A Man's Garden Trade cloth - 2001

Details

• Title A Man's Garden
• Author Schultz, Warren
• Binding Trade Cloth
• Edition First Edition
• Pages 160
• Language EN
• Publisher Houghton Mifflin, Boston
• Date February 22, 2001
• ISBN 9780618003921

Introduction I’m tired of being told that gardening is woman’s work. I don’t like the way my buddies roll their eyes when I tell them I’d rather weed a border than watch a hockey game between Saskatoon and Moose Jaw, but there’s no shame in being a gardening man. Farmers? Men. Landscape architects? Men. Golf-course greenskeepers? Men. Plant breeders? Men. How did the garden come to be seen as a woman’s domain? It’s not, you know. There are 36 million male gardeners in America, a strong cadre of real men with manly gardens. Granted, for many of them the landscape begins at the sidewalk and ends at the front steps, and in between there’s nothing but green, green grass. Hauling out the mower every Saturday is the extent of their “gardening.” But plenty of men are real gardeners, who subscribe to a masculine style of planting. Is there such a thing as a man’s garden? You can bet your last six-pack there is. In fact, there are several archetypal styles of men’s gardens, whose plants or design or furnishings satisfy certain basic needs of a man’s psyche. Some men’s gardens are playful, others are competitive. Some are places to fool with tools. Many have decks and hammocks and built-in barbecue pits. There might be a bocce court, a putting green, or even a quiet corner where a man can sit and enjoy a cigar. A man’s garden may have vegetables, and if it does, it certainly has tomatoes — monster tomatoes, the biggest on the block. It may have a tall and unruly flower border in a riot of colors. It probably has some old- fashioned, unfashionable flowers. It may have cactuses or hedges or a collection of roses or dahlias.
To me, the idea of testosterone in the garden seems natural. I grew up surrounded by gardening men. Well, they weren’t exactly gardening. This was not a leisure-time activity or a hobby; it was serious business. These guys were farmers — shirt-sleeves- rolled-up, cigarette-smoking, work-boot-wearing, wisecracking guys: my dad, my uncle, my cousins. The men worked the fields, the women kept house and planted little flower gardens beside the back door. My father was the greatest influence on me. You had to take only one look at him to be assured that gardening was a manly activity. Six feet tall, 250 pounds, he was an all-city high school football player who attended Notre Dame on an athletic scholarship. In time, though, he gave up his scholarship to return home and help his mother run the family farm. A man does his duty. He takes care of his family, he works the soil. Those were the unspoken rules I learned as a child. And from the time I was twelve I worked beside my father, growing vegetables. The business changed with the times, and eventually he expanded the farm to include a greenhouse and a nursery. To some, growing pansies might seem less manly than growing corn, but he took to it easily. You could count on my dad being up at dawn every day and at work not long afterward. You would find him in the greenhouse, walking the aisles with a hose in his hand, whistling some dumb show tune. Every spring Dad would set aside an evening to plant a flower garden beside the road. I’m sure he told himself that this was a marketing ploy. That ornamental garden of annuals would catch the eyes of passersby and show off our flowering goods to their best advantage.
It was always the same garden. He would plow a long, straight, narrow strip, rake it smooth, and mark it out with strings. He’d start by planting a long straight row of red cannas right down the center of the bed. On either side he put a row of ‘Apollo’ marigolds, then a row of red salvia, a row of shorter marigolds, and finally, a row of red geraniums. It was bright. It was straight. It was symmetrical and simple. It was red and orange and yellow. People would drive by and, sure enough, some would stop to ask about those tall red flowers. Most of those people were men. That roadside garden attracted attention just as it was supposed to and completely satisfied my dad. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t an unusual plant in it, not a single curve or surprise to be found. And, after spending all day hoeing long straight rows of peppers or tomatoes, Dad would be in that garden at dusk on his knees, pulling weeds from between the rows of flowers.
Over the years, my own gardens have had some of my father in them. Oh, sure, they’ve had raised beds and mulch and perennials as well, but they’re usually built around vegetables, and there’s always a bright red canna or two in there somewhere. Men love annuals, from bright red geraniums to garish marigolds to multicolored snapdragons. Annuals are simple. We don’t need to fuss over them or divide them. We plant thhem on Memorial Day every year, fertilize, water, and weed when necessary, and we have blooms all summer. Those are the kinds of results that men lllllove. Maybe we identify just a bit with those bright annual flowers. We’re loud. We’re a little awkward. We like to call attention to ourselves. We may lack subtlety, but we like to think we’re constant and low- maintenance. Men also love exotics — cactus, palms, and orchids. We love the hunt involved in tracking down rare species. We love the challenge of growing plants out of their natural element. Most of all, we love the joy of showing them off. Men love lawns and hedges — any plant that needs to be chopped, pruned, and trimmed. We like the feeling of power that comes from hacking away at a plant to keep it under control. Men love vegetables. We love the idea of growing our own food, even if that food is four hundred pounds of zucchini and a couple of ears of corn. We love the idea that we are providers. Growing vegetables is worthwhile and manly because we are putting food on the table for our family, hearkening back to an earlier time in our country. The United States began as an agrarian nation, which may explain why the tradition of hobby gardening for men is not as strong here as it is in Europe. In our not too distant past, gardening meant farming, and farming was hard work, a hardscrabble existence. You didn’t grow plants for relaxation unless you belonged to the privileged class. Farming has been seen as a form of labor to rise above, the agrarian life something to escape from. For hundreds of years American farmers have struggled so that their sons could have a better life. But today, millions of American men garden. And they do so for many reasons. To recapture the past. Many men garden to satisfy an urge to return to the solid ground of childhood, when life was simple and Dad had all the answers. In the garden it’s easy to let go of current problems and fall into the comfort of the past. The warm, wet soil smells the same as it did thirty years ago. The freshly picked green beans still taste like the ones picked from Dad’s garden. These guys’ gardens tend to be filled with old-fashioned plants in long straight rows. To satisfy the need for order. Gardens are predictable. We know the grass needs mowing every week. We know the hedge needs trimming monthly. We know the tomatoes will ripen in ninety days. We can be certain the Japanese beetles will find the roses. Some men take comfort in that predictability. Their landscapes are often marked by neatly trimmed lawns and weed-free flower beds. To control. Sometimes we feel as if our lives are spinning out of control. But in the garden we can take control. We can cut the trees into weird shapes. We can blast the bugs when they dare to attack our prized plants. We can water and feed to make them grow. And we can yank out every single weed that dares to invade our plot. In short, we can become the masters of our back-yard universe. To provide a place to play. As we grow older, our playgrounds disappear. Our lives fill up with work and duty, and time for relaxation diminishes. For many men, the garden is the only place to putter, play with tools, put together projects. These guys often fill their gardens with toys, sports courts, or whimsical yard art.
To escape. These days most of us spend our lives surrounded by steel and asphalt, cut off from nature by sealed windows. The garden is one of the few places that allows us an escape, where we can come face to face with nature, even if it’s in the form of hybridized, domesticated plants. Guys who garden to get back in touch with nature often choose native plants for their gardens. To make a mark. Even to this day, the interior of the house is likely to be a woman’s domain. A man may not have much to say about the style of the curtains or bedding. But outdoors a guy can decide what to plant around the deck or how short to trim the flowering shrubs. He can plant trees, carve beds out of the lawn, or grow giant pumpkins. In short, he can make the garden his own outdoor room. To satisfy a compulsion. In some cases, a man just gets carried away. He spots a certain plant and it speaks to him. He discovers a particular gardening style that resonates deep within him. Before he knows it, his yard is overrun with cactuses or palms or some other plant that inspires his passion. Often he can’t even explain why he collects the plant. He only knows he has to. To create. Some men need to shape the world around them, even if it’s only a small part of the world. They seize the opportunity to move dirt, dig holes, change views, and create their own sanctuary.



In the end, there may be as many reasons to garden and as many gardening styles as there are gardeners. On the pages that follow, you’ll visit a few outstanding and diverse gardens created and maintained by men. There are vegetable gardens, flower gardens, small gardens, grand gardens. They have little in common, except that each one satisfies a particular man’s passion. Each is a perfectly realized example of what that man thinks a garden should be.

Copyright © 2000 by Warren Schultz

"Inspirational . . . this book could encourage anyone who enjoys gardening to abandon the maintenance and begin creating art." Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Politically incorrect and proud of it. Sets out to prove . . . men and women think differently, and their gardens prove it." Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"The best study yet of garden work by American men." St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A delightful, irreverent romp of a book that's sure to make you smile." Christian Science Monitor