The Secret Lore of Gardening: Patterns of Male Intimacy

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

Trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Jackson is a Jungian
analyst who practices in Toronto. His book proclaims itself to be “a
book about men like no other—an archetypal perspective on the
psychology of homoerotic and homosexual relationships [. . .] drawing
from literature, the arts and case studies.” Many will want to read
this book because of its particularly rich exploration of the arts and
literature: it goes beyond the all-too-frequent references to
Forster’s Maurice, quoting such works as Mary Renault’s The
Charioteer, Umberto Saba’s Ernesto, and David Rees’s In the Tent.
Although the author is careful to introduce basic tenets of Jungian
thought, he is guilty of posting his central thesis unanchored and
without initial direction. He would do well to consider moving some of
the text that begins the middle and later chapters to the introduction
or second chapter—where, unfortunately, examples and citations
proliferate like an overgrown litany. Jackson sets out an interesting
archetypal color polarity of yellow man (natural—sky, vision) and
green man (natural—earth, physical) seeking to complement each other:
“a meeting of yellow and green is a prerequisite for any deeply
creative relationships between men.” Although he points out and
interprets in this perspective a fascinating garden of literary and
artistic examples, some of the supporting reasoning is—in a
word—forced. For instance, he blithely passes over the blatant
contradiction of artificiality (the green carnation of the Aesthetic
movement) faced with the major premise of the natural (spring green,
budding leaves, flower-boy), yet does not hesitate to join the latter
evocations of youth and immaturity to a bronze statue graced with the
green patina of age! Jackson seems, frankly, much more at home and
focused in the final chapter of case material.

Given the inclusion of trappings usually denoting academic legitimacy
(careful footnoting, a bibliography, an index, illustrations), it is
strange to find only one cursory reference to the illustrative material
in the text. Even more incomprehensible, given the author’s fine
tripartite distinction of hues of green and yellow, is that the
publisher offers the illustrations in black and white!

Since Jackson deals at length with classical and aboriginal
mythologies, initiation rites, and the 19th- and early 20th-century
education of artists and literati, it is not surprising that much space
is devoted to the mentor man-youth or erastes-eromenos partnering—a
difficult subject to broach at this time because of increasing
sensitivity to power abuse, especially in the form of sexual aggression.
Fortunately, the author’s awareness of the question is evident: “Men
seeking compensation among themselves for the aggression, hostility,
frustration and fear perpetrated by male power do so generally with
age-mates rather than in older-younger relationships. In other words,
the comrades-in-arms relationship is now a more common vessel for the
green-yellow dialogue, in life, at least, if not in literature.”

With a number of references to “Iron Hans,” The Secret Lore of
Gardening is likely to attract at least a few Iron John enthusiasts who
might otherwise not be drawn to the homosexual and homoerotic aspects of
male intimacy that are the main focus of Jackson’s book.