This Old Pot

This single-use pot's first use was to
enclose a tree's roots.  It has
stuck around for five seasons

Four years ago this spring, Betty and I began buying trees and shrubs for the garden at our new home.  Many specimens had root balls of a size that required rope wrapped around burlap wrapped around a wire cage.  But six smaller trees came in black, ten-gallon plastic pots; each 19 inches wide and 13 inches deep.

After the first trees went in, we contacted the selling nurseries to recycle the pots, but were informed these were ‘one-use’ containers (on top of which they had likely, themselves, been made from recycled materials).  The reason for declining to take back the tubs was because they were encrusted with soil and/or might contain diseases.  Instead, we were advised to take them to our town’s transfer station.  We asked at the transfer station what would become of the pots.  Because they weren’t ‘clean’, we were told, the containers would be incinerated.

In 2016 the pots were pressed
into service as we planted
our second round of bulbs.

As it turned out, we had an almost immediate, though temporary, need for the pots.  We had covered our newly-spread loam with several inches of mulch.  As we dug holes for arriving shrubs – more that 50 that summer – we had to find a short-term parking spot for the displaced soil other than a pile adjacent to the hole (which would inevitably mix with the mulch).  The pots were perfect.  Also, I was building a stone wall and needed to group like-sized rocks for easy transport.  There were times when there were more uses for the vessels than available tubs.

That autumn, our first 1500 bulbs arrived.  We excavated winding, foot-deep trenches around the property, with those containers serving as a brief way station for displaced soil.  Trenching for pipes to carry rainwater from downspouts to the wetlands behind us provided yet another use.

Season after season, the pots
makes themselves useful

In the spring, we started the next round of planting and, by now, those single-use plastic containers were becoming indispensable friends.  We lost one to necessity: Betty acquired a lovely specimen of Sanguisorba canadensis (American Burnet), a wonderful wildflower that produces magnificent plumes.  Unfortunately, it thrives best in a moist environment, and the ideal visual location on our property was ‘well drained’.  Our solution was to sacrifice one of our containers.  We cut out part of its bottom, sunk it a foot into the ground, and planted our American Burnet in it, pledging to throw a gallon of water into the mini-wetland whenever things were getting dry.  It has thrived, and the black neck of the container is still visible.

When not in use, the pots
have a home next to our
composters

Another year went by and, each spring, the four remaining tubs were roused from their off-season resting place by our compost bins.  All spring and summer they served as either warehouses or transports for the soil/mulch/compost that made our ever-denser garden possible.  In the fall, UPS brought another avalanche of bulbs to be planted. There was hardly a week that went by that our one-use containers weren’t pressed into service. 

This year, they have been in near-continuous use to transport compost, heel in perennials and, of course, to hold topsoil for the plants destined for the final frontiers of our garden.  This past weekend, an Aronia (Chokeberry) and Ilex verticillata (Winterberry) found new homes on our property, as did a tray of native ground covers.

As we planted those most recent shrubs, though, I noticed for the first time our remaining containers are showing their age.  Two have large cracks in their base that make carrying them problematic; they need a wheelbarrow as a ‘crutch’.  One also has a cracked rim.  In short, their life span may be five seasons.

In 2017 the pots allowed me
to move 10 cubic yards of
compost, a few cubic feet
at a time

But they have been five glorious seasons.  They were present at the inception of the garden and proved to be useful as soon as their original purpose was completed.  They started out as walk-ons but have, through steady, uncomplaining work, become stalwarts of the regular garden troupe. If they were sentient beings, their ears would perk up as soon as they heard Betty or me reaching for a trowel or spade, because they knew they would soon, themselves, be called into action.

All right.  Maybe I’m over-romanticizing a bunch of pots.  The thing is, I’m going to be sorry to lose them, albeit to advanced age and general wear and tear.  What I know is this: they were manufactured to contain a single plant on its journey from a nursery to our home. They have stuck around to help build an entire garden.

Oh, Useful Christmas Tree

At our old home, trees soared
to fouteen feet

I believe in Christmas trees with a zeal only a convert can possess.  Having grown up in South Florida in an era when the idea of flying in fresh-cut Nova Scotia firs was the stuff of science fiction, my family made do with Scotch pines that had already lost half their needles before they appeared the day after Thanksgiving at the Lions Club lot.

Since migrating to New England some 35 years ago, I have become a connoisseur of fresh-cut trees, able to discuss the particular merits of Frasers and concolor firs, balsams, and spruces.  I believed in soaring trees: for 16 years, our trees rose as high as our cathedral ceiling would allow; some years more than 14 feet.  Whatever their height, our trees fill our home with the wonderful scent that only a Christmas tree can bring.

This year's tree had to fit under an 8'
ceiling, but what it lacked in height
it made up for in girth

This Christmas was our first in our new home.  The vaulted ceiling of our old home has been supplanted by an energy-efficient eight-foot one.  So, naturally, we traded height for girth.  The Fraser fir that came into our home on December 18 had branches that stretched an improbable four feet from the trunk at it base, giving the tree an eye-popping circumference of 25 feet.  It took seven strings - 900 lights - to satisfy Betty that there were no gaps in its brilliance.

Our trees are the history of our lives, from my baby shoes and delicate ornaments from the 1930s handed down from Betty’s family, to a wealth of travel mementos repurposed as decorations.  Boxes bearing tiny bells and crystal icicles still bear the name of long-vanished stores - B. Altmans, Woodward & Lothrop - where they were purchased decades ago at prices that seem to be missing a digit.

But a Christmas tree is an ephemeral visitor.  Some friends, especially those with young children, keep their tree lighted beyond Twelfth Night.  In our home, the tree goes up a week before Christmas and comes down on New Year’s Day.  Regardless of the duration, though, the tree must eventually make its exit.

The lower boughs now protect a
slumbering hosta garden, among
other places

For our trees, those two weeks of glory are just a stage in a longer journey.  On the appointed morning after our tree has been ‘de-consecrated’ of its ornamentation but still in its stand in our home, I bring in a pair of sturdy loppers and begin cutting off those lower branches (an enormous sheet of plastic is a necessity). 

The branches are dispersed to insulate perennials and low-growing shrubs.  They offer a layer of protection from unwanted sun and its resulting harmful freeze-thaw cycles.  They lessen the impact of frost heaves and unwelcome animal visitors.  This year, the lower four feet of our tree yielded some 30 branches that were deployed to all corners of our property.  At our old home, we scavenged trees from up and down our street to cover our extensive perennial beds.  As our new garden grows, so may we return to that tradition.

The upper four feet will provide
an avian wind break and shelter

After the lower boughs were removed there remained another lush four feet of tree with thick branches.  We left those on the still-eight-foot trunk and placed the tree at the edge of the wetlands behind us.  Almost all of the trees in our wetlands are deciduous; the lone evergreens are thin white pines.  Our Christmas tree will serve as a refuge for birds seeking shelter from wind, rain, and snow. 

In April, we will collect the fir boughs and take them to our town’s transfer station where they will be chipped into mulch.  A month later, as the remaining fir loses its needles, that remnant, too, will begin its final journey.

A Festival of Lights, and Imagination

Last evening was uncommonly warm for late December.  Moreover, it was raining.  The confluence of those two meteorological events caused Betty and me to get in our car and head for West Boylston, Massachusetts, to see the 19^th annual installment of ‘Winter Reimagined’ at the Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

Getting people to visit a botanical garden in winter is a marketer’s challenge.  The New York Botanical Garden hosts a ‘Holiday Train Show’ in its Conservatory.  The Massachusetts Horticultural Society has a Festival of Trees.  The Worcester County Horticultural Society, which is more or less synonymous with Tower Hill, has come up with a stunning and original alternative: a festival of lights outdoors, and a fairy land of whimsical trees and more lights indoors.  These blog pieces customarily include captions with all photos.  In this case, they seem superfluous.  I encourage you to double-click on any image to see a full-screen slideshow.

The outdoor component is worth a trip all by itself.  The formal gardens around the Tower Hill campus are decked out in lights; each tree and hardscape structure a different color.  The effect is stunning and the view dramatically changes as you walk within individual gardens.  Even the ground covers are strung with lights.  A lot of thought and considerable imagination has gone into creating vistas that cry out for you to stop to admire and try your hand at nighttime photography.

It’s the indoor part, though, that pulls out all the stops.  Tower Hill starts with two exceptional assets: a pair of gorgeous conservatories, the Orangerie and the Limonaia.  Both are filled with mature subtropical plants that are an antidote to a New England winter.  For Winter Reimagined, there are lights.  Not overpowering and not intrusive.  The lights are subtle tweaks that turn an already handsome pair of spaces into something that is, well, romantic. 

The other indoor spaces within Tower Hill are given over to decorated trees and something very special and unusual: an igloo.

First, the trees.  You’re probably thinking, “another Festival of Trees”.  You’re wrong.  Yes, these are artificial Christmas trees and, yes, they’re decorated.  But that’s where the similarity ends.  These trees are decked out to be in sync with nature.  The materials on many of the trees are pine cones, seed pods, nuts and such.  For others, the theme is recycling: everything on the tree is re-purposed from everyday disposable objects.  Think flowers from soda bottles, for example.  A tree sponsored by one of Tower Hill’s caterers has a ‘topper’ of gold-sprayed forks and knives gloriously exploding out of a Styrofoam ball.

You can’t win these trees in a raffle or buy them from Tower Hill; they’re there to admire and to inspire.  Many are the creation of the Tower Hill staff and volunteers.  Some trees are more memorable than others, but the overall effect is spectacular.

Then, there’s the igloo.  In a space beyond the Orangerie is a modest room and, in the room is a large reindeer, some trees sprayed white, and a luminescent igloo.  It’s maybe four feet high and eight feet wide and will comfortably seat three or four children.  It’s made out of (pause for dramatic effect)… plastic milk jugs.  Several hundred gallon-sized containers that would have otherwise had a single two-week existence as a holder of milk or less wholesome beverage have been re-purposed to create a fun environment.  It’s a kid magnet and I hope the adults chaperoning those children take the opportunity to speak to their charges about the wonders of recycling.

There’s no Santa at Winter Reimagined.  This is a non-sectarian celebration that aims to lift everyone’s spirits on the shortest days and longest nights of the year.  The event runs through January 3^rd.  It is free to Tower Hill members.  Non-member adults pay $15, seniors are $10, children 6-18 are $5 and those younger are free.