Elizabeth Lawrence

The Little Bulbs: A Tale of Two Gardens by Elizabeth Lawrence is what inspired my interest in snowdrops, but it took many years before I actually got any planted. This is partly because I was confused by their blooming time. In Elizabeth Lawrence’s southern gardens they bloomed on Candlemas Day (February 2) and sometimes “more than once known them to take advantage of an ‘amazing interlude’ of mild weather in January to slip out of the half frozen muck and flower serenely.”

Here in my New England garden there is often snow on the ground through March and I feared the beautiful snowdrops would bloom under the snow – all unseen. No point in planting them here! But I finally gave them a try, planting a dozen bulbs below some poorly sited dwarf apple trees. Here they have bloomed and given me great pleasure along with Glory-of-the snow, scillas and grape hyacinths. They are planted in the grass and I try to make sure it is mowed low before it goes dormant late in the fall. The fall seems to last longer these days, and spring arrives later. This year Candlemas Day dawned with freezing rain on top of the snow. On April 2 I mentioned in my journal that the snow was still melting. The photo above was taken on April 15.

For this reason, Miss Lawrence’s garden seemed as exotic as any I have ever read about, but what makes her book such a delight is her love of plants, and of gardeners, and her knowledge of those plants, and the gardeners who became her friends. To me, her books seem to contain so much history, of plants, of gardens, and of friends. There is something to learn about all three even though my garden on a windy Massachusetts hill is so different.

I couldn’t get the assigned reading for Garden Bloggers Book Club, but I can highly recommend the delights of The Little Bulbs and Gardening for Love: The Market Bulletins edited and with an introduction by Allen Lacy.

Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education

When Michael Pollan’s book Second Nature came out in 1991 I remember spending a lot of time reading out bits to my husband with disgusted exclamations – Can you believe he says this?!

Of course, all these years later, I don’t remember the particulars except how my view of the suburban lawn is so different from his. Still, since all this time has gone by, I wanted to reread Second Nature, and see in what ways the world in general, and my world in particular might have changed.

I find that he still irritates me, and it took a while to figure out why – and then it was clear. He makes very sweeping statements about groups of people that I just don’t buy. For instance, “Like most Americans out-of-doors, I was a child of Thoreau.” He may be a child of Thoreau, and I love Thoreau myself (Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!) but I don’t think ‘most Americans’ think a lot about Thoreau outdoors, or in.

Or this, “A society that produces ‘gardens’ (or anti-gardens) like Central Park is one that assumes nature and culture are fundamentally and irreconcialably opposed. . . . . Americans have historically tended to regard nature as a cure for culture or vice versa.” Really? Perhaps my problem is that he is concentrating more on ornamental gardens than I am allowing for. Vegetable gardeners clearly need to work with nature in order to meet the goal of a harvest. But really, even flower gardeners need to work with nature to achieve their goal of a healthy beautiful garden.

And this is not a new and personal view. For a brief time in my checkered career, I was a tour guide in the Stebbins House in the beautiful and fascinating Historic Deerfield. When the tourists were thin on the ground I would sometimes browse through the 18th and 19th century agricultural texts that were among the house’s furnishings. There I was amazed to find that farmers were urged to feed their cattle the best feed possible because that would insure not only the good health of the animal, but good quality manure which could be spread on the fields for a good quality harvest. the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of working with nature was not unknown then, or even earlier.

But about those lawns. Have I changed in my view? No. While it may be possible that developers had a vision of an uninterrupted swath of green lawn ribboning its way across countless suburbs, my own experience of suburban lawns is that fences, hedges, and bordering beds pop up in very short order as homeowners put their own stamp of personality on their blessed plots of land. That is the wonder and delight of the garden. No two gardens or even lawns are the same.

It is true that I have a philosophical position regarding my domestic landscape. I am an organic gardener, continually learning, and trying to live as lightly on my plot as possible. Having arrived at that position I don’t give the moral implications of my garden much thought. I have killed a woodchuck. Nature is red in tooth and claw.

Perhaps it is just a literary style or conceit, but Pollan’s constant moral agonizing gets a bit wearing. There are interesting facts and fascinating digressions, but so many judgements about aesthetics! For me the garden is a place where we can be ourselves, please ourselves, and enjoy ourselves without worrying about anyone else’s opinions.

Though this has been an extended rant, I will say that I did enjoy his book Botany of Desire.

Garden Bloggers Book Club

My Friend Elsa

Though I haven’t read Dear Friend and Gardener I have my own great garden friend. When I moved to my Massachusetts hilltop, I found that one of our area’s most famous perennial gardeners, Elsa Bakalar, lived on a neighboring hilltop. She was a generation older, British, much more knowledgeable about flower gardens, and way more opinionated than I was about anything but happy to befriend a novice.

She is a born teacher, and even now living in a nursing home, she is always imagining classes and lectures she is ready to present.

I knew nothing about perennials and never imagined growing any flower more exotic than a marigold, but she taught me and I encouraged her to write, to put all those good lessons down on paper where they could be shared. We started writing together. It was my byline that appeared under The Flower Garden According to Elsa in the January 1987 issue of Horticulture Magazine with fabulous photographs by Gary Mottau, but the very definite and charming opinions were all Elsa’s.

Elsa not only has skill in the garden, as well as a strong aesthetic sense, she has a sharp wit. It is her sense of humor that helped make her a sought after lecturer at garden clubs, flower shows and botanical gardens all across the country. The tales she brought back from Williamsburg, Virginia, and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art entertained all of us in Heath.

The speaking engagements finally inspired her to put down her thoughts about gardening. Though she held strong opinions, she believed that gardeners should please themselves. Bring on the gnomes and flamingos if that’s what the gardener loved. Her book is aptly titled A Garden of One’s Own: Making and Keeping Your Flower Garden. Elsa was insistent about using those brisk Anglo-Saxon words – make and keep. Forget designing and creating she said. The book came out in time to mark her 75th birthday in 1994.

After we met she watched me put in a 90 foot perennial border and knew how foolish that was at that stage of my life and responsibilities. She just shrugged when it disappeared. She grew a single Queen Elizabeth rose, but appreciated my collection of hardy roses as it grew. Imitation was not considered a compliment in her book. For Elsa the garden is all about pleasure. That was the only thing she demanded a gardener find there. It is what I find with Elsa.