A Garden of One's Own: The Ritual Consolations of the Backyard Garden

With the exception of watching television and possibly reading, gardening may be America's single most widely distributed leisure pastime, certainly its most popular active hobby. It has been suggested that something like "73% do enough yard work to consider themselves gardeners" (Heilenman 24), a figure that must include every conceivable, coerced as well as voluntary, exercise in lawn and houseplant care. More conservatively, American Demographics estimated in 1993 that the country harbored 61 million gardeners, who, for marketing purposes, fell rather neatly into four categories: the Dabblers, the 60% who are least experienced and committed; the Decorators, the 19% who love ornamental horticulture; the Cultivators, the 18% who love to grow and eat vegetables; and the Masters, the 3% whose dedication or addiction makes them an important niche market. Gardeners on the whole tend to be older, more affluent, and better educated than the average American (Waldrop, Yergin, Cook), and increasingly, possibly as much as 59%, they are baby boomers (Loro, Lasek, Beam). Americans, of course, reveal their enthusiasms with treasure as well as time, and annual expenditures range from the National Garden Association's estimate of a $23 billion yearly handle to one nursery industry consultant's estimate of $53 billion (Discount Store News). American culture also weighs its passions in catalogs from W. Atlee Burpee, Stark Brothers, Walt Nicke, Smith & Hawken, Van Dyck's Flower Farm, Klehm Nursery, Gurney's Seed Company, Park Seeds, Stokes, Henry Field's, Gardener's Supply Company, Wayside Gardens, Jackson & Perkins, Rodale Gardens, Netherland Bulb Co., Thompson & Morgan, Jung Quality Seeds, Starlight Daylily Gardens, Miller Nurseries Brittingham Plant Farms, Old House Gardens, Johnny's Select Seeds, Forest Farm, White Flower Farm, Bunton's Seed, Ronni er's Seed Potatoes, Daffodil Mart, Mellingers', R.W. Munson, Pennington, Vermont Bean and Seed, and Kelly Nurseries, to mention probably less than a quarter of the catalogs currently available. Perhaps more revealing is the trebling of the number of gardening magazines in the last six years to a total of something like 150 titles currently available (Beam), including home garden, Garden Design, Country Living Gardener, Women's Day Gardening and Outdoor Living Ideas, National Gardening, Family Circle Easy Gardening, County Accents Gardening, Farmer's Almanac Gardening Ideas, Weekend Gardening, Horticulture, Birds & Blooms, American Gardening, Organic Gardening, Countryside, Mother Earth News, and Better Homes and Gardens. While the terms "garden" and "gardening" lend themselves to a wide variety of meanings, I want to set aside for the moment reflections on Eden or Xanadu or Versailles or Kew, and I would also like to exclude from present consideration all commercial undertakings and even domestic lawns and the "landscaping" that seeks somehow to perfect the architectural design of houses, big and small, the investment of $500 the realtors claim will reap $5,000 in next spring's sale price. Rather, I want briefly to look at the garden of one's own, to focus on what most Americans recognize as the backyard garden, to consider the simple or elaborate cultivation of flowers and vegetables by householders for their own enjoyment and use in venues ranging from a few containers on the back steps of a housing project doorway or on the fire escape or roof of an apartment building to a 10'x15' raised bed in a city yard to larger spaces on suburban half acres to fifty-foot rows on three to ten acre exurban "estates." The common explanations of backyard gardening spring readily to mind. Writing in 1977 for the USDA, Cecil Blackwell points to seven generally recognized values that in one combination or another will continue to drive the practice into the next century: saving money, freshness and quality, therapy or personal satisfaction, a family activity, the trend "back-to-nature," artistic and aesthetic concerns, and neighborliness (2). …