Remembering Margaret Mitchell and the Botanical Aspects of Gone With the Wind

November 8, 1900

Margaret Mitchell, the American southern writer of Gone with the Wind, is born.

Her friends and family called her Peggy.

Margaret grew up in Georgia, surrounded by relatives who had retold their stories of the Civil War. She was so captivated and engrossed in the tales she heard that she never realized her family failed to mention the South had lost the war. She distinctly remembered learning the truth at the age of ten. Later in life, she confessed that she had such difficulty processing the news that the North had won that she sometimes slipped back into her earlier belief that the South had been victorious.

In Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, Anne Edwards shared a delightful story from Margaret's childhood that summarized her family's strength:

Many of Margaret's childhood summers were spent at "Rural Home," the Jonesboro farm of her spinster Fitzgerald aunts, Sis and Mamie. Margaret was especially fond of her Aunt Sis who, even in later middle age, was a beautiful woman with waving gray hair, large soft eyes, fair magnolia skin, and a winning silvery laugh. Best of all, she told her young niece stories about the Fitzgerald family history with great flair. 

Aunt Sis was fond of explaining,

"There was just two kinds of people, wheat people and buckwheat people.
Take wheat - when it's ripe and a strong wind comes along, it's laid flat on the ground and it never rises again.
But buckwheat yields to the wind, is flattened, but when the wind passes, it rises up just as straight as ever.
Wheat people can't stand a wind; buckwheat people can."

Margaret grew up surrounded by buckwheat people - survivors of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Another early memory was of her mother taking her to Jonesboro when she was six years old to see abandoned plantation houses in ruin. Her mother used the experience to encourage her daughter to value her schooling, cautioning that education was the only weapon she could rely on if her world fell apart. Once again, the lesson was of perseverance and inner strength, and Margaret was listening.

After Margaret suffered from another bout of debilitating ankle pain in 1926, her husband grew tired of trudging back and forth with books from the Library to ease her boredom.

One day, he suggested she write a book instead of reading one. To that end, he brought home a typewriter, and Margaret began to write.

Drawing from her childhood experiences, Mitchell's main character was a woman named Pansy O'Hara, who lived on a plantation called Tara. It wasn't until just before publication over a decade later that Margaret's editor changed Pansy's name to Scarlett.

Through Mitchell's pen, flowers and beauty became essential to her epic tale.

Consider Scarlett's iconic green sprigged muslin, the curtain-rod dress with its botanical print, or the moment when Rhett brings Scarlett a bonnet "in the exact shade of green of the lining of a lime leaf."

Floral fabrics played a prominent supporting role in Gone With the Wind. 

Mitchell herself had an affinity for floral prints, often photographed in dresses adorned with delicate botanical patterns. Indeed, Mitchell gave Scarlett vibes when she arrived at the Gone With the Wind premiere in a floral brocade coat dress.

Another memorable image shows Mitchell, the author, in a mid-length dress with a lace collar and three-quarter sleeves, the fabric popped with a small floral print reminiscent of the "sprigged muslin" she so lovingly described Scarlett wearing to the barbecue at Twelve Oaks.

Like a gardener weaving colors through a perennial border, Mitchell used flowers to paint both setting and emotion throughout her novel. Every garden reference was carefully chosen to enhance both the setting and character.

Margaret's masterpiece, Gone with the Wind, incorporated botanical imagery that immediately transports readers to the lushness of Georgia:

She was pretty and she knew it; she would have Ashley for her own before the day was over; the sun was warm and tender and the glory of the Georgia spring was spread before her eyes. Along the roadside the blackberry brambles were concealing with softest green the savage red gulches cut by the winter's rains, and the bare granite boulders pushing up through the red earth were being draped with sprangles of Cherokee roses and compassed about by wild violets of palest purple hue. Upon the wooded hills above the river, the dogwood blossoms lay glistening and white, as if snow still lingered among the greenery.

The flowering crab trees were bursting their buds and rioting from delicate white to deepest pink and, beneath the trees where the sunshine dappled the pine straw, the wild honeysuckle made a varicolored carpet of scarlet and orange and rose. There was a faint wild fragrance of sweet shrub on the breeze and the world smelled good enough to eat.

"I'll remember how beautiful this day is till I die," thought Scarlett. "Perhaps it will be my wedding day!"

And she thought with a tingling in her heart how she and Ashley might ride swiftly through this beauty of blossom and greenery this very afternoon, or tonight by moonlight, toward Jonesboro and a preacher.

In 2010, the lastleafgardener.com noted another botanical detail from Mitchell's novel:

In Gone With The Wind, Aloysia triphylla (Lemon Verbena), is mentioned as Scarlett O'Hara's mother's favorite herb. The scent is a luscious addition to my urban terrace garden. It is not a showy plant, but it does have delicately textured white flowers that appear mid-summer. Its pointed leaves are great to put in an ice-cube tray before filling it with water. A single leaf looks lovely in the cube which in turn can be used in Gin and Tonics. I recommend using Blue Coat Gin with a splash - just a splash - of "Q" tonic.

Today, gardens across the South still echo Mitchell's descriptions. The plants she wrote about continue to thrive:

- Cherokee roses still scramble over fences
- Magnolias stand sentinel, their glossy leaves reflecting the summer sun
- Crepe myrtles line driveways just as they did at Twelve Oaks
- Gardenias (cape jessamine) still perfume summer evenings

In terms of the plant world, two stunning plants carry forward Mitchell's legacy in gardens across America:

The Daffodil 'Margaret Mitchell' gracefully opens with a white perianth slightly reflexed, its cup flat and open, displaying a beautiful graduation from lemon yellow to deep orange-red rim. Like Mitchell's writing, it brings drama and beauty to the spring garden.

Belamcanda 'Gone with the Wind,' a spectacular blackberry lily, soars to heights of 5-7 feet, producing butterscotch yellow flowers speckled like the shadows dancing across a veranda. As one nursery catalog proudly declared, "Frankly, my dear, we think you'll really like this!"

Today, Mitchell rests in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta's oldest garden cemetery.

Among the magnolias and crepe myrtles she immortalized in her writing, visitors can find her grave near a path lined with the very flowers that populated her prose.

As we tend our gardens today, planting bulbs that will bloom in spring, we're reminded of Mitchell's most famous line: "Tomorrow is another day."

In the garden, this promise rings especially true. Each season brings renewal, each plant returns with fresh vigor, and like Scarlett herself, our gardens face adversity with determination and grace.