I Was a Male Flower Show Runner

It all started with the receipt of an email.  My wife, Betty, was cordially invited to judge at the forthcoming Newport Flower Show in Rhode Island.

An invitation to judge at Newport is a genuine honor. Judges are chosen from around the country and the preponderance of those selected are members of clubs affiliated with the Garden Club of America, or GCA. (Betty’s ‘home club’ is affiliated with National Garden Clubs, or NGC. GCA is older, NGC is larger.)  But Betty is a Master flower show judge known to have a good – and fair – eye.  She, of course, accepted, and promptly blocked off June 20 and 21.

The floral peacocks

Fast-forward two months.  Two friends from the Midwest, also chosen to judge at Newport, came to New England early and Betty and I showed them the sights. On the day before judging, they were tasked with creating floral representations of two, larger-than-life-sized peacocks in a fountain on the grounds of Rosecliff, where the show is held. Somehow, Betty (logically) and I (improbably) were asked to pitch in.  It was a great engineering feat and a fine artistic effort, which would have been a lot more fun were it not for the pea-soup fog that encased Rosecliff’s grounds, plus the periodic bouts of rain the Weather Channel said were not happening anywhere in Rhode Island.

Because I was Betty’s designated driver (all right, because I whined for several days), I also attended the Judges’ Dinner, an annual event held on Rosecliff’s back veranda.  The table at which I was seated was a busy one because many judges had seen the peacocks on the front lawn and wanted to congratulate their creators.  Dave Robson and Sandy Robinson freely shared the credit.

Rosecliff, a 'Gilded Age' mansion. 
The Newport Flower Show helps
support the upkeep of this and other
historic properties in Newport.

Somewhere along the way, I built up my courage to ask the show’s Judges’ Chair, Vera Bowen – who, fortunately, is a fan of my books – if she needed any help the following morning.  Vera thought about it for a moment and then asked Vicki Iannuccillo, the show’s Clerks’ Chair, if she still needed another runner.  Vicki didn’t have to think about it.  ‘Yes,’, she said, obviously not knowing it meant she was getting me.

A few words about the world of standard flower shows.  When, as a visitor, you walk into a show, you see the end product of a process that took, at minimum, several months to create; and, in the case of Newport, a full year. Someone wrote a schedule for the show, someone else trolled for entries, and still another group made certain all the right ribbons and banners were printed.  Others pulled together and painted pedestals and tables (‘staging’ in flower show parlance). 

Rosecliff's back lawn, with its
ocean frontage

Some parts of a flower show unfold in a relatively easy timetable but a few are jammed into a few hours – or even minutes – of work.  There are highly visible roles (docents come to mind), and there are low-profile but very necessary ones.  In a crowded kitchen just steps from the Rosecliff ballroom sits the most necessary of unsung heroes: the computer staff.  At 6 a.m. on the morning of judging, four women, including a mother/daughter team, start with nothing other than the titles of the classes and the fact there are four entries.  And so, they type ‘Fork Tailed Flycatcher, Class 8, Entry 1’ into a data file.  Then, as designers make their appearance, they hand in sheets containing the plant materials they are using.  The computer staff goes feverishly to work, adding the information to the file for Class 8, Entry 1 which will appear on the placards everyone sees when the public is admitted.

Judging starts ten minutes late, at 8:40 a.m. and, for more nearly two hours, nothing whatsoever happens inside the computer room.  Then comes the tsunami as judging panels complete their work and choose who gets which award and what to say about each entry.  The information is reviewed for appropriateness and accuracy.  Oh, and fifty or more placards have to be printed out, letter perfect, and posted by 11:30 a.m.

Enter the clerks.  Each judging panel – usually three people – is accompanied by a clerk, whose job it is to write down what the judges are saying about each entry.  Not verbatim, of course, but within those critiques will come the nuggets of thought that convey to the general public (as well as to the designers) what caused Entry 2 to get third and Entry 3 to get Honorable Mention.  Clerks get run ragged for three hours.  They race back and forth between the panel to which they were assigned and the Powers That Be who are allowed to question anything that seems out of place.  Clerking is definitely not a glamor position but, in the flower show world, being a clerk can be necessary to becoming a judge.

Speaking of non-glamorous positions, I was one of two runners.  My job was to do whatever Vicki told me to do.  I twice ran through a driving rainstorm to fetch an extra box of ribbons from a trailer.  I got copies made of something important.  I kept out people who ‘just wanted a peek’.

The placard, in place, for the Fork-
tailed Flycatcher winning entry

And I also helped place those placards.  This is nerve-wracking.  As judges examine designs, they see only a yellow sheet of paper with hand-written information about materials used.  They know only this is Class 8, entry 1.  In the computer room, names and results are attached and, now, there is a placard saying ‘Fork-Tailed Flycatcher, Entry 1, First Place, Janice Gardner and Julie Mather. Green Fingers Garden Club, Greenwich, CT.’ I and my co-runner were handed stacks of placards and we dashed from one end of the room to the other, matching those yellow sheets to the final placard.  When it was done, Vicki went back and checked to verify we did it right. 

At one point, one of the judges on Betty’s panel apparently noticed me on one of my missions, wearing a blue apron.  “Who is he and why is he here?” she asked, apparently miffed that a man was wearing the cherished blue apron.

“Well,” Betty explained with a smile, “he’s my husband and he knows something about flower shows. He ran the Boston Flower and Garden Show for three years. Oh, and one of his books is called, A Murder at the Flower Show.”

The woman gave Betty an odd look.  Maybe she believed Betty, maybe she didn’t.  But she didn’t ask again.

Ten Years and 300 Posts Later...

Ten years ago today, I decided to try something new.

I had written three books and was working on a fourth.  Every morning, I would sit down at my computer, look at what I had written the previous day, and attempt to pick up where I left off.  In doing so, I often wasted an hour or more because my ‘creative juices’ wouldn’t flow on command. 

On the morning of June 24, 2009, I was thinking about a garden I had visited that weekend.  It was opened to Master Gardeners (Betty) and their ‘significant others’ (me).  It was also a party that lasted long into the evening, and it was the conversations around me that were the most intriguing.  The gardeners – mostly but not entirely women – spoke excitedly about all things horticultural while the significant others drank wine and beer and listened with varying levels of interest and comprehension.

Sargent's portrait

Accompanying my memory of that evening was another image.  A week earlier, Betty and I had made one of our periodic forays to New York.  Such visits always entail a stop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, on this visit, we focused on the American Wing.  We have been members of the Museum since the 1970s and have come to have favorites within the permanent collection.  On that trip, I chose to spend time with two old friends: Mr. and Mrs. I.N. Phelps Stokes.  It’s a wonderful, 1897 painting by John Singer Sargent with a fascinating history. 

Edith and I.N. in 1895,
the year of their marriage

As a wedding present two years earlier, a friend ‘gave’ I.N. (he hated his given names, Isaac Newton) and Edith a sitting for Edith with Sargent; in the 1890s still the unquestioned master of ‘society’ portraiture.  Edith Minturn was a radical – a champion of women’s suffrage and housing for the poor. The Phelps Stokes were in Vienna as was Sargent.  An appropriate gown was selected by Sargent, and Edith was to appear in the portrait with a Great Dane at her side.  Then, two things happened: either Sargent or Edith decided sporty daywear was more appropriate attire, and the Great Dane became ‘unavailable’.  I.N. volunteered in to step in, and the result was a stunning double portrait with an unmistakable message: the radiant, 30-year-old Edith quite literally overshadows her husband.

I.N. did some writing...

At that party I felt like I.N. (who, by the way, went on to write the definitive, six-volume history of New York).  We were overshadowed by our partners, yet we didn’t mind.  We are enablers.  We encourage them to keep learning and to practice the art and science of whatever they love.

And so, instead of struggling with chapter 17, I wrote about that garden party.  I polished it to a high sheen, struggling over every sentence until it conveyed exactly what I wanted it to.  Over the next two days, I mastered Blogspot design and editing, and chose the perfect name: ‘The Principal Undergardener’.  I decided each essay would be about some aspect of horticulture and the tone would be light – no lectures and no soapbox diatribes.  That first post went live on June 26, 2009.

In addition to being the tenth anniversary of the blog, this is also my 300^th post to it.  That’s an average of 30 posts a year (duh) or one every 12 days.  These essays – I strive for 900 words – have become my ‘etude’ – the mental equivalent of the finger-stretching exercises used by musicians.  A few have been dashed off in an hour.  Most take several hours (plus additional time to find just the right illustrations) and then are allowed to ‘cool’ overnight before a final review and posting.

The remarkable thing is, people read my blog.  Google provides readership stats, and I’m invariably amazed by the number who drop in to see what is on my mind.  Here is that first post:

                    * * * * *

There are a handful of paintings that bring an instant smile to my face when I see them. They’re the kinds of painting where the artist has recognized some deeper truth about the objects before him (or her) and managed to convey that ‘something’ onto the canvas. One such painting is John Singer Sargent’s “Mrs. and Mrs. I.N. Phelps Stokes”, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Edith Minturn and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes were married in 1895, and one of the couple’s weddings gifts was of a portrait to be painted by Sargent. Sargent's first intention was to paint a single portrait of Edith during the summer of 1897 in Venice. After numerous posing and preparatory sessions, the artist decided to paint her as if she were just returning from a brisk walk outdoors, with a Great Dane at her side. After Edith’s part of the portrait was finished, however, the Great Dane was no longer available and I. N. Phelps Stokes suggested that he take its place. Sargent agreed, and the single portrait became a double portrait.

But, if it is a double portrait, it is one of the most lopsided ever done. Edith is radiant and forthright. It would not be an overstatement to say that she glows. Her husband, by contrast, is consigned to the shadows. Yes, he’s there, but he’s a stand-in for the greyhound. In another fifty years, I have no doubt that he will fade and the pentimento of a dog will take his place.

But the painting, in turn, captures the reality of the two. Both were from wealthy ‘reformist’ families. Edith threw herself into women’s suffrage and housing reform, among other noble causes. I.N. (he hated ‘Isaac Newton’) turned his attention to writing the definitive history of the City of New York – six volumes and over 7,000 pages. She was the spark plug in the family, his role was to be supportive and to write large checks. Sargent saw it and captured it on canvas.  (Fun facts:  Edith’s uncle was Robert Gould Shaw’ her great-granddaughter is Kyra Sedgwick.)

I was reminded of that portrait Sunday afternoon and evening as I attended a Master Gardener Open Garden. There are several hundred people in the Boston area who have gone through the Master Gardener program at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Several times each summer, a Master Gardener will open his or her garden to other Master Gardeners. These tend to be spectacular gardens, all them designed and tended by the homeowner rather than by some ‘name’ landscape designer.

Most Master Gardeners are women. Until this year, the courses were given all day, one day a week, which makes it difficult for anyone who worked full time to gain the accreditation. People who go through the same class tend to become friends.

There were probably thirty people at the garden in Quincy on Sunday afternoon and evening. Many Master Gardeners brought spouses. And, throughout that afternoon and evening, I could not help but be reminded of the Sargent portrait. The women – the Master Gardeners – were in charge. They talked of gardens and of plants. They dissected plant diseases and growing problems and evaluated landscaping choices. Their talks were animated and full of energy. They spoke for hours about their own plans for new beds and rare and unusual cultivars. Master Gardeners also get a heavy dose of environmental awareness as part of their studies and these women discussed organic and pesticide-free lawn care and composting as though it were second nature.

The men… drank beer and ate guacamole. They were appendages in the spirit of Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes. They acknowledged readily that their responsibility is to dig holes and move plants when requested, and to be supportive, including the occasional writing of a large check.

The garden is stunning. It’s a quarter-acre lot with a 1930s-era house in the middle, but packed into that lot is enough landscaping for an estate. The lot slopes steeply making it possible to build multiple garden ‘rooms’ that are functionally invisible from one another. The owner - one of the rare male Master Gardeners - is a pharmacist by training who managed to become a Master Gardener in the same class as Betty by working extra shifts. Paul is also married and, in the true spirit of I. N. Phelps Stokes, his partner, John, says his contribution to the garden is to ‘suggest accessories’.

I never thought of myself as an I.N. Phelps Stokes but, being around those Master Gardeners and listening to them talk about plants and ecosystems as fervently as Edith Phelps Stokes surely talked about housing and universal suffrage, I knew how he felt. The best thing you can do is be supportive. Who knows, I may even write the next definitive history of something.

The Gardening Charter

An email arrived last week from Medfield's Town Administrator (we don’t have ‘City Managers’ or ‘Mayors’, just a Board of Selectmen and an appointed official who oversees our various town departments).  Attached to the email was a letter saying the Board of Selectmen had decided to “review the structure, purpose, and prior years’ work for all appointed Boards and Committees” before reappointing anyone for the coming year.  Attached to it was a two-page questionnaire.

Medfield has 45 Committees; 30 of them ‘Special Committees’, and another fifteen created by the Town Charter. These range from one to ‘Study Memorials’ to a ‘Permanent Planning and Building Committee’. 

Tucked somewhere in the middle of the list is the Community Gardens Committee.  It so happens that Betty and I are on that Committee.  We are, truth be told, its only members and have been so for almost ten years.  We came to be on the Committee because, in 2009, we complained to a Selectman that the Community Garden was in a state of disarray.  We charged the Garden was run by a clique that allocated multiple plots to itself while allowing the others to lie fallow. Spigots leaked or were disconnected.  Weeds were everywhere.  Chaos ruled.

A week later, the Town Clerk asked us to come to the Medfield Town House (we also don’t have a Town Hall, just a ‘Town House’) to be sworn in as members of the Community Gardens Committee (we had no idea there was a ‘Committee’).  After we had been sworn in, we asked when the Committee would next meet.  The Town Clerk shook her head.  “You decide.  They all quit.”

The garden seems to run fairly well

In the intervening years, we have run the garden as best we can.  Our names appear annually in the Town Yearbook, but that is the extent to which anyone acknowledges we hold some official title (I make a point of signing all Community-Garden-related emails ‘Garden Ogre’).

So, it came as a surprise we needed to write a ‘Charter’ for the Committee, and that the Charter should include our “long-term objective or purpose”, “goals for the year”, and “dates and deliverables for committee work”.  In return, the Selectmen would, ominously, “determine if the Committee should continue to exist” and “identify which members wish to continue on the Committee”.

So, I sat down to fill out the questionnaire, starting with answering “Question 1: Should this Committee continue to exist?’  I thought long and hard about it, and finally wrote, “The Community Garden exists only because the Town considers a vegetable garden, open to all interested residents and located on Town land, to be a worthwhile use of such land and a benefit that makes the town a more appealing community in which to live.  The Community Gardens Committee, in turn, exists to relieve the Town of the expense and manpower that would otherwise be required to perform the tasks outlined in the Charter.”

Steal from the best,
I always say...

From there, all I had to do was write the ‘Charter’ I had so blithely referenced.  What, exactly, should a Charter chart?  I decided to use as my reference point a document from 1215 called the ‘Great Charter’ or, as they said in those days, the ‘Magna Carta’.  When you read that 804-year-old bit of statecraft, you come to understand it is a ‘how-to-govern’ manual.  For example, “No constable may compel a knight to pay money for castle-guard if the knight is willing to undertake the guard in person, or with reasonable excuse to supply some other fit man to do it.” Simple, clear, to the point. 

So, I changed the wording somewhat, but otherwise came up with twelve things the Community Gardens Committee is supposed to do; starting with making certain everyone in town knows in February and March plot are available, and concluding with making certain the water gets turned off at the end of October.  I was tempted to include something about droit de seigneur just to see if anyone was reading my responses but, sadly, Betty overruled me.

Once upon a time we all lined up
outside the Town House to get a plot

Writing the Charter, in turn, clarified my understanding of what is involved in running the Community Garden and how it has changed.  Once upon a time, interested gardeners lined up outside the Town House on one specified day and a town employee took money and assigned plots.  Until a few years ago, a group of Department of Public Works employees spent an afternoon staking out the gardens and, once every two weeks, a town tractor mowed the garden’s perimeter.  Now, all these tasks are done by volunteers.

The 2008 plot assignment map Betty and I inherited from the Committee showed a garden with a total of 40 plots, but just 27 gardeners, many with multiple plots, and five gardens that were never taken (and, if memory serves, another half dozen that were abandoned mid-season).  This year, 83 individuals or families are in 73 plots of varying sizes.  Next year, if all goes well, there will be 20 new plots in an annex.  Either interest in gardening has grown exponentially in the last decade, or we’ve fulfilled a need that was not being met.

The questionnaire I filled out will go into a pile along with responses from the other 44 Committees.  Will the Community Gardens Committee continue to exist in 2020?  Time will tell.  Will Betty and I continue to chair it?  I hope so.  I’ve gotten to enjoy signing memos as the ‘Garden Ogre’.

"January, February, March, March, March, March, July..."

Iris cristata and Trilliums
at the end of May?

This morning I paused a moment to admire the trilliums and iris cristata blooming at the edge of our back patio. I sniffed the perfume of the lilac in full glory along the driveway.  And I admired the tenacious hellebores that have continued to flower since the snow melted in early March.

The problem is, I did all these things this morning, and this morning is May 29. The iris and lilac should have ceased blooming three weeks ago. The hellebore should have gone dormant by now. 

Yes, I know I'm lucky...but 49 degrees?

Oh, and the temperature outside is 49 degrees.  And, according to this morning’s Globe, it has rained 22 out of the first 29 days of the month (and more rain is expected today).

There’s a cute joke about the weather on Cape Cod: that monthly calendars have headers that read, ‘January, February, March, March, March, March, July…’. And, it has the ring of truth: the cold Atlantic waters keep the region’s spring weather cool and damp.  But I live in the temperate Boston suburbs, 60 miles from Cape Cod.  What’s going on?

The lilacs ought to have passed by now

The meteorological explanation is a persistent high-pressure system that keep giving us Canadian-grade weather, coupled with a recalcitrant jet stream and brewing El Nino.  Two hundred miles south, Pennsylvania and Maryland are being rocked by thunderstorms, and further west and south, there are tornadoes and flooding.  So, we ought to (and do) count ourselves lucky.

But then I go visit our vegetable garden… or what ought to be our vegetable garden.  By the end of May we should be up to our knees in lettuce and spinach.  We should be picking peas and coaxing green beans. Instead, our garden looks like we planted it last week – which is also not too far from the truth. 

Phlox at the end of May?

Thus far we have picked exactly nothing from a 600-square-foot plot, because everything is too cold and too wet.  This past weekend, when the temperature briefly got above 80 degrees for an afternoon, we planted the tomatoes we purchased three weeks ago. Now, I fear the plants will curl up and wither from the cold.  Neither the corn nor the squash seeds we planted ten days ago have germinated.  ‘Knee high by the Fourth of July’?  We’re not holding our breath.

I realize these are ‘high-class problems’.  “Awww, your garden isn’t producing.  Would you like to come bail out my basement or cut up the tree on my roof?”

The old saw is that ‘If you’re not killing plants, you’re not gardening’.  I guess I’d prefer to see my plants croak the usual way: because I over-watered them, stepped on them, or failed to give them the proper nutrients.  Freezing to death at the end of May?  Now that’s just cruel…

In Our Garden, 2019 Is Leap Year

The gardening world is rich with mnemonics; simple rhyming catchphrases that help you remember important rules.  How much sunlight does a vegetable need?  “Leaf, root, flower, fruit” tells you everything you need to know.  ‘Leaf’ vegetables like lettuce need the least light, ‘fruit’ ones need most.

The daffodils we planted by the road
at the front of our house have doubled

The one I’m pondering at the start of the 2019 gardening season is “sleep, creep, leap”.  It’s a powerful truth: yielding to the desire for ‘instant gratification’ is never in a gardener’s best interest.  Instead, cultivate patience.  If you plant a tree, shrub, or perennial, expect that its first year will be one of little apparent growth – it sleeps.  Whatever you put in the ground is busy establishing a root system and acclimating itself to a new, alien environment.

Twelve months pass.  That yearling plant creeps.  It almost grudgingly displays a modicum of visible growth, but there is still a painful, yawning space between it and its nearest brethren.  It is not until the third – or even fourth year – that the plant begins to fill its appointed space, and a garden begins to look like, well, a garden.

The leucothoe, heuchera,
and azalea now fill the bed

It is also in that second year that Type-A-personality gardeners fall into the trap of overbuying and over-planting.  If a rhododendron’s tag says to plant specimens four feet apart, the impatient gardeners shrinks that spacing to three or even two feet.  For a year or two, the homeowner achieves the illusion of an ‘instant garden’.  By the third year, plants are getting in one another’s way.  By the fifth year, shrubs that ought to be healthy are instead dying of diseases that should be collectively be labeled, ‘willful ignorance’.  (Several decades ago, we acquired a house with such a landscape.  A year into our ownership, we pulled our hundreds of dollars of yellowing shrubs with underdeveloped roots starved for space.)

Betty and I moved into our new home in early April 2015.  Our intention had been to quickly install some 200 perennials lovingly divided and potted up from our ‘old garden’ and bring in a full retinue of new trees and shrubs perfect for the site.  Long before the first frost, we would have the elements of our new garden on the half-acre (of our one-and-a-half acres) we planned to cultivate. 

Magnolia 'Elizabeth' went
from a few dozen blooms
to more than a hundred

Instead, in mid-April, we discovered we had no viable soil in the area we intended to make our garden.   A year of construction vehicles on the site, the dispersal of ‘spoils’ from digging the foundation and basement, and the removal of some 40 end-of-life pines meant that gardening would have to be preceded by the removal of 950 cubic yards of what we came to call ‘builders’crud’ and replace it with a like volume of loam.  Moreover, moles and voles had consumed the roots of three-quarters of our transplanted stock.

It took until mid-summer to complete the site preparation; nothing went into the ground during the critical April through June period.  By the end of September, we had planted just eight trees, 50 or so perennials, and perhaps a dozen shrubs.  We added 1800 bulbs in late October.  Our start was so late that 2015 didn’t even merit being called the ‘sleep’ phase; most of the plants we wanted were still in nurseries.

The hyacinths we planted along the
sidewalk emerge stronger each year

In the following two years we added more trees and several dozen shrubs.  We began planting ground covers, added plants –primarily native perennials – to the spaces between trees and shrubs.  And, yes, more bulbs went into the ground, bringing our total to more than 4,000.  Those were our ‘sleep’ years.  I remember looking out on our back patio where we had planted more than a hundred native perennials a year earlier.  I kept thinking that, by now, it ought to be a scene of riotous color and texture.  Instead, it was a series of discrete, small plants.  Nothing touching, much less overlapping.

Our ‘creep’ year was 2018.  The ‘ephemerals’ – especially the Virginia bluebells – flowered and proliferated.   Our hostas unfurled their first leaves before the end of April.  The dicentra grew vigorously and bloomed into July.  Our shrubs – notably the small iteas and fothergillas – put up exuberant spikes of white flowers, and our leucothoes nearly doubled in size.

The individual plugs of
bearberry have merged into
a mat, helping prevent weeds

This spring we are seeing the telltale signs that 2019 is our ‘leap’ year.  The dozen plugs of bearberry we planted in 2016 merged over the winter into a continuous cover that will help keep weeds under control in one section of the garden.  Eight, gallon pots of chrysanthemum daisies planted on three-foot centers in 2017 will merge this season into a continuous mass of long-blooming color.  A handful of native asters we planted in 2016 to help keep soil in place at the edge of our wetlands have proliferated to the point we now need to stop their plan for world dominance.

It is the trees and shrubs, though that provide the greatest satisfaction.  Only a year ago, our yellow magnolia ‘Elizabeth’ had scarcely two dozen blooms in late April.  This morning I stopped counting at a hundred.  We planted many of our native shrubs in groups of three, typically on four-foot centers.  As they begin greening up this year, it is growing difficult to know which branches below to what shrub.

The best news is that the ‘leap’ phase is not just a one-year event.  Rather, it is the first tangible – and continuing – evidence of our land’s evolution from a ‘collection of plants’ into a coherent garden.

Spring Dreams, Summer Realities

As long as there are people like Betty around, the horticultural magazine business will prosper.  No fewer that four publications arrive each month by subscription, and several others find their way over the transom unbidden.  Each gets scrutinized for interesting new plants as well as for anecdotal gardening information.

           

The gardening magazine industry
is alive and well

Oddly, these magazines aren’t always read when they first arrive.  Rather, they accumulate until the (hopefully) last snow of the season is melting.  Then, they’re brought out and savored like a fine wine (and are occasionally accompanied by a glass of same or a rich dark chocolate).  This is a perfect time of year for such an activity: nothing is yet growing, and the garden palette is nothing but grays and browns.  The garden centers and nurseries are just getting their earliest spring stock.  In the New England gardening world, all things are still possible in early April.

It takes more than a pretty face to sell a plant to my wife.  First, with a commitment to creating a garden that is 95% native, lots of plants are rejected even though they’re cute as a button.  She flips past most of the Asian imports and focuses on cultivars with their roots – figuratively and literally – in North America. 

What did this Echinacea give up to
get such a prolific bloom?

Even native plants are subject to scrutiny.  That new coneflower with the bright green center (most Echinacea eyes are brown)?  It certainly looks attractive, but the description says it ‘matures to a bushy mound with a ratio of blossoms to foliage of nearly 1:1.’   The green center can be a naturally occurring mutation encouraged by good propagation.  However, plants can’t expend that much energy in creating blooms without giving up something.  What did the breeder lose in gaining all those flowers?  If it is pollen, the plant will be pretty for humans to admire, but of no use to pollinating insects.  She says she’ll look at it, but the perennial had better be covered with bees if it is to go home with us.

This is the 'traditional' Calycanthus,
not many flowers but oh, that scent!

Similarly, Carolina allspice, also known as sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus), has undergone a metamorphosis.  A few decades ago it was a rangy green shrub with dull reddish-brown flowers that bloomed prolifically in the spring and sporadically in the summer.  But oh, that scent.  You closed your eyes, inhaled, and you were transported to a South Seas island.  

Propagators have bred for prettier
flowers, but lost much of the scent

Then, the breeders got busy.  More compact cultivars were introduced and, even better, the flowers became brighter, redder, and near-continuous. We have three ‘original’ specimens on our property and were ready to add more until Betty stopped to sniff the new specimens at a garden center.  That was when she discovered plant breeders had been willing to give up scent to get more flowers.  A plant has ‘x’ amount of energy to give over to flower production to attract pollinators.  The ‘old’ Calycanthus wasn’t such a great bloomer, but what blooms it had were pollinator magnets.  The new plants?  Prettier to look at, but the scent was nothing special.  We’ll stay with what we have.

Betony 'Summer Crush' is at the top
of Betty's 'to-buy' list

But there’s a double blue circle drawn around a new betony offering pink and white blooms.  Betony (Stachys) is a native that found its way into our garden two years ago. Last year, our five plants exploded with a burst of foot-high flower stalks that attracted every bee and butterfly in a mile radius.  The purple blooms were attractive, but we already have a lot of purple in our early summer garden, and Betty was hesitant to plant ‘more of the same’, especially given that our betony was spreading nicely on its own.  The new cultivar, ‘Summer Crush’ is at the top of her ‘to buy’ list.

Our garden continues to grow and mature each year, and we have a budget to bring in new plants that complement what we have and fill in the shrinking blank spots in our canvas.  The barrier to entry is getting very high, but those gardening magazines help get us ready to be discerning consumers when the nurseries begin filling with their new offerings.

Where Does the Boston Flower Show Go From Here?

Me, way back when.  You
can double-click on the
photos to see a slideshow.

Before I go further, I need to say I have a strong interest the Boston Flower and Garden Show (BF&GS), as well as its predecessor, the New England Spring Flower Show (NESFS).  It’s an emotional investment: I ran the Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s activities at the BF&GS for three years, and helped build flower show exhibits for several years prior to that.  This essay’s title is intended to pose two questions; one geographical and the other philosophical.  Both are hard problems with no easy answers.

The old Bayside Expo Center

I’ll start with location.  After a peripatetic existence in the 1950s and 1960s, the ‘old’ New England Spring Flower Show settled into a long run at the Bayside Exposition Center in Dorchester, six miles south of Boston’s Financial District.  The facility, a failed shopping mall, leaked and was abysmally maintained.  But it was cavernous and had location in its favor: just off the Southeast Expressway with thousands of adjacent, reasonably-priced parking spaces (attractive for suburbanites), and walking distance from the MBTA Red Line (convenient for city dwellers).  

The move to the Seaport World Trade Center was a compromise.  At roughly 120,000 square feet, it was less than half the size of Bayside, but Bayside was shutting down.  The Paragon Group (the group sponsoring the BF&GS) could not guarantee the hotel bookings necessary to secure the use of the Boston Convention and Exposition Center (BCEC).  Seaport became, quite literally, the only game in town.  The other facilities were too small or not available.

Two years ago this was a surface
parking lot across from Seaport.  I 
took this photo on the show's last day.

In 2010, the first year of the Seaport venue, things went reasonably well.  Seaport (itself a repurposed and re-built cruise ship terminal) was a hotel and office complex amid a sea of cheap, surface-level parking lots.  Mass Hort had no problems drawing floral designers, amateur horticulturalists, and volunteers for the show; and show attendees found ample, reasonably-priced parking  Within two years, though, the Seaport District began its transformation into an office and residential district.  Within six years, the cost to park for a few hours soared from $11 to $36 and traffic bogged down in a morass of lane closures.

Then, last year, Fidelity Investments announced it would close Seaport’s exhibition hall in mid-2020.  Moving the show became not an option but, rather, a necessity. 

Seaport's footprint, while hardly
ideal, is better than alternatives

Where can it go? In my opinion, suburban Gillette Stadium’s field house at just 80,000 square feet, is too small for the show.  The Back Bay’s Hynes Convention Center has 150,000 square feet of space, but it is on two floors and has the same access issues as Seaport.  BCEC is unlikely to make an exception to its hotel/night formula.  Absent a mall closing down (always a possibility in the current retail landscape) or a well-situated warehouse becoming vacant, the alternative is to relocate the Boston Flower and Garden Show elsewhere in New England.

Is there still a demand?

Which goes to the heart of the second question: is there still a demand for a late-winter flower and garden show?  Having been to Philadelphia and being acquainted with the Maine Flower Show in Portland, I can easily argue there is an audience.  But the Philadelphia Flower Show, run since 1829 by the powerhouse Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, is a sensual extravaganza that draws a quarter million attendees from the northeast and mid-Atlantic states.  It will go on as long as Penn Hort is around.  Now in just its third year, the Maine Flower Show is intimate by design and is profitable on 50,000 attendees.  Although held at the end of March, it is in a location where nothing will be green for at least another six or eight weeks.

Waiting to get into the New England
Spring Flower Show in the 1950s

I cannot help but feel – and this is personal opinion – that ‘flower shows’ in northern urban centers have been bypassed by time and technology. In 1960, the ‘winter vacation’ was the province of the wealthy.  Today, for $79, Jet Blue will fly a Bostonian to Ft. Myers or Ft. Lauderdale, where the flowers and greenery don’t have to be forced and six hours of artificial spring isn’t followed by stepping into icy puddles accompanied by a blast of 35° wind.

Mass Hort's exhibit in 2012.
Everything was in bloom.

Also, in my opinion, the 2019 BF&GS was a dispiriting affair.  I know landscape exhibits; I know what it takes to force plants to be fully in leaf and flowering for mid-March: it requires a large greenhouse heated to 80° for as long as three months and a lot of tender loving care for thousands of plants.  Yet, at this year's show, I walked by one exhibit by a ‘major’ landscaper in which dozens of azaleas were barely leafed out and not a single one was in flower.  To me, it was inexcusable - or cheap (forced plants must be returned to those same greenhouses until May).  Many other exhibits consisted more of stone than of plants ("It don't cost a dime to force stone," an exhibitor once told me).  And, if the landscapers aren’t putting their hearts into it, why should a visitor pay $20?

Amateur horticulture at the 2019
flower shoe was a high point...

Mass Hort wisely moved its entry day for amateur horticulture to Sunday from Monday to avoid fighting Boston’s legendary traffic.  The change, however, only paused the long slide in participation.  While the entries were of wonderful quality, they came from a shrinking pool of amateurs willing to make two treks into the city: one to drop off their plants and another to retrieve them.

... and amateur photography was
dazzling with entries from everywhere

Getting floral designers and judges to come into Boston was becoming difficult by 2012, my last year of running Mass Hort’s activities at the show.  Why?  Because so many designers now winter in warmer climates.  This year, the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts formally dropped out of the show, dramatically reducing the number of floral design exhibits on view. Only Ikebana (which expanded to fill the space formerly allotted to the two floral design divisions) and Amateur Photography delivered the ‘wow’ impact I believe show attendees deserve (and those activities were relegated to the nearly invisible conference center beyond the exhibit hall).

Is it a bygone era?

This is a difficult essay to write because – as I stated at the outset – I have an emotional investment in the success of the flower show.  With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the ten years at Seaport sapped the show of its energy by its smaller footprint and relative inaccessibility to the show’s target audience.  Paragon does not publish attendance figures, but my observation is that the show draws fewer people each year.  Friends tell me Paragon has told them there will definitely be a flower show at Seaport in 2020, and that a search is on for a suitable venue for 2021 and beyond.  I wish them success, but I fear the winds of change have sealed the show’s fate.