I had a flashback last month, glimpsing along the roadside a long border of small-flowered, egg-yolk hued daylilies, already blooming in early June. They looked suspiciously like that old stalwart introduced way back in 1975, “Stella de Oro” (or ‘d’Oro,’ depending), called “perhaps the best known daylily of all time” by Better Homes and Gardens. It brought me straight back to the good old days of margarine in tubs and the groovy Ford Maverick that lived in our family driveway (since it wasn’t all that reliable on the road).  

More old-timey plant memories came crowding back, like Phlox “Miss Lingard”, the “Celebrity” tomato, and “Chrysler Imperial” hybrid tea rose.  These must-have varieties of the 20th century, and many others, had been repeatedly drilled into my consciousness by the many effusive recommendations in plant catalogs and gardening books of the era.  

I went back through the bookshelves and pulled out some of those well-worn but dusty volumes for a trip down memory lane. Titles by Donald Wyman had pride of place and were studied like an oracle in our house. As a green youngster I was not aware of Wyman’s distinguished history with the Arnold Arboretum and other prestigious horticultural organizations. But it struck me even back then how often he described the low-maintenance plants as “rather coarse,” or “common, yet dependable.” So very snooty! The Saturday Morning Gardener was first published in 1962. 

The introduction is wonderful: The “simple art” of caring for one’s garden today has become a baffling and complex task… Compare the simplicity of gardening in early colonial times, when the homeowner was not bothered with a multitude of insects and diseases. His lawn was a patch of grass to be hand-scythed occasionally, or left as pasture for his cows, goats or sheep. He kept the plants that were there, or he dug some from the woods nearby.

Makes me want to get that pandemic-purchased scythe out of the garage and go take a few whacks. 

Wyman’s Gardening Encyclopedia, a doorstopper of a volume at 1,222 pages, dates from 1971. Wyman received assistance from a robust stable of contributing authors, most of them formal sounding gentlemen such as the fabulously-named H. Gleason Mattoon, “an outstanding authority on nuts and nut culture.”  I turned to H for hemerocallis to get some pre-Stella perspective: “Chemical analysis has shown (the) dried daylily flowers to be a high-protein, non-fattening food rich in minerals and in vitamins A and B,” wrote contributor Wilmer B. Flory. “The daylily should prove a welcome addition to the diet of those weight-conscious members of our generally overfed population here in America.” The frontispiece is a nostalgia-inducing hardiness zone map dated Jan. 30, 1971.

It gives me pause to read again about the Encyclopedia’s dedicatee, Donald’s wife Florence. As he wrote in the acknowledgments, “Not the least of her contributions was a five-week period of almost continuous typing in a small casita in the rain forest of Puerto Rico, when the tropical recreational pursuits beckoned on every side.” One wonders if this extreme typing marathon might have contributed to her demise in 1973 at the age of 69? I cannot find any evidence of a flower or tree being named after this devoted woman, whereas her husband has several, including a very fine flowering crabapple. Donald would survive Florence by twenty years, remarrying in 1974. I do not know for certain if his second wife possessed exceptional typing skills, but rather suspect that she did. 

This 1982 paperback has more photos so of course it had more appeal to me as a junior gardener at the time. The cover photo alone is priceless, I think. English native Derek Fell was put in charge of the Burpee Seed Catalog in 1964. He became Executive Director of the AllAmerica Selections and the National Garden Bureau, gave gardening advice on Good Morning America, helped plan Gerald Ford’s White House vegetable garden, and authored more than 100 books. For thirty years he and his wife Carolyn lived and gardened at Cedaridge Farm in Bucks County, PA. In 2018, their showplace property was profiled in Philadelphia magazine as the Bucks County Designer House and Garden. According to the article, the Fells were selling their 20+acre spread and retiring to their vacation property on Sanibel Island, Florida. Derek Fell died in 2019. 

The “high-yield Automatic Garden” promised on the back cover was a major inspiration to me at age 11 or so. Just as inspiring as another favorite book of that time period, The Magical Monarch of Mo – and just as much of a fantasy, of course!

But I do recall that a good crop of cukes and cabbage did result from my youthful attempt.