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.

An Unexpected Flood - of Plants

The El Niño summer that has produced floods in West Virginia and tornados in the South has left New England parched.  Most of Massachusetts officially passed into a Stage 2 drought this past week, and nearly every town now have complete bans on lawn watering along with other water use restrictions.

Our front garden as it appeared this
morning, August 6

The reverberations are being felt in local nurseries.  If people fear they won’t be able to water their gardens, they won’t buy plants.  And nurseries face the same water scarcity: retention ponds that allow them to keep their stock well irrigated are running dry, and the alternative is expensive town water.  The result is that everything is on sale: trees, shrubs, and perennials that are out the door are plant that don’t have to be watered.

The drought is getting worse

Following a heavy spring planting schedule, we had decided to use the summer to see how the new additions to the garden filled in.  But then the offers began arriving.  First, Cochato Nursery in Holbrook offered Master Gardeners a one-day special discount.  Betty drive over and came back with six specimens of Betony (Stachys officinalis), a full-sun-tolerant flowering ground cover which she promptly used to begin filling in a previously unplanted part of our front garden.

Betony comes in many leaf colors,
and makes a great ground cover

The following week, we received a mailer from Weston Nurseries with an arresting offer of $25 off of $75 worth of plants, including ones already on sale.  Betty went off to investigate and came back with a car filled with yellow Coreopsis and Shasta daisies.  They were all in magnificent bloom and we planted them immediately.  While picking out plants, she spoke with one of Weston’s staffers who was candid about the low levels of the retention ponds and the fallback position of using expensive town water.  When Betty tried to give back the discount coupon at check-out, the clerk gave it back to her saying, “We’d rather you came back in and use it again.”

Avant Gardens' greenhouses
overflowed with interesting plants

This week, the discount offers came from Avant Gardens in North Dartmouth.  I’ve written about this specialty nursery before.  North Dartmouth is an hour from our home in a direction that makes it on the way to nowhere else that we ever go.  But the lure of unusual plants at substantial savings drew us to a part of the state where our mental maps say “Here Be Dragons”.

Caryopteris 'Hint of Gold'

Betty’s avowed purpose in going was to procure three specimens of Caryopteris x ‘Hint of Gold’, a deer-resistant butterfly magnet with distinctive lime green foliage and vivid blue late summer flowers.  But allowing me to tag along on any shopping expedition is an invitation to blow the budget, and it took me about two minutes to start dragging out Geranium ‘Rozanne’ which we need to extend the ‘river’ of that perennial that we have created across the front of our property.  Betty, too, started seeing plants that she had on her wish list but had put off buying.  I capped it off by spotting a Cape Plumbago (Plumbago auriculata) ‘Imperial Blue’ with phlox-like flowers in an ethereal shade of blue.  I said I wanted it for my birthday.  We filled the back end of our Prius with plants.  So much for three small plants.

I got a Cape Plumbago for my birthday

We planted almost everything we purchased at Avant Gardens this morning.  It took four hours in weather so warm and muggy that our clothes were drenched when we finally called it quits.  We started early because the forecast today was for rain.  In fact, Weather.com’s maps showed the entire Northeast getting socked by thunderstorms and torrential precipitation.  But it is going on 5 p.m. and the current radar shows just a few showers, all north of us.

Our fizzled day of rain

This summer of drought will apparently linger well into August.  And through serendipity, our garden is a little – no, a lot – fuller than we had anticipated a few months ago.  Which means we'll have to keep finding innovative ways to keep it watered.

"A Gem Within a Gem"

Members of the Chelmsford GC receive their award.
That's Betty in pink in the center, presenting the award.

Update:  At the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts' Annual Meeting on June 7, 2017, the Chelmsford Garden Club received the National Garden Clubs Inc.'s top award for a civic development projects.  In the view of the judges, the club's project of creating a new park on the site of an old fire station represented the most significant project by a club of any size, anywhere in the country.  Congratulations to the Chelmsford Garden Club!

The Centre School circa 1890.
the fire station in 1953

The first recorded use for the small piece of land in the heart of Chelmford, Massachusetts was as a blacksmith’s shop in the first decade of the 19^th Century.  By 1851, the quarter-acre site housed Chelmsford’s central school.  The school was razed in the 1920s and, in the early 1950s, a fire station rose on the site.

But by 2014, the fire station was outdated and, worse, “glued together” to reinforce significant weakening and cracking of the structure, according to Patrick Maloney, co-chairman of the town’s Permanent Building Committee.  At the Chelmsford Town Meeting in November of that year, Malo

ney’s advice was, “We think it’s best to rip the building down, figure out the use at a future time. Make it another gem within a gem,”

The fire station was demolished in
April 2015

In April 2015, the fire station was torn down, leaving behind a forlorn, rubble-strewn lot. The 7 North Road Committee was established by the town to find the best use for the space.  Options considered were a parking lot, an information center, and the new site for a historic house. 

One community group presented another option: the Chelmsford Garden Club suggested a garden.  The club had done its homework.  While the triangular Town Green was across the street, that park was largely inaccessible because it was hemmed in by busy roads and had little seating or greenery beyond a scattering of trees.  The fire station site, on the other hand, offered the possibility of a more intimate, inviting, and tranquil space.

On September 28, 2015, Chelmsford’s Board of Selectmen unanimously voted in favor of the park idea, and turned over the project to the 79-member club for implementation.

It was about that time that I first heard about the project.  Betty received a phone call from Chelmsford Garden Club member Brenda Lovering, who chaired the committee that was charged with making the park a reality.  A few days later, Betty visited at the site.  She came home and described it as “weeds and rocks, but a terrific location”.  But she also spoke of the group’s determination to marshal the resources to turn that desolate site into a first-rate garden.

The new park was dedicated June 14

Last week - on June 14 - less than nine months after the garden club was handed responsibility for the project, I attended the dedication of the Chelmsford Public Garden.  More than a hundred people were on hand for the event.  The finished (or nearly finished) project is a testament to determination of what a group of “garden club ladies” can accomplish.

First there was the fundraising.  Even the best-endowed garden clubs have finite resources.  Building a park would require a substantial outlay of funds.  Chelmsford’s Town Preservation Committee supplied a portion of the seed money, but the Garden Club canvassed both families and businesses for a more substantial donor base.  The Club’s pitch: you could be a part of something that was beautiful and enduring, and with a positive impact on the community.

The park site highlighted in red.  As
recently as April, this is all there was.

Creating the park meant turning a lunar landscape of rocks and nutrient-free dirt into something hospitable to plants and trees.  Chelmsford’s Department of Public Works (DPW) and an excavation firm hauled away truckloads of compacted debris left over from the fire station, brought in loam, and re-graded the property.  The nearby Google Maps photo shows the site (outlined in red) in April.  The photo shows loam in place, but nothing else done.  That photo is less than two months old.

Before the first trees were planted, the infrastructure needed to be in place.  A fence was built around three sides of the site; and a patio and walkway built from pavers were installed; all done with the Town Preservation Committee providing funding, and local construction firms providing materials at cost.  An irrigation system was installed as was lighting.

Monica Kent

Ultimately, a park’s worth is in its design and its horticulture.  As Monica Kent, another member of the committee said at the dedication, “We were good at choosing eye-catching plants.  We sought expert advice to choose plants that would survive in this location.”

The “landscape design and tree consultant” for the project was Weston Nurseries, which in 2012 had established a satellite garden center in Chelmsford.  When the Mezitt family was approached about the project, they responded enthusiastically and encouraged the Chelmsford staff to be both generous and creative.  Weston’s Jim Connolly and Terry Duffy were the principal liaisons to the project.  Bypassing the standard retinue of park landscaping staples, they proposed a palette of trees and shrubs that would thrive in the site yet offer a bloom calendar that would attract the eye from early April through the last hard frost.

Weston's Terry Duffy (L)
and Jim Connolly, with
an unplanted blueberry

The plant list for the garden is as intelligent as it is a treat for the eye.  A not-too-tall blue spruce (Picea pungens) called 'Fat Albert' welcomes you at the front of the site, and a beautiful 'October Glory' red maple (Acer rubrum) will provide shade for generations of visitors.  A great, underused native, the Oxydendrum, will have showy white racemes of flowers in mid-summer.  There's even a Magnolia 'Elizabeth' to offer beautiful yellow blooms in early spring.  Among shrubs, Weston proposed several natives that should make the park a year-round bird magnet, including an Ilex verticillita 'Red Sprite' with its bright red winter fruit for avians; a Fothergilla 'Blue Shadow' with its vivid, blue-green foliage that turns (and holds well into autumn) to brilliant gold and reds with the change of season; and multiple specimens of highbush blueberries.

Club president
Carolyn Langevin

The dedication was a joyous affair - over-the-top hats were the order of the day -  and was capped not with a ribbon cutting but, rather, the severing of a garland made with greens and flowers.  Afterward, I spoke with Weston's Terry Duffy, who stresses that the park will be a work in progress, and who also credits the landscaping firm of Branches and Blooms for their more than 100 hours of work in planting the greenscape to meet a tight timetable.

“We’re taking a hiatus for the summer,” he said.  “We’ll carefully monitor the traffic the space generates and the patterns it creates, then go back in and add more perennial and ground covers.  This time next year, the space will be fuller and have even more variety.”

At the center of it all:
Committee Chair
Brenda Lovering

Which is to take nothing away from the park as it was on June 14.  What the Chelmsford Garden Club has created is a small wonder: a space that seems destined to be filled with people every day.  To echo those hopeful words of that town official uttered a year and a half ago, it is a gem within a gem.

My congratulations on a job well done.

Going Strong at 90

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 help Weston Nurseries celebrate 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.

Tales of Two Nurseries

There are times when I fear for the future because it may not include places like Tranquil Lake or Weston Nurseries.  Instead, we’ll buy specialty plant over the internet and everything else at big box stores.  If that happens, we’ll be poorer for the change. 

No – not just poorer, impoverished.  Here’s why:

Back in July, I went to Tranquil Lake’s ‘Garden Day’, a festive extravaganza that offers superb speakers and gardening advice, all set among the nursery’s stunning fields of daylilies (in full bloom, naturally) and iris.  You meet a lot of fellow gardeners at the event and pick up a wealth of knowledge.  And, you do it under the aegis of an organization that is hosting the event because it is good for business (true to that theory, I always walk out with a car full of plants).  It is 62 miles round trip from my home to Rehoboth, Massachusetts, a fact that speaks volumes about the quality of the plant material and the expertise that comes with every purchase.

Henry Schmidt, in the green shirt at
left, led a group of 30 through the
display gardens at Weston Nurseries
this past weekend.

But in speaking with co-owner Warren Leach this year, I heard the unsettling news that the event may be in jeopardy, at least in its existing form.  The reason is declining attendance and rising costs.  I saw a field full of cars when I arrived at noon but Warren reminded me that as recently as five years ago the event drew more than a thousand people. Whether the lower attendance is economy related or a change in the ‘macro’ environment is a subject for debate but I accept Warren’s concern that the event needs to cover its considerable costs through higher sales.

One element of the expense side, he explained, is that Tranquil Lake owns the smaller tents used for purposes like a Master Gardener information table but has to rent the large ones that house speakers.  If it continues, the event may do so in a scaled-back form.  In the meantime, I’m pleased to see that Tranquil Lake’s Fall Festival – another full day of gardening talks – is being held on October 1.

Weston Nurseries has a different problem.  For years, their ‘Weston Days’ kept getting increasingly fancy and with lavish goodies for participants (see ‘The Siren Call of the Garden Center Special, September 30, 2010).  And, I kept succumbing to their blandishments.  This year, the event was quite subdued.  When I asked why, I was told that the event was a victim of word of mouth.  Customers came but, last year something else happened: every Council on Aging in eastern Massachusetts sent busloads of seniors to Hopkinton, where they had chowed down on corn, pizza and ice cream, and purchased exactly nothing.  Success is clearly not always measured by headcount.

The hike included a stop at Weston owner Wayne
Mezitt's garden, which contains a cornucopia of both mature
specimen trees planted by Weston founder Peter Mezitt
and unusual cultivars collected by Wayne in his travels.

I write this because I was at Weston Nurseries twice this past weekend.  The first time was strictly as Volunteer with a Pickup Truck.  Betty had designed a new entry garden for our town’s historical society; I was charged with picking up the ten shrubs that comprise the garden plus nine bags of compost to augment the site’s depleted soil.

Because the plant material was purchased over the phone by a member of the historical society, Betty asked that I have someone at Weston check the quality of the plants.  I asked at the sales desk and no less an authority than Henry Patt came out and spent ten minutes inspecting buds and root balls.  It was one of those moments that make a lasting impression: a customer with a rather modest order asks if he is getting the best stock available.  A guy with more than a quarter century’s experience in such matters takes the time to genuinely look at the material and render an honest evaluation.  Don’t try this at Lowe’s.

Yesterday, Betty and I were back at Weston, this time for a nearly-two-hour-long walk of Weston’s property.  It was led by Henry Schmidt, who says he has worked at Weston since college, and I would imagine that Henry is coming up on his fifty-year college reunion.  A group of 30 started at a patio with coffee and cookies at 10 a.m.  We needed it; we climbed hills and threaded our way single-file through narrow paths.  We did this in order to see all of Weston’s display gardens. 

Here is my ignorance on display: I have been buying stuff at Weston Nurseries for three decades and I did not know that they had display gardens.  Not only do they have them, they’re mature display gardens, most of them planted in the 1940s when Weston first acquired its Hopkinton property.  Worse, most of the gardens are right there in front of you.  They’re beautiful.  They feature specimens that inspire.  They’re also cautionary tales:  ‘dwarf’ has a different meaning in the plant world.  A human ‘dwarf’ grows to ‘x’ height and stops.  A plant ‘dwarf’ grows more slowly than its non-dwarf cousin.  An 50-foof dwarf Atlantic pine is not an oxymoron.

The walk also featured a rare treat, a walk through owner Wayne Mezitt’s garden (which, in turn, was started by Wayne’s father, founder Peter Mezitt).  The garden shows both the grace of mature plantings and a collector’s eye for the rare and unusual.  ‘Breathtaking’ is not an inappropriate word.

This was not some press junket.  Word of its availability went out via Weston’s e-newsletter and the first 30 people to sign up for each of the two walks got on the list.  And, ultimately, it was a sales tool, though one superbly presented.  We ended up in the plant lot where many of the exotic and unusual specimens we had seen were for sale. 

We didn’t buy anything on Sunday, but we made a lot of notes about things that we liked.  First, we have to find room for them.  Then, we’ll buy them.  You can be certain those purchases won’t be from Home Depot.

The Cascade Effect



Hosta Sgt. Pepper - but is it lonely?

Back in September 2009, I wrote about a phenomenon around our garden called ‘The Rule of Three’ which decreed that for every plant introduced onto the property, three holes needed to be dug.  Today, I am able to report on a corollary observable fact which I call ‘The Cascade Effect’.  It works like this:

Last week, Betty was at the American Hosta Society convention.  There, in an act of love and thoughtfulness, she bought for me a hosta called ‘Sergeant Pepper’.  The hosta itself is a delightfully variegated yellow plantain lily of considerable distinction, but its greater worth is in its name: the eponymous album is my favorite of all time.  However, the hosta did not come with any tag indicating the two most important facts needed before it could be planted, namely, how large it will eventually get and how much sun it will tolerate.

We have a home library that has marvelous horticultural resources, but there are more than 3,000 registered varieties of hosta and Hostapedia, the definitive work on the subject, is not among our collection.  An internet search was needed.

We had also recently been to Weston Nurseries which was holding its annual ‘customer appreciation event’ in which ice cream and pizza are liberally dispensed (plus discounts on plants and garden equipment) and among the things we brought home a Pinus strobus ‘Pygmaea’, a small and unusually shaped, slow-growing pine that we agreed would add needed structure to the inner sidewalk bed.

And so we went looking for just the right spot for our new pygmy pine.  As we walked the bed, the Cascade Effect began.  Though it had nothing to do with finding an appropriate site for our new evergreen, the first thing Betty noticed was that some Solidago (goldenrod to the rest of us) had insinuated itself in among our Siberian iris.  We removed it.  That led to her noticing that the last of the peonies had passed, and so the stalks that had held the peonies needed to be trimmed down to better shape the plant for the summer.  That was done.  Removing the peony stalks revealed that a few Allium, long-since past bloom but still with attractive umbrels atop four-plus-foot stalks, had broken over.  The ones with broken stalks were carefully culled.

The removal of the one set of stalks revealed spent bearded iris, which needed to be cut to the nearest leaf nodule and that action brought into sharp focus that several dozen native Columbine had formed seed heads that were about to populate the garden with unwanted progeny.  And, speaking of progeny, the ferns were rapidly overwhelming our stand of Eupatorium ‘Chocolate’ and needed to be brought back into line.  (Please keep in mind that all this activity is in one garden bed of less than 500 square feet.)

Pinus Strobus 'Pygmaea' (red arrow)

The Cascade Effect continued: spent salvia blooms were trimmed back severely and the height of later-blooming perennials were trimmed back to promote stronger growth.  The list goes on.

At last, the perfect spot was found for the pygmy pine.  The location, of course, was already occupied by a long-blooming geranium which needed to be relocated to extend a ‘river’ that flows through the bed.  The geranium was duly moved.  Also, a nearby Stoke’s aster, though not technically critical to the success of the new planting, was dug up and potted as a precaution.  Compost and mulch were brought in and, a mere two hours after the search for a site began, Pinus strobus ‘Pygmaea’ found its permanent home.

What has still not found a home, at least as of this writing, is Hosta ‘Sergeant Pepper’.  It still resides in its pot, awaiting that internet search to determine where on the property it will be happiest.

The Siren Call of the Garden Center Special

As September turns to October, garden center owners fixate on their remaining stock of unsold trees, shrubs and perennials. They face the unappealing possibility that they might actually have to pay someone to replant those maples and azaleas lest their roots freeze over the course of the approaching winter.

The more appealing alternative, of course, is to get me to buy them.

And so, at this time of year, the offers come. First in a trickle and then a flood. Take 30% off. Buy one and get a second one at half price. HUGE markdowns. The really clever garden centers send me colorful, floral-themed plastic cards with my name pre-printed on them together with the massive discount to which I am entitled if I act immediately.

Then, they make it really irresistible: they throw in pizza or maybe ice cream.

I once succumbed to an invitation to Weston Nurseries' end-of-season sale because they parked an ice cream truck in the middle of their container display area. While I unwrapped a Dove Bar, someone loaded a viburnum in the trunk of my car. Another time, I ate a piece of delicious grilled corn and somehow purchased an amelanchier. One memorable year I enjoyed a slice of an open-oven grilled pizza and found myself the owner of a Japanese maple (acer japonica expensivus) so special that it requires its own trust fund.

None of this is the fault of garden center owners. By the end of September, gardeners’ thoughts have gravitated to the post-season, yet autumn is the near-ideal time to plant trees and shrubs. In reality, they’re doing me a favor.

My problem, of course, is that I’ve run out of room for new stuff. But because the prices are so good we go looking anyway… and invariably bring something home.

Weston's most excruciatingly wonderful invention is the ‘pallet sale’ annd it is that organization's contribution to the pantheon of marketing. It is a masterstroke of inventory management:  Take a pallet. Fill it with roughly a dozen trees or shrubs and top it off with half a dozen perennials (which if still on the premises will become compost with the first hard frost). Mark the price at roughly a third of full retail.

That’s how we acquired our fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus). This was, of course, back when we had room for new specimen plants. Betty really wanted that fringe tree but had chafed at the price for a decent-sized one. So, we bought the pallet (and got its contents home in a Saab convertible in only four trips) and suddenly, we had not only a great looking fringe tree, but also a pair of boxwoods, two rhododendron, three azalea, a climbing rose and enough summer flowering perennials to feed an army of birds. That was seven or eight years ago.

We bought the pallet because of the fringe tree. We didn’t really ‘need’ the other plants. But there’s always room for another attractive rhododendron, even though today I am hard-pressed to remember which of the twenty rhodies on the property are the two that came off that particular pallet (confession: we have succumbed to pallet sales more than once). The other plants found appropriate sites.

Except for the boxwoods. For years the boxwoods from that pallet sat at the edge of our woods, completely aloof from the rest of the landscape. What can you possibly do with just two boxwood shrubs? For most of that time, had we known of a home for unwanted Buxus sempervirens, we would have sent this pair packing.

But something unexpected happened: they thrived on neglect, probably muttering to one another how unappreciated they were by their owners. Today, they make a magnificent statement, twin pillars that are prominently visible from the window from which this is written.

The moral of the story is that serendipity ought to play a role in every landscape and those autumn sales can be the catalyst for a horticultural adventure. Carpe diem.



Buxus sempervirens at the edge of the
woods.  That's a young heptacodium
(seven sons tree) growing between them. 



In praise of the uncommon nursery

Yesterday, Betty and I drove 90 miles to buy $116 worth of plants. It isn’t that we live in the middle of a nursery-free zone or that we have access to free gasoline. Rather, we chose to drive to Dartmouth, Massachusetts because we were looking for unusual plants and Avant Gardens is a reliable source for them. Then again, this spring, we drive 155 miles, to Andrew’s Greenhouse in South Amherst, to stock up on more than $300 of plants.

I have nothing against the ‘Big Box’ stores. If what I want is inexpensive potting mix or lime, I’ll be hard-pressed to find it cheaper anywhere. I also brook no argument with the locally-owned soup-to-nuts nurseries. The people at Weston Nurseries (a mere 18 miles away) know me on sight and they have supplied most of the trees and shrubs that grace our property. Weston’s staff is both knowledgeable and friendly and the nursery has some nifty marketing programs that keep us coming back. I used to joke that, instead of having my paycheck direct-deposited at a bank, it should be given to Weston and they could give me back any loose change that I didn’t spend there.

But when it came time to buy the annuals and perennials for some thirty containers this spring, we headed out the Mass Pike and spent roughly four hours shopping Andrew’s vast greenhouse and open-air sales area. Andrew’s (named for Andrew Cowles, who owns the nursery along with his wife, Jacqui) is a 30-year-old family business. It’s a 150-acre farm that has found its niche selling plants that you won’t find elsewhere. Those plants are lovingly described in a dense, 84-page catalog that makes it clear that Andrew’s both knows and believes in what it grows. For example:

MELAMPODIUM paldosum ‘Showstar’. This vivacious bloomer is the workhorse of your garden. Incredibly heat and drought tolerant. Once you try it you’ll never be without. Lush bushy mounds of misty green foliage adorned by multitudes of golden-yellow blooms. Full sun to partial shade.

That’s a lot of description for a small plant purchased in a four-inch pot, yet everything in the catalog is similarly detailed. Because those descriptions have been dead-on accurate every year, we’ve grown to trust that the cultivar we’re getting is going to perform as described.

Avant Gardens is not so easily described. If there is a common thread to the nursery’s collection, it is the unusual plants that owners Kathy and Chris Tracey have discovered and nurtured for the New England market. Going there is always a voyage of discovery: a mass of brilliant, late-summer color that turns out to be a self-sown annual brought back from California; or a capsicum annuum ‘Black Pearl’ that has dark purple foliage, the better to highlight the tiny, round black and red peppers on the plant. ‘Black Pearl’ was worth the drive all by itself. Finding an array of sedums and grasses with terrific autumn accent colors was exactly what we expected, and we were not disappointed.

Nurseries like these are a treasure and deserve a wide following. The outlay for gas is more than made up by discovering a plant with an off-the-charts ‘wow’ factor. And, to me, that’s what gardening is about: cultivating delight.