To address paulns original propostion, I don't think it's a question that has a definitive answer without clarification.....what is "old-time gardening"? How far back does one go? And there are MANY definitions of organic gardening depending on one's philosophy, so which one are we going to agree to use? A lot of the previous comments are valid in a generalized form. The use of manufactured synthetic or chemically derived fertilizers has a pretty recent history when compared to how long man has been farming or growing crops for food. They are really only a by-product of the Industrial Revolution and the "hundreds of years" can actually be reduced to about 200, with the predominance of these fertilizers being widely accepted and used immediately after WWII, when they became cheaply and widely available, as greenwood85 notes. Same with synthetic, manufacture pesticides. And their introduction to the farming or gardening scene was considered at that time to be an enormous boon - a fast-acting, lightweight, easy to apply and easily accessible material that improved and increased harvests. Naturally - without the greater understanding we have now of soil science and the health implications of chemical residues and these products effects on pollution and ecology - they were widely accepted and utilized. It would be pretty hard to go back 50 or 60 years and not find a gardener or farmer that didn't use some form of manufactured fertilizer or pesticide. But even given these considerations, a good many of those gardeners/farmers from previous generations still incorporated what might be best termed "natural gardening" practices - composting, using animal manures, companion plantings, rotational cropping, home remedies for insect and disease controls - along with the manufactured products that at the time seemed like such a great improvement on what they had been doing. And affluence and location played a role as well - poorer farmers in more remote locations tended to use more what they had on hand - the natural methods and products rather than the newer, costly and more difficult to obtain manufactured ones. So I believe it is difficult to make a direct correlation between "old time gardening" and the organic or natural way unless you are going back more than just a 100 years or so.

I'm on Facebook under my name. It's a personal page where I connect with gardeners. I use Twitter mainly for my professional travel writing contacts and staying on top of news. I'm also on LinkedIn, but I rarely participate there. My freelance writing is so unique, rest assured that I'm never advertising to individuals (I pitch only to publications) -- just keeping my skills up and having fun with my writing about my home, garden and travel. You can find links to FB and Twitter on my blog. Cameron Here is a link that might be useful: Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel

Definitely will check this out - we used to go to Abuelo's regularly and it's close. Maybe it's time to go to lunch there! Thanks for the heads up.

Gean, thanks. How's your Pacific Northwest garden going? Hello, Suzy! Thanks! About how I planned the garden, I don't think there was anything in my head that you don't have in yours. I wanted to grow all the plants I love that were suited to my conditions (acidophiles were excluded, for example) in a way that was appropriate to the frame: the Italian countryside. The semi-wild style that called for was exactly suited to my own taste in a garden and in garden plants. Those plants were also the kind that do well with minimal intervention on the gardener's part because they're adapted here (though I do continue struggling with Teas, and we have to go out after a big snowfall and shake the snow off the Italian cypresses and pines, native further south of here). In other words, as you say I honored the genus loci. The main novelty was that I needed to scale up, since this garden was many times larger than anything I'd done before. Also I had views to exploit. I put in a good many trees, including a lot of Italian cypresses since they give a lot of height for the space they take up, and planned on bulky volumes of hedges, beds, and pergolas. I wanted the garden to look good from a distance as well as up close and inside it. I drew up plans beforehand showing the major plants: trees, shrub areas, and rose plantings--lots of rose hedges--and the paths, allowing tractor access, and open areas. I planned the garden, not all at once, but in large self-standing chunks, and trying to ensure that nothing I did would stymie any future ideas. I'm pretty happy with it, though since we started with a poor barren field it will be many more years before it develops an adequate skeleton of trees and large shrubs, and it won't look complete until that happens. Faults and all, and it has many, the garden feels right. Garden design is like morality; you don't need quantities of baggage: just a handful of basic principles and you can deal with anything.