Crape Myrtle in the morning light

Holding two white-egg turnips with attached greens in my right hand, I fold the harvest knife with my left and slide it into my pocket. Walking back to the house from the garden, I mutter, “Take that, Monty Don, you pompous twit.”

Why waste my breath on Monty (real name: Montagu Denis Wyatt Don), you might ask? After all, here is a man I had not even heard of until a video of him showing off his spectacular two acres of British gardens went viral this summer. (Yes, I did share the video with a handful of fellow gardeners.) Could it be envy?

Casting stones from a glass house whose library contains books on the impossibly out of touch gardens of Prince Charles is a dangerous activity. Yet, stay with me as I pick up a hefty rock, throw my arthritic arm back into pitching position, and let it fly.

We need to share less garden porn from the Monty Dons and P. Allen Smiths and more stories and videos celebrating real working people and their gardens. Here in our valley, in that slanting patch of land between narrow ridges, people fed themselves long before the current crisis. They grew okra and beans and tomatoes and potatoes. They did not make a fuss, indeed, might even have been insulted if you called attention to their plot, as if you thought them incapable of creating a garden both tidy and productive.

Gardens in our valley are not for show. They are not tended by armies but by single soldiers. Yet there is a utility and a beauty to them, nestled against a barn or tucked away behind a pig paddock. They exist to feed the families who maintain them. But it is also clear that the caretakers take pride in their weed-free plots and find immense satisfaction in preserving their harvest, whether it be canning tomatoes, shelling beans, or salting cabbage into crocks.

The sight of a well-maintained vegetable garden next to a humble trailer or small clapboard house is both beautiful and inspiring. Far more impressive than the celebrity showplace is the garden with neat rows of beans cultivated by the man who works third shift to keep our modern lives running. Let us share that story, help that video go viral, hold that gardener up as worthy of celebration and emulation.