Gardening: A Man's Hobby?

    
 

             Gardening: A Man's Hobby?

            Can gardening be a man's hobby? The culture today presents men as strong, aggressive, athletic, hunters, leaders, and "wild", etc. Men do not cry, garden, watch "chick-flicks", and other things that women are perceived to do. I disagree with this culture and according to Wulf's book Founding Fathers, the founding fathers would as well. Yes, men should be strong, though there are different forms of strength; they should be courageous and stand up for others, especially women; they should step up as leaders. However, being strong, courageous, and a leader should not determine the hobbies a man has or the activities that are acceptable for him to do. Our very founding fathers were all gardeners. "For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were the elemental passion" (Wulf). Gardening should be a hobby for more men.

            George Washington, the great general of the Revolutionary War that set the standard of the presidency, was so caught up in his garden on Mount Vernon, that it was what he thought about often during the revolutionary war. He shaped his garden and was constantly sovereign over it. Washington designed Mount Vernon to incorporate and aspect of all thirteen colonies and even faced it West to signify growth and expansion. George Washington spent most of his life experimenting with plants. After the war, he used the garden as a nursery.Washington cherished the tulip poplars' upright white-orange flowers, roses, and fruit trees. Even during the war, Washington was thinking of his garden and even had the soldiers grow their own gardens for food and to keep their mind sober. He and Jefferson had their own pleasure gardens where they planted their favorite trees and plants.

            John Adams, the statesman, diplomat, and leading advocate of American independence, had his own small farm and garden. He and Jefferson took time in Europe to tour all of the fascinating gardens Europe had to offer while they were in London forming trade negotiations in 1786. They used gardens as their sanctuaries and freedom from politics. Also, by touring in Europe, they gathered ideas for their own gardens back in America. It was Jefferson's passion for gardening and making the U.S. a agrarian society that devoted him to Western expansion and the Lewis and Clark expedition. The most cherished thing in Jefferson's life was Monticello. Even as the president, he constantly wrote letters to his daughters asking for every minor detail of the garden: when the flowers bloomed and died, when the trees began to produce fruit and seeds, and how the plants were being trimmed and flowers pruned. Jefferson experimented with rice on his window sill when he was stuck in Washington because gardening was his passion and hobby. One of James Madison's love was Montpelier and the grounds around the mansion. He expanded the original garden of his father to a more ornamental garden. Madison and Jefferson took a botanical journey through West Virginia and the other parts of New England as a means to take refuge from politics. 

            Gardening and agriculture were these nationally honored and heroic founders of our country, and yet they were also considered great men. A man should not be judged by his hobbies or passions, especially if they might be contrary to culture's stereotypical man. Genesis 2:8 of the Bible says "the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed." Adam was placed in the garden to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion" (Gen. 1:28). God placed man in the garden before the corruption of sin, due to the fall of man, to cultivate and work so that God's glory would grow and spread. Man was told to "subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on earth" (Gen.1:28). So, even God had man as gardeners in the beginning of Creation to work and keep it but also to be lords and servants under God's authority. So I'll ask it again: is gardening an acceptable man's hobby?