Earthman Revisited

Sissinghurst Castle Garden—axial walkway photo by Tony Hisgett, 2010

Something reminded me of a favorite journalist, the late Henry Mitchell. For those who’ve lived in Washington awhile, beloved might be a better modifier. Mitchell’s moniker was ‘Earthman.’

Earlier in the afternoon last Sunday, fall leaves floating down like small helicopters circling to land on the lake just outside, I was reading an essay, On Rereading, by Larry McMurtry, known for his novels, Lonesome Dove, et al., though he’s written a ton of nonfiction as well. His theme is obvious from the title, and he rambles like someone walking the breadth of Texas chewing a twig–a man with time on his hands talking about a variety of readers for whom certain books have remained by their bedside.

“As one who has so far failed to make it through Rasselas [Samuel Johnson, 1759] even once, I consider Marie Woolf’s devotion to the book a matter worth pondering. If what her son says is true—and who would doubt such a man as Leonard Woolf?—Marie Woolf was probably the world’s biggest fan of Rasselas, just as I myself might claim to be the world’s biggest fan of Slowly Down the Ganges, a wonderful travel book by Eric Newby, which I have been rereading more or less continuously since 1965.”

from On Rereading by Larry McMurtry in the New York Review, 2005

While chopping veggies for the evening’s repast (such as it turned out) I recalled McMurtry’s article from earlier. I was following a recipe for Mexican lintel soup–though enchiladas were last week’s venture and the week before a vegetarian chili, so I was skipping the chili powder, cumin and cilantro, while still going cross-country with the hot pepper and French lintels–cute, little suckers. D didn’t comment too much on the soup’s outcome, so it probably wasn’t my best effort. No one tells you French lintels take twice as long for being half the size of a non-French lintel, so bear that in mind if you want to eat before 9 pm. But the garlic bread was a killer.

However, as I was prepping and chopping hot peppers and onion, tomatoes, carrots and mushrooms, I realized I hadn’t picked up one of the Earthman books (One Man’s Garden, The Essential Earthman) in quite a while. I knew where they were–on the nightstand by my side of the bed. Other than Lord of the Rings, which I’ve read so often I can quote from it, Mitchell’s books are always worth picking up again. He is a writer who calls to be reread for his quirky take on gardens and life in the face of smaller things. You can skip over the Latin plant names and just marvel at the man’s encyclopedic knowledge. An iconoclast of the first order.

For my formative years living in this part of the country, Mitchell wrote weekly for the Washington Post. He was a gardener, an avid one, in the same way you might say Julia Childs had an affinity for French cooking. Mitchell was a larger than life personality. OK, he was a touch obsessive and very much opinionated, but he was good humored about the obsession and the first to laugh at himself; I’d read his weekly columns as much for the style as anything I might glean regarding nasturtiums.

I first learned of clematis vines grown atop climbing roses in an Earthman column. Just writing this, I’m reminded we need more clematis in the yard. Of the two Clematis ‘Jackmanii’ plants, each in its prodigiously heavy whiskey barrel that we ourselves carefully carted from Stoneybrea on the north side of the lake, we still have one clematis all these years later, a testament to the plant not the gardener. The second one succumbed to a dry, cold winter and has since been replaced. They adorn the carport columns and come early spring persist in sending new shoots up between the top beam and under the roof deck. If you don’t catch them at it early enough, half the plant leafs out under the carport roof.

Clematis ‘Jackamanii photo by Mike Gifford, 2005

When Mitchell passed on to the glorious garden in the sky, the New York Times wrote a suitably-titled obituary, Garden Notebook; The Legacy of the Earthman: Wise Words to Plant By, published in their House and Garden Section. That even the Times paid homage to a feature writer for the Washington Post was confirmation Mitchell’s 25-year career had reached a wide audience. And that he’d found, in such a specialty, a voice declaring gardening is a philosophy to live by. While he was forever planting ‘one more rose’ in his personal plot, he was at the same time advising his readers to keep control of such impulses; contradictions didn’t faze him none.

Gardens evolve, then are yanked violently by a storm, a major tree expires–the massive red oak that had shaded most of the front yard for example that fell one night across the road taking out the entire neighborhood’s power, phone and cable. Since that sad event twenty years ago, we continue to watch red oak seedlings emerge every spring. And the azaleas appreciate their better summer light. So Mitchell tells you to accept these setbacks and keep at it.

That Mitchell placed Sissinghurst Castle Gardens on his shortlist of public gardens only reinforced his genius in my eyes. Sissinghurst remains Vita Sackville-West’s and her husband, Harold Nicolson’s most lasting contribution to world culture.

I’ve been fortunate enough to stroll Katsura Villa’s gardens in Kyoto once, and I hope one day to visit Kent, to tour Sissinghurst. Don’t let the castle name confuse you; there’s but a ruin of the former estate, a wonderful brick wall, an octagonal tower, and several cottages; the rest was created by Sackville-West and Nicholson. The property had been in the Sackville family previous to their taking ownership, but by then it had turned to a ruin:

“One might reasonably have hoped to inherit century-old hedges of yew, some gnarled mulberries, a cedar or two, a pleached alley, flagged walls, a mound. Instead there was nothing but weed, rough grass, a shabby eyesore of a greenhouse in the wrong place, broken fencing, wired chicken runs, squalor and slovenly disorder everywhere.”

–Sackville-West's first impressions of Sissinghurst

Sissinghurst border Photo by Michael Garlick, 2012

Priest House photo from Oast House Archive, 2017

The Moat Walk – "the English lawn is the basis of our garden design" Harold Nicholson photo by Graham Horn

Sackville-West isn’t so well known in the States, save for being Virginia Wolfe’s lover. Scandalous, the Bloomsbury Set were like early hippies, only with way more money. In England, her magazine articles on gardening were popular among the Brits with their mad love of rambling, seemingly half-wild gardens. Mad hatter has a meaning, after all.

Every Saturday without fail, Henry Mitchell’s column appeared in the Post, during a time in my life when cash and land were too sparse to do more than follow his descriptions. He was like an avuncular professor who’s just dying to tell you about his latest bulb planting hopes for next spring, and why you need an old brick wall with an arched gate for the well healed garden to be properly framed. And a lily pond for the birds, ten by twelve at the smallest. Canna he loved like children. And though he grudgingly admitted trees were admirable, he didn’t believe they belonged in a small garden–his own–as they robbed the sunlight for flowers, his real passion.

“Recently, a speaker at a men’s garden club observed that he had acquired a nice house and lot that once belonged to a fellow who went wild over trees… The speaker was from Arizona and was amazed at the amount of leaf-raking to be done. His wife had been shown the joys of this task, he indicated. But far more serious that the slightly male-chauvinist notion that women are suitable for raking leaves (most are not, and can be quite dangerous with sprouting clematis and other delicate plants) is the current balderdash that Trees Are Good Things.”

from The Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell, Houghton Mifflin, 1981

Mitchell would throw up his hands in the face of the current witch hunts we take for political correctness.

We live on a small suburban plot–quarter acre–that’s blessed with mature rhododendrons and azaleas and too many trees for proper flowering plants. Several of the largest trees, including our beloved red oak, have given up to gravity, but the plot remains in nearly full shade. The first thing we do when considering another plant purchase–a yearly springtime ritual–that anything requiring ‘full sun’ must sadly be passed by. How many hosta varietals can one plant in a small garden? We have one elephantine hosta planted in a narrow space between fence and rear walkway that’s attempting to take over the entire area; every spring when it emerges from the ground, just to see its return makes me smile.

Does moss count as a proper ground cover?

Once the addition to the house was complete and we could take occupancy of the screen porch hugging the lake edge, I had this vision of a sea of grasses–reminiscent of cattails by the ocean. We planted a mixed clump of sage and miscanthus a few years ago now doing surprisingly well given the limited sunlight, and I’m scheming to spread them toward the trees and the old azaleas–the tall bank of evergreens as background to the lighter lime green grasses.

Only I foresee not being able to keep as close an eye on the neighbor’s racoons who hide in the taller grass. I keep calling our neighbor, Jane, to complain that her racoons are trooping past my window, but she says once they cross over they’re ours. Such details.

Layla dislikes racoons nearly as much as she hates cats.

The yard’s most dominant feature is the long wooden bridge leading from the carport close to the road to the new front door. The bridge was made necessary by the original house being inverted (living, dining and kitchen on top–no doubt to catch the best view of the lake). When I’m in my dotage–which may not be so far away–I still want to reach the front door without a catapult. During the long design process, I worried the bridge would be too intrusive, and it’s without doubt an ‘architectural feature,’ however at night, lit by the LED handrail lights, it’s quite handsome. I just need a few flowering vines to climb one or two of the piers. Wisteria would go nuts–but that’s always the problem with wisteria. Perhaps, if next spring we start a few clematis montana which love taking over in large masses of white flowers, I’ll live to see them thrive.

Clematis C. Montana photo © Andrew Dunn, 4 May 2005

We’ve redone a good deal of the property, though I can’t say it’s a legit garden yet. A few years back I asked Delfino, our gardening guru, to cut a path along the drainage creek bordering the yard, leaving enough room beside the creek for a single row of witch hazel and redbuds. It also opened up view of the boxwoods his crew had previously transplanted there–along with an enormous white azalea originally growing hard by the house all in the way of the future addition.

The boxwoods were old, and I was amazed we only lost one in the transplanting. Cutting the path gives a view of them from that direction. I know boxwoods traditionally are trimmed square, but I like the shaggy look of these, and their smell is just as distinctive. What remains to be done is a better pathway–stone would be nice–and low level lighting. And small, lighter hued plants in front of the boxwood. No flower would grow in that deep shade.

There’d be more light for flowers if the maple occupying the middle of the yard weren’t there–as Mitchell clearly advised–but I’d have a hard time executing it as it predates our stay here.

The biggest challenge remains the tall embankment rising to the road. There’s a fine red oak sapling sprung from seed doing well, a volunteer mimosa tree and another volunteer weeping cherry. But the embankment itself is an undefined jungle of whatever seeds landed there well before our time. Oh, and another volunteer peach tree Delfino thinks was seeded by one of the addition’s construction crew while they ate lunch. D thinks the peach tree needs to go, and it is a vigorous specimen, but I’m always cheering for orphans.

We were sad when they closed Campbell & Ferrara Nursery just down the road–sold the property for townhouses and moved south. Townhouses, we don’t need no stinking townhouses. In Northern Virginia, we need more nurseries. The nursery we now support with our hard earned gardening cash, Merrifield Garden Center, is across the street from another recent mushroomed development dubbed the Mosaic District–it’s just Merrifield by another name. The development replaced a multiplex theater complex that was becoming sketchy with gangs, so no great loss. I suppose the Mosaic’s marketing team felt the rebranding was necessary, seeing as the rest of Merrifield isn’t much to write home about–except for the garden center. I fear for the long term survival of the garden center; the land value’s too high and developers too numerous.

Though the actual act of gardening, I confess, isn’t one I indulge in as much, the getting down on hands and knees, the leaning over, the pulling of thorny vines from azaleas and the like. I’d prefer reading Henry Mitchell, as I did while living in a townhouse in Burke where my only garden plot was the small vegetable garden lovingly laden with horse manure and leaves in the fall. We had cherry tomatoes all summer long.

Last Sunday we cruised the lake—Caesar’s barge. Wonderful fall weather, cool and breezy, brilliant sun and the trees turning colors, you only get so many. I cracked a bottle of California red, friends we rafted up with brought scotch, and we’d all brought snacks, so the conversation was pleasantly lubricated. All were socially distanced for the record. It was getting dark by the time we and Layla regained dry land. I suspect the reason people living in Lake Barcroft are so friendly is because we share this jewel of a finger lake. Bodies of water, even small ones, are too beautiful to stay down too long.

I’ll close with a quote from Henry Mitchell:

“A dear person, assisted by another dandy woman, gave me twenty-two plastic trash bags of horse manure for Christmas, and in the last week’s milder [January] weather I got it spread on particular treasures in the garden. Ten roses on their arches got first claim, followed by the planting site of ten forthcoming tomato seedlings, then a dab for a crinum that should have blossomed in the summer but didn’t, and a handful for the Princess de Sagan (a red rose sitting all by herself), and a bucketful for what I hope is a hardy palm.

Like youth, horse manure goes all too quickly. Before you’ve got started good, it’s gone, and you wonder how it went so fast.”

from One Man’s Garden by Henry Mitchell, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992

Lest it seem I’m fixated on horse manure–I’ll offer that mixed with fall leaves, you simply won’t find better garden fertilizer; it quickly breaks down into rich topsoil. Earthman taught me well.

OK, just one more:

“There’s nothing wrong with hybrid tea roses if they are well perfumed and resistant to black spot (though very few, if any, have these virtues) and there is nothing wrong, or at least nothing inherently evil, in raising scentless roses that require weekly spraying and that can be sheltered and shielded, patted and pampered, until at last an enormous flower can be entered in a rose show. Without rose shows and without roses that have never been outside an intensive care unit, society would suffer. Many people who are now safely occupied with the care of roses would be loose on the streets.”

from One Man’s Garden by Henry Mitchell, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992