"Origins of the Gardeners’ Almanac
Many gardeners have come to rely on the guidance of the annual almanac; discovery the history of its creation!
"Creating a guide & schedule to planting helped sustain gardeners who depended on their harvest for survival.
By Abigail Willis October 2018
"Part instruction manual, part aide-memoire, the gardener’s calendar or almanac is an evergreen staple of gardening literature. One of the first month-by-month manuals in English of these seasonal guides to what to do in the garden, & when, was John Evelyn’s Kalendarium Hortense; or, the Gardners’ Almanac, first published in 1664 & running to many editions.
"Roman agricultural writers included gardening in their dos & dont’s of estate management. Columella, writing in the first century AD, devoted a whole book to it with his multi-volume work De Re Rustica. Columella covered the gardening year & contained instructions on soil preparation, pest control & what plant varieties to sow.
"Roman agronomists were still being consulted well into the Renaissance era by writers such as Thomas Hill, whose mid-sixteenth-century book, the catchily titled A most brief & pleasaunte treatise teachynge how to dresse, sowe & set a garden, was the first gardening book to be published in English. Despite its derivative content, it ran to several editions, as did Hill’s subsequent book, The Gardener’s Labyrinth. Published posthumously in 1577, this illustrated manual contained ‘instructions for the choice of seedes, apt times for sowing, setting, planting & watering’, as well as ideas for laying out knot gardens, mazes & herb gardens.
"Published in 1664 as an appendix to Sylva, his great work on trees, John Evelyn’s Kalendarium Hortense offered a month-by-month to-do list in the orchard, kitchen garden, parterre & flower garden, along with lists of which fruit & flowers would be at their best. The tone is brisk & authoritative, & palpably written from personal experience. Evelyn, a leading figure of the English Enlightenment & a founder member of the Royal Society, was a knowledgeable gardener, putting his ideas into practice over many years in his garden at Sayes Court, in Deptford.
"Evelyn’s almanac set the bar for future calendars & is still worth consulting today (remembering that Evelyn was working from the Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian). It provides a roster of tasks for the whole garden year, including manuring, sowing, propagation, weed-killing (a July job, using salt water, potash & tobacco) & on- going ‘hostilities’ against vermin. There are instructions on using hot beds to get ‘fine & tender seeds’ off to an early start, & reminders to protect crops against the cold.
"A century later, ‘best modern practice’ informs John Abercrombie’s 1767 tome Every Man his Own Gardener. A gardener by profession, Abercrombie’s book included not just what to do each month & when, but also the nitty-gritty of how. Detailed instructions on ‘the method of proceeding.’ crop by crop, ensured that it was still in print at least 50 years after its author’s death in 1806.
"While Abercrombie’s book was pitched at ‘gentlemen & young professors.’ In Britain, Mrs Loudon’s The Amateur Gardener’s Calendar (1847) provided practical guidance for recreational gardeners. As well as offering guidance on the when, what & how of the gardening year, the doyenne of Victorian gardening literature instructed on ‘things not to be done’ saving her enthusiastic amateur readers from rookie errors such as pruning in frosty weather or digging up their tulips too soon. Each age gets the gardening calendar it needs. Mrs Loudon’s advised on that most Victorian of garden features, the shrubbery, & how best to apply the miracle fertilizer of the age, guano..."
From The Compendium of Amazing Gardening Innovations by Abigail Willis & published by Laurence King Publishing, 2018. The book explores the history of gardening & the ingenious discoveries that shaped it into the productive past-time, passion, & livelihood that it is today. Willis is a qualified gardener through the Royal Horticulture Society in the UK. She writes for the London Evening Standard, the Daily Telegraph, & has authored another book called The London Garden Book A-Z.
