Daniel Hinkley had been in a complex relationship with the hellebore for more than 10 years, the type of emotional ensnarement a therapist would call a “goldmine.” He’s catered to the demands of the plant for a decade, only having eyes for the fickle roses, the figure that taught him the “torment of slow motion in the garden,” to the point where he’ll dig his hands into the dirt months before blossoming to get a feeling of the buds yet to come. But the sliver of sensation that Hinkley gets in the winter is more than enough to rationalize the arduous process that feels like it stretches for a millennia. That the night shades of crimsons and Merlot get him drunk in love for the next 10 months, a bewitching, mysterious enchantment that cycles around to make its impact just as one loses faith.
That obsessive tender love and care seems to be paramount to just about every hobby worth doing, but few rival that of gardening’s gluttonous need for all of your attention. That’s at least the sense that I got after reading Jamaica Kincaid’s My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners and the Plants They Love, the anthology that the great author edited and published in 1998, collecting from gardeners essays and poems about the fruits of their labor that bring them the most joy. Impressive writers in their own right, as many of Kincaid’s peers had to be, it’s impossible to tell if the contributors enjoy putting pen to paper as much as they do planting petunias. In the introduction, Kincaid said that she tried to arrange the works like a garden incarnated in word form, but the manner in which they beam with pride about nursing their seedlings year-round actually reminds me of a middle school science fair: where the junior researchers are bursting at the seams to share their findings.
There’s a methodical way that a lot of these pieces unfold (save for the likes of Hilton Als, William Carlos Williams, Colette, and more who subverted structural expectations with poetics and chaotic autofiction that warped the book’s spine and bent time and space for a brief moment). The esteemed gardener is introduced to the plant -- or horticulture as a whole -- by a loved one, or by a master of the craft descended from the clouds, or just by sheer curiosity in a particular flower and plant. They launch into an encyclopedic account of the plant’s quirks, its life cycles and the best time to begin the process, and the keys to keeping it alive. They are prudent experts in the common, and uncommon locations that their favorite plants reside, often recounting their embattled, adventurous hunts to get a couple of seeds to take back to their home turf.
And without fail, every entry has the prime reason that every gardener splurges and toils over their favorite plant -- how it looks. And their brand of love of appearance isn’t monolithic by any means. Some become enamored with the brilliant colors that turn their garden into Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat (Wayne Winterrowd can’t get enough of the Meconopsis’ particular strain of sky blue on the Himalayan blue poppy and Christopher Lloyd completes the rainbow with the lust for the poppy’s range of reds and oranges). Others are drawn to a plant’s domineering presence, flocking to their towering heights and sprawling roots that run through the garden’s rows (the aptly named Michael Pollen’s essay celebrating the castor bean is this greatest example). What it almost always boils down to is that these gardeners cannot fathom an existence without their prized plant, and equally are in disbelief on how you (the reader) has made it to this point without contracting a similar obsession. A most unfortunate form of immunity, in their eyes.
The richness in detail of many of the essays completes the task of effectively conjuring the image of these plants in your mind without the aid of visuals. But it also produces an ache in the heart of this particular reader, mostly because I am quite sure that I will never be able to produce a fraction of the gardens talked about endlessly in My Favorite Plant. I know this to be true. I am utterly hopeless with plants, of all shapes, sizes, and temperaments. Most traits of humanity are in flux, people can change in many ways, but I cannot change in this one. It is my lot in life to walk into other apartments and homes filled with lush greenery, into greenhouses bursting with color and life, and only sigh with slight jealousy and intense yearning for just a pinch of their horticultural prowess. Attempts to learn are fruitless, crash courses only produce more wrecks.
And it’s a shame because I do have a favorite plant. And if it was up to me, I’d grow acres of it to fill houses across the world, then give them away once they’ve bloomed to the ones I love, and the ones who I no longer talk to anymore, and everybody in between. And much like the gardeners who far surpass me in skill and age, I did not arrive at this flower on my own. Nobody ever does, as much as we like to think of ourselves as independent creatures attuned to the rhythms of our own paths. Someone, something caused us to turn our heads ever so slightly to catch a snapshot of the most beautiful flower ever known to man, at least in our eyes. I didn’t know squat about the orchid until someone who I was beginning to know, and beginning to love, told me that she was enamored with the plant because it was “resilient.” A descriptor reserved for our strongest soldiers of all species and phylums, I looked at the dainty flower with the ultra-thin stem, feeding into a glorious symphony of white and violet firework on a summer’s night and thought “how nice.”
Lord knows how many times I strolled into the Ace Hardware and let the Phalaenopsis draw me towards the back of the nursery. I would oblige, fully knowing it was a death sentence for the orchid. There’s something freeing to know that one’s relationship to a plant or flower is doomed to end, and then come back again. That the perennial love acts as the alpha and omega when everything goes according to plan (which, I guess it rarely does), you can set your watch to the beats of its life cycle. The best you can do is try to enjoy each step along the way, nurturing and caring for it on its journey, trying not to impede it as it reaches for the sky before slowly lilting back down to Earth.
I had no delusions about keeping the orchids on my desk alive. But it brought me unbelievable joy and relief to watch the moth orchid throughout the day, as the colors of the atmosphere hurtled from a peaceful, pale blue to emblazoned in fiery orange before sinking to the blackest night possible against the cityscape. Far from a master gardener, it was more than enough to feed the white and violet sentry water when I felt that it was thirsty, hoping that it would help in any way to prolong its lifespan for minutes longer. That I could keep watching the way the light almost broke through the spaces in between the leaves like courtesy curtains. It was a selfish way of thinking, I admit, similar to how I imagine gardeners think.
She was right, in that the orchid was quite resilient, and how lucky for someone who found themselves incredibly unlucky with the act of gardening. The orchid sticks around for a little longer than anyone expects it to, even when it’s not cared for to the best of one’s abilities. But the Phalaenopsis, the orchid that I most commonly walked into Ace Hardware for, could have lived for 15 years if I let it. They enjoyed their day in the sun, but like most stars in the spotlight, a bit of indirect light is best to keep it from shriveling. It doesn’t ask for much, in fact too much water and busy-bodied care often spells death, choking out the roots in the soil. All of this would be determined by a simple Google, or by quickest inquiry to those who knew best. But I found out all of these factors through frustrating trial and error, exasperation seeping out as I watched petals wither away. I don’t want to call it hard-headedness (though, it certainly stinks of it). I believe I just fell in love with the process of learning what it takes to care about something new. I’d be willing to fail at one juncture of keeping this flower alive because I knew that it would lead to just a bit of a greater chance that I keep the next one alive. I lost, sure. But I gained, without a doubt. I think the math checked out at the end, all the same. It was all worth it because I loved this plant, the associations it brought, the memories and emotions it produced with a single look at its direction. Even when its gray petals would drop into the paled soil resting below in the makeshift styrofoam dish. To me, it was as beautiful as ever.
There are many days now where I feel as though I’m not made or cut out for certain hobbies. And, I know that I will never be able to garden with the best of them; that feels like the train has long passed, and I no longer have the time or funds to get a ticket. Though, reading My Favorite Plant does bring me just a bit closer to those who do. Those who have dedicated their lives to a garden’s success, in the hopes that the prized possession will grow surrounded by a congregation of loved ones. It’s an act done with the purpose of creating more beauty, just for the sake of believing that this image should be shared with the world. Realizing that is like a light switch going off: I’m left thinking about how Ian Frazier found his way towards gardening through proxies of loved ones and neighbors, who enlisted his help as a bored and destructive teen. It is succinct, and it cuts to the bone: “Art is long, and so is gardening; chaos and destruction have no appeal to me anymore. Now when I visit gardening friends, I sometimes drift out to the garden, ask what needs to be done, and begin carefully to pull up cheeseflower and burdock unbidden, for no reason I can explain.” My Favorite Plant argues, as a whole, for the gravitational traction for gardening’s bliss, a promise for a slice of Paradise for those with the patience to handle the quiet, serene failure. Not for the faint of heart.