Details

Title

The Heart of a Garden

Author

Watson, Rosamund Marriott

Publication Date

1906

Publisher

George W. Jacobs & Co.

Place of Publication

Philadelphia

Collection

Scans used with permission from Smithsonian Libraries.

Note

'The Heart of a Garden' is a multigenre celebration of gardens. Vivid descriptions and imaginative walks through Watson's garden beds are interspersed with poetry, photographs, and allusions to other literature. Like some of her other garden books, Montgomery was given a copy of 'The Heart of a Garden' by G.B. Macmillan. In an unpublished portion of a letter to MacMillan from a 8 January 1908, Montgomery told him “I think you come the nearest to anybody I know to ‘inspiration’ in choosing your Xmas gifts with regard to the recipient’s taste. If you had ransacked a continent you couldn’t have found anything that would have given me more pleasure than ‘The Heart of A Garden.’” A few days later, Montgomery told her journal that "One of my Christmas gifts was a delightful volume entitled 'The Heart of a Garden' It consists of a series of essays by a woman who loved her garden and is illustrated by several photographs of beautiful old gardens. I revelled in it. One of my dearest wishes is to have a garden--a real garden. I shall never have my ideal garden--it would require more land and money than I shall likely ever have at my disposal, not to speak of a hundred years history behind it. But I do hope I shall be able some day to have some sort of a garden where I can at least grow all the flowers I want" (12 Jan. 1908, The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery The PEI Years, 1901–1911, p. 181). Montgomery did, of course, make and maintain multiple gardens later in life. The author of this book, Rosamund Watson (1860-1911), wrote extensively on the subject in verse and essay. Watson was also an art and literary critic and magazine columnist. Early in her career, she published under various male-coded pseudonyms like "Rushworth Armytage" and "Graham R. Tomson," using the surnames of her first two husbands who she (scandalously, at the time) divorced. Andrew Lang (folklorist, critic, and writer of the influential Lang's Fairy Books) raved about "Tomson's" first collection of poetry, assuming the author to be a man. Watson later befriended Lang, Oscar Wilde, and other popular writers of the 1890s. One additional contextual note from scholar Abigail Chandler, University of Massachusetts Lowell: "Montgomery's reading of 'The Heart of the Garden' in 1908 may have contributed to an exchange between Anne Shirley Blythe and Susan Baker years later in 'Anne of Ingleside.' Watson, like Montgomery, preferred the older perennial flowers to the annual flowers that become popular in the late nineteenth century. Watson writes that she has 'nothing but sheer aversion from the huge, bloated and blotched calceolarias that [her gardener] would dearly delight to honour' (62). In 'Anne of Ingleside,' Anne is returning home to Ingleside after a visit to Green Gables. She confides to Diana that she is dreading finding a way to praise Susan's calceolarias which to Anne 'don't look like flowers to me at all. But I never hurt Susan's feelings by telling her so' (Ch. 2). The moment of crisis is averted when Susan asks whether Anne has 'noticed the calceolarias' which allows Anne to reply that she 'never saw such calceolarias in my life, Susan. How do you manage it?' Internally, Anne reflects 'there, I've made Susan happy and haven't told a fib. I never did see such calceolarias ... thank heaven!' (Ch. 3). To read more about calceolarias, see this Missouri Botanical Gardens page.

Genre

essays

Type of Item

contemporaneous