Naked Gardening Folklore

As any seasoned horticulturist can attest, gardening involves much more than putting a seed into the dirt, keeping it watered, and watching it grow.  Serious agrarians insist on the importance of lore and ritual in gardening.  The Old Farmer’s Almanac stresses the importance of planting according to the moon phases.  Rural grandmothers will swear that parsley must be planted in three sowings (“two for the devil and one for the gardener”), or that spicier peppers can be achieved if the gardener sows the seeds while angry.    

Some even claim that nudity has a role in gardening and horticulture.  

In the late 1800s, a group from Indiana purchased land in Crossville, Tennessee and established the Pomona Settlement to tend to the apple orchards of the former Pomona Fruit Ranch, which had been owned by John Wood Dodge, a respected artist whose paintings can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The Pomona Settlement drew the attention of locals when it was learned that the women of the group would rise “early in the morning to dance nude in the apple orchards, hoping that the dance would assist the apple-growing process.”  It’s not clear if the nude dancing helped with the apples, but two nudist campgrounds did emerge in Crossville, some years later. (1)  

In a 1953 essay titled Nakedness in Ozark Folk Belief, folklorist Vance Randolph relays a story about a fisherman who, in the spring of 1920, told him that he had seen a man and woman in a field in Southwest Missouri, just before dawn, “both stark naked, chasing each other up and down like rabbits.”  When Randolph mentioned this to a friend who had lived in the area, the friend replied, “Yes, I’ve heard of such doings, it’s supposed to make the corn grow tall.”  After subsequently interviewing hundreds of old-timers in the region, Randolph concluded, “There is no doubt in my mind that many early settlers believed that newly cleared fields were benefited by some kind of nude skylarking.  Many of them thought that certain crops grew better if the persons who sowed the seed were naked.”  Randolph soon uncovered a number of Ozark crop rituals involving nudity, including one in which flax seed was sown by naked farmers chanting, “Up to my ass, and higher too!” (2)  

Since then, naked gardening folklore has appeared in a variety of publications.  A reader’s letter published in the Spring, 1992 issue of Garden Ideas & Outdoor Living claimed that, “Turnips must be sewn on a summer night when the moon is full with the sower working stark naked in the bright moonlight.” (3)

Even some noted contemporary horticulturists have suggested that there’s a role for nudity in gardening.  In 1967, a New York painter named Robert Dash moved to Sagaponack and began work on what would ultimately become The Madoo Conservancy.  He spent his days at Madoo painting, writing poetry, and gardening.  At certain symposiums, Dash would encourage his audience to consider the “microclimates” of their gardens, which he believed was essential for understanding the best spots to nurture different plants.  According to Dash, there was one sure way to identify these microclimates:  “Take your clothes off in midsummer and walk around your garden.  Let the air be still, and let it be night.  You will at once feel the different temperatures on your skin.  These are the microclimates to be observed by your plants.” (4)

Janet Draper, the Smithsonian horticulturist responsible for the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden tells gardeners that the ground temperature, not the air temperature, should be considered when deciding when to plant certain annuals.  Her advice?  Take the “bare bottom test.”  “Sow warm weather annuals when you can sit on the soil with your bare bottom comfortably.”  (5)

With so much history and folklore surrounding gardening and farming in the nude, it’s only fitting that the activity should have its own dedicated day.  In 2005, Nude & Natural magazine consulting editor Mark Storey and permaculturalist Jacob Gabriel founded World Naked Gardening Day, as a project of Seattle’s Body Freedom Collaborative, but the event quickly evolved from its Seattle roots.  “No particular organization owns World Naked Gardening Day,”  Storey explained in a 2013 interview with the New York Daily News.  “It could be a little old lady in downtown Chicago with a potted plant, or a group raking leaves at a nudist club.”  (6)  The first annual World Naked Gardening Day took place on September 10, 2005, but the event has since moved to the first Saturday in May, and become an international happening.

This year, World Naked Gardening Day will be celebrated on Saturday, May 4.  If you have a private garden spot, it’s the perfect opportunity to spend a little time enjoying the spring day.  If you’re the adventurous sort, you might consider getting up early and dancing nude in your apple orchard, or grab your loved one and run naked around your freshly-plowed cornfield like a “pair of rabbits.”  Perhaps take a moment that evening to strip down and locate the “microclimates” in your backyard, or find yourself an empty plot of dirt and try the “bare bottom test.”  If you’re feeling particularly enthusiastic, revive the old “Up to my ass, and higher too!” chant of the Ozark farmers as you work.  It’s not clear if these activities will produce bigger fruit and more colorful flowers, but they’re almost certain to add a little joie de vivre to your gardening.

References:

1. Allison Barrell, “Bring Your Own Towel: Nudism, The Federal Courts and Timberline Lodge,” Rural Life and Culture in the Upper Cumberland (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 324.
2. Randolph, Vance, “Nakedness in Ozark Folk Belief,” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 66, No. 262 (Oct. – Dec., 1953), 333-339 
3. Garden Ideas & Outdoor Living, (Spring, 1992)
4. Seebohm,Caroline and Sykes, Christopher, Private Landscapes, (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1992)
5. https://washingtongardener.blogspot.com/2010/03/bare-bottom-test.html
6. Taylor, Victoria, “World Naked Gardening Day encourages no-pants planting,”  New York Daily News, (May 04, 2013)