“The gourd, too, aspires to grow high from a humble beginning” – Strabo , “The Hortulus”
So, everybody asks. “HORTULUS? What does the company name mean?”
Here’s the back-story:
My father-in-law, John Czechowski, was a very smart and intelligent man. About 10 years ago I yakked about starting a garden service business. He asked me “What exactly do you want to do?” I told him “Nothing huge and ‘industrial’, just people’s gardens so that they could enjoy them.”
John went to work researching on a name. . . .
One day I came over and he said “you need to read ‘The Hortulus’ by Walafrid Strabo.”
“Who’s he?” I asked , and as he was want to do went into an hour and a half lecture about this German fellow from the 9th century.
Turns out, Walafrid was an early Benedictine monk. He wrote about his garden accounts not for documenting new plant species, not for pharmacological discoveries , not for an agricultural account of the times but just for the shear poetry of the natural growing world and his love for plants. He believed more in the aesthetics of gardening more than a garden’s practical uses.
Hortulus translates simply as “The Little Garden”. He wrote “The Hortulus” in 849 CE. His work lay in fallow until the 15th century when it was discovered by the Benedictines. When the manuscript was found in Gall in 1484 it was quickly translated in Venice and since has been a landmark in of gardening literature.
Although no original manuscript of “The Hortulus” exists today, the poetry of Walafrid’s gardening account still shine through despite the constant translations through the millenia. “The Hortulus” became the standard for early gardeners, the Christian church and horticulture for over 1000 years.
I have an English copy (not easy to come by) for anybody who may want to read this. It is a wonderful account of the joys of gardening along with descriptions of plants used during the Medieval times. . .
Garden Well,
e
