And now for something completely different

I am going through old files this weekend and came across something I thought was worth sharing. It has nothing whatsoever to do with gardening.

Our dream trip to Egypt

In the fall of 1997, my wife, Betty, and I were contemplating a late autumn vacation. We wanted to go somewhere we had never been.  Someplace exotic and, hopefully, warm. We had already been to five continents, so why not add Africa? We were keenly interested in history and so why not Egypt?

We usually traveled on our own, but I could not wrap my tongue around Arabic and so we looked for a tour. We found a two-week one through Overseas Adventure Travel and settled on a departure date of November 25, returning December 9. We applied for and received our visas, and were set to go.

Double-click to read the gruesome
details of the murders

Then, on November 18, a heretofore unknown group called the Muslim Brotherhood attacked two busloads of tourists at the Temple of Hatsepshut in Luxor, killing 70 and wounding 30 others. Because the tourists were Europeans, it was not huge news in the U.S. We knew about it, though, and wondered if our trip was cancelled. Two days later came a letter from OAT asking if we wanted to cancel or go somewhere else.

OAT offered us a out...

We looked at each other, then talked it over. Our lone dependent was our cat. If we put off the trip, we would likely never again find two weeks for such a journey. We decided to go. So, as it turned out, did 12 other souls – out of more than a hundred who had originally signed up. We did not know it then, but rival Abercrombie and Kent was similarly finding almost every one of their travelers were opting out. And, as for Europeans, governments were flatly telling their citizens that no help would be forthcoming if there was further bloodshed.

At Giza. There is no one in the 
background.

And so, we went to Egypt as planned. And, at the height of the tourist season, the outbound EgyptAir flight carried perhaps two dozen passengers. When we arrived in Cairo, we found the country was empty of foreigners. There were 14 of us and 12 from Abercrombie and Kent. That was the entire tourist population. We saw Egypt as no one had seen it since before the advent of the Boeing 707. We had entire hotels to ourselves; the river boats were berthed tightly along the Nile for a hundred miles. At Hatsepshut’s temple, the bullet holes were not yet plugged and we knew the scrubbed red patches on the floors were the remain of blood stains.

Blonde, ergo American!

President Hosne Mubarak learned there were western tourists in the country and flew to Luxor to personally greet us. Betty, with her blonde hair, was singled out to be filmed with Mubarek, and we would see those 30 seconds of videotape everywhere we went for the duration of our stay as the Egyptian government tried to reassure the world it was safe to be in the country.

Abu Simbel, no tourists

We flew to Abu Simbel with two military aircraft as our escort and six of us saw the light enter deep into the Temple of Ramses at dawn the next morning. A year earlier, the crowd would have numbered more than 500. We also saw the then-recently restored Tomb of Nefertari, where tourists lucky enough to get a ticket could spend only ten minutes inside its magnificent space (carbon dioxide is the enemy). We spent an hour inside its walls because we were the only visitors that day.

Were we foolish to go? I can make the argument either way. Certainly, anyone with children under a certain age would have rightly been labeled narcissists or worse. And, as the letter clearly states, we could have shifted to a date when things were more settled. But we sensed this was an opportunity that would not come again, and we were right. Or, perhaps we were just very lucky.

Trolling for Gardeners

Part of my job description as Garden Ogre is to keep the spaces in the Medfield Community Garden filled. Between full (600 square feet) and half (300) plots, there are 75 gardening families needed each year. Many people return season after season, but each year brings dropouts. Medfield is a mobile community: people move. They also put up cottages in Maine and New Hampshire that come to occupy their summers. They started gardening with their toddlers, but now their offspring are tweens who think putting their hands in soil is gross. Some simply age out; get tired of it all and trade pickles for pickleball. And a few don’t get invited back.

Gardening is also cyclical. During the pandemic, there were a dozen names on a waitlist because the Community Garden was one of the few things you could do without a mask. Going organic waxes and wanes. Last year, I entered the March pre-season with 17 gardens to fill. I did so… barely.

Which is why, on a glorious Saturday in September, I spent six hours trolling for the 2025 class of newbie gardeners at Discover Medfield Day.

There used to be a recipe for finding those new gardeners. Back in 2009 when Betty and I first became the Town Garden Committee (everyone else resigned), it was a matter of preparing an article and finding fresh photos for the weekly Medfield Press and its upstart shopper-style competitor, The Hometown Weekly. The print edition of the Press ended in 2021. For the past two years, The Hometown Weekly has filled its limited news hole with high school sports and real-estate-related copy. When the paper failed for the second year to run the article I had prepared, I got the hint.

Social media nicely filled in the gap for the most part. There were (and still are) Facebook groups like ‘Concerned Citizens of Medfield’ and ‘Friends in Medfield’ that yielded terrific results… until they didn’t. Eyeballs got distracted by videos on a dozen other channels. And, while I am no fan of Mark Zuckerberg, turning over even my correct name and date of birth to TikTok scares the bejesus out of me.

Which, as I note above, is why I went ‘old school’ and took a booth at Medfield Day at a cost of $150. I already had the requisite 10’x10’ tent, two folding chairs, and the offer of a table. For $285, a sign-making franchise conjured up a spiffy and colorful 2’x 9’ banner. I printed up handouts on green paper ($26). And, Betty selectively picked the Community Garden of enough ripe vegetables and flowers to cover that table from end to end.

When I first sent out a cheerful email to those 75 gardening families asking if eight of them could volunteer two hours of their choice to chat up Medfield families about the joys of community gardening, I expected to fill all slots within a day. Instead, I got… crickets. Well, not exactly crickets. I got perfectly valid apologies that their Saturday was already spoken for (including half a dozen who were committed to working other booths). So, I tried a second time and got one volunteer. By weeding in my plot at the right time of day, I convinced a second gardener to lend his time. And, on Friday afternoon, one more volunteer surfaced.

It was going to be mostly Betty and me… except Betty was still recovering from back surgery and sitting or standing for extended periods (dictated as 20 minutes by her physical therapist) was verboten. So, it was mostly going to be me.

Have you every tried to set up a tent when your helper is visibly wincing every time you say, ‘Pull!’? Have you ever tried to hang a banner when you forgot to bring a stepladder? We started at 9 a.m. and barely had everything in place when Medfield Day formally opened at 10. In that hour, the loose end of the banner repeatedly knocked over the (plastic) vases of carefully picked flowers; reducing dahlias and zinnias to bare stalks. The handouts scattered with a gust of wind. The tabletop sign stating proudly that all the produce in the display would be given to the Medfield Food Pantry would not stay upright until Betty found enough counterweights.

But the booth did open. And the good weather brought out thousands of people (the majority, alas, not of age to sign up for a garden). I and my three volunteers handed out flyers to more than a hundred interested parties and 25 people provided email addresses asking me to get in touch with them next March when gardens become available.

I met people who had been part of the community garden decades ago and cherished their experience. I met people new to town who were amazed the garden existed. I also stopped and gently admonished at least a hundred kids who reached into the bowl of cherry tomatoes, expecting they were one more freebie for the taking.

Was it a success? Yeah. Was it hard on my back standing out in the warm sun for all those hours? Definitely yeah. Did Betty and I polish off a bottle of wine with a takeout pizza when we got home and fall into bed at 8:30 p.m.? Most assuredly yeah.

Would I do it again? Ask me in July.

A Medical Story

The Principal Undergardener is taking a week off from essays about weeding to offer a tale of an encounter with modern medicine. If you’re rolling your eyes with an expectation of another lament about things going horribly wrong in the world of Big Medicine, be advised this story has a happy ending.

DMA's offices

When a career opportunity first brought us to Boston back in 1980, Betty and I asked neighbors and co-workers about where we might go to find a family doctor and dentist. The recurring name we heard was that of Dedham Medical Associates, which was housed in its own building roughly 15 minutes from our new home in Medfield. We went there, felt comfortable, and made it our medical home.

Ten years later, we left Massachusetts for yet another career opportunity but, in 1999, we returned to Medfield and picked up where we left off with the same doctors and dentists. In 2004, DMA joined with two other medical groups to become Atrius Health; adding medical specialties not previously available in-house (but, alas, shedding dentistry). Through all this, we kept the primary care physicians we had known for decades. When Betty and I became eligible for Medicare, we chose a ‘Part C’ plan that specifically included DMA.

Aging, though, brings a need for specialists you never contemplated in your 30s and 40s and, for Betty, osteoporosis reared its unwelcome head while she was still in her 50s. Atrius Health provided superb care. In 2020, she underwent spinal surgery to address continuing pain associated with collapsing vertebrae, receiving an injection of the medical equivalent of cement into two areas of her back.

Few things last forever, though, and this year, the back pain returned. Betty bore it well and insisted no intervention was necessary. Then, two evenings ago, Betty got up in the middle of the night and tripped, wrenching her back in the process. We both knew this wasn’t going away with ibuprofen. I also knew, from experience, that short of a true medical emergency, going to a hospital’s emergency room is an invitation to wait hours for indifferent care.

That’s when I discovered just how good medical care can be. At 6:30 a.m., I wrote a note to Betty’s primary care physician of almost three decades to let her know what had happened. At 7 a.m., I called DMA and got their ‘after-hours referral service’. I explained what had happened and, 30 seconds later, Betty had an 8:30 a.m. appointment at Atrius Health’s ‘Urgent Care’ center at their Norwood location.

There, Betty was taken in immediately. An RN named Megan called up Betty’s medical history, did a series of ‘touch your toes’-type tests, and sent her across the hall to radiology for a spinal x-ray. Fifteen minutes later, that image showed a fresh injury to a vertebrae that had been slowly collapsing. Megan put in a request for an appointment with Physiatry, the folks that deal with spinal and skeletal issues. She also issued a prescription for a drug to help alleviate the pain. Elapsed time from arrival to departure: less than 90 minutes.

We picked up Betty’s prescription - already waiting for us at our local pharmacy - on our way home. There, I called the Physiatry Department at DMA. After first cautioning me that appointments dates were made weeks or even months in advance, the scheduler paused and asked, “Could you be in Dedham at 3:30 today?”

Of course we could be, and at exactly 3:30 p.m., we were ushered into an examination room. A few moments later, we met Dr. Srdjan Nideljkovak.

Over the past several years, enormous sums of money have been devoted to facilitate the integration and digitizing of medical records - $36 billion according to consulting firm PwC. More than a few times, I wondered if the project was simply a government boondoggle doomed to deliver 10% of its promise. I officially admit my suspicions were misplaced.

In less than a minute, Dr. Nideljkovak had in front of him Betty’s complete medical history. He highlighted the multiple osteoporosis treatments Betty had undergone and their dates. He compared x-rays and MRI scans over two decades. In ten minutes, he isolated the likely source of Betty’s pain and confirmed it with a quick examination.

We spoke about treatments and settled on one that should offer long-term relief without further surgical intervention. I marveled that it was not yet 4 p.m.; Betty’s fall had been just 15 hours earlier and her arrival at urgent care was fewer than eight hours ago. And the out-of-pocket cost for all of this was $26 – ten dollars for urgent care, a dollar for the Tramadol tablets, and $15 for Dr. Nideljkovak’s time (seeing a specialist costs more).

All is not perfect. We have an appointment for the treatment in September. But Dr. Nideljkovak also told us about the workaround of calling on specific days to check for last-minute cancellations.

Perhaps our luck was exactly that, and the next person with a nighttime fall will spend days or weeks in medical purgatory. Perhaps it is just our good fortune to live in a region with a fabled wealth of medical practitioners. I like to think, though, that this is the way the system works for everyone who is willing to be flexible, to be persistent, and to have had the common sense to take advantage of Medicare’s Part C option.

Wayne Mezitt

Wayne Mezitt, one of the true giants of New England horticulture, died this week. He was 81 and, until felled by a deer tick carrying Babesiosis, he was a tireless advocate for excellence in all things garden-related. You can read his full obituary here. 

I have written about Wayne a number of times over the past 15 years, but the post reprinted below from June 2013 captures the

Wayne Mezitt with Azalea 
'Pink Diamond'

essence of what made him such a remarkable and thoughtful individual. I write this introduction to it while gazing out my library window at a glorious specimen of Cladrastis kentuckyea. The pink-flowering yellowwood was purchased at Weston Nurseries - the gardening mecca founded by Wayne's grandfather - nine years ago as we began to populate our new landscape. Weston was the only nursery in the region that carried such a tree. It has turned out to be a fine specimen that will anchor our garden for decades to come.

* * * * * * *

When Betty and I first came to New England in 1980, we purchased a still-being-built home for which landscaping did not rise even to the level of an afterthought.  We needed to learn about what kinds of trees and shrubs could survive in the deep pine forest out of which our new homestead had been carved.   In our first weeks, we heard about and visited a place called Weston Nurseries in Hopkinton. 

Weston turned out to be the answer to our needs.  It was – and still is – a source of freely offered and sound, professional advice about plants provided by a dedicated and long-serving staff.  We populated our three acres with Weston plant material and it thrived.  We stayed in that home ten years, then decamped for corporate opportunities, first in Connecticut and then in Virginia.  When we returned to New England in 1999, we again gravitated to Weston Nurseries for our landscaping needs, sometimes one or two plants at a time and sometimes in bulk.

A jazz band played at a
1920s-themed party

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure to be on hand as Weston Nurseries celebrated its 90^th birthday.  It is a remarkable achievement for any business to endure ninety years, much less to thrive.  It is all the more remarkable for a family business to reach that milestone. 

Last month, I wrote about Blanchette Garden’s announcement that it will close its doors after 32 years.  Weston Nurseries, by contrast, appears positioned to thrive over the long run.  It has not been easy, though, and it has not been without wrenching change.

Weston Nurseries Chairman Wayne
Mezitt with family memorabilia

Weston’s story begins with Peter John Mezitt, who was born into a family of Latvian farmers in 1885 and studied agriculture before emigrating to America in 1911.  Mezitt found his way to Massachusetts where he would become superintendent of a vegetable farm.  By the early 1920s, he had set his mind to becoming a nurseryman and, in 1923, he and his wife Olga purchased 80 acres in Weston (then a country town far outside of Boston) and began Weston Nurseries.

Their children became part of the business, which grew steadily while establishing a reputation for growing New England-hardy plants.  By 1941, Weston Nurseries encompassed 200 acres.  After World War II, urban development began encroaching on Weston and the family began looking for new land.  They found 300 acres of hilly, rocky abandoned farmland in Hopkinton that had the advantages of having a microclimate of a more southerly region (thus extending the growing season) and being firmly beyond Boston’s urban sphere.  The land was cleared, terraces were built, ponds were dug and roads were created.

Weston's Hopkinton Garden Center
offers a lot more than plants

The course of Weston Nurseries’ history changed in 1945.  For several years, Peter Mezitt’s son Ed had worked to crossbreed rhododendron to create stronger colors and more vigorous plants.  In early May of that year, a remarkable hybrid bloomed and, with it, the PJM rhododendron.  Weston Nurseries can be said to have fairly singlehandedly created the rhododendron (and its taxonomical little brother, the azalea) as a must-have ornamental shrub. 

By the 1970s, a third generation of Mezitts had joined the business.  Ed’s sons, Wayne and Roger, became part of Weston Nurseries, which now sprawled across 900 acres in Hopkinton.  The PJM family of rhododendrons became the gold standard of spring blooming ornamentals and Weston’s Hopkinton retail store a destination for anyone serious about quality horticulture.  Those acres yielded not just rhodies, but a full range of trees and shrubs.  The fourth generation of family members joined the company in 1996 (today, Wayne’s son, Peter Mezitt, is president). 

Employees dressed in flapper
costumes were everywhere

The world – and the industry – does not stand still, though.  The high cost of growing plants from seed to finished product in Hopkinton began pressuring margins in the 1990s.  Bringing in trees and shrubs from specialty growers became much more practical.  In the meantime, Boston’s suburbs grew and prospered… and urbanization headed inexorably west.  By 2005, the 900 acres owned by the Mezitt family was more valuable than the nursery business that occupied the site.

Weston Nurseries' 900 acres.  The
land below Route 135 was sold in
2005 and is being developed

Family pressures can both strengthen and divide an enterprise.  After 2000, Roger Mezitt asked to be bought out of the business.  That began a years-long effort that could have – and nearly did – extinguish Weston Nurseries.  It took a voluntary bankruptcy filing in October 2005 to open the way for the $23.7 million sale of 615 acres – two-thirds of the Mezitts’ land - for residential development that provided the liquidity for Roger’s exit.  The new community, called Legacy Farms, is now rising on the south side of Route 135.  Wayne Mezitt continues as Chairman of Weston Nurseries.

Legacy Farms can fairly be called
the price of securing Weston
Nurseries future

Yesterday afternoon, the events of eight years ago seemed remote.  The retail center hummed with activity when I was there even as guests enjoyed a jazz band and flapper-dressed employees greeted long-time customers.  Weston-created cultivars are well represented at the New York Botanical Garden’s new Azalea Garden. Today, you can purchase everything from upscale lawn furniture and pizza ovens to tropical plants at Weston Nurseries.  There is even a two-year-old satellite operation in Chelmsford, twenty miles away. 

I spoke with Wayne Mezitt at the event.  At 71, he is the steward of a legacy of horticultural quality and no mere figurehead.  He recognizes that Weston Nurseries must continue to evolve, and he and son Peter will guide that evolution.  Weston Nurseries still owns several hundred acres, part of it dominated by hoop houses that are no longer needed.  Planning is underway to determine how best to use surplus acreage.

Betty and I have made our decision to ‘downsize’ from our overly large house in Medfield.  We are looking for property on which we can build our ‘final’ home and where Betty can create a new garden.  We know two things about that pending event: that we will stay in the Boston area and, wherever we build that third home, we will make the drive to Hopkinton to find exactly the right trees and shrubs for it.

July begins, and the garden blooms

I never cease to be amazed how quickly a garden can change at this time of year.  Two weeks ago, the stars of the show were our Carolina lupine and Viburnum Winterthur. There was color in other places, of course, but the dominant color was green.

On July 2, its a different story. A vast sweep of bright red Monarda has come into bloom, flanked by brilliantly white daisies on one side and Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly milkweed) 'Hello Yellow' on the other. All of this occupies one bed of our front garden. In the photo at right, the Carolina lupine, now with flower heads removed, towers over the Monarda.

Only a week ago, there was a long, moderately tall row of bright green vegetation along the north (non-garden side) of our stone driveway. It forms a sort of barrier between our property and 20-foot-wide swath of jungle that belongs to our neighbor (the one who, nine years ago, famously spat out, "Not another one of those f***ing meadows!" when we explained no grass would be forthcoming). Seemingly overnight, there is now a cascade of long-blooming Heliopsis. In coming weeks, other tall perennials will horn in for glory but, on this date, it is the sunflowers that have the stage to themselves,

We value our privacy and, from the front of the street, passers-by get only a peek of what lies beyond.  We left in place a berm and low wall that shields a direct view of our house.  But there's no reason why we can't make that barrier - if it even qualifies as one - interesting, or even educational. Anyone who passes by get to see two cultivars of Physocarpus - better known as ninebark. Betty prefers the darker-leave specimens. Diabolo and Little Devil are still in (minor) bloom. Nearby is our Cercis canadensis (forest pansy redbud) 'Burgundy Hearts'. The ground cover trailing over the wall is bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), which started as 12 quart-sized pots.

At the top of that berm, Ceanothus americanus - New Jersey Tea - is in full bloom. Except during its too-brief bloom (about two weeks), it's something of a wallflower of a shrub... it blends into the background even though it is at the front of the bed.  Ceanothus is a useful shrub in that it thrives in soil other plants would find nutritionally lacking.  

Out in the rear of the garden, the Astible are in bloom along with other, less showy plants. We transplanted one Ligularia 'Othello'; it now has multiple progeny spread across the area. What is terrific, though, is that the strawberry, tiarella, heuchera, and other low perennials now provide a green carpet that accepts light foot traffic without complaint.

What I sometimes still have to pinch myself is that, nine years ago, none of this was here. The photo at left is tagged as having been taken on June 26, 2015.  We (or rather, a contractor) had created an enormous planting bed; ready for Betty's creativity and my muscle.  Less than a decade later, it is truly a garden.

The 10th Summer Solstice at 26 Pine Street

In a few weeks, the character of our garden will abruptly change as sweeps of rudbeckia, monarda, betony, and daisies bloom with startling synchronicity. For the moment, though, there are other other stars, no less eye-catching, to be enjoyed. On the sultry morning of the summer solstice, I took these photos to document the garden on the longest day of the year.

Double-click for a slideshow

I start with what everyone who comes into the garden during the month of June asks about: Thermopsis villosa, better known as Carolina lupine.  As the name suggests, it is native to the southern Appalachians. Betty acquired two pots of it from the Native Plant Trust's plant shop at Garden in the Wood in Framingham, MA. That was four years ago. Based on the plants we saw in those containers, we expected the full bloom to reach four feet or so. Instead, as the photo shows, it tops out at eight feet; and its footprint has increased to about ten square feet with no intervention from us. Clearly, this southern visitor is at home in New England.  This photo shows it with two yellow companions: Achillea (yarrow) 'Moonshine' and some concurrently flowering sedum. The white blooms to the left of Carolina lupine are Hydrangea quercifolia, better known as oakleaf hydrangea.

In the rear garden, the spotlight belongs to our two Viburnum 'Winterthur', also acquired from Garden in the Wood. Amazingly, these two shrubs are not quite at their peak: in another ten days, their flowers will be almost completely cover the shrubs in white. We had absolutely no idea they would flower in such profusion - especially given they are in, at best, a part-sun environment. Amazingly, the purple-blooming sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia), just visible below the base of the triangle in front of the viburnum, was planted at the same time as the now-hulking shrubs behind it.

Out in front of the garden, passers-by always stop to ask about our now-magnificent redbud and the multiple ninebarks adjacent to it. Our Cercis canadensis 'Burgundy Hearts' took about four months to find and was the next-to-the-last specimen tree to go into the ground. Betty had a specific location in mind and, therefore, a specific form factor. The tree has been shaped to fit its triangular site and kept to about an eight-foot height. Its reddish-brown, heart-shaped leaves will not change to green until nighttime temperatures fail to fall below seventy degrees (usually in August). We have multiple specimens of Physocarpus opulifolius (ninebark) in the front garden. This one is 'Diabolo', and its purplish-pink flowers are only now starting to fade. The small shrub with white bottle-brush flowers is Itea 'Henry Garnet'. Because it is growing in the shade of a large maple tree, it has remained small.

Finally, looking from the driveway up the front sidewalk, an array of trees, shrubs, and perennials are lush and green. To the right are multiple Pinus 'Nana', which requires an annual removal of its candles to remain even remotely in it place. An array of geraniums - too many cultivars to call out - are in prolific bloom. To the left, the shrub in front is Lindera. Behind it are our Cornus florida (American dogwood), now well past its flowering, Cladrastis kentuckyea (yellowwood), which blooms every other year, and Betula nigra (black birch) which are all jockeying for space, and all looking wonderful.

Digging out the builders' crud in 2015

It is difficult to believe that in June 2015, this was a barren spot of land: nothing grew on it. We had completed construction of our 'dream retirement home' on the site. Left behind was a half acre of what could most politely be described as 'builders' crud'... lifeless dirt and a multitude of rocks compressed into a an airless mass. A landscaping company dug out the top 18 inches of the mess (945 cubic yards), and brought in a like amount of screened loam. We topped that with 80 cubic yards of mulch and began planting (primarily) native trees, shrubs, perennials, and ground covers. It is still a work in progress.

'Gardening Is Murder' Comes to Saugus... and YouTube

Fourteen years ago, my first mystery (Murder Imperfect) was published and I had a plan for publicizing it. A library’s meeting room was booked, press releases went out, refreshments were purchased. The appointed day came.

The attendance: me, my wife, and an assistant librarian.

I have spoken to audiences in highly unusual
settings. One garden club met in a party room.

Undeterred, I refined my press materials and changed the timing and location… all to no avail. My conclusion: no one wanted to come hear an unknown author. Maybe, I thought, they might want to read a blog. I had already started one called ‘The Principal Undergardener’, in which I crafted taut, 900-word essays intended as a writer’s equivalent of a musician’s etudes and an athlete’s stretching: warm-ups and limbering exercises. Readership, though, was sparse.

Then, two years later, I received an invitation from a suburban Boston garden club. The club had chosen my third book (The Garden Club Gang) as their summer read, and now they wanted me to speak about it and answer questions at their September pot-luck dinner-with-spouses meeting. But, two weeks before the meeting, the club president called. “We’re a garden club,” she said, “not just a social group. You’re welcome to talk about the book, but could you also include some gardening information?”

Betty already had a reputation as a superb horticultural speaker. I asked if I could ‘borrow’ one of her programs. I was met with an icy stare.

Those essays might be useful...

So, I began re-reading my Principal Undergardener essays. Their problem, I immediately saw, was that they were horticultural only in the most tangential sense. What I was writing were observations on gardening; I had no original advice to offer. But, maybe I could cobble together a few of those essays…

On the appointed evening, I gave the primordial version of the program that would become ‘Gardening Is Murder’.  When it was over, the club president offered her concise appraisal and criticism: “We couldn’t hear you because we were laughing so hard.” 

In the intervening years, more than 600 groups ranging from small clubs to state and regional meetings with hundreds of attendees have had pretty much the same reaction. Gardening and humor can go together quite well.

Signing books, with Betty

On May 22, I presented ‘Gardening Is Murder’ for the Saugus (MA) Garden Club’s annual fund raiser. They had booked the auditorium at Town Hall with a plan to use me to lure in a crowd beyond the club’s membership. Following my talk, they would raffle and auction off floral designs and other horticulture.

While I was not aware of it, my talk also was videoed by the town’s cable system. Last week, it went up on YouTube. The production values are quite good.

If you’ve never seen ‘Gardening Is Murder’, please take a look at the video, which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a7YDxugoo4. I begin speaking just before the two-minute mark.

May Turns to June, and Purple Reigns

The garden at 26 Pine Street, June 1, 2024
double-click on any image for a slide show.

When Betty began planning our new garden in 2015, she focused principally on trees and shrubs. It was a logical decision because those elements provide the 'structure' that anchors the property. It isn't that perennials, groundcovers, and bulbs weren't important; it's more the reality that, until Cladrastis kentuckyea (yellowwood), the right Chionanthus virginicus (fringetree) and the rest of the their horticultural brethren were on site and had been planted, everything else was going to be consigned to the sidelines. There was also the matter that Betty wanted to be able to imagine the garden as it would be viewed from inside our new home.

The same garden nine years ago.

Amazingly, by July (three months after we moved in), and as the photo at right attests, ten specimen trees and roughly 40 shrubs were in the ground (and a 500-count bottle of Ibuprofen had been consumed).  Betty then turned her thoughts to groundcovers and perennials. With the benefit of nine years of hindsight, what she accomplished is nothing short of miraculous. The garden is now approaching maturity, with weekly revelations of what a combination of long-term thinking, meticulous planning and luck can provide.

The view from the library

I start with the sight that greeted us for two weeks in mid- and late May as we gazed out of our library windows and front door. My memory is that we looked at more than half a dozen dogwoods. Betty checked for crossing branches, general vigor, and any indication of disease or abuse. She was also looking for a pink-flowering Cornus florida. Why pink? All I know is, she was adamant. But, here it is. It was a stunning sight, made all the more alluring because its color was echoed by multiple specimens of Dicentra (bleeding heart).

The view from the back porch

The view out of the back of the house is no less important. Because we chose to place our new home some 30 feet farther back that its predecessor (both for added privacy and to have a larger front garden), we have just 50 feet or so of 'cultivatable' land before we run afoul of our town's Conservation Commission restrictions. Betty wanted to preserve the view into the mixed pine and oak forest behind our home, while creating visually interesting vignettes nearby that change with the season.  Chamaecyparis 'Snow' is a remarkable shrub that shifts its color accents across the year while providing a predator-proof habitat for birds. Viburnum 'Winterthur' is a month away from flowering, but already is showing great texture and color. The purple-blooming perennial is Thalictrum aquilegifolium, better known as meadow rue.

In the front garden, Allium (not a native) offers purple umbels on tall stalks. The blue/purple blooming perennial in front is a native salvia, procured like many of our perennials from the Grow Native Massachusetts plant sale. Alas, the tag identifying the cultivar is nowhere to be found. At the back of the photo is our magnificent Cercis canadensis 'Burgundy Hearts'. Its deep purple leaves will remain that color until nighttime temperatures fail to fall below 70 degrees - likely some time in August.

That's a quick look at the garden. Check back in a few weeks to see summer begin unfolding on Pine Street.

The Spring of 2024 at 26 Pine Street

The winter of 2023-2024 was fairly well non-existent in eastern Massachusetts. There was rain - lots of rain - but not a single plowable snowfall in Medfield, the town Betty and I have called home for the past quarter century. There were  nor'easters that brought near-hurricane-force winds to the region, but the ponds never froze. As a result, we lost no trees or shrubs; the perennials did not get heaved out of the ground. In this, the first full week of May, the garden is a sea of new green with bursts of color from all the usual suspects. Please double-click on any photo to get a full-screen slideshow of the garden.

Sometimes, though, words get in the way of things. Rather than wax poetic, I'd like to let the garden speak for itself.  Let me start with the first tree to bloom. This is Amelanchier 'Autumn Brilliance'. It was, if memory serves correctly, the first tree to be planted on the property in June 2015. It wasn't so much an honor bestowed as a practical reality: Betty and I were still driving from nursery to nursery looking for 'the right' specimens. Weston Nurseries had exactly the Amelanchier in stock we wanted and so we brought it home and dug a hole in what we hoped would be the right place.

Our Amelanchier's bloom is brief. This photo shows it at its peak on April 23.  Two weeks later, the leaves have eclipsed the blooms.

Magnolia 'Elizabeth' bloomed right behind the Amelanchier. It us a glorious shade of yellow and it fairly glows.  This photo is from April 30 and shows the tree at or near its peak. 'Elizabeth' is supposed to get to roughly 25 feet in height and then stop.  By my estimate, it has reached its mature status.  The tree is still in bloom, but much of its earliest flowers have dropped to the ground. In another week it will be all green - though still a lovely tree.

New England wouldn't be New England without azaleas and rhododendron (the latter is technically a subset of the former). We have multiple specimens, but it is Azalea 'Weston's Aglo' that beats all the others to display the first color. This pair are readily visible from our library. In the photo at left, Magnolia 'Elizabeth' stands at peak glory in the background. There are other azaleas and rhododendron dotted around the property. They'll bloom as late as mid-June.

Fothergilla is largely overlooked in garden design. Part of their lack of broad appeal is that their leaves are a dull green. The exception is 'Blue Shadow', which offers a much more attractive leaf color. But, for a few weeks in May, all Fothergilla have a stunning white brush-like flower. Some are round balls; F Blue Shadow's bloom looks like a bottle brush straight out of a Williams Sonoma catalog. We have three groups of three on the property; one of which is shown in the left third of the adjacent photo.

Which brings us to Cornus florida, the American dogwood. It was only today, May 7, that ours burst out in its full glory.  Cornus florida has a bad rap: that it is disease prone, specifically anthracnose which can kill the tree. Cornus kousa, the Korean  variant, is considered immune to the disease.  The solution, though, isn't to abandon the native version. Rather, it is to give Cornus florida an open space to ensure adequate air flow. 

Why does it matter? Because our native birds can eat the small, thin-skilled fruit of the native tree. The large, rubbery-skinned Korean fruit falls to the ground and rots.

There are other, less grand  blooms around the property. For example, the Tiarellas are in bloom.  Betty acquired 120 Tiarellas and Heucheras in a sharp deal at the 2015 Boston Flower & Garden Show; taking them off the hands of an exhibitor for the price of the plugs - one dollar each.  Three months later, having pampered the plants with daily excursions into the sun, we placed them all over the property.  What you see at the right, blooming white, are maybe ten of those Tiarella, interspersed with ginger as a foundation planting for our garage.

Finally, we are endeavoring to use as many native groundcovers as possible to eliminate the need for grass. At the front of our property there's a growing expanse of Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, otherwise known as bearberry. It's a terrific groundcover, but its bloom is what is called 'insignificant'... a flower you need a magnifying glass to see. Not so Phlox stolonifera, shown at left. For about three weeks, it puts up a glorious blue flower spike. Then, the flower fades and the spike browns. We're left with a green mat of phlox that takes light foot traffic. What you see here started as three plugs back in 2015.  It's now about nine square feet and expanding at a rate of about two square feet a year.

That's how the garden looks this spring. Hope you enjoyed the visit!

Gloria Freitas-Steidinger

Some giants come in diminutive packages. I know because I was acquainted with one.

My enduring memory of Gloria Freitas-Steidinger is from late November of 2009. I was one of a handful of volunteers who were putting together an event called ‘The Festival of Trees’ for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.  We had shamelessly copied the idea from a town fifty miles north of Mass Hort’s headquarters at the Elm Bank estate in Wellesley. The idea was ingenious: charge people a few dollars to come in and see beautifully decorated holiday trees, then sell them what amounted to lottery tickets for the opportunity to take home their favorite one.

Gloria and Paul unload her tree in 2009

To get entries, we entreated garden clubs across the region to bring in a tree and decorate it on site. We also went to businesses and asked for money for trees we would decorate. (Because Mass Hort’s coffers were bare, the organization could not contribute its own candidates.)

Gloria had promised us a tree but, as the ‘decorating day’ was drawing to a close, she was nowhere to be seen. A few clubs had sent last-minute regrets and we were scrambling to meet our goal of 30 trees for this first-time event. Then, a horse van appeared in the driveway of the building in which the Festival would be held.  Moments later, Gloria and her husband, Paul Steidinger, unloaded a stunning, fully decorated tree.

Gloria (right) with Ann Lange at
the 2013 Festival of Trees

We gave it a place of honor. It drew a mountain of tickets, stuffed in a box at the base of the tree.

My wife, Betty, already knew Gloria from what is politely called ‘the flower show world’, but which could be more accurately described as ‘the Judges Council Mafia’. Gloria was a force within that world, as well as an extraordinarily gifted and creative designer.

I would get to know Gloria better at later editions of the Festival of Trees, but our relationship

Gloria, on a ladder, creates
a miniature landscape

blossomed when I became Chairman of Blooms at the Boston Flower and Garden Show.  Gloria entered not only the amateur floral design competitions (and routinely won not just ‘Blues’, but also ‘Tri-Colors’ indicating hers was one of the best of the hundred-plus entries for the show). She also contributed entries for the ‘Miniature Gardens’ exhibits; one of the most challenging of all flower show activities because it entails creating a horticultural landscape within a box measuring approximately three feet on a side.

Unloading Gloria's car at the Boston
Flower & Garden Show in 2012

It was a pleasure to work with Gloria – even to unload her car at the Flower Show at 5:30 a.m. One of the reasons was that Gloria was a ranconteur extraordinaire.  The story on which she could, if she chose to, dine out on forever revolved around her presence in the White House during the government shutdown of 1995. Gloria was one of about a dozen designers chosen each year to decorate the many Christmas trees that grace the White House.

When the shutdown commenced on November 14, all federal employees were sent home. Because they were volunteers, Gloria and her cadre of decorators were allowed to remain.  President Bill Clinton remained because he lived there. And, because she was a lowly unpaid intern, so did a woman by the name of Monica Lewinsky. Gloria said she saw it all, and I believe her.

When I began writing ‘Murder in Negative Space’, I knew I needed to incorporate a Gloria-type character. I did so, but I also had the opportunity to give her a shout-out. As my amateur sleuth, Liz Phillips, attempts to help out a floral designer struggling with a ‘stretch design’ (one of the more difficult ones). Liz asks if the designer remembers a famous stretch design that won a Tri-Color at a show a few years earlier – a floral design that evoked a man pulling a dog on a leash. “The one by Gloria Freitas!” the woman exclaims.

Gloria gave me a kiss when she read that book. Many people have told me she carried a copy of it in her purse to show it off.

Gloria passed away in late March, just over a month before her 92nd birthday.  Her husband, Paul, pre-deceased her by six months. She was a lovely lady. gracious and kind to all. More than that, she was a firecracker; funny, witty, and possessed of an energy few people of her age possess. Her death leaves a hole in the garden club and floral design world.