A book is commissioned. (not mine)
I was recently talking with a friend who has just been commissioned to write a book about a specific genus of plants. He and/or his commissioning editor had had the idea that he might add a section at the end with comments from other people about – this specific genus of plants. Rather like, I imagined, I had done at the end of Deckchair Gardener, where I asked friends to write what their best garden mistakes had been.
I think the best of these was possibly this:
But no, not like that. The commissioning editor suggested ‘My Favourite Thingy Plant’ to my friend. (fill in with relevant genus of plant. See how discrete I am? I have always anonymised people who I think ought to blush at what I report of them and in spite of this mega virtue I am still regarded generally as unpublishable).
I am happy to report that my friend was not happy with this banal suggestion.
Garden writing is supposed to be boring.
But it brought home to me once more just how banal we are supposed to be as garden writers. When I began offering garden articles to various editors, I naively supposed that the reason garden writing was bland and anodyne was that editor knew of no-one who could do any better. But no – brilliant and original garden writers are generally simply not wanted, especially in newspapers and magazines.
Books may be a little different as you are possibly more likely to come across adventurous publishers. (Let me know ?) And there are exceptions in all those publications – it helps to be funny. It is a disaster to be truly serious.
Was this the Thingy Plant? Well, I have seen some truly terrible plantings…..
I was recently reading a piece about the best practices various ‘beauty’ writers (where on earth did that description of that particular media world arise?!) would recommend to the readers based on their own habits. I was delighted by a woman who began by saying that she never takes her make up off before she goes to bed, because she can’t be bothered.
I imagine I don’t need to say why this was so refreshing. My experience suggests that, o, misery, ‘beauty’ journalism and garden journalism are twinned in the banality requirement. How on earth did that wonderful and rule breaking suggestion escape the Deadly Editor? When someone breaks the rules, it can suddenly show up just how boring and predictable the stuff we read really is.
Bland conformity
“Which Thingy Plant would you happily consign to an eternal compost heap?” or “What was the worst Thingy Plant planting you ever saw?” (and I have seen some dreadful examples of that particular Thingy Plant plantings) would be actually interesting and engaging, unlike ‘My Favourite Thingy Plant’.
But that is never required.
Banality is what is wanted, loved, admired, required. Don’t wake the reader!
I once suggested in a garden magazine piece that the best way to address a lacuna in a late summer border was shopping, and that was instantly eliminated by a shocked sub editor. Shopping??? Unmentionable, although, of course, relentlessly encouraged.
Or is this the Thingy Plant??? Hmm???
The Advertising Problem
Much of it is dictated by preoccupations concerning advertising. An editor who did used to risk my heretical pieces now and then told me how critical it is to keep advertisers on side. And that also advertisers want garden pieces directed to young and novice gardeners (hence all that ‘how to’ and ’where to’) because they are the people who will be buying garden tools, machines, sundries, greenhouses and all those usually things older gardeners already have.
Eloquent….
So more cheers for Garden Rant: – we have no editor leaning on us this way.
Usually a publication wants to keep a certain style uniformly across the whole and if the publication is bland, cheerful, reassuring and frequently dishonest then that is what a writer must provide. No matter how often you go to bed in your make up. This is why books sometimes escape – they only have the imprint to perhaps vaguely conform to. But speak it quietly – it is sometimes simply because bland is the accepted style and no-one cares. I strongly suspect that it simply seems right to editors. I had a dreadful struggle with one editor who ‘corrected’ anything slightly unusual to the point that we had a real fight about it.
The Immovable Object
And perhaps it has to be said that garden writers tend to get stuck once they have a column.Or columns. Robin Lane Fox has been garden correspondent for The Financial Times for some 30 years, Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh have been writing for everything for ever. So imagine having to be original and exciting every week for all that time and you might excuse big boredom.
Yep, that’s me and the ever present Alan…
Have you any great examples of garden writing which has escaped the Big Be Boring prison? I did come across one the other day, in ‘Sissinghurst: The Dream Garden by Tim Richardson’. He brings his excellent book to a conclusion with a poem he wrote himself, inspired by the garden. But Tim has a great deal of clout, based on his years of horticultural writing. Maybe this encourages an editor to indulge him.
All this helps to explain my joy in Garden Rant (though not forgetting the British thinkingardens also) and being invited to write here – the freedom!!! (But what will I have left to say this time next year?)
A timely read. I’ve been thinking about garden podcasts, wondering if there was one that might be interested in my take on gardens, which I consider thoughtful and intellectually challenging. Anything other than ‘how to’ podcasts are few and far between. Am I wrong? Are there podcasts out there daring to go beyond those parameters?
I hope you are wrong and that there are some exciting and challenging podcasts!
What a wonderful piece. I too have had the same struggles with editors who want to drop quotes of others just because it’s a tiny bit quirky, such as anthropomorphizing plants with the quote, “Every plant wants to have a full and productive life with vigor and resistance to predators and diseases.” I won on that one, but the impulse to bland is rampant. Thanks for talking about this. Staying inside the perceived comfort zone is so dull.
There’s still part of me that simply finds it very weird. And surely counter productive?
Amen! — perhaps too weak a word to express my huge hurrah for your thoughts above Anne. (Not to mention the reference to vorpal blades!) The lack of an editorial board certainly keeps things fresh and often uncomfortable around here as this is an opinionated site with even more opinionated readers (double hurrah!). Given my druthers I’d love a copy editor to do a quick scan for typos that we often don’t see, but the editorial freedom is both fantastic and frightening.
I’ve always been attracted to clever, informative writing — a sense of personality helps the medicine go down. Plus, risky, intelligent writing IN PRINT gives us delicious opportunities to come across un-deleteable nuggets like a pre-Gardener’s World Monty Don calling GW “naff but nice” (or was it “nice but naff”?).
Wonder how he spun that in the interview… “I’ll make it less naff?” Regardless – I appreciated the honesty. And for that matter – yours in your tell-all chapter about Garden Experts in The Bad Tempered Gardener. Priceless.
HOWEVER – and this is a big however – not all brilliant and talented plantspeople are brilliant and talented writers. And the world NEEDS excellent reference books. If the point of the commission is to get that person’s wealth of experience documented for the benefit of others, is it a necessarily a bad thing that you may need several espressos to get through each chapter? In today’s author-as-promoter world, I am thrilled if a publisher is willing to take a chance on a bone-fide subject matter expert, as these decisions now have a great deal to do with how well the author will promote the book. I maintain that anyone who devotes their life to being a TRUE expert in their field simply does not have the time to tweet it out three times a day. They may be able to pay someone to do that for them, but the real work requires real concentration. I am assuming your friend is an expert on ‘thingy’ of course. Great rant. xoMW
Your thoughts re reference books open up a whole new aspect, with publishers apparently saying they are no longer needed because ‘it’s all on the internet’ and some of the ones which do get published are not worth the paper they are printed on. I have some of the latter on my book shelves and you’re welcome to take them away….
I wonder if the ability to marshal your thoughts coherently and express them clearly as well as (we hope ) extensive experience of a plant means that an ability to write is actually necessary in a good reference book?
This merits more thought.
And the willingness and ability to promote a book? – drives me mad. What a way to spend your time. (See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/8965434/Anne-Wareham-a-succession-of-amazing-humiliations.html) Much of that may be more about filling up endless desperate media slots than actually selling copies?
I used to write for a tea blog that went through multiple editors in it’s search to cultivate a voice that would attract a certain kind of reader. Only one editor believed in having multiple voices covering different angles and creative approaches, and giving the authors freedom to decide what to write (which brought a broader audience, including newbies); when she left, I did too. The opinionated diversity of Gardenrant is why I keep coming back—keep up the good work!
We need more people like you and that editor!
more ranting please!
Takes a good ranter to know a good ranter?
I don’t often find the gardening content here relevant to my NZ garden (wildly different climates, for one thing) but I read it for the voices! If I was just after information I’d read an encyclopedia.
What this world needs, in my opinion, is more garden writing such as one had in the old days – witty and self-deprecating but realistic about the challenges of actual gardening. (On which note, it’s incredibly hard to find a copy of We Made a Garden in this country, let alone Merry Hall or Gardening’s Such Fun!)
Yes, yes and yes! So agree. From NZ
I’m sorry to hear that about the books. One of the great joys of the internet, I have thought, is how it’s made the knowledge of such books and their dissemination so much more accessible. Takes me back to marketing: books are only reviewed and discussed when they are brand new, but they can and do go on selling for years and years. Where once you had to chance on a book in a second hand book shop, now you can scour the world for copies. But not in New Zealand?
Well, there’s always the internet, but then there’s always international shipping as well, which frequently works out to as much or more than the cost of the book itself.
All my books are available in the UK as eBooks. I’m not suggesting you’d want them, (and royalties on ebooks are tiny!) but I wonder if that also means they are available digitally in New Zealand?
Most likely because I live in my own little green world, I had no idea garden writing was supposed to be dull. This is depressing. Is this true on both sides of the pond?
Quirky and funny are what I look for and what keeps me reading. Oh, and from your rant, I guess ageism plays a part in today’s publishing. My sister who is an author says it’s definitely there. (I’ve noticed in all sorts of writing not necessarily related to gardening, where many pieces behave as if their readers are young, stupid, and have no opinions. In essence, they act as if they are your mother. For example: “Do this, not that!” and “Get rid of these things in your closet immediately!” “Never do ____” Who put these authors in charge, and why do they need to tell us what to do?)
Along with your “Bad Tempered Gardener”, I thought (and these are OLD books) the “$64 Tomato” by William Alexander and “Mrs. Greenthumbs” by Cassandra Danz were pretty funny. However, I know some readers thought Ms. Danz was over-the-top in her humor and appearance. Fine Gardening Magazine also often has a humorous piece at the end of its publications.
I have enjoyed all of your rants. Keep on ranting!
Laura, I was thinking of Cassandra Danz as well! I loved her book “Mrs. Greenthumbs,” which managed to be informative and also downright hilarious at times. To this day, I can’t see a hooped peony, its stems lolling a bit against its iron prison, without remember her description of it as looking like drunks gambling at the race track, leaning over the railing. It never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Thanks! I think humour in itself is acutely lacking in garden writing. Do we take ourselves too horribly seriously???? But I guess real humour requires an even greater talent than being a specialist grower and a good writer? Pieces which set out to be funny too often set my teeth on edge.
Helen Yemm’s piece on pruning shrubs made me snort tea out of my nose. I was very pleased to see on Twitter recently that you and she appear to be friends.
As for seriousness, and at the risk of sounding like someone from “Pseud’s Corner”, I was floored by your essay “Exile and Belonging” in “Bad Tempered Gardener”. I am very new to gardening and have bought and read numerous books in the past year, many of which have been useful but nearly all were unremarkable. I didn’t expect anything more from them. Your story is very different from mine, but I have never read anything that better sums up the conflicts and contradictions of being an emigrant. In two pages. I really, *really* did not expect that from a gardening book, which is, I suppose, exactly your point. I’ve ordered another copy in case I ever lose this one. I sent it to a friend. We can’t be the only ones out there, surely.
And, by the way, the only days I go to bed with no makeup on are those when I haven’t bothered to put it on in the first place.
Thank you.
This is so good to hear (and yes, I hope Helen would regard us as friends: I’m a great admirer)
Thank you so much for your appreciation of the Bad Tempered Gardener, and for letting me know. Just sometimes, when someone writes to me like this, it feels as if I’ve really been writing them a letter. And I feel so pleased that what I’ve said has resonated.
Ah, the make up – but the neither of us are ”beauty correspondents”. Beauty, for heaven’s sake!!!!!
In gardening there is no such thing as a cheat. Said by Christopher Lloyd, who knew exactly what to do with a gap in a summer border.
This conjured up a picture of the great man setting off out to the local nursery with a shopping basket on his arm….as if he ever…..
One of the finest writing I have read so far!
O, sweet! Thank you!! Xxxxx
So there is a reason I reread Henry Mitchell’s books of his columns?
Ah! (Just looked him up) There’s a revelation! I had heard the name but I see his writing is maybe spot on?
Yes! He was one of the first authors who came to mind! Opinionated and funny and not afraid to express how he really felt about a plant or a theory.
I have bought and I will discover!
I love this! In garden books I want someone who tells me what they thing strongly. Otherwise why bother reading it? Like the book “Small Formal Gardens” which is so against uninspired lawns. Or the rock gardening book from the 1960s that gives you examples of what NOT to do unapologetically while saying you’d be stupid to do them now that you know better. Fantastic. I might not agree with the author but that’s half the fun.
Yes, just so!
In addition to Henry Mitchell, mentioned above, Eleanor Perenyi’s “Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden” is a wonderful collection of short essays on everything from Annuals to Woman’s Place. Like all truly wonderful garden writers, she is knowledgeable, opinionated, and funny. It’s what makes Michael Dirr and Alan Armitage so much fun to turn to when in need of horticultural advice. “A Gardener Obsessed” by Geoffrey B Charlesworth is worth tracking down if only for his response to “Why did my plant die?” — a “poem” too long to quote, but that covers almost every possible reason. “Reflections from a Garden” by Susan Hill and Rory Stuart is particularly notable for its “Grumbling Appendix”, in which each author has a chance to take issue with the other’s opinion. And I found Anne Wareham after finding a copy of “The Bad-Tempered Gardener” because, really, how could I not want to read that?
Thanks for these. Have you also come across Rory’s What Are Gardens For?: Visiting, Experiencing and Thinking About Gardens ? A must read. (Like Bad Tempered??!) Xxx
Yes! It’s one of the “keepers” on my shelves.
Good to hear.
Great rant! I will have to find a copy of “The Bad-Tempered Gardener.” I second Henry Mitchell, but my go-to when I want wonderful garden writing is still Beverley Nichols, despite the misogyny. I was delighted when Timber Press reprinted his garden books.
Nicholls is fun – and doesn’t just write about plants. I’d always thought of him as a private pleasure until the re-issue. I think you should be able to find Bad Tempered Gardener – I hope so!
Yes! It’s one of the “keepers” on my shelves.
George Schenk deserves mention. I periodically reread The Complete Shade Gardener for another dose of his mellow, wry voice. This book is one long literate, opinionated ode to plants. Absolutely unique. See also his book on tabletop gardening, breathtakingly quirky. He doesn’t pull punches: About Paulownia tomentosa he says, “Something close to a total mess: coarse and fast in habit, it drops squishy flowers and smothering leaves. The roots are robbers, the shade a tarpit.”
Sounds great!