The Professor’s Last Translation: The Green Garden Inscription at Dumbarton Oaks
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
October 25, 1840
My dear listeners, gather close, for I have the most fascinating tale of a garden, a Greek scholar, and a mysterious inscription that would perplex even the most learned minds of the age.
It was on this day, that Joseph Hetherington McDaniels [JO-seph HETH-er-ing-ton mac-DAN-yels] entered our world - a brilliant classical scholar who would, in the twilight of his life, become entangled in one of garden history's most elegant mysteries at the legendary Dumbarton Oaks.
Picture, if you will, the magnificent Green Garden at Dumbarton Oaks - the highest point of the estate, where the celebrated landscape architect Beatrix Farrand [FAR-rand] had worked her magic.
The garden's patrons, Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss, wished to honor her genius with an inscribed tablet. But not just any inscription would do.
No, they desired their sentiment in Greek, the language of ancient philosophers and poets.
Enter our dear Professor McDaniels, who at 93, was asked to translate their tribute.
But here's where our tale takes an unexpected turn...
Despite his mastery of Greek spanning 65 years at Hobart College, some garden dreams, it seems, refuse to be captured in even the most ancient of tongues.
The inscription ultimately found its voice in Latin, and oh, what a voice it was:
"Dumbarton Oaks. Somnia sub patulis videant nascentia ramis sidera fausa ferant omnia et usque bona. Testimonio amicitiae Beatricis Farrand nec illorum immemores qui postero aevo vitas veritati ernendae impenderint. Hanc tabellam posuerunt Robertus Woods Bliss uxorque Mildred."
Which translates to:
May they see dreams springing from the spreading bough; may fortunate stars always bring them good omens. Witness to the friendship of Beatrix Farrand, not unmindful of those who in a later age shall have spent their lives bringing forth the truth. This tablet has been placed by Robert Woods Bliss and his wife Mildred.
Is it not extraordinary, dear friends, that even today as we tend our autumn gardens, these words ring true?
For what are we gardeners if not dreamers, watching our own visions spring forth from spreading boughs?
Every time you place a bulb in the cooling earth or plan next season's borders, you're participating in this timeless tradition of garden dreams and hopeful omens.
And perhaps, just perhaps, Professor McDaniels understood that some garden magic transcends even the most scholarly of translations.
After all, as Beatrix Farrand herself might observe, the most compelling garden stories are those written not in Greek or Latin, but in the universal language of growth and beauty.
