Literary Gardens: How Edith Wharton Designed with Words and Flowers

June 1, 1937

My dear readers, on this most peculiar day, the eminent American authoress Edith Wharton suffered a rather inconvenient heart attack while gracing the country estate of her friend and co-author of The Decoration of Houses, the architect Ogden Codman. One might say her heart chose the most dramatic of settings for its revolt, though I daresay she would have preferred it elsewhere—or better yet, not at all.

Edith, that most fascinating creature of letters and landscapes, would suffer two more such episodes before departing this mortal realm on August 11th of the same year, finding her final repose in the hallowed grounds of Versailles. How fitting for one who had made gardens her sanctuary and words her weapon.

You see, darlings, Edith was not merely content to craft tales of society's foibles—though she did that with devastating precision. No, her true passion lay in the art of garden design, a pursuit she elevated to literary heights with observations that still make one weak at the knees.

"The Italian garden does not exist for its flowers; its flowers exist for it,"

she declared with characteristic authority. One can almost hear the rustle of silk skirts against perfectly trimmed boxwood.

Her childhood, spent gadding about Europe's finest gardens, planted the seeds for what would become an obsession rivaling her literary pursuits. Indeed, she once confided—and I have this on the most reliable authority—

"I'm a better landscape gardener than novelist."

Imagine! The woman who penned The House of Mirth believed her true talent lay in the arrangement of peonies, which she delightfully described as having "jolly round-faced blooms."

Edith was a huge fan of garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. In 1904, departing from her standard storytelling, Edith published a major gardening book, Italian Villas and Their Gardens, with pictures by Maxfield Parrish. Edith thought gardens should be a series of outdoor rooms, and she wrote,

"…In the blending of different elements, the subtle transition from the fixed and formal lines of art to the shifting and irregular lines of nature, and lastly, in the essential convenience and livableness of the garden, lies the fundamental secret of the old garden-magic…"

At her magnificent estate, The Mount—built in 1920 in Lenox, Massachusetts—Edith created what she considered her masterpiece: a series of "outdoor rooms" that would have made even the most seasoned garden designer weep with envy. From its French flower garden to its Lime Walk lined with 48 Linden trees, The Mount was Edith's masterpiece and summer home. The garden also featured a sunken Italian or Walled Garden and grass steps. Built on a high ledge, from the terrace, Edith could see her flower gardens, which she designed.

During her time at The Mount, Edith wrote The House of Mirth. In the story, Edith wrote about having fresh flowers, and her character, who is about to face financial ruin, says to her mother,

"I really think,... we might afford a few fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or lilies-of-the-valley----"

Edith's wisdom extended beyond the garden gate, of course. She left us with such delectable observations as

"Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins"

and

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time."

But perhaps her most illuminating comment was this:

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."

In her gardens, as in her prose, Edith managed to be both.

Sadly, Edith's time at The Mount was short-lived as her marriage ended nine years later, and she was forced to sell the place.

Later, she reflected on her time there with longing,

"On a slope over-looking the dark waters and densely wooded shore of Laurel Lake we built a spacious and dignified house, to which we gave the name of my great-grandfather's place, the Mount...There for ten years I lived and gardened and wrote contentedly..."

Edith drew inifite creative inspriation from the Mount.In her story called The Line of Least Resistance, Edith wrote from the perspective of a husband who had financed elaborate gardens:

"The lawn looked as expensive as a velvet carpet woven in one piece; the flower borders contained only exotics… A marble nymph smiled at him from the terrace, but he knew how much nymphs cost and was not sure that they were worth the price. Beyond the shrubberies, he caught a glimpse of domed glass. His greenhouses were the finest in Newport, but since he neither ate fruit nor wore orchids, they yielded, at best, an indirect satisfaction."

In 1920, toward the end of her career, Edith wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, The Age of Innocence - becoming the first female to win the award in her category. In the book, Edith painted neglected gardens with the same vivid brush as her social commentary, writing

"The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hayfield; but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white, surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim."

In 1993, Edith's book was the basis for the movie with the same title, The Age of Innocence, featuring a young Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis.

Edith's connection to the horticultural world extended to family ties—her niece was none other than the celebrated garden designer Beatrix Jones Farrand. One might say green thumbs ran in the family, though Edith's were perhaps tinged with ink.

As for her personal preferences in the garden, Edith favored the reliable over the revolutionary: lilies, hydrangeas, delphiniums, cleome, and dahlias.

On this day, as we remember the first flutter of mortality that would eventually still her gardening hands, we might do well to remember that Edith Wharton's legacy blooms eternal—in both her words and her gardens.

And isn't that, dear gardeners, the most exquisite form of immortality?