Reading Dickinson's garden

Published on May 25, 2007

Dozens of books have been written analyzing the poetry and the life of Emily Dickinson. Only recently, however, have writers turned to the subject of her gardens and her love of nature, so integral to her poetry.

Judith Farr, a Dickinson scholar and emeritus professor at Georgetown University, wrote "The Gardens of Emily Dickinson," published in 2004 by Harvard University Press. The price is $26.95.

Her book encompasses not only the physical gardens but Dickinson's use of garden imagery in her poetry and "that garden unseen," the inner plot Dickinson called the soul. This is an erudite book, focusing more on the poet than the gardener. However, Farr asked landscape designer Louise Carter to contribute a hefty section on the plants Dickinson grew, along with advice on how to cultivate them today.

The second recent book is "Emily Dickinson's Garden -- A celebration of a poet and gardener" by Marta McDowell, a garden writer and lecturer at Drew University and the New York Botanical Garden. The book was published in 2005 by McGraw-Hill. It sells for $18.95.

McDowell said she isn't a Dickinson scholar. "I have neither the training nor the temperament," she said. "Rather her gardens and plant interests provided a hook for me to understand her life, her poetry and some of the connections to people and places around her."

This is more of a gardener's book than a scholarly tome about the poet's use of garden and nature imagery. It has plenty of tips on how to grow the plants Emily Dickinson loved and is arranged by seasons. It also has important information about the poet's mother and her Norcross cousins, who were also great gardeners, as well as the landscape design interests of her brother, Austin. Emily Norcross Dickinson was known for her 'Brown Turkey' figs, not an easy plant to grow successfully in our climate.

The most recent book is the fantastic "Emily Dickinson's Herbarium, A Facsimile Edition," published last fall by Harvard University. The original herbarium or collection of dried flower specimens is so fragile that Harvard has forbidden even serious scholars from examining it for many years. Modern digital color photography made it possible to create the facsimile. Farr wrote one of the introductions to the book, which sells for $125.

It is incredible to see the faded flowers carefully held in place by tiny strips of paper on which are written the names of the plants. The only glue is affixed to the paper, not to the plants themselves. Dickinson studied botany at Amherst Academy and at Mount Holyoke Seminary and was very familiar with botanical nomenclature. She was a serious student of plants both the garden variety and wild flowers.

Ray Angelo of Harvard's Herbaria verified the identification of the 424 specimens on the 66 pages of the book. He discovered that one plant, Castilleja coccinea, is now considered extinct in Massachusetts. He also identified one unlabelled plant as marijuana!

There is a book for every level of interest in Emily Dickinson's plants and they are all available at local libraries as well as bookstores and the Emily Dickinson Museum.

-CHERYL B. WILSON