Black-Eyed Susan and Sweet William: A Love Story in Folklore and Bloom
Today's Garden Words were featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest,
most beautiful words of all.
April 18, 1918
On this day, the Black-Eyed Susan was crowned the State Flower of Maryland—though not without considerable fuss and flutter.
The choice caused more gossip in the garden than a rose at a thistle’s tea party.
The Baltimore Sun, never known to resist a good jab, sneered that “Susan came to Maryland, not on the Ark or the Dove, but a migrant from the Midwest mixed in clover and hayseed.”
How delightfully scandalous!
And yet, despite its humble arrival, the daisy-like bloom won the hearts of the people, gold and black shining bright as if the state itself had taken root in its petals.
There’s poetry, of course, in the Black-Eyed Susan’s story; her legend twines around that of her sweetheart, Sweet William. Their union—one wild and native, the other cultivated and genteel—has long enchanted gardeners and romantics alike.
Folklore tells us that these two flowers bloom together to honor their eternal devotion, the bright faces of Susan and William nodding in summer breezes like eternal lovers whispering through the hedgerow.
Long before Maryland’s lawmakers argued over her worth, the name “Black-Eyed Susan” drifted out of English literature, sweet as perfume across the sea. John Gay’s 18th-century ballad—once adored by sailors and sentimental novelists alike—sang of a steadfast maiden and the sailor she adored.
Their story unfolds on the deck of a departing ship; Susan’s tears leave dark circles around her eyes, her heart both breaking and blooming.
All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd,
The streamers waving to the wind,
When black-eyed Susan came on board;
Oh! where shall I my true love find?
And so the song sailed on the tides of history, leaving behind not sorrow, but blossoms.
Today, when we spy the Black-Eyed Susans dancing beside clumps of Sweet William, we may smile at the thought that love, once sung to the sea, now grows through the soil instead.
It is a living poem—one that hums of resilience, loyalty, and improbable beauty born of contrast.
So the next time you see those golden petals turned toward the sun, remember her—Miss Susan of Maryland—once mocked as a migrant, now reigning queen of the meadows.
She reminds us that even the humblest flowers may, with time, sow both legend and love.