“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden… But though an old man, I am but a young gardener,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. For Jefferson, gardening was not simply a hobby, it was a political and philosophical act, a way to stay connected to nature, to hope, and to the rhythm of life.
In my experience, I do think aging — having gone through more of the rhythms of life — brings deeper appreciation of gardening. But beyond this, we all might do well to remember Jefferson’s spirit today, especially here in Alhambra, where our very name calls back to a vision of gardens, orchards, and harmony with the land.
Jefferson believed in the power of the garden to renew both the land and the soul. At Monticello, he treated gardening as a form of democratic experimentation. He planted foreign seeds and native varieties alike, curious to see what might thrive. For him, each row of beans or hill of squash was a vote of confidence in the future. Gardening reminded him that while we may not control nature, we are participants in it, and that participation, in turn, shapes us.
In Michael Pollan’s Second Nature, Pollan explores this tension and equates the garden to a “middle ground between nature and culture,” where we are constantly in dialogue with nature, not dominating it, but not retreating either. He views the garden as a space of struggle and negotiation, where the human touch and natural growth interact to create something neither purely wild nor purely artificial. Gardening, in his view, is an act of ongoing moral judgment, where every cut, planting, or irrigation decision says something about the kind of world we want to live in.
Long before Pollan, another writer had been captivated by a similar ideal around gardens. In his Tales of the Alhambra, Washington Irving described the gardens in Granada Spain, where water flowed down from the Sierra Nevada mountains to irrigate rose gardens and orchards surrounding the ancient Moorish palaces like the Alhambra. Irving wrote of “the murmur of fountains” and the scent of blossoms that seemed to float on the air as he described the beautiful gardens shaped by the human hand over centuries.
Remind you of someplace else? That imagery inspired Alhambra’s early founders, many of whom came in the late 19th century to buy plots of land for citrus growing. For many, including Francis Q. Story who would later go on to have a role in establishing the Sunkist brand, this represented the chance to start a new chapter, to live a life of cultivation, literally and figuratively. These early residents redirected mountain water into orchards and gardens, echoing the vision Irving had described. They believed, like Jefferson, that there is “no culture comparable to that of the garden.”
For them, gardening and citrus growing were not just ways to make a living, they were ways of life. They built homes surrounded by orange trees and bougainvillea, roses and grapevines. They studied and deployed the best practices of irrigation and fruit cultivation. They taught their children to dig and prune and harvest. And through it all — with extensive help from hired laborers whose hard work cared for the land and made the harvest possible — they lived with the seasons, anchored in the cycle of growth and renewal.
But let’s be honest here. Gardening is often a ball of frustration. My own garden is a constant struggle. Even with my versatile drip system and wifi-enabled watering timers (things that earlier gardeners could have only dreamed of) something is always inadequate, stranding a poor plant in a micro drought. Things frequently break, leading to frustrated Youtube scrolling to learn how to fix drip systems and repeated trips to the hardware store. When I finally have a vegetable that survives the raccoons, it often requires extra care to remove the aphids or other insects, only for no one in my family to eat it! More often, we end up getting our vegetables from the grocery store, or if we are lucky, the farmer’s market.
Maybe this struggle is the whole point. Although the orange groves of Alhambra are long gone, we are still left with mature trees and gardens. And as we work in our own backyards, patios, or community plots, we can continue that earlier legacy of gardening that links us to deeper values: care, patience, negotiation, resilience, and hope.
Jefferson knew it. Pollan reminds us. Irving saw it in the south of Spain. And here in Alhambra, our pioneers lived it. So whether you’re planting tomatoes, pulling weeds, or just watching the roses open, take heart. To garden is to believe in tomorrow.
“The McCollum Column” is written by Mike McCollum. Mike McCollum is a lawyer and owner of the local coworking space, Iona Work Spaces.
