AUCTORITAS
Auctoritas is the first of the nine Roman virtues. The others are Comitas, Firmitas, Dignitas, Gravitas, Humanitas, Liberalitas, Potentia, and Severitas.
From the Latin words themselves it is relatively easy to understand what they mean. But if one wants to go into their deeper meaning or significance, there are plenty of sources available, on or off the internet. Or, in books.
So what does Auctoritas have to do with gardening? It has to do with authority or approval. We don't need anyone's approval as to how to grow our own garden! As Voltaire said in Candide. It is our garden, even if it is a windowsill row of African Violets, which I have, or a several acre plot. For most of us it's the housing development sized lot. Some are small or large. Mine is large. This is purely luck or fortune, from the Latin "fortunas". I love that word.
The point is that we don't need any approval to work in or to enjoy our garden. No one is there to judge or criticize or to say that what we are doing is right or wrong. As one writer in the Penguin Book of Garden Writing states it, we can do what we want, or as we please. What we do matters only to us and not to anyone else. We are the true practitioners of Auctoritas. There is no right or wrong, correct or incorrect. Whatever we like or enjoy doing is our business. For me, doing it my way, the way I want to, is refreshing, empowering and deeply pleasing.
This appears to be simplistic. But it isn't when one considers popular taste, community approval, status, what so-called experts dictate, what the books tell us or anything else that comes from external authority, which is different from Auctoritas.
The art and act of gardening comes from within. And, to be a good gardener, one has to be an artist, and that is why so many people love gardening and gardens. All gardeners are artists. It proceeds from the personal center or core of one's essential being--thus Auctoritas.
Also, the creation of ones own garden takes a very long time to achieve, like the inside of ones own home: the colors, furnishings, collected objects, framed photos, paintings and drawings. It is not something that the landscapers and garden designers tell us that can be "popped right in". If you pay the money and we do the job. No. This is the antithesis of true gardening because the garden is a creative act and grows out from the Soul. Yes, designers can possibly help, but they also must have Soul, and they have to work with the Soul of the person (if he or she can) who is asking for their help and expertise, and paying them for advice.
On a practical level, it has taken me a very long time to understand the characteristics of my little piece of land; how it sits in relation to my house. How and where the winds blows on it or the sun shines on it, or even to know how my neighbors have neglected to care for or properly trim their own trees. Somehow they think cared for trees are not a part of a garden. For instance, nothing that enjoys sun and breezes will grow in the deep cold shade created by the neighbors' trees to my south. These are no longer urban garden trees: huge sycamores, ficus nitidas, out of control ash trees, tall pittosporums, rampant Brazilian peppers. They have run wild and are beyond being garden trees at thirty to forty feet tall, very dense all the year. They do not belong in an urban garden setting unless regularly trimmed by good tree workers.
The same for the neighbor trees to the East and the West of my plot. For six months in my back garden bed there is cold shade because of their neglected trees--no roses or gardenias will grow there. They had those trees "popped in" thirty years ago, and then they forgot them. They consider them utilitarian for privacy. So, these monster trees suck up your water, nutrients, and life giving sun. There was neither gardening intentionality nor planning in their being planted. Some garden-center clerk told them what to do! So, I, have had to plant my rose garden in the center of my garden plot. As my father told me, "Keep the center of the garden open from large overwhelming trees and shrubs," and this is good advice. Many true gardeners have agreed with me. Openness in some part of the garden is one way to create a feeling of expansiveness. Monty Don talks about this all the time. Psychologists tell us that people feel better when they can see outwardly. You don't feel hemmed in when you look out the window into the garden. There is a sense of freedom, even of hope, I would say.
So, attention to the lay of the land and the position of the house (home) is essential, and that has taken me 45 years to understand. This, year as every year, I am growing seven or eight varieties of tomatoes in fifteen gallon black plastic cans. They are placed where the sun is constant, dependable and very bright. Up against the south wall. They love it there. That's the way I do it, and do you think that some know-it-all dillitante "professional" is going to tell me what to do and where to grow my tomatoes? Forget it! Growing tomatoes requires skill derived from personal experience, knowledge, and what I want for myself and my family.
But most off all a garden acquires a special spirit or Soul with age. Age is a Soul maker. It has taken my garden years to get that layering, that patina of having lived; mossy places, twisted and gnarled tree trunks, falling leaves in fall, footsteps worn in places where I walk every day. I see this patina of love and age in European gardens mostly. Except for a few old gardens, America is too young. I often worry about what will happen to my garden when I leave this earth--will somebody improve it, build a condo, rebuild, by doing "a scrape"? Most of all there are memories of so many people in my heart who have given me plants. My garden is "peopled" with plants. They are growing in my garden "in absentia", and always will be present as long as I am here to acknowledge their plant gifts, their gardening advice, the lovely specimen-plants that have matured over the years. You can't just "pop that in"--no way.
Auctoritas means as the ancient Romans conceived it, that which one does with ones intentionality. It is the same in speech, playing music, good cooking, love, hate, a teaching, voice in writing, or anything else worth doing well. Where there is no Auctoritas there is no true intentionality, and a Garden of Soul possesses Auctoritas.
Frank La Rosa Mazza 19 June 2020
