
of plenty, horticulture is the collection of processes and information gathered
through the millennia to serve the present.
Mostly science now, but still flavored with folk wisdom handed-down
through the generations, horticulture tells the gardener and the landscape
manager which species will live and which will be overwhelmed; how deep to
plant the peony and when to plant the corn; how to save the oak and where to
site the cactus. The Western traditions
that enabled the science of horticulture not only lead to new varieties of
hostas and new shades of color in daylilies but to hotter cayenne peppers and
larger Halloween pumpkins. It is
horticulture that informs us as to where our cacao trees will grow so that we
may gratify our sweet-tooth cravings and when to pick the grapes for our
dinner-wine celebration.
The reach of horticulture is
expressed by the modern extent and present range of definitions. Horticulture is the practice of gardening
which in itself is a vague notion of work associated with the cultivation of
plants. But horticulture is also the
science of caring for gardens and small scale agriculture as well as the
industry of plant cultivation. So
horticulture involves plant propagation, production, breeding and genetic
engineering, botanical biochemistry and physiology. Horticulture provides information that
enhances yields, quality, nutritional as well as ornamental value, and works to
improve resistance to insects, diseases, and environmental stresses. Traditional horticulture is the compendium of
knowledge about the way our
interrelationships and interdependencies work with our efforts to shape the
land to suit our human needs.
The present study of horticulture
demonstrates the depth and spread of its historic roots. Botany, soil science
and identification, indoor and outdoor plant identification, Integrated Pest
Management (IPM), business management, propagation and production, floral and
landscape design, landscape construction, container gardening, aquatic
gardening, arboriculture, herbs and medicinal plants, turf management, fruits
and vegetables, perennials, greenhouse production, safety and hazards, as well
as basic chemistry, biology, and mathematics constitute the core of the working
knowledge and skills needed by today’s horticulturist. The professional horticulturist as beneficiary
of two thousand years of study will know, among other things, the principles
and techniques of reproducing plant varieties by seed, leaf and root cuttings,
bulbs, corms, tubers and rhizomes; layering, divisions, grafting, budding, and tissue culture as well as the
fundamentals of seed structure and vegetative makeup of plants. In addition he or she will master structures
and functions of plants, the associated effects of environmental factors on
plant growth, and will have a working knowledge of the fruit, nut, vegetable,
bedding and pot plant, cut flower, nursery and landscape industries. Students of horticulture will learn about
horticultural crop families, growing systems and culture needs, soil
preparation and fertilization, selecting and propagating varieties, preventing
pests, regulating growth, harvesting, value-added processing and marketing. And least but not less, the professional
horticulturist will be able to address causes of and solutions to air and water
pollution, soil erosion, pest challenges and problems, loss of biodiversity,
deforestation, energy depletion, potential changes in climate and invasive
species.
While much is written from a Western
viewpoint about the horticultural arts, the same needs and knowledge of plants
are seen and studied in Eastern landscape traditions. Bonsai, the Japanese landscape art form,
miniaturizes and freezes the ideals of perfection inherent in Zen. Nature is reflected in a frozen tableau by
using the knowledge of how to form a shape by careful trimming of equally
carefully chosen plants. Which plant to
choose; when to prune the roots; what soil to use; when to cut the foliage are
all integral to creating an image of nature in miniature. The need to control, to freeze time, is
buried deeply with in the tradition and the art of bonsai and are an unspoken
outcome at the heart of western gardening traditions, too.
Broadly speaking then, horticulture
is an art – an art of knowing when to plant, where to plant, how to plant, and
most importantly, what to plant. This is
the basic knowledge of good and evil, beneficial or harmful, useful or
superfluous, belonging or not-belonging (invasive). These positive, necessary fundamentals of procurring
human needs from the land are supplemented by the quiet inverse of knowing what
species belongs and which does not.
Horticulture speaks to us about the intersection of beauty and danger. The plant family to which the potato belongs
famously offers to mankind food, spice and drugs. Potatoes, peppers, and nicotine represent the
wide-ranging contributions of this family of flowers. These nightshades, however, as they are
called in common parlance are known by their scientific or botanical name as
the Solanaceae. The Latin verb solari, to sooth, may explain the name to which cigarette smokers
can attest. The list of food sources
within the family is astounding. Sweet
and chili peppers, tamarillo, tomatillo, eggplant, and tomato are a few of the
beneficial plants found within in the nightshade family.
The desire to exert some kind of
control over one’s destiny combined with the basic needs of life - food, fuel,
fiber – translate into a primary pursuit of knowledge. The importance of knowing which plant kills
and which cures is an obvious outcome for most of the world even if some of us
think we are no longer impacted by the power of plants. Mathematics and physics combined to describe
a solution for removing a boulder from a field.
The pry bar and the fulcrum moved both the earth and the rock. The art of alchemy drove a pursuit of
learning about the physical world that would by the 18th century be ‘transduced’ - an alchemical term of art
- into the study of inorganic chemistry.
Illness was addressed by the growth in medical knowledge that demanded a
specific and detailed understanding of plants.
Enticing flowers like the aptly
named Belladonna, the beautiful lady, beckoned like Greek Sirens leading the
unwary to the shores of eternity. The
beauty of the Sirens song waylaid mythological travelers as do the dangerous
trumpet-shaped-flower beauties of the hallucinogenic members of the nightshade
family. To fall asleep under the spell
of the devil’s herb, Atropa belladonna,
is to never awake in this world. One of
the world’s most toxic plants; a few berries can kill a child. Also in the family are the witch’s weeds, the
Daturas, whose common names offer up
a history of less than positive experience: Hell's Bells, Devil's Weed, and
Devil's Trumpet. Under the influence of
these queenly shadows of the night, ingestion results in delirium and the
inability to separate fact from fiction, reality from fantasy, and the
possibility of death. With both the
Greek Sirens and the garden shades of night, those who survive their
assignation with destiny tell tales of a very unpleasant journies/. It is this combination of beauty and danger that
horticultural knowledge explains to those who venture forth from the grounding
of the known into the chaos of other.
Knowing for sure what to cook and
what to eat, what to touch and what to watch, belongs to the domain of
horticulture. The look-a-like invader is
a primal problem for the gardener or the explorer. Claytonia
perfoliata commonly known as miner's lettuce alluding to its use by miner’s
in California’s mid-19th
century Gold Rush used to prevent
scurvy, is also known as winter purslane, spring beauty, or Indian lettuce. A salad mistakenly made from Atropa belladonna instead of the helpful
Claytonia will have serious and
potentially deadly consequences.
Identification confusion does not have to lead to death, but can lead to
intense discomfort affecting the quality of life as anyone who is allergic to
poison ivy can relate. Which vine is the
nasty personal space and garden invader: the native Toxicodendron radicans (poison ivy) or the non-native Hedera helix (English ivy)?
Distinguishing differences,
assigning a name, establishing relationships, and adding a value statement is
the work of horticulture. The very word
horticulture is derived from two Latin words, hortus – the garden, and cultare
– to till. The knowledge gleaned from
the Tree in Paradise is understood to be the knowledge of tending or tilling a garden. The ill-gained knowledge of Eden was also the
key to survival. Knowing for sure that
the fig leaf would not cause physical discomfort was an important piece of
information supplied by horticulture through, perhaps, at first, experience. Learning how to grow cotton to supplant the
fig leaf enhanced human life and was made possible by the information provided
by the knowledge that we would eventual collect into the science of horticulture.
We can imagine the origins of
horticulture in the mists of time after Paradise was lost. The knowledge of good and bad, the original
sin not-with-standing, comprises the core of the critical principles of
horticulture. Knowing the name and
function of a species is a primary activity of horticulture. Less mythologically and yet somewhere along
mankind’s journey to the present,
traveling bands of human decided to stay
in one place long enough for members to notice plants growing where
hunting experience would not have suggested, perhaps, for example, near the
human clearing. The medicinal or
pharmaceutical use of plants was from the earliest times intertwined with
horticulture. Greek plant collectors and
root diggers called rhizatomoi were
botanical specialists, an early version of today’s pharmacists. The study of human connections to the land
and with the species that provided sustenance was by necessity the first study in
survival. Even hunter/gatherers need to
understand the fragile interactions that exist between living things and the
physical world upon which they live.
Horticulture addresses therefore the matrix of systems that consitute
the landscape up on which mankind depends.
An awareness of how the forest edge relates to the woodland clearing is a
key to finding a meal. Knowing the
location of an edible plant, knowing for sure which part of the plant might be
eaten and when it might be toxic comprise a direct necessary skill set. Rhubarb, for example, a plant whose leaves
are toxic has stalks that are used to make pies and provide tart flavors in
cooking. Our sweet confection would
bring death without the practical information of horticulture. Horticulture tells mankind where and when and
what to harvest. George Sarton (1884-1956),
the "father" of the history of science, reinforced the long,
important reach of basic plant skills when he wrote in Ancient Science
Through The Golden Age Of Greece the "…farmer was aware of many
mysteries surrounding and threatening him; he was every day at the mercy of the
elements and of luck."
The ancient Greek philosophers led
their students through complex intellectual concepts in gardens, and were very
aware of the relationships between man and the plants therein. In the Academy and the Lyceum it is not too
far-fetched to presume that horticulture was a topic of interest and
investigation. Aristotle’s students discussed and studied definitions, forms,
and growth of garden plants as well as their practical use. Tyrtamos “Theophrastos” of Eresos, born on
Greek island of Lesbos located in the northeastern Aegean Sea, was a student of
Aristotle and became the next director of the famous Lyceum in Athens. If there were saints of horticulture, botany
and ecology, Theophrastos through his studies and works, De causis plantarum/The Causes of Plants and De historia plantarum/The History of
Plants, would be among the first rank.
In the grove, surrounded, as it
were, by a controlled landscape or garden, Socrates lectured to his students
including Plato. For teaching
uncomfortable ideas that challenged them current notions of the world, the
teacher was tried and condemned to death.
The plant species of choice that we know today as Conium maculatum, poison hemlock, was the preferred method of
execution. Perhaps the drive of
Theophrastos, who was a student of Aristotle who in turn was a student of Plato,
to collect, understand and disseminate a knowledge of plants was in some small
part due to the stories of the great philosopher’s death. How to end life, and how to save life, were in
the hands of people who knew about the locations, relationships and functions
of individual plants in the world.
By the time of Julius Caesar some 2100 years ago, people who
needed to know (in Latin scientes – a
knowing one) about plants were dividing their research and acquisition into two
distinct but related disciplines. Natural
philosophy would lead to the big sciences of meteorology, physics and chemistry
and agriculture to name a few. Unlike
agriculture however which tends to focus on large crop production systems, the
wider discipline of horticulture is wonderfully described
by Marcus Terentius Varro who lives in the early years of the 1st
century BCE. Prolific writer, soldier,
historian, natural philosopher and
practical Roman farmer following in the geographic relating, descriptive footsteps
of the historian Xenophon of Greece and Cato the Elder of Rome, Varro explored horticulture
in De Re Rustica/On Agriculture
offering readers information about the garden and landscape practices of grape
cultivation, grafting, composting through animal waste, soil suitability,
inoculations, fodder, and harvest storage.
The second area of study was the
pursuit of medical and pharmaceutical remedies and cures. How to grow, where to find, and how to
recognize are direct needs of the botanical druggist. While the first pursuit of knowledge kept families
fed and therefore healthy, the second found cures for those things that ailed them. Pedanios Dioscorides, a military surgeon in the legions of Nero
wrote De Materia Medica/Of Medical
Matters in which he describes some 600 plant species including references
to the roots, stems, leaves and some flowers.
After the brilliance of Greece and the early bloom of Roman
civilization, the written record of scientific horticulture goes dormant with
the death of the great physician Galen much like oriental poppies after their spectacular
spring flowering.
Horticulture after the 1st
century focused on the herbal and medicinal uses of plants and would directly
lead to the science of taxonomy. It
would be over 1500 years before the research would combine the scientific
method with exploration and see the explosion of horticultural discoveries. Investigating how to extract from a local
ecosystem the best human use was the mission of horticulture. Driven mostly by folk knowledge and lore,
curious minds sought after plants that could cure or correct ailments. A gatherer would rise to her task (or his)
trying to identify good plants from bad.
A good plant was one that not only addressed a health or medical issue but
whose harm was less than the good it offered.
A bad plant had no redeeming features and might additionally cause damage
or death. The duality of the Serpent’s
Gift was carried to the fields in the search of remedy. The effect of the plant was the goal of the
day, however, cause would have to wait until the 17th century. These earlier practitioners of the gardener’s
art worked in a world of dualities because they saw and sought the effects and not
causes. Attempts to explain the effects
bordered on the fantastic. The spots on the leave of the lungwort, Pulmonaria, resembled the markings of a
diseased lung and accordingly were assigned the curative properties relating to
lungs and the pulmonary system in the hope of providing medicinal relief
the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus of
Ephesus’ famous quote that all is flux, nothing is stationary (Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει) describes with ancient wisdom
the gardener’s challenge. From seed to
seedling to sapling to shade-tree, each step is seamless and constant. How to identify each stage of a plants
growth, in essence how to recognize a potential cause lay at the heart for the
great leap from lore gained from experience to knowledge accessed through science. Knowing for sure what plant you are
harvesting is the bases of the discipline of horticulture. How many people died before the herbal
qualities of goutweed, Ammi visnaga L. Lam, and the death causing
properties of hemlock, Conium maculatum L., were firmly understood. Goutweed, for eample, is a spice with
pharmaceutical properties and is related to poison hemlock that was used to
execute Socrates. The two plants
themselves are related to a whole family of species, Apiaceae or Umbelliferae, which
provide food, drugs or death when misused or identified. The familiar edible members, however, include
carrots, parsley, parsnips, cilantro, and dill.
The divide between herbal and spice is pleasantly fuzzy as are the
definitions of many things when one looks too closely. The litany of spices blends to medicinal
cures of yore: anise, caraway, chervil, coriander, and cumin in a tangy
pharmaceutical change ringing.
And,
while in hindsight seemingly self-evident, the relationship of the parts and
stages of a plants life is by no means clear to those not steeped in the wisdom
and experience that gives knowledge to the gardener. In the first part of the 16th
century Andrea Cesalpino, physician to the Medici and to Pope Clemens III, would inspire future students of botany with
his philosophical approach to a classification system that would find patterns
in the structures of the plants. While he rather famously, and incorrectly it
turns out, ascribed the origin of flowers from the leaves of the plants, he on
the other hand astutely and correctly described the need and appearance of a
system of classification that would ultimately lead to the study of taxonomy. Cesalpino wrote that " [u]nless plants are reduced to orders, and
distributed into their classes like the squadrons of an army, everything is
bound to fluctuate.
In
this explosion of learning in the spring of scientific inquiry, Cealpino was
not alone. He was joined by a long list
of early botanical intellectual explorers.
Valerius Cordus, a German physician who in 1540 described a technique
for synthesizing ether, improved the descriptive accuracy of plants including
species from exotic locations. Charles De
L'Ecluse, a Flemish medical doctor who never actually practiced medicine,
created one of the first botanical gardens in Leyden, introduced the potato to
Germany, and fired up the bulb culture that would in part financially empower
the Netherlands to imperial world dominance.
The great herbalist and one of the founding fathers of botany, Leonhardt
Fuchs, was a doctor of medicine and personal physician to the Margrave of
Brandenburg. At the invitation of the Duke
of Württemberg in 1533, he helped reform the University of Tübingen directing
it towards a humanistic course of study.
He created the first medicinal garden in 1535. Such was the stature of his learning and his
knowledge of the function of plants, horticulture that he served as chancellor
of the university seven times. Known
also by his Latinized name, Fuchsius Leonhardus, later memorialized by a
favorite ornamental flower, the fuschia, he created one of the first
pictorially accurate botanical book as well as encouraging the use of newly
discovered pumpkin and corn in Europe.
Taking
advantage of the latest in the ‘hi tech’ of the time, the printing
press, John Gerard, Gervase Markham and Thomas Hyll were among the first to
commend in print plans of gardens of food and pleasure for considered study. Leonard Mascall wrote of planting techniques
and grafting indicating “…the divers proper new plots for the Garden. Also sundry expert directions to know the
time and season when to sow and replant all manner of seed.” Mascall also makes a point to identify
“…remedies to destroy snails, canker-wormes, moths, garden flees, earth-wormes,
moles, and other vermin.”
Mascall prescribes solutions for garden
problems, which are familiar to us today, telling his readers that “[t]o destroy
pismiers or ants about a tree…Ye shall take of the saw-dust of Oke-wood oney,
and straw that al about the tree root, and the next raine that doth come, all
the Pismiers or Ants shall die there. For Earewigges, shooes stopt with hay,
and hanged on the tree one night, they come all in.”
This
explosion of botanical interest was in every sense the study of
horticulture. This intellectual interest
and inquiry laid the foundation for our present dynamic landscape template.
Mankind, for so long asymmetrically arrayed against the infinite majesty and
potential destructive forces of untamed nature was creating a tool to overcome
the odds of survival. The study of
species, the art of classification, the research that enable subjective
valuations of the components of nature for the enhancement of mankind were driving
forces of at the beginning of the modern age.
Nature, the wild, unexplored and unnamed Other, was being corralled and
domesticated by humanity that yet felt over-matched and at the mercy of forces
beyond its control. The rhythm of naming
parts and parcels of the landscape became the dance of control.
The
recognition of change would drive the conversation of scientific enquiry from
the 16th century right through the 19th century. Horticulture examined the continuous nature
of change in the landscape describing analytically in detail each step of
growth and decay. It could do so by
first assigning a name to which an effect or function could be attached. A system of naming or classification was a
gift of the Tree of Knowledge; the primal urge to know good from evil, benefit
from harm in a dangerous and uncertain universe.
It
is hard today to imagine the enormity of the world as once felt by mankind. I can remember reading books of exploration
and discovery with maps that included regions labeled exotically “terra
incognita”. Scientific missions that
were lost in far away jungles and barren landscapes filled with the terror of
the unknown. The fragility of control
was reinforced and obvious, for a garden untended quickly reverted to a
“natural” state. The duty and mission of
man was to tame this unruly dynamic system that festered beyond the garden
fence. To adequately control the massive
forces of nature, horticulture provides the first line of defense. A landscape with a name is no longer
unknown. A landscape can be identified
by the plant species it supports.
Everything, therefore, is dependent upon the name.
In
the 17th century the art of naming was not yet a science, and
horticulture was not yet a discipline.
The scientific method was becoming the new tool of knowledge and
learning. The gardener first asked a
question. Then he or she studied and
researched what was known about the question. A hypothesis was constructed that was tested
through experimentation. The information
in the form of data was analyzed and a conclusion drawn that was then communicated
to a wider audience to become part of the body of scientific knowledge.
In
an age when many clergymen were also scientists, the Reverend Stephen Hales was
an English example of a physiologist, chemist, and vicar. In his Statical Essays, volume one, Vegetable Staticks (1727), are
accounts of experiments in plant physiology that include the loss of water in
plants by evaporation, the rate of growth of shoots and leaves, and variations
in root force at different times of the day.
The role of natural philosopher was rising to an apex below which the
modern disciplines of horticulture, agriculture, biology, botany, taxonomy,
chemistry, physics, medicine and mathematics were differentiating into areas of
specialized knowledge. At the height of
its reach the complications of horticulture were forcing a simultaneous break
up of the discipline into unique categories of research and understanding. The impetus of this specialization was the
search for a cause of an effect rather than for just the effect itself.
In
the 1600s, the study and application of horticulture begins to be presented in
terms of hard science such as botany and biology as well as related fields of
chemistry and physics, versus applied science such as garden and orchard
cultivation and design (horticulture in a modern sense) as well as the field of
agriculture. Though not yet well formed
the idea of pure research and applied science was coming into being. Jethro Tull,
not the 20th century recording artist, but rather the inventor of
the horse-hoe and seed-drill showed the practical side of a farmer even as he
showed signs in his work of the nascent state of scientific knowledge. He asked what plants ate and answered earth,
which then supported the need to for cultivation, the continuous disturbance of
the land, on order to feed the crops.
Leaves, he claimed, were the lungs of plants, an observation that was
close for the wrong reasons.
Technology
and luminaries came together in the late 17th century to research
plants, to draw forth every possible benefit that nature might give. Rudolf Jakob Camerer, also known by the
Latinized surname Camerarius, John Ray, and Nehemiah Grew researched plant
reproduction while the nurserymen, Thomas Fairchild and John Bertram,
experimented with practical hybridization. With the help of Antonj Van Leeuwenhoek’s newly introduced
technological tool, the microscope, the great Robert Hooke, famous today for
his law of elasticity (Hooke's law) and his book, Micrographia, investigated
the cellular composition of plants first applying the word "cell" to
describe the basic unit of life. The
great strides of science enabled greater knowledge about plants that could
provide a better life for humanity. The
efforts can be summed up as how to get more from the garden and the land by
finding out how plants work and by introducing new plants to the landscape.
Richard
Bradley, the first Professor of Botany at Cambridge University, writes in the
Preface to his 1718 book, New Improvements of Planting and Gardening both
Philosophical and Practical, that “..there is no Subject of more general
Use and Advantage than the Cultivation of Land, and the Improvement of the
Vegetable World.” This idea of
improvement is key function of horticulture, the cultivation (cultum) of
the garden (horti), which seeks to address any physiological or
biological cause that might hinder the positive effect or use of a landscape and
the access to its resources. Bradley
goes on to say that well meaning writers in the past had given advice “… by
heaping together a Load of Observations from Varro and Pliny, without carefully
considering wherein their Experiments differ from the Genius of our Soils and
Climates.” Scientific method was to be harnessed to
revolutionize control of the land.
Bradley,
who brought ideas about horticulture back to England after a trip to the
Netherlands, lays out a novel idea in an attempt “… to prove that the Sap of
Plants and Trees circulate much after the same manner as the Fluids do in
animal Bodies; which may be one Argument to shew (sic) the beautiful Simplicity
of Nature in all her Works.” His next
section deals with the Generations of Plants and the “…Manner how their Seeds are impregnated… [which
]… will be a great Use to all Planters, by directing them in the proper Choice
of their Seeds.” He follows this with chapter on the
Differences of Soils in which he will demonstrate which soils are “…natural to each
Tree, and how all Kinds of Soils may be mended, alter’d, or improv’d, by proper
Mixtures with each other…”. A Method of Dressing the Woods for timber wherein
he proposes “…a new, easy, and practical Way of raising Woods with very little
Expense…” After a chapter on profitability,
Bradley then takes up the Flower-garden and “…prescribe[s] the properest (sic)
Methods for rendering that Part ornamental.”
He continues, “I have there given the best Method of Propagating and
Introducing all the Ornaments of the Garden, as Ever-greens, Flowering-shrubs,
Perennial and Annual Flowers, and Bulbous-roots Plants, with their differing
Heights, Beauties and Times of Flowering.”
He brings the work to a close with the tools and information necessary
to propagate fruit trees and “...tender exotic Plants.” Remarkably prescient in light of modern
landscapes and invasive species, Bradley writes in his chapter three: “I
suppose that no one is ignorant that the greatest Part of these Flowering-trees
and Shrubs, which are at this time so well known to our Gardeners, are Exotics,
(Italics are Bradley’s); and it is well worth our Enquiry what Climes they were
first brought from…”.
The various functions of the parts of the
plant and the functions of the plant within the landscape were described in
detail by chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden, Phillip Miller, in his
ambitious re-issue in 1735 of The Gardener's Dictionary containing the
Methods of Cultivating and Improving the Kitchen, Fruit and Flower Gardens. He compiled a concise reference in which he
his cautious to use proper nomenclature for identification of a species
function and care with in the landscape.
The entry for lavender provides an example of the level of detail as
Miller writes: “Lavendula, lavender. It
is one of the verticillate Plants, whose Flowers consist of one leaf, which is
divided into two lips; the upper-lip standing upright, is roundish, and for the
most part bifid; but the Under-lid is cut into three Segments, which are almost
equal: These Flowers are dispos’d in
Whorles, and are collected into a slender Spike upon the Tops of the Stalks.” (Vol. 2)
Miller
next identifies several species or types of lavender and then describes them in
terms at times familiar to today’s gardeners and ecologists noting that
lavender latifolia “…tho’ very common for most Parts in Europe, yet in England
is rarely to be found…” while lavender latifolia, sterilis “…is a
Degeneracy from angustifolia…”. Miller’s
use of the word degeneracy is a critical piece of the work of the gardener in
the managed landscape, for it is in part the landscaper’s mission to enable
high culture through cultivation, and in doing so avoid the degeneracy inherent
in the wilderness just beyond the garden gate.
Bradley,
Miller and other natural philosophers, proto-scientists and nurserymen were
beginning to create the great calculus of the garden, horticulture, by mapping
cause to effect. They were identifying
points of infinitesimal change at which a measurement could be taken or a
decision made to create a desired outcome.
They used the latest inventions and hi-tech tools like the microscope to
aid their quest for information, for models and for theories of the relationships in the
landscapes and therefore their world.
The cross-inter-disciplinary nature of study in the 1600s, the fluid
nature of research and investigation allowed for creativity in exploration if
ideas. A partial list of the works of
John Abercrombie, show the wide ranging professional interests that were
covered by the science of horticulture: Every Man His Own Gardener (1767), The Universal Gardener and Botanist (1770),
The Garden Mushroom, Its Nature and Cultivation (1779), The British
Fruit Garden and Art of Pruning (1779), The Complete Forcing Gardener,
etc. (1781), The Propagation and Botanical Arrangement of Plants and
Trees, Useful and Ornamental (1785), The Complete Kitchen Gardener and
Hot-Bed Forcer (1789), The Hot-House Gardener (1789), and The
Gardener's Pocket Journal and Annual Register (1791)
This
was the age of Newton and Leibnitz, and the calculus in mathematics; and the rapid
expansion of the scientific method for understanding the whole world, not just
the space right outside the imagination.
It was also the age of the last of trials for heresy and the Thirty
Years War in which men such as Kepler had to be secretive as to some of his
notions about the cosmos for fear of indictment by the political establishment. Hiding in the darkness just outside the
garden fence still scurried gremlins and uncontrollable spirits who could
without warning intrude upon the serenity of the garden bring death and
destruction. The poetic images of
Spencer’s Fairie Queen rang true and strongly influenced the world-view of
European man who knew for sure that there were living not too far away cursed
beings “…in wasteful Wildernesse...by which no living Wight passe, but through
great Distresse.” (The Faerie Queene, Book 1 edited by Martha Hale
Shackford) The degeneration of the landscape beyond the
sanctuary of the garden psychologically bolstered imaginary fears that became
incorporeal evils.
A differentiation
is made between what is manageable and measurable versus what is infinite and un-usable. The differentiation of the stem from the root
provides insight to the function of the plant itself. A differentiation of use to mankind produces
a function that assigns a value of good or not-good. What is the purpose of the leaf, the
horticulturist asks, how does the flower function, why are there roots, what is
the inter-relationship between the seed in its pod to the flower and to the
seedling in the soil; these questions now taken as common knowledge are brought
together in the great work of circumscribing the processes of gardening and the
garden. The role of a plant in the
garden and the relationship of its parts to the greater community of the
landscape were detailed in no small part by connecting a plant’s change in
physiology through time to its growth to the motion of the sun and
seasons. For the gardener it is
paramount to know when to plant which plant as well as when to prune and when
to divide or and when to harvest. It was
equally important to understand which plants can grow together in full sun and
which plants tolerate shade. A plant
with no discernable use to mankind at any point in its life is by human
definition without value. And this human definition is all that we humans have
to work with.
The
inverse of this process horticultural differentiation is the integration of
what is known through experimentation and is bounded by the limit of of a garden’s
perimeter, edge or, if you will, the garden wall. To use the calculus of horticulture, the
gardener needs to differentiate types of plants, scientifically and commonly
referred to as species made possible by the great system of taxonomy created by
Linnaeus. To manage and to measure what
is possible in the garden is done by horticultural integration of a landscape.
Carolus
Linnaeus, known also in recognition of his contributions to learning by his
ennoblement as Carl von Linné, or more simply just Linnaeus, created the naming
system for living things including plants in and out of the garden. The Linnaean system uses a nested hierarchy
of categories, starting with three Kingdoms divided into Classes that are then divided
into Orders, in turn sub-divided into Genera (singular: genus). At the end of
the nesting process are found the division into Species (singular: species),
itself divisible into ranks of plant species now called "varieties". The importance of this system is so
fundamental (and mostly now taken for granted if even thought about by society)
as to have become a kind of modern accepted intuitive knowledge presumed to
have always existed. Who today can
imagine world in which there is no common underpinning to the classification of
living things. The differentiation of species
was based upon shared physical characteristics. The resultant naming is allows for
an attachment of values and the assumption of function. Now a species could be named and assign a
function which in turn could be tagged with a value of either beneficial or
harmful.
Systema
Naturae, first printed in the Netherlands in 1735, contained by its
10th printing in 1758 classified over 4,000 species of animals and 7,500
species of plants. Based upon a binomial
naming convention first proposed by Gaspard Bauhin and Johann Bauhin in the 16th
century the great work set out the principles necessary for an orderly naming
system. Genera plantarum: eorumque
characteres naturales secundum numerum, figuram, situm, et proportionem omnium
fructificationis partium (1737) delineated plant genera. In
1753, Linnaeus published Species Plantarum, exhibentes plantas rite
cognitas, ad genera relatas, cum differentiis specificis, nominibus trivialibus,
synonymis selectis, locis natalibus, secundum systema sexuale digestas
began to out in detail a nested hierarchy for plants that culminated in Systema
Plantarum published in 1779.
The
introduction to Genera plantarum outlines the needs for the
function of orderly naming right at the beginning: “All that truly can be known
by us depends on a clear method by which we distinguish the similar from the
dissimilar. The more natural the
distinctions this method comprises, the more clearly the idea of things emerge
to us. The more objects our
understanding engages with, the more difficult it becomes to work out a
method—and the more necessary. Nowhere has the Great Creator placed so many
objects before the human senses as in the vegetable kingdom, which covers this
whole globe that we inhabit. Thus, if a
pure method is of use anywhere, it is here,
if we shall hope to gain a clear idea of Vegetables. “
From
Linnaeus comes the injunction to join the similar with the similar, and to
separate the dissimilar from the dissimilar. The great Western intellectual effort from the
time of Aristotle until the middle of the 18th century rose like a
wave towards the shores of a system of plant species classification. The great fundamental theorem of horticulture
is the ability to differentiate species; to assess a particular related set of
features through time at one particular instance and claim a categorical
relationship. The motivational dream is
a function consisting of a set of rules that provide a definition that
identifies a particular species. The community of life around us, the biology
that comprises a particular ecological system, may be expressed in terms of
relational categories that are called species; we can reduce the complex to a
single individual and identify its membership within a specific, biological
set.
And
now the horticulturist and the gardener could systematically express the benefit
and desirability of a particular species.
The naming convention as a consequence of Western civilization’s binary
Aristotelian logic, allowed for the categorization by orderly systematic classification
of species into a set of harmful undesirable and pervasive “wild” species with
no visible value to the garden. This
category of other was not hard to sell. The
primary importance of the plant world was first and foremost in the minds of everyone,
unlike today, when some of us are several generations removed from the vagaries
of the soil and weather, mankind through the centuries fully felt the fury and
the uncertainty of nature pounding on the garden wall every minute of every
day. This is a world fast disappearing
in which most people lived off the land affected directly by their knowledge of
the relationships of plants, insects, diseases and animals around their
home. Any failure to correctly identify
was life threatening.
Horticulture’s
function is to identify the particulars of the relationships and
interconnections of living things to the physical world. Armed with a name events and experiences can
be tracked through time. The seedling of
a garden invader is detected at an early stage and the ultimate harvest
increased by a rapid response called weeding.
To plant necessarily implies a positive labor while to weed involves a
necessary evil. The plant is good; the
weed is bad, and an eternal struggle is firmly established in practice and in
memory.
Through
constant attention and continuous selection, the gardener chooses which species
will be permitted to flourish inside the wall.
Eden is recreated one plant at a time and through endless work and the
knowledge of horticulture additional species are introduced each with its won
identifiable function within the garden complex. Unsolicited
additions or arrivals of any species from outside are prevented. The ultimate goal is control of the world
immediately around us by careful, learned selection and the tool used is the
accumulated knowledge of horticulture.
The natural world is in a perceived state of degeneracy, of vagueness
and of uncertainty that may be tapped or exploited to enhance the productivity
of the garden through the applied science of horticulture. The day-dreams of a time gone by are colored
by the works of great men who found new uses and new skills to manage the
land. There is for many a “Romantic” view of the past
in which nature is a harmless-other to which one only needs to apply intellect
and determination to compel the secrets of a good profitable harvest. Through careful cultivation a landscape
generates culture. Through cultivation a
group of people can begin to feed themselves predictably, and have the time to
create works of art and memories of glory.
With time’s gift of the science of horticulture comes education and
knowledge which can touch the stars.
The
very same landscape if not tended continuously will revert to a wild
undifferentiated state. The wilderness
for settled humans who have moved from hunting and gathering to a more
sedentary life style is undifferentiated for there is not enough direct,
tangible yields for the larger number of individual; there is only haphazard
chance encounters with useable resources. From inside a managed landscape the
outside is a blur of unregulated potential uses, but without clarity or
definition. Horticulture teaches mankind
how to select and transfer productive species from the wild into a controlled
state of cultivation and in doing so to raise the level of culture through the
increased harvest which then can support greater numbers of people.
Horticulture
also addresses the problem of a landscape once disturbed that does not revert
to an idyllic pastoral scene but rather almost immediately becomes an open
wound festering with competing species each trying to take advantage of the
absence of the complicated webs of biological and physical interdependencies. Natural areas that are chronically disturbed
through human actions do not revert to a pristine state but over time evolve
into a new state of being.
I
cannot imagine nature as an untamable adversary. The cosmic legion of horticulturists who
named, essayed and found solutions to gardening challenges is brightly lit by
the work of the inquisitive garden investigators of the 17th
century. I cannot imagine a world in
which I do not know the function of a flower or why too much nitrogen invites
the aphid to attack. I cannot envision a
world where every living thing is unknown and potentially an adversary.
Staffan Mueller-Wille and Karen Reeds. 2007. A translation of Carl
Linnaeus’s introduction to Genera plantarum (1737). Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 38
(2007) 563–572
“Omnia, quae a nobis vere dignosci, possunt
dependent a claroa Methodo, qua distinguimus fimilia a dissimilibus. Haec
Methodus, quo magis naturalis comprehendit destinctiones, eo clarior rerum
nobisnascitur idaea. Quo circa plura
versatur noster conceptus objecta, eo difficuliu selaboratur methodus, at
magtis necessaria evadit. Nullibi tot
objecta humanis sensibus objecit Summus Conditor, ac in Regio Vegetabili, quod
totu, istum, quem inhabitamus, globum tegit, replete. Ergo si nullibi pura methodus a re est; sane
hic; si Vegetabilium claram idaeam obtinere sperabimus…”
