catalogs seriously

Among the consolations of a New England winter are the seed and nursery catalogs that turn up in the mail. Their arrival sparks the fantasy of other seasons and reminds us that, despite appearances, snow is just a makeshift ground-cover. When a garden catalog does its job, it transports readers to other landscapes – to dreams, lists and, yes, orders for seeds and plants.

Garden catalogs may be a balm for us, but they’re big business for the firms they represent.

So imagine the surprise of growers and nurserymen when, in 1958, their marketing efforts suddenly gained new stature. Katharine White, an avid gardener from Maine who was then fiction editor at The New Yorker and wife of author E. B. White, wrote the first of several essays for the magazine in which she surveyed garden catalogs. The essays ran under the heading “Onward and Upward in the Garden,” which would later become the title of White’s only book.

While many of the catalogs in question had come in the mail, others were on loan, as from White’s hairdresser, who used them as bedtime reading. White praised some of these “little books” for their clear and engaging text, their ease of organization, true-to-life photos and helpful cultural guidelines.

More often than not, she would note a pleasing typeface, as well as the weight and quality of the paper stock at hand.

When a catalog met with her displeasure, as some inevitably did, she would remark on its dim or cluttered photographs, gushy prose, lack of useful instruction or other failings.

White’s critiques were quirky and precise, reflecting not only her preferences as a gardener, but her contention that these catalogs formed a literary genre of their own, their authors as singular as Hemingway or Faulkner.

Looking back a half-century later, one finds White’s views alternately quaint, witty, sage – and surprisingly current. Many of the catalogs she described are older versions of those that gardeners still receive and pore over today, among them, Wayside Gardens, Park Seed and White Flower Farm.

And many of White’s obsessions are no less concerning now: She bemoaned the increasing lack of fragrance in so many flower varieties. She worried that the plant hybridizers’ goal of making bigger and better flowers would lead to an unwelcome sameness – to zinnias that look like dahlias, and marigolds that impersonate mums.

Nor was she at all certain about the use of grow-lights for indoor plants. “Though I’m willing to be a floor nurse,” she says, “I have no intention of becoming an electrician.”

After writing a handful of these essays, White branched out to cover such topics as flower arranging, garden clubs and the American penchant for lawns. Her reviews moved from catalogs to field books, even major gardening tomes. Notable throughout was her breadth of research, boundless curiosity and her candor. Yet the charm of these essays and their staying power derive from White herself.

Throughout the 14 pieces that she wrote for The New Yorker over a dozen years White’s tastes emerged. She loved clarity of design in gardens and in garden catalogs. A catalog with a distinctive voice, and especially with a regional flair, was apt to win her over. Always the editor, she lacked patience for hyperbole, puns or other gimmickry.

“Miss Lily Pons,” White wrote, is a “punning name, which I can’t admire.”

And she was fearless in her disagreements, as when Amos Pettingill of White Flower Farm proclaimed a cultivated French pussy willow to be more reliable than the wild version.

“What is unreliable, pray, about the native wild pussies?” she asked. “I have found them trustworthy in every respect.… Not everything good comes from abroad.”

In her final essay for the magazine, White took up the disparity between English and American garden writing, which is, in effect, the difference between reference and how-to books (ours) and literature (theirs). She singled out Dorothy Jacob, the British author of “Flowers in the Garden,” as someone whose personal, no-nonsense style she liked, and whose scholarship she respected.

White wrote, “I can’t think of a pleasanter circumstance than to have the practical and thoughtful Mrs. Jacob, now in her 80s, as a next door neighbor and friend.”

Readers of these essays may come to feel the same about Katharine White.

Joan Silverman writes op-eds, essays and book reviews. Her work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune and Horticulture.

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