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‘Old Herbaceous’ depicts complex hierarchy among bygone English gardeners By Rhonda Nowak Dec 18, 2022 12:30 PM A A “You had to start as a boy, digging weeds from between stones with a broken dinner knife; scrubbing the pots and the greenhouse floors. Then you became, in turn, an improver, learning to dig and stoke; a journeyman, working on the borders; a charge hand, with other chaps under you; and, perhaps, a departmental foreman. That was where most of them stuck.” — in Reginald Arkell’s “Old Herbaceous: A Novel of the Garden,” 1951 Those of us who never missed an episode of “Downton Abbey” might remember a bit character during Season 4 named John Pegg (played by Joncie Elmore). During one of the episodes, Isobel Crawley meets Pegg, a polite young man from the village, and convinces her cousin, Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, to hire him as her gardener at Dower House. Unfortunately, Pegg’s new position does not go well. Violet soon suspects him of stealing items from her desk and fires him. A short while later, however, the misplaced items are found, after which Isobel and Violet engage in one of their endearing bickering sessions, this time about “prejudice, injustice and stubbornness.” At the end of it, Pegg is reinstated to his gardening post. The story of John Pegg is one of many that made watching “Downton Abbey” so enjoyable for me. However, after reading Reginald Arkell’s short novel, “Old Herbaceous,” I understand how unlikely it would have been for an inexperienced young man like Pegg to land a job as an estate gardener — with or without Isobel Crawley’s high recommendations. “Old Herbaceous” is written from the perspective of an elderly gardener (I suspect Old Herbaceous himself) who reflects on his struggles and accomplishments while moving up the career ladder at an English manor. Readers follow “young Herbert” from the time he arrives at Captain and Lady Charteris’ estate as a young teenager in the late 1880s, through his transition to “Bert Pinnegar” and greenhouse gardener at the turn of the century, and then as “Mr. Pinnegar,” who finally earns the coveted status of head gardener during the Edwardian era (and later the nickname “Old Herbaceous” for his sometime “acerbaceous” personality). Old Herbaceous recollects his slow career ascendancy and the rival jealousies — “always somebody or something trying to trip you up or pull you back by the coattails.” In fact, up until the first World War, proprietors of English estates as large as the fictional Charterises’ often would hire 20 or more people on a full-time basis to take care of their lawns, greenhouses, orchards, flower gardens and vegetable beds. There was a strict hierarchy among the gardeners, and everyone knew and operated within their place. At the top of the hierarchy was the head gardener, whose status was equal to the highest ranking servants in the house (think Mr. Carson, the butler at Downton Abbey, only in tweed). Like Mr. Pinnegar in “Old Herbaceous,” they were respected members of the community who often were asked to write gardening articles for newspapers and judge at village competitions. Head gardeners usually were men whose fathers were head gardeners; they were groomed from young boyhood to eventually become head gardeners, too. An apprenticeship of up to 15 years was common for estate gardeners. As Old Herbaceous notes in the book, they started out as boys 12 to 14 years old pulling weeds and picking caterpillars off the vegetables. After proving themselves worthy by the head gardener, a 17- or 18-year-old would progress to an “improver,” who might work in the glass greenhouses and be responsible for keeping the space warm by stoking the coals in the furnace. All under-gardeners were expected to remain unmarried. Improvers lived in a shelter called a bothy with the journeyman apprentices — gardeners around 20 years old who traveled to different estates to gain a wide range of gardening experiences. After working hard all day on the grounds, their training also required they study a variety of horticultural topics in the evening. A journeyman’s career progression should include chargehand and foreman positions to develop leadership skills. If ambitious and successful enough, he usually would be ready to interview for head gardener jobs by the time he was in his 30s. Once a gardener achieved the status of head gardener, it was not unusual for him to remain at the same estate, like Old Herbaceous did, for the remainder of his career. But the traditional hierarchical organization of the English gardener shattered during World War I when so many men were called up for military service. Crushing estate taxes and rising labor costs made maintaining large estates unsustainable, and technological innovations made hiring a large gardening staff unnecessary. In the end, Old Herbaceous becomes obsolete. The Charteris estate is sold and, rather than turn out the old head gardener (at least at first), the new agent simply hires new gardeners who ignore him: “He would come in the morning, put on his old green apron and get down to any job he thought needed doing. He would go home to his dinner, come back in the afternoon and work until it was dark; and not a soul would come near him even to pass the time of day.” The day I finished reading “Old Herbaceous,” Jerry sent me a link to an article called “The College Essay is Dead” (Marche, Dec. 6, 2022). I’ve taught English composition at Rogue Community College for the past 12 years, but apparently an artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, has developed a program called ChatGPT that writes full-length, college-level essays for any prompt to which instructors would be happy to assign at least a B+. Suddenly, I felt just as obsolete as Old Herbaceous. I hear head gardeners are making a comeback ... Rhonda Nowak is a Rogue Valley gardener, teacher and writer. For more on gardening topics, see literarygardener.com or email Rhonda at [email protected].