Liberty Hyde Bailey – Dean Of American Gardeners
Liberty Hyde Bailey has long been recognized as the Dean of American gardeners. In every field connected with garden education and horticulture, he has had a distinguished career. Moreover, he has also succeeded in that artistic expression of life which together with his distaste of excess, a close kinship with men and nature, and high moral standards adds to his stature.
Hearty and at 92, he celebrated his birthday on March 15 in studying the palm groves of Nigeria, had he not fallen and broken his leg while attending the national science meetings in New York City the previous December.
Born on a backwoods farm near South Haven, Michigan, Liberty Hyde was named for his father, a Vermonter whose family were prominent farmers and abolitionists. His mother, a gentlewoman from Ohio of Virginia stock, died when he was four. She was a flower lover and he resolved when a small lad that he would always have a garden. His father brought fruit trees west on his back to start’ one of the first apple orchards in that region, and before long he showed 320 varieties of apples at the local fair, a record for that time. Young Liberty soon became an expert at grafting. At the age of 14 his knowledge was such that he was in demand to help orchardists improve their plantings.
Michigan in those days had as many Indians as whites, and South Haven was a rowdy waterfront town. Liberty, however, preferred the woods, fields and streams and turned his back on the town to collect plants, snakes’ eggs and creatures from the woods, sometimes to the disgust of his father who once predicted that “Lib will never be worth his salt.”
The boy’s concern with nature interested his one-room schoolmarm who asked some questions he could not answer. “You must learn to observe,” she said, and from then on he did. From observation he went on to read and discovered Darwin’s new “Origin of Species.” Its startling theory did much to shape his thinking.
Another influence was the botany of Asa Gray, one of the great plantsmen of all time. At the same time that this tall, gangling boy was captaining the baseball team and leading a typical frontier youth’s outdoor life, he was also studying hard and retaining every important detail he learned. He early recognized the goodness of nature and man’s relationship to her and was aware that by working with and improving on nature man could better his lot materially and spiritually. In gardening and farming, profits were necessary but also important was a close feeling for the land and an active participation in the creative force.
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