Sunshine & Showers: Eliza Calvert Hall and the Gardeners of the Soul
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
February 11, 1856
Dearest Gardeners,
Today, the mists of Kentucky yield up a literary treasure in the birth of Eliza Calvert Hall (books about this person),—author, champion of women’s rights, and suffragist whose prose glimmers with local color and biting truth. Born in Bowling Green and baptized into a world of civil strife and family challenge, Eliza (known as “Lida” to her kin) found her true calling not just in the parlors of society, but in the sunlit expanses of the garden.
Her collection, Aunt Jane of Kentucky, became a sensation, read in homes across America and even praised by President Theodore Roosevelt as essential reading for every household. Through the wise, witty voice of Aunt Jane, Eliza drew a sharp line between those who merely possessed houses and those fortunate enough to inhabit gardens. With poetic grace, she wrote:
Each of us has his own way of classifying humanity.
To me, as a child, men and women fell naturally into two great divisions:
those who had gardens and those who had only houses....The people who had gardens were happy Adams and Eves walking in a golden mist of sunshine and showers,
with green leaves and blue sky overhead, and blossoms springing at their feet;
while those others, dispossessed of life's springs, summers, and autumns,
appeared darkly entombed in shops and parlors
where the year might as well have been a perpetual winter.
With every story, Hall gently broke the soil of everyday Kentucky life, inviting readers to see gardens as portals to happiness and renewal. For her, the greatest joy was in hearts beating in rhythm with the seasons—not simply possessing shelter, but inhabiting life in full bloom.
So, dear gardeners, let us classify ourselves proudly among the “happy Adams and Eves”—those with muddy hands and sunlit hearts—and honor Eliza Calvert Hall, who knew that the truest comfort lies where blossoms spring and the soul walks the golden mist.
Yours, forever escaping the perpetual winter of parlors,
Jennifer
