Charles Dickens’ Scarlet Geraniums and the Gardens Behind the Stories
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
February 7, 1812
Dearest reader,
On this day, the world welcomed the birth of Charles Dickens, the celebrated English Victorian-era writer and social critic, whose love for gardens was as measured and deliberate as the strokes of his pen.
At his cherished home, Gad’s Hill Place, Dickens was known for taking a daily promenade around his garden before settling down to write, drawing inspiration from the natural world that flourished around him.
Among his many horticultural delights, his favorite flower was the Mrs. Pollock geranium, a classic bloom bred in 1858 by the Scottish gardener and hybridist Peter Grieve.
Dickens grew geraniums not only in the garden but also in the conservatory at Gad’s Hill, and he famously wore fresh geraniums in his lapel during public readings, a floral signature for the literary giant.
In his novels, the garden often appears as a haven for characters seeking solace or hope.
In Hard Times, he famously wrote,
"Facts alone are wanted in life.
Plant nothing else, and root out everything else."
A stern admonition that rings as a cautionary gardening metaphor for the importance of careful cultivation—whether of ideas or flowers.
Yet in Bleak House, the garden represents a sanctuary of beauty amid harsh realities.
Dickens penned,
"I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet.
This was my first gain from my illness.
How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me."
Does this not remind us how the simple marvels of nature can kindle our spirits even in our darkest hours?
His garden at Gad’s Hill was more than an estate; it was a living canvas of flowers and trees, from red geraniums to roses climbing the walls, playing their quiet parts in the drama of a life devoted to storytelling. One imagines Dickens’s daily walks, the very footsteps stirring the soil of creative thought.
Dear reader, might we ask ourselves: how do the gardens we tend feed not only our bodies but also our imaginations?
What blossoms from the seeds of patience, observation, and love that we plant in our own green sanctuaries?
And as Dickens wore his beloved geraniums close to his heart, what flowers do we carry with us, unseen but ever-present, inspiring our own stories?
