Garden Literature goes Up in Smoke

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Dear friends,just as there is no hiding the fact that Professor Roush is a rose nut, there is also no suspense to the revelation that I aman entrenchedbibliophile. My love of printed and bound material stretches far back into mychildhood,tothat happy time when I was stillan only child and had to find ways to occupy myself. While burdenednow with middle-age, a sister, a wife, and children, I continue to feel comforted with the feel of paper and printed letters, the smell of new ink and glue. I aspire to become the last person on the planet to purchase a Kindle or Nook.

Mylongworship of books and growing interest ingardening has, for the past twenty years or so, connected in that genre weknow as garden literature. I have discovered natural gardening with Sara Stein, delighted in the philosophical ramblings of Michael Pollan, grown older with Sydney Eddison,and grumbled with Henry Mitchell. Iveplotted spousal demise with Amy Stewart and searched for old roses with Thomas Christopher.

All that, I fear, is disappearing.Literally, it seems to be going to pot. Marijuana, Mary Jane, reefer, and cannabis. Call it what you want, I was shocked, visiting alarge nationalbook chain, to realize thatwhat was previouslyeight shelves of fascinating garden literature is nowfour shelves, two of them composed entirelyof books about growing, marketing, or self-medicating with marijuana. I counted 87 different books on pot cultivation, withsuch imaginative titlesasMarijuana 101,Organic Marijuana,Everything Marijuana, and theMarijuana Garden Saver.TheBig Book of Budsis not about roses.Only one even looked mildly interesting to meSuper Charged: How Outlaws, Hippies and Scientists Reinvented Marijuana,probably because it was more scienceand history-oriented rather than ahow-to-grow-to-get-high-at-home manual. I didnt buy it for fear someone mightsee it laying around.

Can the drive for all these new booksabout marijuana really be sales-based? I dont see theseon the bookshelves of friends, sitting on tables of garage sales, or promoted in bestseller lists. Perhaps the gray-haired members of my daylily club areonly pretending to grow hemerocallis in my presence, butpass the potatobong when Im not around. Somehow, somewhere, are the same clueless editors and booksellers just surmising that these are what the public wants? The same editors that contract good writers to produce lame and repetitious books of landscaping dumbed down for the homeowner, orto write the 200thtome cautioning against over-watering houseplants (which currentlycomprise the other two gardening shelves in the store)? Would Scotts, Bayer, and other companies grow richer if they forgot about lawn care and rose chemicals and concentrated their marketing on hydroponic fertilizer and gro-lamps aimedto entice that little extra buzz out ofhemp?

Dont answer that last question. It was rhetorical, not a suggestion for improvement.

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