The Poet’s Garden: James Gates Percival and the Language of Flowers

September 15, 1795

On this day, we find ourselves transported back to when James Gates Percival, that most fascinating polymath of American letters, drew his first breath.

While history may remember him as a surgeon and geologist, it is his poetic musings on the natural world that capture our attention today, dear garden enthusiasts.

In an age when every flower carried weighted meaning, Percival demonstrated an extraordinary sensitivity to the language of blooms.

His work in The Language of Flowers speaks to this exquisite understanding:

In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,
And they tell in a garland their loves and cares:
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers,
On its leaves a mystic language bears.

Is it not remarkable how our ancestors used nature's alphabet to compose their most intimate messages?

One cannot help but wonder if our modern gardens have lost something of this delicate art of communication.

In his equally moving piece, The Flight of Time, Percival captures the ephemeral nature of garden beauty:

Roses bloom, and then they wither;
Cheeks are bright, then fade and die;
Shapes of light are wafted hither,
Then, like visions, hurry by.

What gardener hasn't felt the bittersweet truth of these lines while watching their prized roses fade at season's end?

Yet, isn't this very impermanence what makes our gardens so precious?!

Imagine, if you will, strolling through an early 19th-century garden, where every carefully placed bloom carried a message, every bouquet told a story.

How different from our modern gardens, where aesthetics often trump meaning!

As we tend our own gardens today, perhaps we might consider reviving this lost art of floral communication.

What messages might your garden convey to future generations?

What stories could your carefully arranged blooms tell?

Let us honor Percival's memory by preserving not just the beauty of our gardens, but their power to speak in that ancient, mystical language of flowers.