It’s the time of year for Maryland cooks and gardeners to feel excitement for all of the seasonal thrills to come.
The curtains part with asparagus and it all builds up to a kingly feast of tomatoes and more tomatoes and some watermelon and then it’s back to the sedate old winter crops and canned things.
I found the book “Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake” a few years back, while browsing the excellent collection of Marylandia offered by Johns Hopkins University Press. I knew it would be a good source of information for my food database, but it delighted me overall in general with information and background on pleasure gardens as well.
The book was my introduction to Annapolis Citizen William Faris who kept a diary of life and garden between 1792 and 1804.
Faris was an urban gardener who grew some of his food, cultivated flowers, “with thinning hair pulled back into a queue and covered with a familiar frayed hat, who gossiped too much and drank gin too freely.” Sounds alright, maybe.
Barbara Wells Sarudy paints a lovable picture of him and selects relatable garden observations from his life, as well as essential information to understand the food system of a man of his (middle) class in his time.
The garden illustrations from Warner & Hanna’s Plan of Baltimore from 1801 show a faint idea of what was growing underneath the places I frequent today.
Warner & Hanna’s Plan of the City and Environs of Baltimore
Most importantly to this blog I get a look at what was grown in Maryland during that time period, what was popular and beloved, and how our ways of growing and eating these things was viewed by visitors from Europe.
Carrot and Strawberry illustrations Bernard M’Mahon, The American Grdener’s Calendar 1806, from Gardens & Gardening in the Chesapeake
This book provided me with a few of my favorite anecdotes about food and gardening, such as the “passion for peas” that swept the French royal court.
“The subject of peas continues to absorb all others. The anxiety to eat them, the pleasures of having eaten them and the desire to eat them again are the three great matters which have been discussed b our princes for four days past. Some ladies even after having supped at the Royal table and well supped too returning to their homes at the risk of suffering from indigestion will again eat Peas before going to bed. It is both a fashion and a madness ” – Madame de Maintenon
There’s also the story of the cocky runaway convict gardener and his fraudulent treatise on pineapples… more on that when I cook something with pineapples in it.
Author Barbara Wells Sarudy now has a nice art history blog featuring frequent tie-ins to historic gardening.
William Faris’ complete diary is also available from Hopkins Press.
