Following receipt of a comment from Gloria regarding the book, ‘A Woman’s Hardy Garden’ by Helene Rutherford Ely, I had an urge to explore this book further. Fittingly, Gloria left her comment on this posting about old gardeners.
M. Sinclair-Stevens has this book listed on her blog, Zanthan Gardens, under the heading “instructional”, which is where Gloria found it.
I found this comment from the book most illuminating:
“If the rich and fashionable women of this country took more interest and spent more time in their gardens, and less in frivolity, fewer would suffer from nervous prostration, and the necessity for the multitude of sanitariums would be avoided.”
Need I say more? We must garden for our very sanity, even if we aren’t rich or fashionable!
Funny… nervous prostration… do people still suffer from that? I guess not if they garden!