Muse Day September 2010

“Few things are more annoying than dogmatism; and dogmatism is nowhere more misplaced than in horticulture. The wise gardener is he whom years of experience have succeeded in teaching that plants, no less than people have perverse individualities of their own, and that, though general rules may be laid down, yet it is impossible ever to predict with any certainty that any given treatment is  bound to secure success or failure.” Reginald Farrer in My Rock Garden.

No season was ever greater proof of this quote from Reginald Farrer (1880-1920) than this spring and summer.  We couldn’t complain about early or late blooming, because all bloom was operating on some mysterious energy. Some plants bloomed late, and some early.  People who planned wedding dates with available garden flowers in mind found themselves in difficult straits.

Last week I opened A Century of Gardeners by Betty Massingham that I bought at the Friends of the Heath Library Book Sale at the Heath Fair. The brief biography was so tantalizing I ran to my bookshelf and there was A Rage for Rock Gardening: The story of Reginal Farrer, gardener, writer and plant collector by Nicola Shulman.  I’m afraid the term rock gardening put me off to such an extent that I hardly opened the book when it was given to me as a gift years ago.  That was a mistake because if Massingham’s book tantalized, Shulman’s book delighted in the ways I assume Farrer was able to do.

Born in 1880 his youth was difficult because he was born with a cleft palate which affected his speech.  The corrective  surgeries that were available at the time sound barbaric, dealing with “hot tongs, sulfuric acid and metal bridles.”  Because of this he was schooled at home and learned to deal with physical hardships, a different type of which he met up with on his plant hunting travels..

He was self taught in botany and at the age of 14 he rebuilt his parents rock garden. Unlike my vision of a few rocks on a slope with bits of basket of gold alyssum stuck in beetween which is what my  first and only rock garden looked like, Farrer’s rock gardens were designed to coddle alpine plants. His book was written when he was 22 and it was well received. However, fame as a novelist is what he longed for. The five novels he wrote did not give him fame or even critical applause.  His relationship with his father, never close or easy, deteriorated to such a degree that he was finally forced to earn money on his own.

Needing money he took to writing garden books  -  books about his plant hunting and planting aesthetic.  Along with William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll he is responsible for changing the whole approach to gardening. The Victorian way was bedding out, turning flower beds into complex and brilliantly colored carpets. The way we garden now, more naturally, with the gardener working with the plant instead of working to subdue the plant, is thanks to Farrer as well as his more famous colleagues.

His other books include In a Yorkshire Garden, Alpines and Bog Plants,  On the Eaves of the World and The Rainbow Bridge. His writing about plants was as new and unique as his garden style. For him plants had personalities. They sulked or were capricious.I will have to search them out as well as Farrer’s Last Journey by E.H.M. Cox about his expedition to upper Burma.  The novel failed him, but his literary talents bloomed when he wrote about plants.

I want to thank Carolyngail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago for hosting Muse Day which I always look forward to. I keep my eyes open for something to share – and love seeing what muses are inspiring other gardeners.

Elsa Bakalar’s Garden

Horticulture Magazine January 1987

In 1985 (could it be that long ago?) Elsa Bakalar,  my Heath neighbor and friend, and I started writing an article about color in the garden for Horticulture magazine.  One summer day in 1986 the brilliant photographer, and gardener, Garry Mottau arrived in Elsa’s garden at dawn. That’s when I learned about the importance and desirability of that early morning light for photography. I even got to hold a piece of shiny Thermax to throw some gentle light on Elsa’s face, or the flowers she was  working with.  That was another photography lesson for me.  The article finally appeared in the January 1987 issue of Horticulture Magazine. Elsa was the cover girl!

At the end of the story you will see a note saying that Elsa and I were writing a book together. I bombed out, but Elsa not only wrote her book, with her beloved husband Mike’s editorial support and advice, she started criss-crossing the US,  in demand as a garden speaker, well known for her wit and humor as well as her knowledge.

Several years ago, after her husband’s death, Elsa sold her house and garden to noted artists  Scott Prior and his wife Nanny Vonnegut. Nanny confessed that she lets Scott handle the garden, which he maintains with the help of Jeff Farrell.  Jeff  worked with Elsa in her garden for a number of years. Among other things he is a now a member of the Trillium Workshops trio; they have arranged tours of this garden for those who want to enjoy a fabulous, riotous country garden that is also sophisticated and inspiring. The next tour is July 18, and the final tour is on Sept. 19.  It is best to sign up early.

Horticulture never forgot Elsa’s beautiful garden. The results of their revisit are in the new issue, with an interview with Scott and Nanny. More photos!  Horticulture has made it possible to download the original story by clicking on

http://hortmag.com/upload/images/mediakit/ElsaBakalarGardenp.pdf.

You can see the new story by Jane Roy Brown with photos by Bill Regan by picking up the August/September issue. If you live close enough you can even visit with Jeff Farrell and see the garden ‘in the flesh’.

Elsa passed away this winter. I wish she could have seen her garden’s return to the pages of Horticulture magazine. She would have enjoyed it, and she would love knowing people still have the pleasure of visiting her garden and learning from it.

Buzzin’ of the Bees

The bumbleebees are buzzin’ in the wisteria blossoms, and all kinds of bugs are biting me around my eyes, behind my ears and in the middle of my back where I can swat or scratch. It got so bad that in the heat of the day yesterday, I retired to the house for iced tea and a dip into Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles (Knopf $29.95).

I was entranced the first time I picked up this book and began at A  for Air. In 1926 a little monoplane took off from Tallulah, Louisiana to collect insects from the high altitudes. That was the first attempt to use an airplane, but not the last. While statistics tend to put me to sleep this chapter counts the amazing numbers of insects, some as common as ladybugs, at 6000 feet. Some are wingless, but carried by air currents. At 15,ooo feet a ballooning spider was found.  ”Think of 26 million little animals flying unseen above one square mile of countryside. . . . a vault of insect laden air.”

But that is just an introduction to the insect world, which for Raffles in an introduction to many other facinating topics and a spur to his own thoughts and point of view as an anthropologist. He is interested in how humans interact with all manner of animals, including insects.

The twenty-six chapters or essays range between 2 to 44 pages, and cover insects from a variety of perspectives. In Chernobyl he writes about Cornelia Hesse-Honeggers painting of mutations in insects caused by radiation; in Fever/Dream he writes about malaria and his own attack; and in The Sound of Global Warming he writes about pinon engraver beetles.  Chapter headings like The Ineffable, Temptation and Zen and the Art of ZZZ’s take us to unexpected and fascinating places.  When the grandsons visit this summer I’ll be full of weird and wonderful facts. They love weird and wonderful things.

Raffles has said that writing this book as an ‘encyclopedia’ is bit of a joke, making fun of the idea that you can gather all the information about anything and put it in one place. But he is an anthropologist, not an entomologist, so he comes at insects in myriad ways, with references to artists, philosophers, novelists and the ways they approach the world, not only insects. The book (well footnoted if you are interested) ends with this: “Learn to live with imperfection. We’re all in this together. The miniscule, a narrow gate, opens up an entire world.

I am still going to put on insect repellent when I go out in the garden today.

Muse Day May 2010

Thom Chiofalo's Garden

“What, if anything, do the infinity of different traditional and individual ideas of a garden have in common? They vary so much in purpose, in size, in style and content that not even flowers, or even plants at all, can be said to be essential. In the last analysis there is only one common factor between all gardens, and that is the control of nature by man. Control, that is, for aesthetic reasons.” Hugh Johnson

Hugh Johnson created a notable garden at his home in Essex, England, then wrote a notable book, The Principles of Gardening:  a guide to the art, history, science and practice of gardening. this is an encyclopedic book that is great fun to dip into.

I liked this quote which I found in a newer book on my shelf, Why We Garden by Jim Nollman. I was particularly taken by it because I remember so well my confusion when we went to China and found the concept of garden so different. Shan shui translated literally  means mountain water but it is the way the Chinese refer to gardens.  We went to one famous  garden in Suzhou, the garden city of China, and it contained nothing but stone. But by that time I had adjusted somewhat to the many differences between the Chinese garden and the “English” garden that I was familiar with.

Despite the differences in cultures I think Hugh Johnson got it right when he said, on the very first page of his book, “The first purpose of a book is to give happiness and repose of mind.”

Visit Carolyn gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago to see how the muses inspire in other gardens.

Pam Oakes' perennial border

Real and Imaginary

My Garden by Kevin Henkes

I celebrated the arrival of my friend Kathryn Galbraith’s new book Arbor Day Square and then I saw My Garden by Kevin Henkes on the New Book shelf at the Heath Library.

As a former librarian I know it used to be difficult to find books for young children about gardening, whether real gardens with real information, or about imaginary gardens, but happily that seems to be changing. Kevin Henkes is one of my favorites authors and illustrators because he has so much understanding of a child’s ecstatic emotions, happy or sad. In My Garden a little girl is bursting with joyful imagination.

She  helps her mother in a real garden, watering, weeding and chasing away the rabbits. She also imagines her own brilliant garden where the rabbits are chocolate, where there are no weeds, where tomatoes are “as big as beach balls, and the carrots would be invisible because I don’t like carrots.”

Even when we have children helping us with real garden chores on a summer day we should always remember that there may be a lot more going on in their minds than where to dump the weeds or put away the watering can.

Constance Spry

David Austin's Constance Spry

The name Constance Spry doesn’t mean much to most Americans. Gardeners may know the Constance Spry rose, one of the first of David Austin’s English roses, but not know the woman behind the rose.

Constance Spry was born in 1886. She had varied careers in health, joined the civil service during World War I and was headmistress of a school teaching young teen aged girls who worked in factories. It was not until the 1920s that she began arranging flowers and 1929 before she opened her first shop in London.

Shock  greeted Constance Spry’’s outrageous arrangements in the Britain of the 20s and 30s. She was possibly the first to break down the barriers that existed between the flower garden and the kitchen garden. I think we can credit Constance Spry with many of the ways we use and decorate with flowers today.

Spry explained herself, “If to use a kale leaf for its fine modeling, a bunch of grapes for its exotic bloom, a spherical leek flower for its decisive shape, a bare branch for its delicate strength, is to like strange materials, then I am guilty, but not guilty of liking them for any perverse reason.”

Among her many admirers was Beverley Nichols, the British gardener, writer and wit. He talked about “doing a Constance Spry” which is to say  “standing before a bed of hydrangeas, when summer has fled, and seeing beauty in their pallid parchment blossoms.  It means suddenly stopping in a country lane and noting for the first time a scarlet cadenza of berries, and fitting it, in one’s mind’s eye, into a pewter vase against a white wall.  It means bouts with brambles, flirtations with ferns and carnival with cabbages.”

Constance Spry came to the United States in 1937  invited by a group of New York women  to open an establishment on East 64th Street between Park and Madison Avenues.  She also published Constance Spry’s Garden Notebook while she was here. I found that book in the stacks of the Umass Du Bois Library. This was my first visit to the stacks since my graduation in 1974. Now that I have found the garden riches in the SB section, you can bet I’ll be back.

The War put an end to her shop in the US, but she went on for years arranging flowers for many notables, including the flowers for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.  In 1960 Constance Spry, teacher, gardener, and flower arranger, died after a fall down the stairs. It is said that her last words, were “Someone else can arrange this.”

The Meditative Gardener

The Meditative Gardener by Cheryl Wilfong

I met Cheryl Wilfong at a recent Garden Writers (GWA) meeting in Boston. The meeting was excellent with good advice about blogging and writing  given by Richard Banfield of freshtilledsoil.com.  The speaker gave me more than I ever expected, but one of the reasons I attended was to meet other writers, some of whom I already knew through their blogs.

Cheryl brought her book, which I bought, and information about her website, meditativegardener.com.  In spite of a weekend Vipassna session years ago, I do not claim to be a meditator, but I don’t think you need to claim this title to recognize many of the feelings, thoughts and reactions that Cheryl describes.  The book describes many Buddhist and meditative practices which appeal to me, in and out of the garden. Not to mention the gorgeous photographs.

I was particularly taken with the Flower in Your Heart Meditation.  I grow flowers, and yet rarely bring them into the house because the cats always knock the vases over, and I even more rarely give bouquets away, for no reason except affection.  I will be more mindful of this opportunity.

Every day our gardens teach us, about the ways of nature, about the ways to be  generous, and about the ways of the spirit.  So does this book.

The Green in Vogue

Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier

In preparing for a Fashion in the Garden posting I have been reading the spring issue of Vogue magazine. Strictly business you understand. Besides, Tina Fey was on the cover.

Although I wasn’t looking for it, there was a little feature on page 370, The Green List, with John Patrick’s (whoever he may be) five latest (fashion everywhere) faves.  There is seedlibrary.org for heirloom seeds; Emiliano Godoy, an industrial designer who focuses on sustainability; Magnus Larsson, a Swedish architect working to stop the spread of the Sahara!; Ecocradle for shipping materials made of mycelium, —  remember you heard it here first; and Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier.  Well, Dave Jacke is headquartered  right in our own green county. I hope to catch up with him this spring.  I met Eric Toensmeier when he spoke at the local Master Gardener’s Spring Symposium a couple of years ago and bought his book.  I am going to plant perennial Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus- henricus) in my Henry garden.

Who knows who I’ll meet at this year’s Spring Symposium. Check out the full schedule and info.

Smith College Bulb Show

A Turkish Delight

Robert Nicholson, Manager of the Lyman Conservatory at Smith College complained about the challenges of all the cloudy weather we have been having, but, once again, he and the crew more than met the challenge of forcing 5000 bulbs to bloom all at the same time. The Conservatory is a Turkish Delight of flower and fragrance, with all the usual bulbs, but also many freesias and delicate species tulips from Turkey.

Opening Night

On Friday evening I attended the lecture by Smith alum, Lynden B. Miller. She described the public gardens she has designed over a long career, and what she has learned about plants that work in public gardens. Fortunately, if you missed the talk you can get all that information in her beautifully  illustrated new book Parks, Plants and People.

Lynden B. Miller and her book

After her talk in the new Campus Center, attendees were invited to a preview of the Bulb Show which will run for two weeks until March 21. The Conservatory is open every day from 10 am to 4 pm. A $2 donation is requested.

Botanical Radiography

In addition to the Bulb Show, there is a beautiful and fascinating display of radiography, The Hidden Beauty of Plants, in the Church Gallery of the Conservatory. These exhibit is a collaboration between the Smith Botanic Garden, Dr. Merrill Raikes, retired radiologist and Robert B. Hallock of the UMass physics department. This exhibit will continue until September 30.

Gardens appeal to every sense. This year there is an audio installation in the Palm House, What Every Gardener Knows. This piece by Susan Hillier (Smith ‘61) is presented in collaboration with the Smith College Museum of Art. It will continue only until March 31.

Kids in the Garden

I didn’t need all the talk about ‘nature deficit’ to think that children can be entertained, educated and nurtured by spending time in the garden, with and without adults. As a child I spent a fair amount of time watching the bugs on my aunt’s black seeded simpson lettuce, while I daydreamed in the sun.  I don’t know how that affected my personality development, but I am sure it was in many good ways.

Black Dog Publishing also believes children will find good things in the garden  and have just published Kids in the Garden by Elizabeth McCorquodale. They are giving my readers a discounted offer that will bring you this $17.95 book for less than you can get it on Amazon.

To order your copy email Jessica (jess@blackdogonline.com) with commonweeder in the subject line. You will get a 40% discount, which makes the cost $10.77 plus shipping.  Jessica will tell you about shipping once she has your address.  I do not make any money on this transaction, I just like to encourage getting children in the garden.

Kids in the Garden is an easy and fun guide for children to use on their own or with adults, and encourages children to learn about gardening, healthy eating and caring for the environment. With easy to follow step-by-step instructions, with bright photography and fun illustrations. The book is aimed at children aged five upwards with adult supervision, then for older children up to 11 to complete on their own.

The book features more than 50 projects, with full instructions on the materials needed, companion plants, saving resources, harvesting seasons, seeds, the water cycle and indoor gardens. There is also a section on wildlife, showing how to encourage animals into your garden, as well as how to make a mini pond, birdhouses, pest patrol, building a wormery, rescuing bees and ladybirds, and much more. The plants and vegetables featured include potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, herbs, strawberries, blueberries, sunflowers and many more. The recipes included are simple to make with the fresh produce and include; one pot jam, minty fizz and easy pizza sauce.