Gardening by Myself

Yes, I am reading another gardening book from the past. This time I have gone way back…

Not to the 1950s.

Not to the 192os.

Further back than that.

Grab your button-up shoes and your best sunbonnet, put on a dress with a big full skirt that goes all the way down to cover your ankles.

We are going back to 1872!

We are reading Gardening by Myself by Anna Bartlett Warner, the latest Lost Lady of Garden Writing.

(If you haven’t subscribed to my new series about these forgotten women authors of gardening books, click on that link, subscribe, then come right back here so we can talk about some of the ideas from Anna’s book, which some consider to be the first do-it-yourself gardening book.)

The book is organized by months, so I skipped ahead to August. Guess what Anna was writing about in August? She was writing about bringing plants in for the winter, or rather thinking about it. She wrote:

“It is time, even now in August, to begin to think of winter flowers for the house, — deciding what we have room for, and what we want. Some are to be raised from seed, and some from cuttings, and others are to be pruned or repotted or taken up. It is too early of course for the general taking up of tender plants. Let them enjoy their freedom while they can, and make the most of out-door advantages for a month to come.”

Spot on, I’d say, and I’ve been doing just that. Dee and I even talked about this topic on The Gardenangelists podcast episode that is coming out on August 14th.

(Did you know we publish a newsletter every week on Tuesdays with an early listen link for each episode? I’ll wait here for you to check out that link and subscribe to the newsletter. You don’t have to listen to the podcast to enjoy reading the newsletter. Some people just like to read the newsletter. )

Anyway, one of the plants I plan to bring in is this one:

I bought it in the spring when it had the prettiest little pinkish-purplish flower spikes on it. There was a plant label for it, but when I went to find it yesterday, I could not find it anywhere. I spent way too much time looking for it before finally finding it, but it proved to be half the tag it could have been. You can read the rest of the story of that tag in my weekly newsletter that comes out on Sunday evenings.

(Oh, you haven’t subscribed to that newsletter yet? I’ll be patient again while you go and do that.)

One other tidbit from the August chapter of Gardening by Myself is this little bit about sharing.

“Whatever we possess, becomes doubly valuable when we are so happy as to share it with another.”

Anna herself writes that as a quote from “a child’s story”…

“I think a flower garden (that one attends to oneself) does scatter other seeds, of yet sweeter things, in one’s own heart! The owners of such gardens always seem to have the old motto in the child’s story, —
” Whatever we possess, becomes doubly valuable when we are so happy as to share it with another.”

So what is that child’s story? It would have been written before 1872. A search on the internet gave me the source: Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, a French author (1763 – 1842). Thank you, Jean-Nicholas for the lovely sentiment. Since all the books he wrote are in French, I still don’t know which book he wrote it in, but at least I know to credit Jean-Nicholas Bouilly.

Thank you to Anna for including the quote in the August chapter of Gardening by Myself.

I really like this book from 1872, so I plan to keep my sunbonnet, long dress, and button-up shoes ready to put on before I dip into this book each month to see what Anna has to share about gardening. (I won’t really put on such clothes, but it’s a fun to imagine doing so to keep in step with this book, don’t you think?)

If you want to do the same, you can read the entire book online at Archive.org.

And now, one last though from Anna Bartlet Warner to send you off into your garden!