One significant attraction of M’Mahon’s prose is that his writing is consistently efficient, practical, and accessible. His sentences do occasionally become convoluted, and he uses a few words and phrases that may not be immediately understood (e.g., the word “blow” to signify a flower in bloom), but his Calendar is full of passages that have impressed me as directly relevant to my own gardening practices. One does need to keep in mind that M’Mahon did his gardening in a Zone 7 climate, so his “growing season” would have stretched from early April to late October, about two months longer than what is the case for Zone 5 Iowa gardens.
What follows is a series of quoted passages from his monthly “Pleasure or Flower-Garden” sections. While I have retained McMahon’s spelling and exuberant use of commas, I have on occasion added a few personal observations and provided names for some plants no longer commonly identified by M’Mahon’s terminology.
The Pleasure, or Flower-Garden
January
• In designs for a Pleasure-ground, according to modern gardening; consulting rural disposition, in imitation of nature; all too formal works being almost abolished, such as long straight walks, regular intersections, square grass-plats, corresponding parterres, quadrangular and angular spaces, and other uniformities, as in ancient designs; instead of which, are now adopted, rural open spaces of grass-round, of varied forms and dimensions, and winding walks, all bounded with plantations of trees, shrubs, and flowers, in various clumps; other compartments are exhibited in a variety of imitation rural forms; such as curves, projections, openings, and closings, in imitation of a natural assemblage; having all the various plantations and borders, open to the walks and lawns. . . . all the parts of the pleasure-ground being so arranged, as gradually to discover new scenes, each furnishing fresh variety, both in the form of the design in different parts, as well as in the disposition of the various trees, shrubs, and flowers, and other ornaments and diversities. . . . and even if the figure of the ground is irregular, and the surface has many inequalities, the whole may be improved without any great trouble of squaring or levelling, for by humouring the natural form, you may cause even the very irregularities and natural deformities, to carry along with them an air of diversity and novelty, which fail not to please and entertain most observers. (55-6)
This M'Mahon's Calendar link should enable you to access a pdf document with the complete blog posting.