When new immigrants came to America to build a new life, they could bring very little with them. Buying passage was too expensive to bring frivolous things. Clothing, tools, basic furnishings and cooking utensils took precedence. Women often brought seeds and bulbs tucked into their personal clothing rather than do without them. Later, as the wagon trains rolled west, again pieces of their beloved plants went with women to be planted at the new homestead.
Along the immigration paths today, you can find old homesteads with the traces of their commitment still growing and blooming without help. Roses, lilacs, iris, daffodils, tawny daylilies, dame's rocket, peonies, foxgloves, poppies of many colors - live on or self-seed in overgrown abandon. They are a testament to the unnamed women who carried them there and nurtured them until they grew as strong as the pioneers who brought them and could make their way on their own.
Kitchen gardens were usually at the back of the yard, but the treasures were often planted in front of the house where they could be seen and enjoyed by all who came and went. It was rare for a woman not to offer cuttings or divisions to visitors who admired her flowers. Children were pressed into weeding and harvesting in the kitchen garden at an early age, but often found that helping mother in the flower garden was a time they could share family stories and ask growing up questions while she was allowing herself some down time. I think a case could be made for this being the initial signpost on the career road of many male garden designers then and now.
Horticulture is one of those fields where the written history leaves out a lot about the cultural heritage mostly shaped by women. I can't even tell you myself who the pioneer women were whose diaries I read that gave me the information I have just written. I have lent the book to someone and can't remember who. Here's such a gardener who must have been like them. Learning to love plants and gardening has come to be second nature as if programmed by our genes. Only a few women have been recorded in the recent past as notable gardeners such as Gertrude Jekyll or Vita Sackville-West. Most have gone unsung. My own horticultural training beyond the school of Mom, was reading the work of the wonderful horticultural writers that I consider my heroes of today. My shelves are full of the works of Pamela Harper, Ann Lovejoy, Elsa Bakalar, Rosalind Creasy, Celia Thaxter, Sara Stein, Thalassa Cruso and more and more. Hopefully horticultural history will become as much herstory in the future, now that we are all more aware of the discrepancies of the past.
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