The fuddy duddy and the garden books

I read today that an enzyme catalyzes the hypothesis of starch*. Not that long ago I read "week ones get ait first" as a description of evolution. It's been reported to me that members of Kingdom Animalia differ from members of Kingdom Fungi in that, "Kingdom Animalia is 97% alive."

Being inundated with errors, both of logic and editing, is an everyday part of my job, and has been for many years. Something has changed in the last several months, however, and suddenly I've become one of those cranky editor types both in and away from school. Errors now bother me in my pleasure reading. I circled and crossed-out words on the paperwork I had to complete for my new doctor. When the receptionist entering my data apologized for the "if it if" where "if it is" was intended, instead of assuring her it was no big deal, I pointed her to the line where I was to report any past "insuries"**. I refrained from asking how much longer it would make my appointment if I answered "Has anyone ever hurt you emotionally?" truthfully.
This post is emerging very slowly because I have a karmic sense of the universe. I can't imagine how a post criticizing editing won't lead to future personal humiliation. I am a bad editor of my own work. I am a worse speller. Yet somehow, reading gardening books over the summer, what I noticed was the editing, and I'm going to tell you about it.

The very beautiful coffee table book, The Garden Design Book by Cheryl Merser and the editors of Garden Design magazine, is, like the magazine that inspired it, fun to flip through. It was probably my mistake to try to read it cover to cover. While doing so I found that several sections had no point, that the "lessons" did not much match the "plans" they accompanied, and several (okay, at least two), unexplained and awkward Gertrude Jekyll references.
The table of contents lists chapter titles and a sub-head for each. The first chapter is, "who is the new gardener?" accompanied by, "Hint: It's not Gertrude Jekyll anymore"***.

So a possible convert to gardening opens up the book and sees gardening is not for Gertrude Jekyll anymore and thinks, "I don't even know who the person they're making fun of is, the book must not be for beginners like me," and closes the book. The odd person who thinks, "Gardening is not for some woman I've never heard of, I'm intrigued," will find a vague description of the new gardener (not necessarily old or English, who I assume that Gertrude Jekyll was to represent) but no further information about GJ other than she would be amazed by the people who now garden. Those of us for whom Gertrude Jekyll is a paragon of garden design get defensive about her and wonder what else the author is missing if she thinks that Gertrude Jekyll is the antithesis of modern gardeners.
Take home editing lesson: if you are going to set someone up as a foil, particularly as an attention grabber foil, they should both be immediately recognizable to your audience and actually represent some sort of opposition.
Aside: Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) was a fabulous English garden designer and planter. She used color and texture in "painterly" combinations that still feel fresh to me. Her name supposedly rhymes with treacle and her younger brother was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson.
The revised edition of the Oklahoma Gardener's Guide by Steve Dobbs has both editing and editorial problems. One of six different Oklahoma climate maps is in the introduction. The other five are in the back matter. The index lists several plants that don't make the book. The sod chapter (smack dab on the page where Chilopsis is supposed to be) was cut and paste from a different book for a different region without local adjustments. Of real concern, Dobbs profiles several plants that are invasive thugs as being good garden plants for Oklahoma.

So that should give you an idea of the things that are bugging me recently. Suffice it to say there are similar examples from many other books.

To help my editing karma, I'll end on a high note. Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West by Marcia Tatroe is fabulous. Well, I did have an issue with Marcia's decision to use "intermountain" to define an area that's not between any mountains (See what sort of stickler I'm becoming? Put "Intermountain West" in your title and I expect you not to use the Denver metro area for most of your examples.) but other than that the book is beautiful, inspiring and had just enough practical information in the text that it is well worth reading instead of just looking at Charles Mann's gorgeous photographs. I would think it a great book, even if I didn't know Marcia Tatroe personally (meeting her was nice a perk of working at a renowned garden in the near-mountain West, even if I haven't spoken to her in ten years) but it wouldn't have occured to me to buy it.

Okay, all this crankiness in making me tired and I'm afraid of all the errors I've made myself. Oh well, time to post. And then maybe this weekend I'll actually put the gardening knowledge to use.

*I believe the students intended "hydrolysis". I would be more sympathetic except it was a take home assignment and the word hydrolysis was in the instructions.

**I actually thought insuries was some sort of insurance-claim-worthy injury at first. I do like the word.

***That the "who" is not capitalized and the "Hint: It's" is also irks me a bit, but then I've just established that I'm a fuddy duddy who like parallel construction, at least in other people's work.

Garden image of Crathes Castle in Eastern Scotland by Kathy Collins. Crathes is not actually a Jekyll design, but directly a Jekyll-inspired garden. I'm not sure how that works, but it is a stunning garden.