The Blue Garden: a gem hiding in plain sight

 Occasionally, fairy tales do come true.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to see a stunning garden that, for seventy years, was only a memory and was presumed a vanished artifact of another age. Yet, here it was in all its glory; made possible by a fairy godmother.

Let’s go back 113 years to the night of August 15, 1913. Arthur Curtiss James, who both inherited and made a fortune in copper mines and railroads, and his spouse, Harriet Parson James, are throwing a party to inaugurate their new garden. The garden is located at their Newport summer residence, Beacon Hill House, which is located on 125 acres on an inland promontory; the highest point in Newport.

The garden, in turn, is Harriet’s idea and passion. Since 1908, The Olmsted Brothers have designed and executed the palatial landscape of the estate, save for a hollow on the northeast side of the property where there is an indication for ‘an informal garden’. For the preceding two years, Harriet has engaged Fredrick Law Olmsted, Jr. to design and build what she envisions as “a monochromatic concentration of purples and blues.”

Olmsted creates a hortus conclusus, a secret garden hidden behind a dense border of trees and shrubs.

On this August evening, “The Masque of the Blue Garden” is being held for 300 invited guests. The event, which features performances of musicians and dancers, culminates with Amphitrite, the Greek goddess of the sea, leaping from a giant shell placed at the far end of the long pool that is the central feature of the garden.  We know all of this because the event was covered in detail by newspapers and periodicals across the country.

But times change. Harriet and Arthur die within weeks of one another in 1941. Beacon Hill House and its landscape fall into disrepair. In 1967, the mansion is destroyed by fire. Eventually, it will be demolished. The property will be sub-divided into multi-acre lots in the 1970s. In the ensuing decades, the Blue Garden will disappear under the weight of vines and undergrowth.

Enter Dorrance “Dodo” Hill Hamilton. Born in 1928, she was the granddaughter of John Thompson Dorrance. Mr. Dorrance created the process for condensing soups and, in 1914, became the owner of the Campbell’s Soup Company. In the early 2000s and now widowed, Ms. Hamilton was a billionaire and one of the wealthiest women in America according to Forbes magazine.

Ms. Hamilton had longstanding ties to Newport, having spent summer there since childhood. In 1998 she acquired Wildacre, an oceanfront estate but, fifteen years later and now in her eighties, she realized she needed a house on one level, and acquired one of the parcels of land that had been part of the Beacon Hill House property, and set out to build ‘The Birdhouse’.

In 2012, as Ms. Hamilton was completing her new home, an adjacent parcel on which the Blue Garden had been located came up for sale. It is worth noting that Ms. Hamilton was a major supporter of horticultural causes, including the Philadelphia Flower Show and the Newport Flower Show, as well as Blithewold Mansion, Gardens and Arboretum.

She acquired the property for the specific purpose of rebuilding the garden. A team led by renowned Cambridge, MA landscape architectural firm, Reed Hildebrand was charged with recreating it. The original plans were located from the Olmsted National Historic Site. The invasive Norway Maples and other detritus was removed… as was a 1980s modern house that had been constructed on the site of one of the two pergolas. Specialists meticulously dissected the garden’s site and perimeter; pulling out and preserving tiles and ornamental stonework from the original garden.

It took two years, but the site was restored. By design, the horticultural elements were faithful to the spirit of the original garden but not replicated exactly. Trees, shrubs, and perennials were chosen for their suitability to the Newport climate. They were also selected for sustainability: in the time of Arthur and Harriet James, the garden staff numbered more than forty. Such a force is impractical in the third decade of the 21^st Century.

Dorrance Hill Hamilton died in 2017. She lived to see the garden’s completion. In August 2014, the renewed Blue Garden opened to a group of invited guests who came together to celebrate its rescue from the diminished condition in which it was found. The garden is an accredited arboretum with the Morton Register of Arboreta and, in 2018, a permanent conservation easement was placed on it by the Aquidneck Land Trust. Its maintenance is provided under a perpetual trust created by Ms. Hamilton.

If there is an oddity to this story, it is that few people seem to know of the garden, and fewer get to see it: just 100 per week. The garden is open one day a week – on Thursday – and there are three (or occasionally four) tours, each 90 minutes long; and the tours are limited to 25 attendees. The garden is open from mid-June to early October.  I booked the tour on Monday of this week. Only the first (11 a.m.) time slot was filled when I registered.

The reason for the limited opening is, I suspect, that the garden is fragile. One hundred pairs of feet on its grass and pathways one day each week allows the lawn to recover.  Open the garden six days a week and the wear and tear will be evident by July and irreversible by October.

The tour - $25 – is well worth the money. Our guide was Matt Phillips (pictured at left), who wears the hats of property and horticulture manager. His knowledge of the property is vast, his tolerance for questions quite high.

 

Please Don't Swipe Right

While out weeding yesterday, my mind started wandering... and came up with this question: You're one of the later-blooming native perennials... one of the last to makes its presence known. And, you have a very unfortunate common name. What would you say about yourself on a dating app to explain to a gardener that he or she ought to take a chance on you?

Well, I came up with something:
Please don’t swipe right….
I know, I know. No clearly identifiable profile picture and no name. It’s a dead giveaway I’m hiding something, and us plants are always supposed to be ‘out there’ and available. So, give me a few moments to explain. Please!
I’ll start with my name – and you have to promise not to swipe right when you read this. My first name is Downy. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. What plant gets named after a fabric softener? It gets worse: I have a last name, but we’ll have to know one another a lot better before I tell you because it’s mortifying. And I’ve lived with it my entire life.

There’s no profile picture because I’m not sufficiently photogenic yet. I’m an August bloomer in a world where everyone wants May, June and July. But, I’m worth the wait. May bloomers get all the attention. Peonies get all the Prom invitations because of how swell they look… in May. But I know the truth. I’ve seen them changing after gym class. It’s all wadded-up Kleenex and cotton. Caveat emptor!

And, I also know all too well that I look rangy right now with stems headed in every direction. Not like Monarda. Monarda knows how to strut its stuff: one plant, one stem two feet high. And available in every color of the rainbow. Monarda know they’re going to sell out long before anything gets marked down, and they’re snobs about it. I get tired of listening to their bragging.

I grow back from my roots or from seed, and I’ve got stems galore. I can get three feet wide without breaking my stride. And, yes, I know I only come in blue. But it’s a beautiful, iridescent blue and it lasts forever. Plus, I have flowers on every branch. What’s not to love?
Did I mention I spread? Oh, my gosh do I spread. Don’t cut my flowers. Let them stay on into fall. And, if you must cut me down, leave my stems in place. I don’t want to sound promiscuous, but I can fill the border of a garden in two years.
You probably want a reference. OK, Neal has me in what he calls his Sun Garden. And, yes, the core of the Sun Garden is that haughty Monarda, ox-eye-daisies, Rudbeckia, and Betony, plus lots of Asceplias. But their glory was June and July. Now, they’re getting a little ragged.

So, guess who gets to steal the show for the next sixty days? Yes, homely little me; except I’m not going to be homely much longer. I’m already showing a little blue ("give them a little peek", my Aunt Virginia always advised me) on some stems. In another week, you can be walking up the driveway or be on the sidewalk, and I’ll stop you in your tracks. I guarantee it.
Oh, you want to know about pollinators? I hope you like bumblebees and native bees. My flower includes a protective hood, under which is loads of nectar and pollen. I, ahem, leave them satisfied. I also have gentlemen callers in the form of butterflies and skippers. Yes, I know they only love me for my nectar, but who's complaining? It's my lot in life!
OK, you deserve my full name. It’s Scutellaria incana, or more commonly, hoary (don’t you dare go there… I have itchy friends) skullcap or downy skullcap, which is bad enough. Why skullcap? What did I do wrong? Whom did I annoy? I rather like the Latin binomial, though. ‘Incana’. I think Linneaus meant to write, ‘enchanting’ and was forced to abbreviate. Because I think of myself as enchanting.
And, you will, too. So, swipe left. Let’s get together. Put me in your garden. I promise you won't regret it!

The Cascade Effect

This was supposed to be a lazy Sunday afternoon. Read the newspaper (yes, I’m a dinosaur who subscribes to the print edition of newspapers), organize some documents I had been putting off doing; that sort of thing.

I looked out the window and saw my
containers needed watering

But, I glanced out the window by the front door and saw that the two container gardens at the base of steps needed watering. So, I filled a jug of water from a rain barrel and went out to quench the thirsty containers. Which is when I noticed that one of my foundation shrubs, a Leucothoe (aka dogshobble), had sent some exploratory branches out, and those branches were mostly hiding what I thought was a very attractive container.

The flowering raspberry was behaving
like, well, a raspberry bush

So, I went to the garage and got a pair of Felcos and a fabric barrel to trim back the errant branches. Which is when I noticed that almost all of the flowers on my flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus), located a few feet away from the Leucothoe, were past bloom and needed to be cut off. So, I did that first.
Which is when I saw that the flowering raspberry was behaving like, well, a raspberry, and had sent out a dozen runners into the birch bed (a very nice Betula nigra). So, I pulled up the runners and placed then into the barrel. But, in doing so, I saw there was an infestation under the birch of jewel weed (impatiens capensis); a low-order nuisance because they pull out very easily. It’s almost as though they know they’re not supposed to be there and so don’t put up a fight.

Both the Kalmia and Leucothoe
had committed a no-no: they
had grown higher than the sill.

But, what they lacked in fight to survive, they more than made up in sheer numbers. There were hundreds of them all along either side of the thirty foot (or so) path between the birch bed and the foundation plantings. Because they reproduce so easily, I knew I needed to get them all out. A few that had access to sunlight were as tall as the about-to-bloom summersweet (Clethra alnifolia) which they has also colonized.
By now, the debris barrel was full and I emptied it in the compost pile. When I returned, I noted that mountain laurel (Kalmia ‘Sara’) along the house foundation also harbored jewel weed which needed to be pulled. But the Kalmia also was growing over the top of some very attractive (and expensive) coral bells (Heuchera) that had been planted as ‘boots and socks’ for the foundation shrubs.

I filled three barrels with debris

So, I carefully trimmed back the Kalmia to make it look as though it and the Heuchera had always co-existed peacefully. Stepping back to admire my work, I saw that the Kalmia also was transgressing in another – maybe even more serious – way: its height was six or eight inches above my home’s window sill. I have always believed that shrubs higher than a home’s window sills is the first step on the slippery slope to becoming a recluse.
So, I went in and carefully cut back the top of the Kalmia, making certain no one could ever think I has just sheared off the top eight inches willy-nilly. Each offending branch was trimmed individually so there was no protruding stem visible.

Order restored

And, of course, the two Leucothoes (which had long since grown together) also were above the window sills. I filled and emptied the debris barrel a second time. Since I was already hot and sweaty, I figured I might as well also provide a modicum of ‘space definition’ between the Kalmia and the Leucothoe. I gave the Kalmia the benefit of the doubt where the two shrubs had dueling branches.
Then, I was back at the front steps of my house. I carefully trimmed back the Leucothoe – pulling out several branches that had rooted within a foot of the containers – and reshaped the corner so there would be ample light. Oh, and I watered both containers well.

And, the container
garden has light!

So, all it took to give a jug of water to two urns filled with annuals was three hours to do six other things. I’m certain this – which I call the Cascade Effect – never happens in your garden. It is, unfortunately, an all-too-common occurrence in mine.

The unwanted interloper

If anyone ever offers you the opportunity - and calls it ‘the honor’ – of running a community garden, you should run at high speed from the person trying to recruit you. Delete the individual from your phone and email. Change your address. Answer the phone in a foreign language.

600 square feet of Japanese hop

I know this because I spent Monday afternoon removing a nasty, invasive vine from 600 square feet of the conservation land in which the Medfield Community Garden is located; and from which garden I have been removing yet another pernicious vine now for the better part of a month.

Two millennia ago, the poet Virgil wrote the famous Latin line “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”, which translates to: "I fear the Greeks (Danaans), even those bearing gifts." My update is “Beware of anything your town’s Department of Public Works brings you.” It especially applies when you’ve been told that only the DPW can supply something.

As the Community Garden co-manager (or Garden Ogre, and I have titled myself), one of my tasks each spring is to request that tenants of the 70 plots in the acre-sized garden replenish the wood chips that for the ‘streets and avenues’ around their gardens. I start saving newspapers beginning in September so that gardeners can easily a) rake back last year’s chips that did not break down into organic material over the winter; b) put down either cardboard or (preferably) newspapers across the three-foot-wide paths around all sides of their plot; and c) rake the old chips over the newspaper and supplement with fresh chips for a depth not to exceed two inches.

The town's mulch pile, in theory, weed free

Where do the chips come from? Historically, they have come from the Medfield DPW, which take wood debris dumped by homeowners at the town’s transfer station, grinds it up into a mulch, puts it in a large pile where, in theory, the internal temperature of the wood pile will get to just below the combustion point. In the process, those high temperatures will kill off pathogens and sterilize any weed seeds or vines that might have been ground up along with the wood.

The key phrase, is ‘in theory’,

The chips were perfect!

Each year, I request 60 cubic yards of mulch, starting with four piles, each of ten cubic yards. If that isn’t enough, I request more. Last year, for reasons I cannot understand, the DPW pointedly declined to provide additional chips.  Weeds were starting to appear in the unchipped aisles and so, after pleading for six weeks, my co-manager and I used a wonderful, free service called ‘Chip Drop’ which allows tree service firms to avoid paying tipping fees at landfills and, instead, drop off freshly-chipped wood at homes or other locations. You can even specify ‘no logs’ or ‘no branches’. Did I mention it is free?

Two days later, we got ten cubic yards of the best wood chips we had ever seen.  I was in thrall.

But the Community Garden is not a power unto itself. Like many such gardens, we are under the auspices of our town’s Conservation Commission, and the Medfield Conservation Commission takes its stewardship role quite seriously. We are on the site of Medfield’s last working farm, acquired by the town a quarter century ago. I did not ask permission to bring in ‘outside’ chips. And, when it was learned we had not asked permission, my co-manager and I were – and I will use this word because it is the dictionary-perfect description – castigated for violating the trust of the Conservation Commission.

This spring, we requested our usual supply of chips… and were told by the DPW they didn’t have any available because of the cold winter. So, I investigated ‘outside’ wood chips and narrowed the choice to two: Chip Drop (free) and Certified Playground Chips, which are milled from the everwood and pith of hardwood trees.., and are $55 per cubic yard. The community garden collects enough in user fees to pay for the chips, and I agreed to pay any overage from my own pocket.

We were about to order the certified chips when the DPW said it had taken the temperature of its wood mulch pile and found it had gotten high enough to kill off all the bad stuff. The Conservation Commission decreed we should use DPW chips and they were delivered and spread by gardeners in their aisles.

Three weeks ago, I noticed something I had not seen in the garden in almost a decade: bindweed.

For the uninitiated, bindweed is evil incarnate. It exists to make the lives of gardeners miserable. It can regenerate from root pieces as small as two inches.  And, it was all over the garden, vining up fences. I pulled back the mulch around my own plot. Pieces of the bindweed had survived in the wood mulch and taken root. Since then, I have been cajoling my fellow gardeners to cut off the vines at ground level so as to ‘starve’ the roots of energy.

Underneath the hop, the remnants of
the compost pile which harbored seeds

Two weeks ago, I noticed something else. In 2025, the DPW also delivered two truckloads of compost. It looked beautiful.  We augmented the soil in the garden with it. What was left over just stayed in two piles on opposite ends of the garden…. where, this spring, dormant seeds for an invasive vine called Japanese hop germinated and were running wild.

The Japanese hop, removed.

The smaller tangle was removed, unbidden, by one of our long-time gardeners. Which gave me the idea that I could do the larger one. Took me three hours. To clear the vines that came from the seeds brought in by the compost from the DPW.

But it’s done. And, because the vines were removed before they had an opportunity to flower and set seed, it should be the last I see of it. And the satisfaction of a task completed maybe makes it OK to accept an offer to run a community garden after all.

Unless, of course, the DPW has more ‘surprises’ in store for me….

 

The Re-wilding of Beaver Brook

For thousands of years, the western Massachusetts site just outside the town of Northampton was part of the vast forest that covered almost all of the region. In colonial times, it was – like almost all of that primeval forest – cut bare to permit farming and supply lumber for buildings and roads. In the 1930s it became a dairy. And, in 1960, 240 of its acres gave way to the Beaver Brook Golf Course and an adjacent second-growth woodland.

Hilltown Land Trust's perview

In 2025, the owner of the struggling public course sought a buyer. An expression of interest came from an unexpected source: the Hilltown Land Trust (HLT); a 37-year-old organization serving 13 towns in a mostly rural part of the state, and which has conserved and provides stewardship of more than 5,000 acres of land in those towns. HLT, in turn, reached out to The Trustees of Reservations; a century-plus-old organization that stewards 120 places of ecological, scenic, and historic importance in Massachusetts. The Trustees’ portfolio comprises 52,000 acres, representing 120 places of ecological, scenic, and historic importance.

A price was agreed upon and, last July, the Beaver Brook Golf Course hosted its last players.

Once a fairway, 
now foot-tall grass

Since that time, the site has largely been allowed to lay fallow. The fairways and greens now host foot-tall grass; the sand traps have begun to fill in. But, at the same time, the site has been meticulously documented and inventoried. There are decades-old fresh-water mussels in Beaver Brook. There are rare butterflies and turtles whose habitats will need to be protected. There is already marsh grass growing in low areas that were once mowed and drained. What was once a marsh will be allowed to return to its natural state.

This one-time water hazard
may or may not remain

And, along with a catalog of specimen trees (including a dawn redwood), there is a laundry list of invasives. The inventory of unwanted species ranges from wild rose to Japanese knotweed. Teams of volunteers and, in the case of the knotweed, specialists, are already fanning out to cull interlopers.

Our guide, Julie,
knows the property well

The reservation is not yet open to the public. I had the opportunity yesterday to see it as a work in progress; to take a walk with a guide, Julie – part of The Trustees’ conservation staff and who was stunningly knowledgeable about the property. She enumerated what has been done to date and the longer list of what needs to be done to make the site sustainable. Eventually, it will open as a Trustees site, with several miles of hiking trails.

Double-click to see image

More than just land conservation, though, Beaver Brook serves another purpose: carbon sequestration. This was driven home in a talk given after the walk by Jonathan Thompson, whose day job is Director of the Harvard Forest; Harvard University's 4,000-acre laboratory and classroom located in Petersham, northeast of the Quabbin Reservoir. Thompson notes more than half of Massachusetts is forested – roughly three million acres. But much of that forest abuts roadways and developments. The ecosystem of the ‘edge’ of a forest is quite different from that of a ‘deep’ forest; especially when it comes to soaking up carbon. Beaver Brook is surrounded by yet more forest. Properly managed, it will be part of a carbon sink – what The Trustees terms ‘climate hope’.

Other Trustees and HLT
properties in the region

Beaver Brook could have had a very different future. Another golf course in nearby Amherst was acquired and became a tree-less solar farm. In more populous areas, the site would be ripe for re-development as housing.  This golf course has a more ecologically beneficial long-term future: wildlife habitat, home for endangered species, a place where folks can hike and, if all goes well, where beavers will return to gnaw on helpless trees.

At present, there are no beavers at Beaver Brook. Beavers have no interest in fields of grass, no matter how attractive they may be to humans. They need something to (literally) sink their teeth into. There are beavers downstream. As trees are planted along the brook, there is an expectation they will return… and that they will gnaw down the very trees The Trustees and HLT are going to plant.

The Docents Are Coming!

 

There's nothing like a deadline to make you focus on the job at hand.

Spring did not cooperate this
year. Everything is behind.

This has been a busy spring with much travel. It has also been a spring featuring lots of rotten weather – and especially cold. But on June 18 – less than two weeks from today - docents from Arnold Arboretum are coming to get a look at a genuine 'Homegrown National Park', and my garden has to be ready.

The offer to host the group was made last summer when Chris McArdle – herself one of those docents and the subject of my essay on Witch Hazel back in March – came to my home to see what a native plant garden could look like if it was fed a diet of steroids.  She went away sufficiently impressed to mention it to her peers. Chris asked if she could bring them to the garden for an outing and I was flattered enough to say, ‘Sure!’ and to agree to a mid-June date.

And, it isn’t that the garden shouldn’t be ready for inspection by outsiders. It’s just that the combination of cold weather that lingered into May and the aforementioned travel conspired to keep me out of the garden for its annual spring maintenance. As recently as last Saturday, the high for the day was 46 degrees and the ‘real-feel’ temperature was 38.  Oh, and the rain was falling sideways because of the 30 mph winds.

Tuesday was one of the handful of 'perfect' days for outside gardening work. I focused on two 'big' projects: the Pennsylvania flagstone patio that has mostly moss between stones to help keep rainfall on the property; and the 

'inner walk' through the rear garden. The patio needs to be cleared of excess moss and uninvited plants every other year. The inner path attracts ‘opportunistic’ ferns and other 'cute' plants that want to inhibit travel. It also allows me to see what shrubs and perennials are growing into one another - and take appropriate action. The photos at right show 'before' and 'after'. Tuesday was a long but productive day: work started at 10 a.m. and wrapped up at 5:30. 

I finished the back of the garden today.  And, I hope it is docent ready. This is a shade garden with all the good and bad things it connotes. The sunniest part is planted in high-bush blueberries, Aronia, and an Amelanchier (shadbush).  Those parts were easy: stop tree “A” from growing into the light needed for shrub “B”.  Loppers and Felcos made the work go quickly.

Not at all easy was the rear garden’s ‘outer walk’.  It was lightly used last year and so got no maintenance. As the "before and after" photo above indicates, the neglect showed.

The portion of the rear garden behind the house (and so, shading the garden) is anchored by three Viburnum - two of them 'Winterthur' and the other 'Wavecrest'; and a remarkable Chamaceyparis called 'Snow' because its new growth comes out white and gradually acquires green pigment (see photo and inset at right). The four shrubs were originally planned to be kept at a height not to exceed five feet so there would be an unobstructed view from the screened porch of the entire garden. The first time 'Winterthur' bloomed, it was so startling - entirely blanketed in white flowers - the decision was made to allow it to grow. It seemed to have stopped at ten feet and the two 'Winterthurs' have grown together to form a single massive clump.

The inner path, restored

I did the work on one, long morning (under 85 degree temps but thankfully low humidity). I completed the outer path, which winds between the Viburnums and blueberries, and shows off the native plantings - Zizia aurea (golden Alexander), wood asters, Ageratina altissima (White Snakeroot), Aruncus dioicus (Goats beard) - that merge into the woodlands. The path then winds up to the patio (also shown a few days ago) and then to the Podophyllum peltatum (Mayapple) path to the front garden.

This weekend, I start work on the main body of the front garden. I suspect much of that project will be done at sunrise and sunset.

I hope the docents appreciate my work.

 

He's Come Undun

Let it be stated for the record – and I still have the pay stubs to prove it – that in the summers of 1967 and 1969, I earned the munificent sum of $1.75 an hour ($75 a week!) riding the back of a trash truck for the town of Miami Springs, Florida. From 6:30 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon, I hefted tons of yard debris, soaking wet bales of newspapers, and discarded sofas; all in the name of earning enough money to buy a bare minimum collegiate wardrobe and purchase the textbooks that would be required for the fall.

That first summer, I was a newly minted high school graduate and in reasonably good physical shape. I learned two important things over those three months. The first was that all men are created equal. I was one of twelve guys – all white – who took the place of the town’s all-black sanitation crew while they were on vacation. We all got to know one another and, once it was demonstrated we were up to the physical task, we kids were accepted as junior members of the crew. The second lesson was to not even think about not finishing college. This was not a career path I would choose to follow.

I offer the above history because it is tangible evidence that I once engaged in heavy physical labor while doing so under the hot summer sun and torrid humidity that is the price paid for living in South Florida. As an adult – but now living in New England – I have planted shrubs, weeded vegetable beds, and built rock walls in the full of summer. I have chain-sawed trees, and moved and spread mulch. I am no stranger to hard work.

At the Garden Club of
Jacksonville

These past few days, I have had the honor and the pleasure to speak to three Florida audiences, where I found my odd brand of horticultural humor does in fact travel. And, along the way, I introduced them to my books.

This weekend, I am the guest of my oldest friend, Hank Rawlings and his wife, Marilyn, at their home in Port St. Lucie, about a hundred miles north of Miami. I have come here several times in the past few years, though earlier in the spring. In return for bed and board, I do two things: I offer a modicum of horticultural advice about what to plant on their property, and I do yard work, including planting anything they purchase during my stay. I also keep up my weeding skills.

This past winter was one of the coldest since record-keeping began in the state. The area around Port St. Lucie saw nighttime temperatures down into the twenties, accompanied by a hard freeze. The perennials I planted last year were history, as were two hibiscus bushes. 

Weatherbee's Nursery

Yesterday, we went to a wonderful, family-owned nursery called Weatherbees in the nearby city of Fort Pierce. There, I spotted a clutch of gardenia shrubs. I picked out two that looked particularly robust and we took them home.

At 8:30 this morning, I set out to plant them. And discovered I was no match for mid-April humidity and full sun. It was less than 90 minute’s work including prep and clean up. But, from ten minutes into digging the first hole, preparing a slurry of soil and peat moss, and freeing the gardenia from its container, I was drenched in sweat.

The finished planting

The sky was cloudless and there was not even a hint of a breeze. It was two, one-gallon containers. My sunglasses quickly filled with sweat. My lightweight shirt was soaked, and I was still prepping the hole.

Afterwards, I took my second shower of the morning and contemplated what had just happened.

It is possible that, at 76, I shouldn’t be out in the hot sun doing manual labor. It is possible that, had I started at sunrise as had been my original plan, I would have come out of the process with nothing more than a sweaty brow.

What is more likely is that decades of being coddled by cool low-humidity New England summers have softened me up. The tough teenager - who needed nothing more than a quick shower before heading off to the beach for the rest of the afternoon - has grown into a gentleman gardener whose Florida genes have laid dormant.

I refuse, though, to accept anything as inevitable. I intend to keep digging holes and moving rocks until they take the spade out of my enfeebled hands.

Bewitched by Witch Hazel

Witch hazel in flower, with company

One of the joys of being retired is not having a fixed schedule; no one demands you show up at an office or factory at 8:30 and stay until dusk. If you’re both retired and appreciate the freedom it brings, you make a point of saying ‘yes’ to serendipitous invitations. Which is what I did on Tuesday when an email arrived asking if I would have an interest in looking at witch hazels in flower.

Last year, my garden was visited by a charming, British expatriate couple, Chris and Colin McArdle, who brought their infant grandchild. We had tea and scones on my screened porch on a beautiful May morning. Seven months later, my hospitality was reciprocated when I was invited to welcome in the new year on Greenwich Mean Time at the McArdle’s lovely home in Brookline. I found it an entirely sensible way to celebrate: raise a glass at 7 p.m. while enjoying Marmite on toast and other British goodies worthy of a hamper from Fortnum & Mason’s. Oh, and be home, off the road, and safely in bed by 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Chris McArdle, with Hamamelis

Chris McArdle, in turn, has one of the best (albeit nonpaying) jobs in the world: she’s a docent at the Arnold Arboretum. For those not familiar with it, the Arnold Arboretum (hereinafter, ‘the Arboretum’ to make things easier) is a 281-acre public park, designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted, that sits squarely in the middle of Boston. It is America’s oldest arboretum, established in 1872 and, while a free public park nominally owned by the City of Boston, it is under the stewardship of Harvard University.

Certain plant snobs turn up their noses at the Arboretum because it is chock-full of trees and shrubs from other continents that have climate zones comparable to eastern Massachusetts (6b or 7a, depending on whom you ask). Those foreign plants, though, are the whole point of the Arboretum. Back in the nineteenth century, collecting rare plants in the verge of extinction and finding a safe place where they could be propagated was the life work of many botanists.

One of Arnold Arboretum's
dawn redwoods

Perhaps the most famous example is the Dawn Redwood, which was discovered as a fossil in Japan in 1941 and thought to be extinct – except, by stunning coincidence, that very same year a forester in China noted a tree that he had not seen before. In 1946 the connection was made between the fossil and the tree. The Arboretum sent money for seed collection. Seeds arrived at the Arboretum in 1948 and were shared widely. Today, Dawn Redwoods are found in multiple sites, including more than 200 at the Crescent Ridge Dawn Redwoods Preserve; a private, 50-acre site in the mountains of western North Carolina.

281 acres. Double-click for full screen

All of which is prelude to explaining how I came to be part of a small tour, conducted by Chris McArdle, to see the Arboretum's comprehensive collection of Hamamelis - better known as witch-hazel.

Witch hazel, blooming in the snow

Witch-hazel gets its name from a combination of its pliable branches (Old English wice, meaning "bendable") and its historical use as a ‘witching stick’ for dowsing. In 1588, an assistant to Sir Walter Raleigh exploring the lands along the east coast of America, (lands Raleigh named Virginia after the virgin queen) mistook the wood used for bows by indigenous people as that called witch-hazel at home.  In fact, it was a different plant, but it was the North American plant that Linnaeus included in his list of Genera as Hamamelis in 1742 and then named the only species of which he knew as virginiana in his list of species in 1756. There are three distinct North American species as well as species from Japan and China. Growers all over the Northern Hemisphere experiment with crosses of these species.

Ozark witch hazel (H. vernalis)
blooms with an orange flower

The most common witch hazel growing in the wild in this country is Hamamelis virginiana. There is also the Ozark witch hazel (H. vernalis), found in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma; and a relatively recent find, H. ovalis, which was discovered in Mississippi in 2004. The Arboretum has mature specimens of everything described above.

The common element of all witch hazels is that they bloom when other trees and shrubs are biding their time.  The virginiana both blooms and bears fruit from last year’s flowers in the fall but the other witch-hazels bloom in the cold of winter from January to March.

Why take the chance of blooming in winter?  Because while there are fewer pollinators around, your nectar is the only game in town. On a warm afternoon, moths, gnats, wasps and flies will come out of dormancy and descend on witch hazel. And, the shrub is playing a long game: while the insects are spreading pollen, the fertilization doesn’t take place until spring, and the ‘fruit’ – a tiny, hard nut – forms equally slowly; maturing in the fall.

A witch hazel seed or nut

Which is where the Germans get it right giving witch-hazel the common name ‘Zaubernuss’ (magic nut); a great description for how witch hazel spreads its seed. All summer long, the shrub builds up what amounts to an explosive charge for each nut. When the time is right, those seeds go flying up to 40 feet from the parent plant – establishing the next generation. Multiple sources agree getting hit by one is a painful experience.

Chris again, and my thanks!

I knew none of this on Tuesday morning. But, over the course of a leisurely walk over ninety minutes and a visit to specimens of the Asian and North American varieties of Hamamelis spread out across the Arboretum, I came away both moderately knowledgeable and a budding fan of a wonderful plant that fills a special niche in the world of horticulture.

And, it was all made possible because Chris McArdle had absorbed that knowledge across roughly four decades of being a docent… plus the serendipity of her sending out an email asking if I would join her on the walk (which was open to the public), and my having the good sense to say ‘yes’ to her invitation.