I Thought I Loved Gardening - Then I Read This Book

Hi, I'm Sue from Garden Moxie. I've spent the last year studying historic garden design books and visiting beautiful gardens to understand what makes a garden extraordinary. In today's video, I'm sharing one of those historic garden design books and it may be one of the best books I've ever read. The book I'm talking about is called In Your Garden written by Vita Sackville-West and don't assume that because this book was published 74 years ago that it doesn't have anything to teach you. This book is filled to the rim with great plant combinations. Stay tuned because later in the video I'm going to share a list of hardy annuals that we can grow in our Midwest gardens. Vita Sackville-West was an English author and garden designer and she was celebrated for her contributions to literature and horticulture. She was born into an aristocratic family and she loved writing from a very young age, becoming a prolific writer and poet. And while Vita Sackville-West won awards for her poetry, it was her garden writing that resonated most with readers. She had a wonderfully common sense approach to gardening, which is something I deeply admire. From 1946 until 1961, Vita Sackville-West began writing a weekly gardening column in the Observer, sharing her insights and experiences from her own gardens at Sissinghurst Castle. And these columns resonated with readers because they offered practical advice as well as vivid descriptions of her horticultural endeavors. She would go on to write a total of four such books. Published in 1951 was In Your Garden. In 1953, In Your Garden Again. In 1955, More for Your Garden. And then in 1958, Even More for Your Garden. She would joke about running out of title options. The book itself opens with Sackville-West providing some background. She writes, it was with some reluctance that I agreed to the publication of these snippets in book form. They were all very well as they appeared, weekly or at longer intervals, according to the space available in the columns at the Observer. But when it came to dressing them up into the solidity of a real book with stiff covers and the expectation of a place to itself on somebody's shelves, I quailed at their incompleteness, their repetitiveness, and also at the haphazard way they had been dotted about the years. I discovered the book In Your Garden the way I discover a lot of things, quite accidentally. I was reading a book called A Life in Garden Design by Paul Bengay. He had an illustration showing the first edition gardening books that he had in his personal collection. And that's where I first saw the title, In Your Garden. So on a whim, I searched for a copy of In Your Garden on eBay and found it. I had no expectations, I just thought it might be interesting to read. But the moment I opened it, I was hooked. She wrote the book to give some suggestions to the amateur gardener on some plants to try that perhaps their neighbor might not grow. The book is filled to the brim with plant combinations for us to try in our own gardens. She also had some common sense approaches to garden design itself. She wrote, and remember that it is far more effective to sow large patches of a few varieties than small patches of many. What you sow must depend on your personal taste and the coloring you want. As a change from the usual jumble, pretty and gay though it may be, we might find it more original to concentrate on one color. I've never read a gardening book that was so easy to read. In an article that she wrote on March 26, 1950, she was talking about pruning roses. Cut almost to the ground. Cut down to the second or the third bud. Cut till nothing is left except a couple of inches sticking up. Be pitiless. Be ruthless. Prune for fine blooms, exhibition blooms, even if you don't intend to exhibit. Never mind the appearance of your garden or the natural alacrity of your roses. Snub them as hard as you can, even as Victorian parents snub their children. Vita Sackville-West's passion for gardening was contagious, and her poetic writing made me look at plants, at creativity, even at storytelling in a whole new way. In a world where we rush through content with quick video edits and endless scrolling and instant gratification, her book felt like stepping into another time. The book is one of the books that I'm covering in my Wintertime Garden Design Book Club, and I made little tabs everywhere where there was information that I wanted to share with the club, and just take a look at how many tabs this book has. One of the aspects I've enjoyed the most is learning about new plants that I'm going to try in my own garden. In an article dated April 16, 1950, she wrote about hardy annuals. When I was small, I had a book called Flowers That Do Not Disappoint. They nearly all did, but that was probably my fault so far as annuals were concerned. Hardy annuals should not disappoint, and there is still time to sow them in April. So useful for filling in bare patches or for making a display in the window boxes of townhouses. So let's take a look at some of those hardy annuals that Vita Sackville-West recommends we grow. She starts with the tiniest, Leptosiphon, only three inches in height but very varied in color. It's charming as an edging or among stones or in paving. This looks like a wonderful plant to grow from seed, and I found this plant on the Outside Pride Seeds website. This low-growing annual has fern-like foliage and hundreds of sweet little half-inch star-shaped flowers. This annual prefers a sunny location, and it blooms from the mid-spring until the late summer, growing six to eight inches tall. The next hardy annual that Vita Sackville-West recommends is called Lineria Marocana. She mentions that it associates well with Leptosiphon being several inches taller, but of the same delicate character as the name Fairy Bouquet will suggest. It's important to this point to note that Lineria Marocana is not to be confused with the invasive version of Yellow Toadflax, which is called Lineria Vulgaris. This is another hardy annual that is easy to grow from seed, and I was able to locate seeds on the Hudson Valley Seed Company website, as well as the Botanical Interests website. This plant has multiple bloom colors. It blooms in pink, yellow, red, purple, and violet. It prefers full sun. It blooms from spring until early fall, growing eight to fifteen inches tall and six to ten inches wide. The next hardy annual that Vita Sackville-West recommends, she actually recommended in more than one article, and that is or California Bluebell. This plant is native to California, preferring a sunny location. The leaves are a gray-green and oval shape. It blooms from spring to early summer in cooler climates, growing six to eight inches tall, and it's easy to grow from seed. I was able to locate a seed source on the Stover Seed website. The next hardy annual recommended is Dimorthotheca erinthiaca, or African Daisy. Sackville-West says that this plant looks like a patch of sunlight on the ground, but shuts itself up when the sun goes in. You can purchase seeds on the Outside Pride Seed website. Again, this is an annual. It blooms in shades of orange, yellow, and blush colors. It prefers a sandy, loam, light, well-draining soil in a sunny location. It blooms from mid-spring until fall, growing eight to twelve inches tall. It's also deer-resistant. The last hardy annual that Sackville-West recommends is Calendula, and she says, among the Calendulas, there is a strain called by the repulsive name of Archshades, which throws a variety of pretty colors in apricot, buff, and straw, less violent than the old orange king. I was able to also locate on the Select Seeds website a large variety of colors that are available for purchase. Again, this is an annual. It blooms from spring until fall. It prefers a regular to rich, well-drained soil. It is deer-resistant, heat and drought tolerant, good for cut flowers, and good for containers. It grows 24 inches tall and approximately 12 inches wide, and prefers full sun. I'll be sure to leave links to these recommended annuals in the description of this video. Sackville-West had a wonderfully common-sense approach to gardening, encouraging gardeners to see flowers in person, whether in private or public gardens, because there's no better way to know what you truly love. She had an incredible perspective on gardening and time itself. She wrote that gardening keeps you young because it's the most rejuvenating of all occupations. One is always looking forward to next year or five years hence. Gardening isn't just about the present, it's about hope, about imagining the future. So I'm taking a page out of Vita's book, literally, and this season I'm planning to grow several of the annuals that she recommended in my new back garden renovation. Her writing made me fall in love with gardening again, even more than I did before. And maybe, just maybe, her words will inspire you too. Have you ever read a book that changed the way that you look at your garden? Let me know in the comments. That's it for this video, friends. I'll see you in the next one.