3 minute, 22 second read.
It’s difficult to chew and enjoy an aged, grass-fed steak when you’ve been living on a diet of McDonalds cheeseburgers – or a sautéed portobello when you’ve got a freezer full of Quorn.
If you choose the first option(s), you’re going to give your mouth a workout, and delight your tongue with nuanced flavors beyond the salt, fat, acid, sweet, balance that soothes and numbs the palate and keeps us snacking beyond our bedtimes. It’s not the easier choice, but it’s the healthier one.
Similarly, it’s hard to read anything of any substance when you’ve gradually trained your brain to read tiny bits of text; fat, inflammatory headlines; and simplistic solutions – also designed to keep us snacking beyond our bedtimes…designed to keep us feeling full and ‘informed,’ but which ultimately contribute to an intellectual malnourishment both unsatisfying and dangerous.
I’m not throwing barbs at the news sites. It’s everywhere – and gardeners are not immune. In fact, garden writing is a genre with a long, popular history that clearly shows how far we’ve regressed (even as we pat ourselves on the back for moving forward).

Two of seven in-depth pages from an article on the genus Begonia by Mildred L. Thompson, from the January 1976 issue of Horticulture magazine.

A similar genus-specific article in the November 2019 issue of Horticulture.
Just in from the “We’re Doomed” Desk…
This week, Washington Gardener magazine brought my simmering thoughts on TLDR Culture to a rolling boil when its editor, Kathy Jentz, used her opening letter to gently defend her new book against some online reviewers. Apparently, they couldn’t handle more than 4-500 words of text on 101 topics related to urban gardening, and termed the snippets “too long.” The topics were separated, I might add, by big, colorful photographs.
Authors rarely engage with critics, lest they go mad or appear too sensitive, but I recognized the frustration which led to her letter. This is a book co-authored with Teri Speight that I reviewed here last week; and which – ironically – I might have accused of not going deep enough, had I chosen to throw that punch.
Why didn’t I? Because I’m painfully aware of the tiny space between rock and hard place that the co-authors inhabit: between an audience seeking tidbits, and publishers seeking an audience. I’ve been there myself and it’s a challenging space to negotiate. For both authors and publishers.
And yet it appears that in their desire to educate and inspire readers (particularly beginners) on the many facets of urban gardening – and do so without overwhelming anyone – they didn’t go shallow enough.

The Urban Garden, Kathy Jentz & Teri Speight, Cool Springs Press, 2022
500 words. On Cool Season Edibles. Or Layered Plantings to Maximize Harvests. Or Raised Beds and Square Foot Gardens. You have GOT to be freaking kidding me.
Mel Bartholomew’s original Square Foot Gardening is 347 pages. With scary charts, and confusing tables, and line drawings, and…wait for it…black and white photos! How did over a million gardeners in the eighties and nineties manage to wade through all that informative text?

Just some of the ‘too long’ information in Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening [Companion to the PBS Series, 1981]
Sharp, succinct writing should be the goal of all writers – even those who love to play with words. And there’s a lot of terrible writing out there fully worthy of contemptuous hipster terms. Most of us could lose a hundred words and never feel it.
But at the same time, the definition of “succinct” is changing. In a new TLDR Culture, we are conflating word count with wordiness, dismissing it outright, and looking for the Cliff Notes instead.
We don’t want to chew our food.
TLDR Culture Takes Hold
For those who have never come across the initialism TLDR (and subsequently felt their soul die a little bit that very first time they looked it up), let me take a moment to get us all on the same page, as I think it’s relevant to the place in which we find ourselves now. And where we’re going.
For the TLDRs out there, I’ll meet you at the end, with a [short] conclusion.
In 2003, TL;DR, or “Too Long; Didn’t Read” got its first entry in the Urban Dictionary. At first, it was used in internet chat forums to snarkily disparage the long rambling comments of other users that could be summed up in one sentence, such as: “TL;DR: It’s 3am and I’m tired, socially inept, and angry at the world.” Or “TL;DR: Your team sucks.”
Gradually TL;DR was used by posters themselves on forums such as Reddit – where a shorter summary of a long post was offered for readers who couldn’t be bothered to read the entire thing, and which begged the question of why the poster bothered to write it in the first place.
But these things tend to wander out of their caves eventually, and over the next two decades TL;DR made it into common internet parlance – in comments at the end of broadsheet editorials, or tacked to the front- or back-end of articles that dared to delve further than Google’s most recent proclamation on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) length. Some very clever people used it to sum up great books, with hilarious results.

A quick snippet of one of the funniest things I’ve read this week. Except it’s only funny if you’ve actually read these plays. There’s much more of Joshua Engel’s cleverness with Will’s plot lines at https://tinyurl.com/5n9yrpac
New writers wondered if they should start their essays with a TL;DR. “People are lazy, for the most part, and I like to accommodate.,” says one on Quora, breaking my heart with her acquiescence and realism. TL;DR was eventually shortened to TLDR – possibly because the irony of using semicolons in a hip initialism to disparage something that by its nature probably used them, was just too cognitively dissonant, even for those who specialized in such things.
Dumb and Getting Dumber
At the same time, Corporate Media (already operating at a 10th grade reading level) changed to attract very distractable eyeballs. Short snippets, inflammatory headlines, and immediate links to more digestible snippets were offered to those who managed to stop browsing the endless social media foodcourt feeds. We began to add the approximate time it would take you to read an article at the beginning, as if to apologize for the time it was wasting. [Hopefully you’re coming to the three-minute mark on this one.]
We – all of us – became lazier readers. And slowly, a culture emerged which didn’t just apologize for the vice, but lauded it in a voice laced with contempt. Faced with a long article truly worth reading, the premise could shift: the writing was probably bad, not the reader.
And it’s severely infected our ability to think, process, absorb – disagree perhaps – but ultimately learn.

If 500 words is too long on a single topic, one can only imagine how many minds are blown up by entire books devoted to a specific genus or genre of plants.
It’s that Old Chicken and The Egg Thing Again
“People want to read books, but they don’t actually want to “read” them.” says Jentz in the letter that started this Rant. “Skimmable text with lots of lists, subheads, photos, and bullet points are how we read online, so now that is how we want to digest our books…”
It is beyond naïve to believe that such things will not continue to encourage the superficial exploration of important topics both online and on the shelf. Or fail to inform people in any meaningful way. Or discourage any subsequent, and lingering, thought on what has just been read. When you read in bullet points, you think in bullet points. Or, as an author friend put it – far more cleverly – “When you read in bullet points, you think in blanks.”
We’ve put ourselves on a steady diet of this for too long. The publishers are responding. And now, those who can actually be tempted to give up a screen full of snacks to make a foray into books require the tiniest of crumbs – lest they choke when they fail to chew.
500-word snippets on 101 topics is “too long?” Call it realism, hip, attitude, practicality…a new generation…. a new paradigm… Call it whatever you want, but you sure as hell can’t call it progress. My very best wishes to Jentz and Speight and all fellow authors and publishers as we try and navigate this new marketplace with grace and integrity. -MW
To read more that bullet points requires someone to think, which seems to be asking a lot of them these days.
I am currently reading The Lost Gardens of Heligan, a beautiful winding personal and botanical memoir of the finding and restoring of a now-beloved place. I’m grateful for not just the ability to read long and winding narratives, but the curiosity to do so.
You last paragraph causes me to wonder what will end up happening to the art and love of gardening that is facilitated and encouraged by in-depth information.
I read the same book a number of years ago (and re-read it during the pandemic) and was able to visit this enchanting garden after reading the book.
Loved the book. Loved the visit. But, I love to read about gardens, and plants, and landscapes…
🙂
That’s a haunting garden Ann, very memorable. I haven’t read the book. – MW
It isn’t one to hurry through, but to sit with and imagine and chuckle along with the author at their predicaments and solutions 🙂
If they can’t handle a book, they certainly can’t handle a garden either. Probably best to know that before starting. I listen to a lot of podcasts and have heard that people complain that gardening is too complex. Time to toughen up!
I’ve been buying old garden magazines for a while now-they are much more informative.Home Garden was a gem in the 40s,and any Better Homes and Gardens issue with Fleeta Brownell Woodruffe is worth saving!I miss Flower and Garden,too.
This article is absolutely accurate. So much of current gardening articles, books, and magazines is so ineffective at conveying information, mostly due to lack of “wordiness” (depth) that you have to read 10 or more articles or (commonly) short books (with lots of pictures) to ger the information you would have gotten out of one serious text written in the 1970s or before.
I agree,Debra. It’s for this reason I rarely pick up a magazine anymore. It seems they’re are just filled with pretty “fluff”.
Guilty. I mean, I only skimmed this, of course, but I am pretty sure I am guilty. 😉
You are so bad. – MW
So tragic! No wonder people don’t learn critical thinking any more! No time for that. Please continue writing wonderful, in depth books!
Thank you Sandy! – MW
I wonder if part of it is reading on our devices. I find it difficult on my eyes. My go to is paper without interruptions. Give me a whole book on Hellebores, YES!
It is a fantastic book Lisa by Cole Burrell and Judith Tyler. Excellent reference which usually gets well-thumbed in February/March. If I thumbed it more in September I’d have a better collection. 🙂 -MW
I feel so fortunate that I found your articles in our local paper. Through you and your fellow writers I have read (and continue to enjoy) Christopher Lloyd’s “The Well Tempered Garden”, Pamela J. Harper’s “Time-Tested Plants”, Margaret Roach’s “the Backyard Parables”, Douglas W. Tallamy’s “Bringing Nature Home”, Roberts and Rehmann’s “American Plants for American Gardens” among numerous others. Research texts include work by Allan Armitage, Robert Kourik and Heather Holm. I am now a subscriber to the AHS American Gardener. I am enriched and my little spot of earth is too. Thank you. Keep up the good work.
Filling me with happiness Mary Lou. Thanks. These are all great resources and I wish every gardener in America would join The AHS as an obvious thing to do to support the mission of promoting horticulture across the US! And then of course they could read my column in The American Gardener….;) – MW
l’ll pipe in to say that having given it more thought after writing that Editor’s Letter, that there is a small hope for long-form garden communications in one format — that is the gardening podcast. For my weekly episodes of GardenDC, I record in-depth interviews on one overall topic with a guest garden expert. The interviews last 45-55 minutes and I have seen in the listener statistics that the longer they are, the more people listen. The inverse of what we are seeing in online/print consumption. I believe this confirms that there IS an audience for in-depth gardening information, but that reading it in print or online may not be the preferred way for many to consume it. I know my own tired, computer-worn eyes have trouble reading for pleasure or education at the end of the day.
That’s a good way of seeing the silver lining Kathy, and I agree; but I also know that I don’t take notes on podcasts the way I take notes with books (leading to less absorption) because I’m usually in the garden or working in the house. I very much hope that we can find our way out of this place. And thanks for letting me piggy-back on your irritation! – MW
unfortunately my comment is lengthy, erudite, complex, insightful and based on being an old person who loves long books….so I will pass
Sounds like the type of comment I love Sally. Thanks for joining the conversation. – MW
Well said! This trend goes along with the general ‘dumbing down’ of information aimed at the public. Dazzled by gorgeous pictures who needs anything further. I stopped subscribing to many magazines as there was very little information just lots of horticultural porn. My whole family loves books, big thick ones with lots of words and information that engages us. Let’s hope these little sound bites of information are a passing trend and we return to reading as a way to educate, for enjoyment and an opportunity to slow down and relax.
You know what is sort of ironic – digital media has started to shift to longer word counts, at least for brands that are laser focused on SEO. Google is rewarding more in-depth content for search rank (at least until the next algo update)!
That’s good to know Viveka. Last time I checked in it was 1000-1200? But of course that means that key words need to be repeated a certain amount of times throughout the text – whether they need to be or not. I should check the Yoast on this post, bet you I blew TLDR out of the water. (not intentionally!) – MW
I was eating my curried rice salad and reading your article and loving learning about TLDR for the first time!!! (Not many things are “virginic” at my age!) And all of sudden I started laughing out loud and woke my husband who was sunbathing on the deck and he wondered “Hey Hon…what am I missing?” And I started to give him the “Rebecca Digest” Version of your article and realized….”oh my God, I am part of the problem”!!! He got the full version of your article and we both howled together!! You my love, are a fabulous gardener and a delightful writer. Many thanks for a happy read on the deck!!!
Thanks Becky! – MW
There’s so much information overload these days. For some reason we’ve settled for a mile wide and an inch deep, instead of, er, something a bit more sensibly proportioned.
I am an elder millennial and actually read every word of this rant. I do find myself scrolling and skimming and looking at the pictures when the writing isn’t engaging. The best garden writers tell stories in a way that captivates. Books with a lot of lists and charts are too dry and clinical for my taste – I prefer the poetic descriptions of nature’s wonder. I have read all 800+ pages of Monty Don’s Complete Gardener – my poor wrists were struggling but my heart and mind were happy. I’ve also gotten through many books by Ken Druse – love his photos and attention to detail.
Please be gentle with generations that were raised with more technology – there are definite changes to the brain and how information is consumed. Hopefully gardening helps teach patience in our instant gratification culture!
Please also consider that it is a tremendous privilege to have access to big books, time to read them, and the concentration required to do so. I am thinking of those with learning disabilities, long COVID, or maybe just looking for a quick answer. Not everyone learns best by reading – podcasts and video and lecture are great ways to get information. If buying a book, I expect a book – I believe the listicles and bullet points should stay in an online format. So disappointing to finish reading a volume and feel I haven’t gotten anything out of it.
I work in agriculture where many folks work super demanding hours, generally are NOT able to sit still, may have low educational attainment / literacy, and are often speakers of languages other than English. Super smart and mostly NOT readers of books – my materials have to be at a 4th grade reading level and often include (gasp) bullet points! A far cry from my college days, spent studying literature and getting through analysis of a novel a week.
Anna, thanks for your comments, I’m very glad you enjoy books as an “elder millennial.” I’ve never heard that term before — I suppose that would make me a middle of the pack GenXer. We’re obviously on the same page in places, but in others, I’ve got a few thoughts. The first is, I’m not willing to be gentle anymore. It’s an unwillingness to point fingers at intellectual laziness that has brought us to this point. It’s not getting better unless we identify the problem.
I agree with you completely that some people are visual learners – as it has always been. Second language learners are naturally going to search for books at a lower reading level (as I do with children’s Spanish books to slowly teach myself). It does not mean we should lower literacy standards across the board.
Way before Long COVID there were (and are) plenty of other brainfog inducing illnesses, such as chronic Lyme disease, which I myself suffer from. However, if these realities hamper someone’s ability to read and enjoy something of worth, reviewing books online probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Bottom line, it’s pretty clear from my post that I’m not talking about readers who deal with challenges. I’m talking about a cultural shift (however inadvertently it happened) that significantly lowers standards of literacy. We can do that, sure. But we can’t for one single moment think that it is helping us to critically think about and discuss ideas, or to express ourselves within the incredible range our language affords us.
We are fortunate, and have been fortunate for decades, to benefit from a robust public library system which encourages inter-library loans, not to mention digital access to cheap used copies if you wish to buy them. More than 85% of my gardening library has been collected in thrift stores, library book sales, book rescues, and the like (as you can see from the stickers on the photo above). In today’s world, books are very, very accessible. We should be more literate than we have ever been. – MW
Bravo to your reply, MW.
Yes! Someone needed to say this, so thank you! I’ve started purchasing and reading many of the old gardening classics (and some new to me) because I want more in depth information. Of course, I need to buy Jentz and Speight’s book, too.
I see that Christopher Lloyd has already been mentioned, to my mind the gold standard of continuous prose in garden literature. My book shelves are full of collections of bullet points and pictograms. All useful in their place, but not something from which you can derive any pleasure. I think part of the problem is that garden writing is almost always going to be based on imparting facts; time of planting, time of pruning, ultimate height, flower colour, etc. So a bullet pointed list is going to be the route of least resistance. Mr Lloyds works are pleasurable to read partly because of the personal opinions that add a little extra colour, precisely the kind of thing you cannot fit into a bullet point. I would say more, but I don’t want to be too wordy (smiley face emoji, winky face emoji).
Christopher Lloyd in my mind is one of the best examples in modern gardening writing of someone who could write lyrically on a subject filled with facts and figures and manage to impart a great deal of information in the process. That is the precise type of writing – whatever the discipline – that disappears first in this new marketplace. Because that extra word used, or a precise turn of phrase, or an unexpected comment — the elements that make writing good, like the brushstrokes on a painting, are all skimmable. And when you skim them, you have absolutely no idea why the author didn’t just make his or her main points and get on with it. It’s a terrible thing. Thanks for the comment Chris. – MW
This is terribly depressing. Never heard of TL;DR before. I have heard that publishers don’t want to publish books on plants anymore, because ‘it’s all online’. (written by nurseries)
I have, however, recently bought and then abandoned reading, several garden books. I know I’ve been at this gardening thing a long time and have poor patience for reading the same old same old over and over. (And I possess several hundred garden books)
But I think it’s worth adding that quality of writing counts and maybe that is becoming rare. Lively, readable, entertaining and personal writing matters. And garden books are more often enthused about than criticised.
Further reflection: The Observer (UK) used to publish columns by Vita Sackville-West and Christopher Lloyd. The FT (UK) has published Robin Lane Fox for time out of mind. But today the demand is for the young, diverse and auto speak writer – idiosyncratic writers like those, with their own as opposed to corporate speak voices would never get a column now.
So – boredom rules and that ought to have its own abbreviation: TBTC. (Too Boring, Too Clichéd.)
See my comment to Chris above. I think we’ve forgotten (and two generations, perhaps three, have never been taught) that a huge component of reading is pleasure, and when pleasure and productivity combine….oh it is a beautiful thing.
Yes Anne, let’s rise up and make our own set of contemptuous initialisms. Happy to start with TBTC. How about DHV (Dismissive Hipster Vibe) or INTSS (It’s Not That Simple Sweetheart). 🙂 – MW
🙂
I have gifted hundreds of gardening books to our local library and Yew Dell Gardens, the past few years. I pared down to what I simply can’t part with—those books I reference often or others that have sentimental value. I’m down to a hundred or so. Walter Benjamin’s essay, “Unpacking My Library” reveals the truth about his love for books and the “chaos of memories.” He also addresses the shame he feels about books on his shelves he has meant to read and never quite got around to. I know that feeling, also. I feel shame every week when my iPhone reminds me how long I’ve spent looking at my tiny screen the past week. You can find Benjamin’s “longish read” online.
Back 100 years ago when I first started getting interested in gardening, I remember going to the library and checking out back issues of Horticulture, reading them cover to cover. At first I thought they were above me and I’d never get to the level of the writing but lo and behold, I learned so much!
And I enjoyed it. Then I subscribed to the magazine and started checking out books, mostly those written by famous gardeners, and I continue to do so even though I’m not physically able to garden like I once did. I can’t imagine starting out today with the same interest level and having only the TLDR material available. Thank you for writing about what’s going on today, I didn’t realize TLDR was a thing.
Food for thought is what you have brought us with this one, Marianne. I’ve read it three times so far. Thank you for all the time you invest in your writing, even when the garden calls.
Thanks Jenny. And boy, in this heat is it ever calling! – MW
Hah! This all rings way too true for me, an old, cranky professor of Anthropology (as well as a gardener, garden writer and garden reader) who finds that students at my (supposedly elite) college balk at reading whole books.
ATL;SR (almost too long, still read). But then again, the “gardening books” I like to read are full of story, lacking photos. Michael Pollan’s “Second Nature”, or anything by Mirabel Osler, Henry Mitchell, Des Kennedy, Allen Lacey, Beverley Nichols, and Sydney Eddison are just a few of my favorites. And yet my own blog is probably more on the NTL;pictures.
I do love TLDR when it comes to things like Reddit. I think in that instance it’s actually really useful! Which makes sense since social media is where it started.
Looking at your picture of an old Horticulture Magazine I do want more pictures though. I like very in-depth writing AND very pretty pictures, which is why I like reading Monty Don, Ken Druse, and such so much. Although I also like classic garden memoirs with fewer pictures…but wouldn’t they be better with more pictures? I think older books were more limited picture-wise and color-wise because of printing costs and they would have added more if they could have.
Thank you. Enjoyed your article. Every word.
Thank you so much, Marianne. I have to remind myself to get Henry Mitchell or Christopher Lloyd down off the shelf. Great writing! Validation! Hilarity! And the books smell so much better than my iPad.
Great article, Marianne, very well written and entertaining! I agree that there is less and less out there of substance and possibly fewer people that are willing to read it. Not that you did, but I would be careful to blame “younger” generations for the TLDR situation we find ourselves in today. It appears more to be to be a symptom of our circumstances being that we are bombarded by such a surplus of media (a construct of a generation that grew up consuming almost nothing but books, by the way) that we feel we can’t afford a good deep-dive lest we miss other important information. I support the need for more immersive reading, but man, is it nearly impossible to stay up to date on things these days as it is.
Circle the bases, MW; you knocked it out of the park once again. Write as much as you want- I will read and savor every word.
Hello, I am a first time reader of the Garden Rant. It was just a few days ago I was lamenting to myself how much I learned about gardening by reading long books and long articles in Horticulture, and how now the articles are much shorter and not as informative as I remember they were years ago. Even garden catalogs gave detailed descriptions of the plants and what they needed to thrive, now all short and woefully uninformative. Thanks for the thoughts.
Welcome to GardenRant Jacquelyn. I hope you find much to enjoy here. You’re not alone in your concerns about the dumbing down of magazines, or indeed, the elite-ing of them — Anne just wrote a great article on the changes in Gardens Illustrated, I urge readers to check it out. – MW
Of course, a lot of this is rooted in our “modern” educational system. Students aren’t usually taught to think critically or to do much in depth investigation. Many topics are broken down into bite sized pieces, but then never brought back into a cohesive whole. Teachers have too many topics to teach and too little time to do so. Not too mention the huge societal push to consume more, faster. It’s no wonder many of us have the attention span of a gnat. Each one of us has a responsibility to slow down, think, and enjoy…and to teach others to do so as well.