The Passionate Gardener by Des Kennedy

I thought that after diving into You Grow Girl that I might be done with the gardening books for now, until the snow has melted. I know myself better than this, but I had hopes. Instead, while browsing at my local library, I happened across another collection of gardening essays by one of my very favourite garden writers, Des Kennedy. His collection An Ecology of Enchantment was one of my favourite reads of last year, and The Passionate Gardener is the latest collection. It appears that he's got a memoir coming out this month, titled The Way of a Gardener, which I will certainly have to get my soil-chapped mitts on.

If you are a gardener, even just growing a potted plant or two, you really need to read Des Kennedy's gardening books. To be honest, I much preferred An Ecology of Enchantment -- I thought it was a more graceful book, in a lot of ways, and it had a very pleasing arc in the form of a monthly chronology. There was wider variety in the pieces, too. The Passionate Gardner is still a lot of fun to read, inspiring and entertaining. But there doesn't seem to be the same driving force, and some of the essays start to feel a bit samey. The hyperbole gets to be a little excessive as opposed to just straight humourous by the end of the book, although this might not be as much of a problem if you are smarter about reading this book than I was. I was enjoying myself so much, and needing to feel like spring was a possibility so much, that I have read this book in two days. Which might have been just a little too much at once.

But that's a very minor complaint. Very minor. I have thoroughly enjoyed my romp through Kennedy's garden and brain. It's funny, it's occasionally rather raunchy (there's a chapter that's a torrid love story about gardening based entirely on plant names, and it's steamier than one might think) and it's informative. It's also largely beautifully written: in the introduction, Kennedy talks about how "gardening burst into our lives like a howling southeaster." There are wonderfully quotable bits throughout the entire book. And it's all pretty much dead on. His observations resonate perfectly. He might be a little over-the-top, but I recognize where he's coming from exactly. This is about garden clubs, but it could just as easily be about naturalist clubs (I suspect there's significant membership overlap) or several other types of meetings I've been to:

(from the essay "Garden Clubbing")

Invariably, the introducer begins by describing the guest speaker as someone who "needs no introduction." One might thereby conclude that the introductory remarks will be brief, but it is soon revealed that the lack of a need for introduction will in no way hamper the introducer from launching into a peroration of unimaginable length and complexity during the course of which the guest speaker's accomplishments, both real and imaginary, are paraded for the admiration of all.

And when I say inspiring, I mean that it's nice to know that I'm not alone:

(from the essay "The Ten Commandments")

Perhaps the most problematic of all is the fifth commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." You know as well as I do that if gardeners ever took this commandment to heart, plant sales would plummet, the garden supply business would grind to a halt, and nurseries would declare bankruptcy as often as airlines. Fortunately, no such crisis is imminent, because if there's one thing gardeners are good at, it's the sustained and systematic killing of plants.

And, just because I enjoyed it, from my favourite essay in the collection, "Darwin Was No Gardener":

The early years were not easy. The little tree was disinclined to grow, and what marginal growth it did attempt was invariably in a contrary direction. We came to recognize that it was afflicted with a fear of heights, a considerable disadvantage in a tree.

This collection is recommended. I enjoyed this one enough that I've finally gone ahead and ordered my own copy of An Ecology of Enchantment so that I can re-read it as I wait for the crocuses to get their act together and burn through the snow. The essays range from travel reports, to musings on the gardener's various neuroses and quirks, to loving descriptions of plants. Lots of fun for gardeners and armchair gardeners and anyone who might want a little insight into this strange passion from which we gardeners suffer.

An Ecology of Enchantment by Des Kennedy

I am afraid that I might go on at length about this book. I suspect it is best enjoyed by people who have gardens of their own, or wish they did, or have had in the past. But I hesitate to say that no one else would enjoy it -- it might be just the book to convince you that you should grow a thing or two after all. I'm already convinced that I should probably try to grow kale, which was not the case before I read this book, for example. It's hard to say no in the face of such enthusiastic praise for a lowly brassica.

Des Kennedy is another one of those famous Canadian gardeners. He and his wife Sandy garden out on the West Coast, which is probably the best place to garden in Canada -- they have longer summers and warmer winters than the rest of us, meaning they can grow a huge variety of plants, and leave their root vegetables in the ground over winter. That said, it's not without its challenges, which Kennedy describes alongside the joys.

The book is structured, as its subtitle advertises, as a year in the life of Kennedy's garden. He has written an essay per week for an entire year, about 10 years ago and published them as a record -- sometimes practical, sometimes advertising favourite plants (as with the kale), sometimes musing on the spiritual aspects of gardening and gardeners. 52 short essays and almost all of them entirely quotable. I'll get to that in a minute.

There are a couple of overall things that I enjoyed about this book, which may or may not conflict with people's reading tastes. I really don't think this book is for everyone despite how much I loved it. For one thing, Kennedy likes words. He likes big or obscure words and he's not afraid to use them. For instance, does anyone know what "inveigle" means? Now I do. It's synonymous with entice; also to gain something by flattery. What I really appreciate here is that I don't often run into words I've not met before. At least not when reading something written in modern English in the past 10 years. But I've always loved that feeling of running across words I don't recognize and having to puzzle it out based on context or etymology. I used to do that all the time as a kid.

Another thing I enjoyed but might not be to everyone's taste is the hyperbole and prose that occasionally veers past purple into indigo. What makes this enjoyable, as opposed to unbearable, is that Kennedy is a very self-aware writer, so you never get the impression that he's doing this innocently. He knows exactly what's going on, and even devotes one chapter to pointing out how flamboyant garden writing often is, at least on the subject of poppies. He just clearly enjoys playing with language as much as he enjoys gardening.

But the best thing about this book, by far, is how humane it is. I am just starting my gardening career, really, and it's mostly trial and error. More error than anything else. An Ecology of Enchantment follows the ups and downs, both the joys and the frustration of a mature garden. These experiences parallel my own limited gardening experience, and rather than being disheartening, it's nice to know that despite heartbreak and discouragement the garden largely keeps on growing. More than any other gardening book I've read, this one seems to invoke a sense of both ongoing, steady continuity and ongoing, sometimes unplanned change. Kennedy's writing is humble, self-deprecating, hilarious, and always optimistic.

As I said before, there are a large number of quotable bits, so I'm only going to give you a smattering.

On the feverishly garden-deprived gardener in winter:

Thus the bleak days of winter can be whiled away in trenchant analysis and stirring plans for action, the bulk of which can be abandoned with the onset of spring before any permanent damage is done.

On daffodils:

I think the most frequently seen big yellow trumpet types work best at a distance where they're free to excite the romantic poet's imagination from half a mile away without yellowing us to death.

On the bewildering, daunting world of roses and their never-ending hybrids:

Anarchy seems the order of the day, with wild-eyed hybridizers running riot in the streets while tactical squads of classifiers bang their shields to try to maintain some semblance of order.

He also has a habit of dropping a description here and there that seems somehow perfect. From the rose chapter:

Rambling Albertine and long-limbed New Dawn reclining against the old woodshed like two beautiful sisters, arms outstretched to touch one another's fingers.

and the introduction:

a hummingbird appears in an irridescent commotion

The book I have was borrowed from my mother, who was borrowing it from my grandmother, who received it from me for Christmas (on the off chance that she would probably like it, since I get my gardening genes from her). I'm going to have to get myself my own copy. This one is a keeper.