American Gardening

English Garden Continues Its Influence

August 10, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

We know we have come a long way as gardeners here in the US.

We do not have the kind of dependence on the English garden that we once had. In 1906 Wilhelm Miller, an American landscape designer from Chicago, wrote the book What England Can Teach Us about Gardening.

A recent online article by Nancy A. Rubling seems to readdress that dependence and indeed recognizes that it is still happening.

The article “The English Garden Endures” makes the point that the English garden contiues to influence garden fashion.

Old-fashioned blossoms in one of the gardens at Helmington Hall [Harpur Garden Images]

Rubling writes, “With their classic hedges and bounteous blooms, traditional English-style gardens remain a popular perennial in the formal landscapes of stately estates around the world.”

Kathryn Bradley-Hole, garden editor of Country Life magazine, says “Many designers are making beautiful English gardens with a modern twist.”

Some of the elements of that modern look include ornamental grasses and easy-care perennials.

Whether rows of perennials, shrubs in a line, or a grand lawn, it is so easy to see how the English garden asetheic continues its grip on the American gardener’s imagination.

Filed Under: English garden design, English Style, Garden history

Petunias Slowly Gained Garden Prominence

August 3, 2020 by admin 1 Comment

I couldn’t believe it when I first heard from a worker at a garden center that the petunia was toxic. To me the petunia looks just too beautiful to kill you.

That surprise was nothing compared to what I read in Philadelphia nurseryman Thomas Meehan’s magazine Gardener’s Monthly from 1868.

It took decades for the petunia to attain the status of a coveted flower in the garden.

Meehan devoted an entire article in that volume of GM to the petunia. The article began with the plant’s travel from Brazil to England, where it first appeared in 1823.

Then the author of the article W. P. from Detroit said, “For a long time after its first introduction, the Petunia was looked upon as almost worthless, and from the flimsy appearance of its flowers, was pronounced a ‘miserable weed’, but we must now abandon the word weed, for the Petunia has become a florists’ flower.”

By 1868 flower-lovers everywhere treasured it.

A bit later the 1874 catalog of seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) from Rochester, NY listed eight varieties of petunias.

Vick wrote in the flower description: “The improvement of this flower has been constant.”

Even today.

A petunia variety from Proven Winners that I love is Supertunia® ‘Pretty Much Picasso.’

One summer I grew it in a container in my backyard on top of this wrought iron table [below].

The popular petunia began its journey to American gardens from England, as was the case with many flowers in American gardens in the nineteenth century.

Today the petunia is one of the top ten most popular summer annuals, according to the National Garden Bureau.

Filed Under: Annuals, English garden design, English Style, Gardens of England

Oehme van Sweden Landscape at Service Credit Corporate Office

July 27, 2020 by admin 1 Comment

Service Credit Union built its new corporate office on Lafayette Road in Portsmouth, NH in 2012.

The building received the gold LEED award as a leader in energy and environmental design for the four-story structure.

It uses ninety-eight percent less energy than the usual non-environmentally sound building of the same square footage.

The Oehme van Sweden Landscape Architects from Washington, D.C. designed the landscape in their style called the “New American Garden.”

The landscape on fourteen acres is truly a beautiful, evironmentally-sound, and inviting outdoor green space.

The large yellow Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’ lines the front of the sign with the corporate name. [below]

Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’ at the corporate sign

Oehme van Sweden’s Philosphy

The company website of Oehme van Sweden explains its forty-year old philosophy of landscape design.

“Our firm transformed the field of landscape architecture with the New American Garden style of design, distinguished by a balance of horticultural complexity and architectural craftsmanship.

“We infuse botanical expression in the form of color, texture, movement, and fragrance.

“Our designs embrace the seasonality of the American meadow and magnify ecological systems, sustainable processes, and aesthetic values.

“The New American Garden boldly reveals the ephemeral through mystery, intrigue, and discovery.”

In August of 2010 Eric Groft, vice president of Oehme van Sweden, presented the landscape design to the team at Service Credit in New Hampshire.

Groft wanted to familiarize the Service Credit staff with the work of Oehme van Sweden and the philosophy behind the New American Style.

That style includes mass plantings of native plants, ornamental grasses, and perennials with abundant pathways and water features.

In 2012 the company hired the local Portsmouth firm Piscataqua Landscaping to install the plants, lawn, pathways, and water sites.

Today the same local firm maintains the property.

In keeping with the Oehme van Sweden aesthetic there were hundreds of plants.

Plants

The number included ten thousand grasses, twenty-seven thousand perennials, and sixty-five thousand bulbs. One hundred trees and a hundred shrubs rounded out the list.

Paths and walkways wind throughout the property. [below]

Mass planting of ornamental grasses and perennials makes a bold statement.

Today employees have areas in the landscape for an outdoor lunch break. Neighbors can freely walk the property as well.

A visitor notices immediately the large swaths of ornamental grasses that make up so much of the design.

Three wells on the property supply the water for the plants.

Rain gardens, with two feet of water in spring, help with collecting rain water as well.

Scott Arsenault, Director of Grounds at Piscataqua Landscaping, says it takes his team eleven to twelve hours to cut the grass.

Black-top walkways wind through the property.

The landscape seems much bigger when you are inside and start to walk the grounds.

Mulch helps to keep down the weeding. [below]

Ornamental grasses along with large areas of lawn fill the landscape.

Over the years many books have been written about the Oheme van Sweden approach to landscape. The titles include Gardening with Nature and the newest The Artful Garden: Creative Inspiration for Landscape Design.

Service Credit Union’s Corporate Office gives employees as well the city of Portsmouth a chance to see the Oheme van Sweden landscape style called the New American Garden.

That style has developed into an important chapter in landscape design history.

Filed Under: Garden history, Garden style, Lawn, Native plants

Hosta Grows in Granite

July 20, 2020 by admin 1 Comment

This past week the gospel reading at Sunday Mass included instructions known to every gardener.

The story Jesus told was that without adequate soil a seed will not flourish.

Jesus said, “A farmer went out to sow his seed.

“Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

“Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

Here is a story about a seed that found a home in granite.

House Built on Granite

My house is built on granite so stone surrounds us.

It is not easy to garden on this property which is three quarters of an acre.

When the house was built in 1948 the contractor brought in plenty of soil, especially for the front and back lawn. [below]

Front of the house with lawn, shrubs, and perennial beds.

The rock is mostly on the side of the house and along the driveway.

Over the years I have gardened with great success and much happiness.

Red maple, planted in the granite’s pocket of soil. Nearby red roses, spirea, sedum, blue sedge grass, and epimedium add color as well.

Hosta ‘Black Beauty’

Recently I identified a large dark green hosta, with rippled leaves. It has grown over the years right in an area of granite.

The Hosta, a seedling of Hosta ‘Black Beauty’, is gorgeous in the granite. [below]

You can see the granite fron the low mid point to the far right.

The plant sits right in the middle.

Over time this large hosta variety becomes a large plant, measuring forty-eight by thirty inches.

It is close to that size now.

Hosta ‘Black Beauty‘ comes to us from Kate Carpenter (1984).

I have a small patch of this variety quite near this ledge.

Evidently, many years ago, one of its seeds found a great home, right in the ledge.

Today it still grows there. It found enough soil to become such a marvelous treat for the eyes of the gardener and any visitor.

Filed Under: Perennials, Seed business

Victorians Teasured Colorful Flowers

July 13, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Victorians believed that colorful flowers needed to fill the garden all summer.

In his book The Garden in Victorian Literature Michael Waters writes, “The massing of plants in showy color schemes grew rapidly in popularity.”

Waters provides three reasons for those colorful Victorian gardens.

First, the influx of foreign plant materials during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Second, the hybridization of already available species, including dwarf varieties of older plants.

Third, the introduction of greenhouses, in which huge numbers of tender annuals could be raised for wholesale use.

Thus, Waters says, “Brillance of color became the top prerequisite of the mid-Victorian garden.”

Verbena

The list of plants every garden had to have included the verbena.

The verbena, a Victorian favorite, continues among the best sellers for the garden industry.

Today the plant grower Proven Winners constantly searches for ever newer varieties of plants.

PW has introduced a beautiful, new verbena called ‘Dark Blue’.

James Vick

The Rochester, New York seed merchant James Vick (1818-1882) mentioned the popular verbena in his garden magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly in November 1881.

He wrote, “The term, bedding plants, has long been in use, and is applied to all those tender plants that, preserved through the winter under glass, are there propagated and raised, and finally planted in beds in the spring to serve for the decoration of the garden for one season. Such plants are Geraniums, Heliotropes, Verbenas, Lantanas, and a multitude of other flowering plants.”

The Vick Company of course offered verbenas in its seed catalog. [below]

Vick won awards for his verbenas at State Fairs around the country including Michigan.

He wrote in 1880 in his garden magazine: “Among our garden flowers none is more valuable and more prized than the Verbena.”

The verbena was, however, only one of many annuals that offered colorful bloom in the Victorian flower garden whether for beds, borders, or containers.

Filed Under: Annuals, English Style, Flowers, Garden history, Victorian

Repton Brought Back Flower Gardens

July 6, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

We know in the modern English landscape garden dating from the early eighteenth century the extensive lawn took center stage.

Flower gardens were there, but not emphasized until serious plant collecting from around the world emerged, as well as the support of landscape gardener Humphry Repton (1752-1818).

Garden historians attribute renewed interest in flower gardens to Repton.

Andre Rogger in Landscapes of Taste: The Art of Humphry Repton’s Red Books mentions a significant threesome in Walpole’s book The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (1780).

Rogger argues that Walpole linked the three most important landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century.

Rogger writes, “The tripartite sequence [in Horace Walpole’s book] William Kent followed by Lancelot Brown followed by Humphry Repton established the canon for the history of English landscape gardening.”

The Victorian Garden

It was Repton’s focus on flowers that makes him so significant as gardening with flowers emerged in the nineteenth century.

In The Garden in Victorian Literature Michael Waters, though not a historian as such, looked at the image of ‘garden’ in Victorian fiction and poetry.

Repton appears important to such artists because he brought back the flower garden to its important position near the house.

Waters writes , “Repton believed this would restore not only the art of gardening but also the social functions of the garden.

“That this was Repton’s major contribution to the history of garden design is occasionally acknowledged in Victorian fiction.”

For Repton flowers ought to be viewed both by the garden’s owner and the visitor.

Mick Thompson, writing in the journal Garden History, says, “During the second half of his career as a landscape gardener. Repton led the way in returning flower gardens, both formal and informal, close to the house where they could be seen and enjoyed.”

Repton includes flowers in this illustration from his Red Book for Ashridge of 1813. [below]. Flowers dot the lawn in both beds and borders.

The Countess of Bridgewater’s Flower Garden; detail from Repton’s **Red Book** **for Ashridge** (1813).

Filed Under: English garden design, English Style, Flowers, Garden history

Resist Colonial Attitude toward Plants

June 29, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Last week I came across an amazing new article entitled “It’s time to decolonise botanical collections.”

The author Alexandre Antonelli is the Director of Science at Kew, England’s Royal Botanic Gardens.

The main idea of the article is that plants were not ‘discovered’ like a treasure in the sea. They might well predate by many years the first time their species was recorded.

Antonelli writes, “For hundreds of years, rich countries in the north have exploited natural resources and human knowledge in the south.

“Colonial botanists would embark on dangerous expeditions in the name of science but were ultimately tasked with finding economically profitable plants.”

Exotic plants are still taken from other countries and brought to the homeland of the plant hunter.

Kew became the major destination for plants from other countries, for the purpose of improving the gardens of England.

Antonelli recognizes the subtle racism in that attitide that has endured for centuries.

Kew will tackle structual racism in plant and fungal science. He says, “We will strive to increase the ethnic representation of our staff and students.”

Also, he says “Our current work on a new science strategy is an opportuntity to ensure our research is framed in the context of equality, diversity, and inclusion.”

Book Currently Reading

What’s really more than a coincidence is the book I am currently reading.

The title is A Natural History of the English Garden by Mark Laird.

Laird traces England’s involvement with plant collecting from 1650 to 1800, one hundred fifty years.

He writes about the important English botanists and horticulturalists from that period including John Evelyn, Peter Collinson, Philip Miller, Mary Delany, and William Curtis.

Each of them loved plants, especially the newer varieties arriving in England.

They all cultivated gardens and often wrote about their collections, or like Mary Delany created works of art that illustrated plants.

The goal of plant hunting around the globe was to build up the plant collection at Kew.

Laird writes, “Plant collecting had obvious relevance for apothecaries and doctors.”

By 1778 in Kew “plants from across the seven seas were being added to the original compendium of the four continents.”

It was common for English aristocrats to foster plant collections in their own gardens as well.

No individual’s plant collection however rivaled that of Kew.

Kew housed all the finest in exotics available to England.

Thus, because Kew represents such a vast and important history of plant collecting, Antonelli’s remarks are all the more relevant.

They force us to rethink at this time the collecting of plants, including for institutions like botanical gardens.

Filed Under: English Style, Flowers, Garden history

Newport’s Restored Blue Garden

June 22, 2020 by admin 1 Comment

A restored garden always brings a sense of excitement.

You are seeing a garden the way it was first installed.

Or so you think.

Last week I visited the restored private garden called Blue Garden in beautiful Newport, Rhode Island. [below]

The garden is located in an area just past the Gilded Age seaside mansions on Bellevue Avenue. You proceed on Ocean Avenue and shortly you arrive at the property located on Beacon Hill Road.

To say the garden has been restored is only the beginning of what the philanthropist and horticulturalist Dorance H. Hamilton and her team of architects, contractors, and landscape designers have created.

The restored Blue Garden is a glorious garden experience.

Environtmental Concern

What I learned was that though the garden has been restored, the new garden is in keeping with serious environmental and maintenance concerns.

For example, the many plants that have been introduced demand far less upkeep than the original varieties included on the Olmsted plant list of 1913.

I saw frequent groupings of white Scaevola aemula and blue Veronica ‘Magic Show Wizard of Ahhs.’ They complement each other quite well.

The two pools still form the backbone of the garden. They sit exactly where they were in the 1913 design of the Blue Garden by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.

The garden had been left for years and became severely overgrown with invasive plants like the Norway maple.

When Mrs. Hamilton purchased the property in 2012, she wanted, above all, to restore the Garden.

She succeeded.

With over two thousand annuals, perennials, vines, and shrubs along with two hundred fifty evergreens in the three acre garden-site you experience a bit of yesterday, but designed with today’s concern in water and land preservation.

The design of the garden still reflects the formal garden style which was popular in the early 1900s, with such landscape designers as Charles Platt, Edith Wharton, and, of course, the Olmsted Brothers firm.

Everything the builders found as they dug up the original garden, where it could be, was recycled in some way.

Though the builders had the original plant list from Olmsted, they opted, where possible, for plant varieties that were easier to maintain.

Plan a Visit

Newport in the summer becomes a major attraction for the State of Rhode Island. Nonetheless, the Blue Garden ought to be on your list of places to visit.

Remember that the Blue Garden is a private garden and open only at special times. Thursdays til October you can join a guided tour of the Garden. Email the Director Sarah Vance ahead of time since the number of visitors admitted is limited.

The Blue Garden: At the top of the pergola *Wisteria frutescens*, ‘Amethyst Falls’ and along the cement edge blue *Lobelia* in containers.

Filed Under: Flowers, Garden fashion, Garden history, Lawn

In Search of Coleus ‘Main Street’

June 15, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Every summer garden needs coleus.

Whether in containers, a border, or a bed there is a coleus that will add color.

Nineteenth century Victorian gardeners used this plant for colorful carpet beds.

Many will peform well in shade, but some newer varieites do best in sun.

For the past three summers I have searched out both local nurseries and big box stores for the new coleus series called ‘Main Street’.

I would eventually find one or two varieties, mostly one.

The new one I found for this season is ‘Main Street Ocean Drive.’ [below]

Coleus ‘Main Street Ocean Drive.’ Photo courtesy of Dummen: Rush Creek Growers.

In the past I have planted coleus ‘Main Street Oxford Street’ and also ‘Main Street Granville Street.’ I liked both of them for their color and shape.

When I searched on line for a history of this series what surprised me is how many varieties of ‘Main Street’ are out there.

Quite a few.

The coleus, a colorful summer treasure, has a long history in the garden.

History of the Coleus

According to Allison Kyle Leopold’s The Victorian Garden, the coleus, native to Africa, was introduced to the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The American Agriculturist of 1880 wrote, “Plants with bright-colored variegated foliage are of special value in this country, where our hot summers prevent us from doing much in the way of producing bedding effects with flowers. The intense heat that causes such a rapid development and short duration of flowers is, as a general thing, favorable to the growth and coloring of the leaves of the so called ‘foliage plants’. Among these plants the coleus stands at the head.”

Of course the nineteeth cenutry seed companies and nurseries sold the coleus to their customers.

The Dingee and Conard Seed Company catalog of 1892 offered a series of coleus plants called Success Coleus. “Everybody admires gorgeous summer bedding coleus, and every flower grower wants a bed, border, or edging of them. In fact, they are indispensable for bright bedding effects. We offer for the first time a special selection of coleus seed that will produce vigorous and fine plants, showing the most perfect markings and colors, in a short season.”

For more ideas about coleus varieties for this summer, check out suggestions from the National Garden Bureau on Pinterest .

Filed Under: Annuals, Garden fashion, Garden history, Victorian

Women in Horticulture: Yesterday and Today

June 5, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

I am currently reading Michael Waters’ book The Garden in Victorian Literature.

This title fits into my general area of interest, the history of the garden.

In this case I am looking at how novelists and poets wrote about the garden in the Victorian period.

Such literature tells us a great deal about the garden, but also about the role of women in horticulture.

Women in Horticulture Week

Earlier this week I discovered that June 1-5 is Women in Horticulture Week.

I can see a thread between the two sources of our understanding the garden as a cultural phenomenon: Victorian fiction where the garden takes center stage and the evolving role of women in the garden.

Katie Dubow, president, Garden Media Group, the primary sponsor of this special week, says, “Women play a crucial role in the horticulture industry—not only as entrepreneurs, growers, researchers, marketers and employees at all levels, but also as the largest consumers of home and garden products.”

Victorian Literature, Women, and the Garden

Victorian literature paints its own image of women and the garden.

We know that the nineteenth century was a time in which the influence of women was relegated to taking care of the family, and in terms of the garden, mostly tending to flowers.

Waters writes, “An assumption almost universal in Victorian literature: women, not men, have a natural and privileged affinity with flowers.”

Women were then even compared to flowers: beautiful and sensual, and there to bring a sense of feeling and emotion to taking care of the household.

Though women had a lot to do with running the household, they were not encouraged to seek any fulfillment outside the home.

By the end of the nineteenth century women were voicing their own frustration with that role.

Women wanted to be more self-determining.

Slowly that role of women emerged to provide women leadership roles in the field of horticulture.

It is a good idea to support, honor, and promote women professionals and their achievements during Women in Horticulture Week.

Today’s woman in the garden is quite different from her Victorian ancestor.

Here is Monet’s beautiful Victorian painting, “Woman in the Garden.”

Filed Under: English garden design, Flowers, Garden history, Victorian