Waldo in Bloom: The Botanical Journey of Ralph Waldo Emerson
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 25, 1803
On this day, dear readers, we celebrate the birth of a man whose words have blossomed through the ages, much like the flowers he so adored - Ralph Waldo Emerson.
This American transcendentalist, essayist, philosopher, and poet would grow to become one of the most influential voices in American literature and thought.
After graduating from the hallowed halls of Harvard, young Ralph decided to go by his middle name, Waldo.
One can almost picture the youthful Emerson, beloved by his classmates and serving as class poet, his mind already brimming with the profound thoughts that would later shape a nation's consciousness.
Life, however, had trials in store for our Waldo. On a Christmas Day, he met his first love, Ellen. Alas, their happiness was short-lived, as tuberculosis claimed her just two years later. In a twist of fate that seems almost Shakespearean, her death would eventually make Waldo a wealthy man - though not without a legal battle with his in-laws.
It was in the wake of this loss that Waldo embarked on a journey that would prove transformative. Picture, if you will, our grieving poet wandering through the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris. There, amidst the carefully arranged flora, Waldo experienced an epiphany.
As the American historian Robert D. Richardson so eloquently put it:
Emerson's moment of insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science.
Upon his return to American shores, Waldo found kindred spirits in the likes of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. These friendships would further nurture the seeds of thought planted in that Parisian garden.
In 1835, love bloomed anew for Waldo. He married Lydia Jackson, whom he rechristened Lidian. Their relationship was one of endearing quirks - he bestowed upon her pet names like Queenie and Asia, while she steadfastly referred to him as "Mr. Emerson." One can almost hear the gentle laughter echoing through their home.
It was around this time that Waldo's philosophical garden truly began to flourish. In 1836, he published his seminal essay "Nature," which laid out his philosophy of transcendentalism.
In it, he penned these immortal lines:
Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but [a] language put together into a most significant and universal sense.
I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that is written in that tongue.
Waldo's love affair with nature was not merely philosophical. As he aged, he found great joy in the practical art of gardening. Gone were the days when he would hire others to tend his landscape. Instead, he discovered the profound satisfaction of working the earth with his own hands.
He wrote:
When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and [good] health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.
And in a line that surely resonates with every gardener who has found solace among the blooms, he quipped:
All my hurts my garden spade can heal.
Even in his twilight years, Waldo's connection to nature remained strong.
Imagine him, if you will, embarking on a camping trip to the Adirondacks with a group of fellow intellectuals, including the great botanist James Russell Lowell.
Their mission?
Simply to connect with nature.
One can almost smell the pine-scented air and hear the crackle of their campfire as they discussed the wonders of the natural world.
Waldo's love for nature is perhaps best encapsulated in two of his most beloved quotes. First:
The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it.
And my personal favorite:
The Earth laughs in flowers.
As we tend to our own gardens, dear readers, let us remember Waldo's advice to "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."
And in moments of quiet contemplation, perhaps we might recite his beautiful prayer of gratitude for nature's gifts:
For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!
As we celebrate Ralph Waldo Emerson's birth, let us carry forward his legacy of wonder, his appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things, and his profound love for the natural world.
May we, like Waldo, find wisdom in the woods, solace in the soil, and joy in the gentle unfurling of a flower petal.