Eleanor Perenyi on lovage

Franz Kohler c.1887

Instead of a poignant comment on the changing seasons and cycle of life, here, in the last of my series of excerpts from Eleanor Perenyi's book, Green Thoughts, is a little something about lovage:

People who have lovage are wonderfully generous about giving hunks of it away, and once you have acquired it, you see why. Full grown, it is five feet tall, self-sows liberally if the birds don't get the seeds first, doesn't mind shade, is unkillable. Nobody needs as much lovage as, inevitably in a year or two, he has. It is true that it smells and tastes like celery, but it can't be eaten like celery--the flavor is too strong and the stalks are tough. A few leaves added to a soup or stew are sufficient to impart a celery flavor, and I prefer it to celery in a court bouillon. A friend of mine devours the leaves raw on sliced tomatoes in a sandwich. I keep it because I have it (it was, of course, a present), but given the amount I use in relation to the colossal size, I can't call it an essential herb.

We can call her an essential writer though. Many thanks, and bon voyage, Baroness Perenyi.

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Eleanor Perenyi on herb farms

Borage, a Jupiterian herb

Photo credit: Jengod

You've done it, I've done it--the over-buying of herbs. Eleanor Perenyi comments, in the fourth of a series of excerpts from Green Thoughts (1981):

My corner of New England happens to be well endowed with herb farms and my will power easily sapped by the sight of plants for sale. Surely a gold-leaved marjoram wouldn't be amiss? What about a Lavandula viris from the Canary Islands? And inevitably the car fills up with plants that will turn out to be too large, too small, or simply not as interesting as their history and provenance have made them sound. There is, I find, that drawback to herbs. No other class of plant bears such a weight of myth and symbolism, and it can be oversold. For me there comes a time when it isn't enough to know that a plant was sacred to Jupiter, used to ward off snakes, a symbol of loyalty or mentioned by Theophrastus, when all it looks like is a not very exciting wild flower/weed.

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Eleanor Perenyi on dahlias

'Lilac Time' Photo credit: Olaf Leillinger

Some people can quote from Shakespeare; I quote from Henry Mitchell and Eleanor Perenyi, two of America's classic garden writers.

Eleanor Perenyi captured the cultural silliness, as well as the deep importance, of gardening. Third in my series of excerpts from her book Green Thoughts (1981) is her frequently-cited reflection on dahlias:

Looking at my dahlias one summer day, a friend whose taste runs to the small and impeccable said sadly, 'You do like big, conspicuous flowers, don't you?' She meant vulgar, and I am used to that. It hasn't escaped me that mine is the only Wasp garden in town to contain dahlias, and not the discreet little singles either. Some are as blowzy as half-dressed Renoir girls; others are like spiky sea-creatures, water-lilies, or the spirals in a crystal paperweight; and they do shoot up to prodigious heights. But to me they are sumptuous, not vulgar, and I love their colors, their willingness to bloom until the frost kills them and, yes, their assertiveness. I do like big flowers when they are also beautiful.

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Eleanor Perenyi on old-fashioned flowers, and a garland of tributes to her

Love in a Mist, Sophie Gengembre Anderson* (1823-1903)

This is the second in my series of excerpts from Green Thoughts (1981) by the late, great writer Eleanor Perenyi. Here is some of her commentary on old-fashioned flowers:

The Victorians meant hardy annuals when they spoke of old-fashioned flowers, a term that used to puzzle me. In Little Women, Beth grows 'old-fashioned flowers,' and I always supposed this was part of Alcott's goody-goody emphasis on out-of-date virtue. That isn't the case. The sweet peas and larkspurs and pinks beloved of Beth actually were old-fashioned by the middle of the nineteenth century--having been superseded by the newer, smarter, tender annuals imported from the tropics and sub-tropics of Mexico, India and South America. The old annuals in contrast were natives of the north temperate zone, age-old denizens of cottage gardens where familiarity and the folk imagination bestowed on them their common names: love-in-a-mist, pincushion flower, bachelor's buttons, sweet sultan.

Several garden bloggers have written on the passing of Eleanor Perenyi and I have gathered the tributes here as a virtual garland for her. Please let me know if there are others to be included.

Country Gardener

Garden Rant

InterLeafings

Recreating Eden

the bark tree

*Sophie Gengembre Anderson was a Pre-Raphaelite painter.

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Eleanor Perenyi on mint

Photo credit: Gogo

Eleanor Perenyi wrote about her gardens in a way that commanded respect. Many of us worship at the shrine of her collected garden essays, Green Thoughts (1981), and I felt a personal pang at the passing of the author in May.

Margalit Fox captured her well in a delicate New York Times obituary. My own memorial to Baroness Perenyi will be a series of excerpts from Green Thoughts.

Here she speaks about her mint bed:

Every garden should have an area that can safely be neglected, and a mint bed is the ideal choice. My unknown mints, fenced in with old boards, get no attention beyond a shovelful of compost now and then. They never have a shadow of a pest or a blight. Once a summer I get down on my knees and trace the stolons that have escaped the fence, ripping them from their moorings and throwing them on the compost heap. As gardening jobs go, this one is a delight. The heavenly smell invades every pore, and if I were the size of a cat I would roll luxuriously in the pile of discards.

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