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Re: [GWL]science and power

In a message dated 9/21/03 1:49:02 PM US Eastern Standard Time, jeff@gardener.com writes:

IMHO we need more science sessions at our GWA meets.


Whilst I would agree that science sessions would be informative at the GWA conferences, I am not sure of the value professionally, that they would give the writer.  A session on  Lumbricus terrestris,  or Mycorrhiza would be informative on an academic level but it would not make me comfortable enough to write about it in any meaningful way and certainly would not make me an expert (which is what are readers perhaps expect).

I would also like to mention the power that writers have and how they can influence (for good or bad).  In a modern English translation or Horace Walpole's essay on 'Modern Gardening' he comments that he does  not  recommend anything but is strictly an observer. and yet goes on to ridicule the formal gardens of the pre-Capabilty era and outwardly promote the landscape idea as the only sensible garden design.  Whether we agree with Warpole or not in his assessment, the destruction of almost all formal gardens and walled gardens was a catastrophy to English garden history.  It has taken close to 200yrs to recovery from that 'phase' promoted by Kent, Brown and endorsed by writers such as Warpole.  So we can have an effect and sway the tide, but is that is that what we should do? Pander to the current phase? Or let people read what they want to read?
I, for one, have not idea
Katy
Living just one cornfield away from civilization 
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