It's no newsflash that Nostradamus was an astrologer and physician or that many believe he was a prophet. His quatrains, verses with meanings, have been interpreted and misinterpreted time and time again.

What we haven't known until now is that Nostradamus was a serious gardener who predicted world gardening trends long before they occurred. People have bandied his prophetic utterances for centuries using them to highlight political and social history. Alas, Nostradamus was merely talking of his garden like a lovesick Romeo esteems his Juliet.

Here's an example;

The year 1999 seven month,
From the sky will come a great King of terror:
To bring back to life the great King of Angolmois, (the Mongols),
Before after Mars to reign by good luck

which has been altered considerably from the original;

The year 2007 seven month,
From the ground will come a great King of terra firma:
To bring back to life the great King of Deodar, (the Conifers),
Before after Moon-planting to reign by good propagation

It's actually quite devious how modern interpretations have made a humble gardening prediction into some political justification of 9/11.

The true gist of what Nostradamus was trying to foreshadow was that 2007 will be a year where great upheaval will occur in the gardening industry. No longer will people be planting dwarf versions of the original. Miniatures will be discarded like a handful of onion grass. There will be weeping and gnashing of tiny leaves in the compost piles.

For the mighty Sequoias, Deodars, Huons and Wollemis will begin to reign the landscape once again.

People will no longer settle for small and those that patent miniature versions of plants will be scoffed. True gardeners will tear down their barns and their sheds and make room for a large living conifer specimen that will alter the skyline for generations to come.

Streetscapes of robinias and plane trees will be rejected like a jilted lover with halitosis. People will brag about the height of their conifer and make excuses for their genetically modified willow.

Instead, the mightiest of the mighty arboreal relics will once again capture the imagination of a public incensed with a desire for meaning in their gardening efforts.

This is what Nostradamus was really talking about: Conifers will again be the plant of choice and the gardening public will no longer stand for palms and patented miniature versions of colossal trees constrained like a lion in a cage.

2007 will be the year that gardeners became serious about great trees.

This has been written as part of Problogger's Group Writing Project.