bered rhapsodies to velvet beans by my grandmother (Theodosia Yarbrough Palmer,
d. ), information esp. on velvets as hallucinogens is derived from e-mail exchanges
with a tropical ethnobiologist, February , who was conducting research in Central
America and searching for velvets in the U.S. Southeast.
. I am indebted here and in following paragraphs esp. to Richard Westmacott,
African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South(Knoxville: University of Tennes-
see Press, ), but one might peruse also Henry Glassie,Folk Housing in Middle Vir-
ginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
). ‘‘Gardens’’ does not appear in Glassie’s index, but photographs of many of his
predominantly Euro-Virginian buildings include spaces obviously once gardens. There
is also a photo of a European walled farmstead, suggesting European as well as Afri-
can precedence. On home demonstration agents and decorative gardens, see Lu Ann
Jones,Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South(Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, ), –, .
. Michael Pollan described the disaster that followed his willful dismissal of his
grandfather-mentor’s instruction to plant in rows, in s suburban Long Island, in
Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education(New York: Dell, ), –. On formal pleasure
gardens, see Anne Scott-James and Osbert Lancaster,The Pleasure Garden: An Illus-
trated History of British Gardening(London: John Murray, ), esp. chaps. and (on
Pope, pp. , –), and Peter Martin,The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia, from Jamestown
to Jefferson(Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), esp. chaps. – (Wythe’s gar-
den plan, p. ).
. Pollan,Second Nature. William Cronon and other scholar-contributors to Cro-
non, ed.,Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature(New York: Norton,
), incorporated Pollan’s construction into their own discourse.
. Eugene Odum quoted in Betty Jean Craige,Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist
and Environmentalist(Athens: University of Georgia Press, ), .
. Edmund N. O’Rourke Jr. and Leon C. Standifer,Gardening in the Humid South
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, ), – (on hoses), – (under-
ground irrigation), (organic gardening), and –, – (pests, chemicals).
. John K. Crellin, comp and ed.,Plain Southern Eating: From the Reminiscences of
A. L. Tommie Bass, Herbalist(Durham: Duke University Press, ), xi (on Tullos’s ‘‘dis-
covery’’ of Bass), (on sharing milk when someone’s cow went dry, etc.). Westmacott’s
African-American Gardens and Yardsdoes not feature gender, particularly, but men and
boys are pictured at vegetable production and processing.
. See Louis R. Harlan,Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, –
(New York: Oxford University Press, ), esp. –, and Linda McMurray,George
Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol(New York: Oxford University Press, ).
. Theodore Rosengarten,All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw(; New York:
Avon, ), (quotation); see also –. On Washington, see Harlan,Booker T.
Washington, (on his Farmers’ Improvement Society), (on farm demonstration),
– (the Tuskegee Farm and Improvement Co.), (on public health). See also
–