Reading and Planning

I am still in the middle of reading and planning season. Two very different books have sent my imagination into high gear.

Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars: Grandma’s Bag of Tricks by Sharon Lovejoy  ($14.95 Workman Publishing) is ostensibly for grandmas, but among the 130 activities described and illustrated with engaging photos and charming drawings, many will engage mommies and daddies as well.

The opening chapter, Preparing Camp Granny, gives advice about welcoming a visiting grandchild so that even the first night without parents can be comfortable and cozy. Like Lovejoy we have a well stocked dress-up box, but I am going to have to think of a place to have a tokonoma, to place a simple flower arrangement as they do in Japan. You don’t even need a grandchild to make and enjoy the pleasure of a fresh daily plant arrangement reflecting the season.

The other chapters, Neighborhood Naturalist, Kids in the Kitchen, Kitchen Garbage Garden, Kids in the Garden and Rainy Day Activities, also have many ideas that are as appropriate for moms and dads as for grannies. Many, but not all the activities involve the natural world; I was happy to see that Reading Aloud plays a part in Grandma’s bag of tricks.

Lovejoy explains how to attract butterflies to the garden. In addition to including plants that support butterfly life cycles, she says something as simple as a shallow bowl filled with wet soil and sand, complete with a rock island, will help attract butterflies who need a place to drink. She mentions that butterflies and moths also like to dine on rotting fruit, and gives a recipe for Moth Broth of mashed up banana, plum or peach that rots quickly in the summer sun. Moth Broth can be painted on trees and prepares the way for a magical show of moths eating it up in the dark of a summer night.

Water, food and shelter are all a granny needs to entice all manner of wildlife into even a suburban yard that can be rich in wonder for a young child. One of the things that made a particular impression on me at UMass when I was in the education program there was the Square Foot Field Trip project. Everyone was sent out to the grounds around the building to choose a single square foot of ground and examine and catalog it carefully, noting all the different life forms, to see and think about what was going on, and what relationships might be.  What worked for would-be teachers also works for grannies and parents. We all have to learn to keep our eyes open and pay attention.

There are any number of projects that I can’t wait to try out when my grandsons visit this summer, making a pizza box solar oven (I’m a big fan of solar power) that will make grilled cheese sandwiches, mini pizzas and half baked apples; sprouting seeds including peanuts; planting a garden in a straw bale or two; and making leaf and flower collages.

Lovejoy is also the author of Sunflower Houses: Inspiration from the Garden, Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots, and Trowel and Error.  She advises about children’s gardens to the American Horticultural Society and has a charming website and blog for adults, www.sharonlovejoy.com .

Children love color but Tom Fischer’s new book, The Gardener’s Color Palette with photographs by Clive Nichols (Timber Press $12.95) is a delightful  book that will appeal to the sophisticated gardener. Fischer presents ten flowers in each of ten color families to entice the gardener into colorful new directions.

I confess that that I don’t take a very organized or artistic approach to the garden. Partly because I don’t have a very strong visual sense, and partly because I am so easily seduced by a flower in the nursery or catalog and buy it without thinking about where or how it will fit into the rest of the garden. I comfort myself with Elsa Bakalar’s dictum that all natural colors  go together and one shouldn’t agonize too much.

Still, I love books like The Gardener’s Color Palette because it opens my eyes to colors I hadn’t even thought of using. Some colors like red, yellow and blue are very familiar to us in all their shades. Others are less so.

Fischer looks at ranges of color like orange to peach with the strong hues of Orange Beauty cannas to the Dordogne single tulip which is a blend of amber, coral and gold. Fischer is also generous with suggestion for plant pairings. He says Dordogne would be pretty with the clear yellow Mrs. John T. Scheepers tulip, but a more dramatic companion would be the dark purple Greuze tulip..

One unusual color family is Brown, Bronze and Copper from the familiar chocolate cosmos with its dramatic dark flowers that has such a long season of summer bloom, to the copper flame on the ruddy brown Abu Hassan triumph tulip. Fischer suggests that a planting of Abu Hassan with other tulips in orange, deep ruby or darkest purple will be a striking sight.

This book is not all about dreaming and planning. Fischer gives an ample measure of information about the cultural needs of each plant.

Somehow with its gorgeous photographs of one hundred flowers The Gardener’s Color Palette is spurring a thousand ideas for this summer’s garden.

Between the Rows   February 20, 2010

Year of the Tiger

L. henryi

The Chinese Year of the Tiger has been rung in with drums and dancing, and jiaozi, the delicious stuffed dumplings  that are said to be shaped like silver money and symbolize a year stuffed with good things – and riches.

We have celebrated many Chinese New Years since our first trip to live and work in Beijing in 1989. While there we learned that while there are 12 animals in the 12 year Chinese zodiac, the full cycle takes 60 years to complete. Every 12th year is considered a ‘dangerous’ year, and when you think about it there are often great physical and social changes every 12 years or so. Puberty at 12,  marriage at 24, full family life at 36, and edging into old age at 48. When you arrive at 60, the full cycle is complete and you begin again; 60 is a time of new energy and new possibilities.

My husband Henry was born in the Year of the Tiger and it just occurred to me that I made a lucky choice when I  planted Henry lilies from Old House Gardens last fall.  Henry’s Lily (Lilium henryi) is an old Chinese wildflower that is described as having ‘tawny-orange petals’ which sound very tigerish to me.

I have been planning a Henry garden, or at least a Henry collections for some time. In addition to Henry’s Lily, I also planted White Henryi, lily (white with a’starry heart of apricot and cinnamon”) a newer lily hybridized by the same man who created my sturdy and hardy Black Beauty lilies.

So far, the only other Henry plants I have are the white flowered clematis henryi that climbs through my Celestial rose, and  Henry’s Garnet sweetspire, a small shrub that has white summer blooms and crimson fall color.

I am looking for suggestions for other Henry plants and will welcome all the help you can give me.

Images courtesy of Old House Gardens.

My Friend Elsa

Elsa Bakalar was my friend. This morning I got the call that I had been dreading. Elsa passed away peacefully on January 29.

We moved to Heath in December of 1979, but I did not meet Elsa, who also lived in Heath until I began writing a weekly garden column, Between the Rows, for The Recorder. I had heard about Elsa and her garden and finally got up my courage to ask her for an interview. It must be admitted that I was not an expert gardener, but got the job because I wrote a compelling letter saying I would interview all the expert gardeners in our region.

I  had seen Elsa’s initialed articles in Mike’s West County News launched not too long before we moved to Heath and I imagined a young couple sharing a romantic journalistic enterprise. When we met I was somewhat shocked to find that it was more in the nature of a romantic post retirement project. They taught me that it is never too late for new beginnings.

Elsa not only gave me an interview, about starting flower seeds in the dead of winter, she began my education. I had been concentrating on vegetables and had hardly planted a marigold. She also hired me to work alongside her at Greenfield Community College where she was the Director of Community Service.

All too soon I was trying to tend a 90 foot long perennial border, filled with divisions from Elsa’s garden. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is not what Elsa expected from her students. Although she had very definite opinions of her own, she always insisted that gardeners please themselves, and plant what they liked, in the way they liked.

Elsa became known for her garden designs, how she combined color and form, but in the end she said, all the colors of nature go together, and there was no point worrying excessively. .

I was fortunate enough to participate in one of the Study and Travel courses Elsa taught at GCC. After familiarizing ourselves with England and its gardens in class for a few weeks, 35 or so of us set off to tour the great and intimate gardens of England with Elsa, entertained by her wit and knowledge. It was  well known that where Elsa was, there was a party.

Right up to the end when she was frail Elsa made a party happen. My husband and I visited her for the last time in mid-January. As it happened, two other friends arrived as well. There was chocolate cake and candies. Laughter and talk. Another of Elsa’s parties.

If there is any word that defines Elsa it is teacher. She had taught elementary children in a village school in England, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in NYC,  and more locally, the Academy at Charlemont. She taught garden workshops in her own garden, and she went on the road lecturing, teaching, amusing, and delighting audiences all across the country. Sometimes she lectured to local garden clubs, and sometimes she gave workshops or lectures for august organizations like Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, the New York Botanical Garden, and even the Whitney Museum of Art.

Together we wrote an article for Horticulture Magazine. I loved interviewing Elsa for that piece about Color in the Garden because we talked about so much more than the task at hand. I learned about her job teaching in the Penshurst Village school in England during WWII where her young students brought her jam jars filled with flowers. She lived in a cottage where she gave the goats free range, and entertained a number of servicemen who seemed to find their way to her door.

She told me about her days working for British Information Services in Rockefeller Center in NYC, and meeting Mike. When we heard that Benny Goodman had died she reminisced about the apartment she and Mike shared on West 13^th Street, and how they wore out three Benny Goodman records – and the linoleum dancing in the kitchen.

Elsa edited and revised the article with me numerous times, and then the editor at Horticulture had a few things to suggest. It finally appeared in January 1987 with gorgeous photographs by Garry Mottau. Elsa, Gary and I all met in Elsa’s July garden at dawn to get the best light. I ran around holding a shiny sheet of thermax insulation to help gently direct sun onto Elsa’s face or particular flower. It was an amazing photography lesson for me, and lots of fun.

When she retired from GCC, she wrote a book, A Garden of One’s Own: Making and Keeping Your Flower Garden that was published in 1994. Mottau again did the photos. I remember the discussions about a title.  She would have no designing or creating. “Make and keep were good anglo-saxon words,” she said. That is what she chose.

Elsa was just a little older than my mother, but I never thought of her in those terms. Still I loved hearing about the girls, students from Fieldston where she taught, who spent summers with her in Heath for several years. Elsa once told me that they had all gone on an outing to Tanglewood and some music lover looked at this bevy of girls and asked what camp they belonged to. One girl drew herself up, . “We are not a camp. We are Mrs. Bakalar’s girls,” she said with great dignity.

I like to think maybe I became one of Mrs. Bakalar’s girls, too. ###

BETWEEN THE ROWS  February 6, 2010

The Gardener’s Color Palette

Tom Fischer, Editor in Chief of Timber Press, has created a small, inexpensive book with more than 100 gorgeous photographs by Clive Nichols of 100 plants in the ranges of 10 colors – scarlet, orange, lime, blue, mahogany, and more!

My garden, full of roses as it is, is heavy on pink, but when I look through this book I can’t help imagining a color themed garden.  Lots of people have blue and white gardens, which are easy because there are so many blue and white flowers, but when I look at the photographs of scarlet crocosmias, Gardenview Scarlet bee balm, Rubinzwerg sneezeweed and red canyon sage, I am tempted to put together a Red Garden. It probably won’t look like the long red border I saw on a garden trip to England, but a book like this makes one dream.

What color would you choose for a color theme border?  Mauve with alliums, bellflowers and clematis?  Yellow and white would  be very pretty too.

Elsa Bakalar, Gardener and Friend

Elsa at her 91st birthday with Marie

Last October I joined with friends, and family including Jake and Susan Bakalar, Elsa’s nephew and his wife, and ‘honorary daughter’ Marie Hershkowitz who had been a student of Elsa’s, to celebrate Elsa’s 91st birthday. It was a jolly affair with a buffet brought by Jake and Susan, cards, stories,  and tributes. And laughter. And champagne.

Two weeks ago my husband and I visited Elsa at the nursing home and again had a jolly time. The menu was more limited, but one of the two other guests who had shown up had brought chocolate cake.  More laughter. Who needs champagne?

For the past two days I have been conferring with Susan and Marie, and that other important ‘honorary daughter, Nicole Gordon, to prepare an obituary, because Elsa was failing. This morning I got the call I had been expecting, but dreading.  It was time to to send out the obituary.

Elsa  (Holtom) Bakalar,  of Ashfield and Heath, passed away peacefully at the age of 91 at Overlook Northampton in Leeds, Massachustts on  January 29, 2010.

Elsa was born in London in 1918 to Ernest Alfred Holtom and Rosalie Gilder Holtom. She attended Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls and Bishop Otter College, now part of the University of Chichester.

After graduation she began her teaching career at a school that was bombed, killing many students, while Elsa was out of the building.  She was lucky! She went on to teach at Penshurst Village School, often teaching 65 young children in a class. She married a German refugee artist, Erwin Wending.  After the war she came to the United States, working for British Information Services (BIS) in New York City lecturing and writing pamphlets, and several articles that appeared in Gourmet Magazine, introducing Americans to English traditions and recipes. There she and Wending divorced.  It was in New York that she met Michael Bakalar; it was love at first sight and they married in 1954.

After leaving BIS in the 1950’s, she worked for many years as a teacher in New York City at the Ethical Culture and Fieldston schools, now known as the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, first as a grade school teacher at Midtown (in Manhattan), then at the high school in Riverdale. As a much-loved teacher, she is remembered by her students for a demanding but highly engaging and inspiring teaching style and for her annual uniquely dramatic reading of the whole of  Dickens’ Great Expectations to her 6th grade class.

In 1958 she and Mike bought a small house in Heath where Elsa began making the garden that she would write and lecture about for many years. For several years she also ran a summer camp for girls, most of whom were her students at Ethical Culture and Fieldston.

In 1978 Elsa and Mike moved to West County full time. Mike founded the Shelburne Falls and West County News, and Elsa became Director of Community Services at Greenfield Community College. While there she instituted a series of Study and Travel Courses, leading groups through England and its great gardens. She also taught garden workshops in Heath and became well-known for her garden talks to local groups, encouraging new gardeners, and expanding the horizons of experienced gardeners. She was as well known for her charm, wit and turn of phrase as for her gardening expertise

When she retired from GCC she began a career of lecturing to garden groups all across the  United States and offered workshops under the auspices of Harvard University’s Arnold  Arboretum, the New England Wildflower Society, the New York Botanical Garden and many  professional organizations. In 1994 she published her book, A Garden of One’s Own: Making  and Keeping Your Flower Garden, made a garden video, and was interviewed on national TV.  In every endeavor her husband Mike was at her side, a perennial support: photographer,  mover of stones in the garden and slide projector operator on the lecture road until his death in 2000.

She is survived by her  cousin, with whom she was raised as a sister, Peter Kerry and his wife Iris of Almeria, Spain; stepson G. Michael Bakalar  and his wife Erika of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, granddaughters Dawn Byrd,  Amanda Eiras, Leigh Anne Jennings; and four great grandchildren as well as nephews, nieces, cousins and her beloved “honorary daughters” Marie Hershkowitz of Northampton and Nicole Gordon of New York City.

Interment is private. A memorial gathering is being planned for the spring. Memorial gifts can be sent to the Friends of the Heath Library, c/o Jane Deleeuw, Long Hill Rd, Heath, MA 01346, or the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 900 Washington Ave, Wellesley, MA 02482.

Baptisia – Plant of the Year

Baptisia australis

The Perennial Plant Association has named the beautiful blue Baptisia australis as its Plant of the Year. I am very familiar with this plant, although I have never grown it.

Friends have this hardy and adaptable perennial (zones 3-9) in their gardens, and I have admired it on the famous Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls. It is commonly known as false indigo, a reference to the lovely color of the lupine-like races of blossom. An important blue dye was derived from the West Indian plant Indigofera, but it was expensive; early settlers often made do with false indigo.

Baptisia is a perennial, but it grows to a shrubby size, three to four feet tall with as wide a spread. The most important thing to know about Baptisia to grow it successfully is that it has a deep taproot and does not like being moved or transplanted. Therefore, it behooves a gardener to be careful about siting it.

It likes sun, but can tolerate some shade although it may need staking in the shade. It is slow to get established, but within three years you will have a plant the size of a small shrub. It blooms in the spring for three or four weeks, but even after bloom season it is an interesting plant because the seed pods eventually turn black and are useful in dried arrangements. Those seed pods also account for another common name, rattleweed.

Baptisia has so many benefits – a long bloom season, hardiness, interesting seeds, drought tolerance, deer resistant – that you might ask why I have never grown this plant which I do admire and enjoy?  It is the problem of where to put it and not decide to move it the following year. This is the same reason I have never managed to plant an asparagus bed. I have a bad habit of moving everything. Except for the roses. I’m going to have to work on that.

Achillea for Me-a

Achillea "The Pearl"

I’m starting to make up my list of Plants to Buy for the spring, and I got stopped right at the first page of the Bluestone Perennials catalog. A is for Achillea or yarrow. I already have “The Pearl” in my garden and I love it. It is pretty in the garden and useful in bouquets.  I have another pink yarrow, but I don’t know the name.

When I first started gardening I was only familiar with the dense deep sulphur yellow Coronation Gold yarrow that is useful in dried arrangements, and the gentler yellow Moonshine. Now Bluestone shows 13 varieties, shades of pink, red, yellow, and white. Coronation Gold and Moonshine are still there, but I think I will go for Paprika.

Achillea "Paprika"

I saw this achillea in a friend’s garden and I knew on the spot that I had to add this. I love the brilliant color, so different from other colors in my garden.  Achilleas are hardy and dependable plants, requiring little care. Just the kind of plant I like!

And Bluestone is a dependable catalong nursery. And no, I didn’t get paid to say that. I’ve bought perennials from Bluestone for years. They sell three smaller plants for little more than some nurseries charge for one. For instance, I can order 3 Paprikas for $14.95, while a single plant at White Flower Farm costs $11.95. I can happily wait for an extra season for the plant to gain that generous size.

A Retiring Garden?

Bruce and Anne Aune

“The garden just grew,” Bruce Aune said with a slight shrug as we sat in his living room and looked out across a still green lawn to a neat curving border. All the perennials had been cut back, but shrubs, evergreen and deciduous, and small trees remained, providing the bones and structure of this garden.

While it is true that the garden had changed over time as Bruce and his wife Anne moved into retirement, it had not changed in ways I expected a retirement garden would evolve. The Aunes admitted that beds were still being added to the garden, but were quick to say that those beds were filled with small trees and shrubs, and hostas, which meant less work during the main part of the growing season. “We are not buying and planting, as we did,” Anne said. “We do prune, and deadhead. And we replace things that die.”

A tour of this Montague garden begins on one side of the house and ends on the other, but requires some doubling back along enticing secondary paths to see the whole. The lawn, is sunny, but beyond the deep shrub beds woodland trees throw some shade. A huge 30 year old holly, azaleas and rhododendrons remain points of interest in this season. Bruce said they have chosen a number of PJM rhododendron varieties even though the color is not their favorite, “but we love the foliage,” which turns a deep, almost bronze shade in fall.

Winterberry

A colorful exclamation point in the border was the winterberry trees, two females in full brilliant red berry, and one leafless and berryless male.

Early on the Aunes worked with landscape designer Gordon Fletcher-Howell of Amherst who assured them that there were no shortcuts to a beautiful garden. A mantra they have come to repeat many times. Repairing the lawn was one of their first improvements to the house that was built in 1990. Two hundred and forty yards of loam were brought in to provide a level lawn surface, a proper base for seeding the lawn, and enrichment for the new beds as they were laid out. Currently there are about 400 running feet of deep beds.

Bruce and Anne are both Master Gardeners and work together in the garden, but they each have their own special interests. Bruce loves hostas. His collection includes over 100 varieties of every size, color and pattern. His biggest problem is the voles who love the roots which provide just the taste and nutrition that voles need. “I’ve touched a wilting hosta and knocked it right over. The roots were totally gone,” he said.

Hosta cage

To foil the voles Bruce now plants each hosta inside a hardware cloth cage, actually a cylinder he builds to the appropriate diameter. The cylinder is buried 7 – 8 inches deep with 2 or 3 inches remaining above the ground. The protruding section of hardware cloth is painted with black car primer to be inconspicuous. Voles will only burrow about 6 inches below ground “and their delicate little feet can’t go over the wire cage,” Anne said. Thus are the hostas preserved for another season.

Rock Garden

Anne has a love of conifers and alpine plants. One of the newer sections of the garden is the rock garden with its striking stone bench. Bruce brought mossy and lichen covered stones from the woods to the gentle slope where Anne planted a variety of conifers including a dwarf Mugo pine, Japanese white pine, a bird’s nest spruce, and chamaecyprus as well as heathers and succulents. This area with its differing needle forms and textures remains interesting even in winter.

Although, true to their name, evergreens do remain green throughout the year, Anne pointed out that they do not necessarily remain the same shade of green. Some are a brilliant yellow green in the spring and early summer, but shade to a dark bronze in the fall.

Bruce retired as a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts and Anne from teaching French at Amherst High School; both continue to learn by becoming members of the New England Hosta Society and the North American Rock Garden Society. These active societies put out newsletters, have plant sales, organize meetings, letures and tours. They have also been a way to meet those with similar interests and passions.

On tours they have seen different ways that gardeners handle their extensive collection. Bruce remembered one garden with over 2000 hostas, each labeled with full information about the plant including the date planted. He recalled another garden where each hosta was isolated as a specimen and he felt it was more like looking at an insect collection.

The Aunes have chosen instead to integrate their special plants into a graceful whole. Visitors may not be aware of the rarity or unusual nature of some of the hostas and conifers, but all recognize their beauty and feel welcomed into this landscape.

The pleasure and information the Aunes have gotten from their society memberships remind me that during gift giving seasons memberships in a specialty society make an excellent present. The cost is modest, but the return is great. Most horticultural and plant societies now have websites and joining is very easy. For more information about the New England Hosta Society (www.nehosta.org) or the North American Rock Garden Society (www.nargs.org) logon to their respective websites. There are societies for many other plants, easily found on the Internet.

Between the Rows  December 5, 2009

KIKU at NYBG

Kiku exhibit

I went to the NYBGfor the roses but I got chrysanthemums, kiku, too. This is the third and final year for this extraordinary exhibit of Japanese chrysanthemum art forms set up at the Enid Haupt Conservatory courtyards.

Kengai or cascade

I was familiar with this form, Kengai, because similar cascades are created for our local Smith College Chrysanthemum show. All season long a single chrysanthemum plant is trained through wire mesh, pinched and artfully pinched again to create this waterfall of bloom.

Ozukuri or One Thousand Blooms

There are not actually one thousand blooms in this Ozukuri form, but again, a single (yes, single1) plant is trained on a form and pinched so that over the course of 11 months this amazing form is created. Because the blooms are so heavy, at a certain point each blossom is provided with a support to hold it in place.

I took this photo in the greenhouse where it was easier to see the metal rods that made up the structural support and the little supports for each blossom.

Ogiku

The third and final form of chrysanthemum ’sculptures’ (I don’t know exactly what to call these forms) is ranks of tall chrysanthemums, each plant trained to a single stem and blossom and arranged in diagonal rows by height.

Those artful forms might have been the most spectacular elements of this exhibit, but they were not the whole. Almost every class of chrysanthemum was on display.

Shino-tsukuri

This particular chrysanthemum has three types of petals that change as the blossom matures to resemble ‘Driving Rain.’

Driving Rain is amazing, but I’m partial to the spider mums, and I think I might be able to grow these in my own garden.

Several Bonsai forests were on display as well.

The combination of rare scarlet Japanese maples with golden mums gave an idea of what a Japanese garden might look like at this time of the year.

After looking at so many different elements of the Japanese autumn garden I was particularly enchanted to see an arrangement to give an impressionistic view of the Japanese mountains with forests in their autumnal dress.  I was told that last year’s exhibit showed the mountains in snow – the snow being all white chrysanthemums.

I was lucky to see this exhibit which will not be held next year, but special exhibits are always a part of the NYBG year. Next is the annual Train Show, where electric trains run through a familiar city landscape, except that all the buildings are made of plant materials. If you are in the area this is not something you want to miss.

Terror Among the Tomatoes

Happy Halloween! One way to strike terror into this night of goblins and ghosts is to think of the fears that plants have generated over the centuries. Deadly nightshade was rightly understood to be a poison, but other members of the family, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and peppers were less deadly and more delicious. The large pale flower of datura, another member of the family, is beautiful but equally deadly.

Not all peas (Lathyrus sativus) are benign, or all members of the corn family. Elderberry wine is good, but don’t put raw elderberries on your cereal, or you’ll be ingesting cyanide.

Amy Stewart’s book WICKED PLANTS: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities will keep you awake nights with its full catalog of Deadly, Dangerous, Destructive, Painful and Offensive plants, many of which  could be right in your own garden.  Boo!