17 Years Ago in TIME

Martha Stewart is out of prison and ready to do her planting, and the rest of America is starting to think about GARDENING too, as TIME did back in 1988.

We all have an idea of a garden. It is the place where we wish we were, where we are at our best: generous, fertile, humble and at peace. For some the vision may be exquisitely formal, a garden of thought and geometry, traced with tulips and a perfectly taut hedge. For others it is wild and artless, with shaggy trees and hiding places and children splashing in clover. Even if we have never been there, we know what it looks like. Maybe it is the change of season, or something in the social climate, but suddenly it seems as though all around the country people are going to any length to find their garden: to read about it, visit it and, if at all possible, create it. Mailboxes bulge with gardening catalogs, groceries grow on windowsills, cranes hoist trees onto city rooftops. From coast to coast, nursery owners say their business has doubled. — TIME, June 20, 1988

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