Sigalit Landau, Salt Stalagmite #1 [Three Bridges], (detail), 2021
Are you ready to experience something you've never seen before? We are so excited to be one of 12 gardens across the world to premier Seeing the Invisible, an unprecedented new global exhibition bringing the digital experience into the physical world.
Opening in September 2021, this international collaboration features work by over a dozen leading artists from across the globe.
Christmas in July
Join us from July 25-31 for a week of holiday spirit without the winter weather! See what the citizens of Snow Village, the winter-themed model train display, are up to. Visitors can decorate their own ornaments and hang them on a tree that will be displayed at the 13th Annual Festival of Trees later this year. Stay tuned for more events to come!
Colors, foliage, blooms! Learn how to pick the best plants for your yard that will look good all year round! In this 3-session virtual Class and 1 garden tutorial walk at The Gardens at Elm Bank, you’ll learn color pairing and create your own color palette. You’ll “de-clutter” your garden. Also, how to create stunning perennial and shrub combinations. And, how to lay-out your combinations to create an abundant, dynamic, and colorful flower garden in seasonal sequence. This is a four day workshop, taking place virtually and onsite at The Gardens at Elm Bank.
Virtual Dates: July 14th, 21st, and 28th, 10am-2pm
Our friends from Ribbit the Exhibit will be hopping around the Gardens until September 7. We would like to thank CBIZ, Inc. for sponsoring Floyd & Grace, who can be found by Maple Grove. If your business is interested in sponsoring a frog, please contact Elaine Lawrence at elawrence@masshort.org or call 617-933-4945.
"Learn basic plant propagation techniques from seed saving to harvesting cuttings. You will leave this workshop with the ability to start a garden for free, using regenerative methods, and with a deeper sense of connection to the plants of your place."
July 15, 6–7:15pm
Family Fun in the Gardens
Join Melissa Pace, our Garden Educator, in the Gardens on Saturdays from10am-1pm.Melissa will have all the books, props, and activities perfect for a fun Saturday morning in the Gardens. Check our website and Facebook page for updated information on each week's theme!
David Epstein, Channel 4’s freelance meteorologist, inspires viewers with plants & gardening tips each time he hosts the weekend TV weather segments. Dave, a professional meteorologist, horticulturalist for three decades, and former MHS Trustee, maintains the website Growing Wisdom and stays current on all aspects of weather & plants. Read this recent article about Dave from Boston Magazine. Tune in to WBZ Boston
Channel 4 around 7:15am on weekend mornings; if he’s on that day you can catch one of his segments—you’ll be impressed with his knack to inspire viewers about plants!
We want to hear about your membership experience! Please answer these few questions to provide us with valuable testimonials regarding membership with Massachusetts Horticultural Society. These testimonials will be featured on our social media pages and our website!
Featured Articles
The "Summer Azaleas"
Why Vegetable Gardeners Are Optimists
From the Stacks
Monarchs and More: Of Gardens and Butterflies
July Horticultural Hints
The “Summer Azaleas”
By Wayne Mezitt
MHS Trustee
When we consider azaleas in the garden, most homeowners envision those familiar red, pink, purple or white May-blooming evergreen shrubs, compact growing and readily available in garden centers. But the so-called “Summer Azaleas” are a different
Azalea ‘Henry’s Triumph’
class of plants that can add distinctive appeal in your summer garden. They’re stately deciduous shrubs (they all drop their leaves in winter), with pink, white or orange/yellow-toned blooms, often fragrant; they’re also bred from mostly native azalea parentage, so they are generally pest-free and well adapted to thriving in most every New England garden.
The sweet (arborescens) and swamp (viscosum) azaleas are native to New England, flowering in June and July respectively, with fragrant, white or pale pink blooms, but not commonly used in gardens until recently. The development of the more colorful Summer Azaleas began in the 1950’s using the brightly colored Cumberland (bakeri) and plumleaf (prunifolium) azaleas for hybridizing; both of these are native to southeastern USA, and like their New England counterparts, these plants bloom in June and July. Although they lack fragrance, their intense orange, yellow and red shades offered the possibility for increasing the range of flower colors when hybridized with the less colorful New England native azaleas.
The Summer Azaleas today are comprised of a June-flowering group with the sweet azalea as their primary ancestor, and the July-flowering hybrids with swamp azalea parentage. Together they offer an impressive range of colors including pinks, orange/yellows and whites from mid-June through mid- or in some years, late-July. They can reach 6 ft. or higher when mature; the June group tends to grow wider, and the July ones more upright; they both can be readily managed by pruning just as they finish blooming.
Azalea 'Millennium,' a July-flowering cultivar
Because their parents grow naturally in their native stands along stream sides, both types enjoy rich, humusy acid soils with consistent moisture. Most have proven to be hardy to Zone 4 or even colder and they perform admirably even in the northernmost parts of New
England. Also, when conditions are right, most exhibit colorful fall foliage in shades of copper to burgundy, often for many weeks before their leaves drop and they go into winter dormancy.
These are some of the June-flowering hybrids, now available at local garden centers:
‘Pink and Sweet’—light pink with a yellow eye and sweet aroma
‘Ribbon Candy’—spicy-scented pink flowers, each with a distinct white stripe that imparts a unique bicolor effect.
‘Weston’s Innocence’— richly fragrant pure white with green foliage that becomes bronzy green in summer and fall
‘Weston’s Popsicle—lightly-fragrant, trumpet-shaped pink with an orange flare
These are some of the July-flowering cultivars, all have moderate to strong fragrance:
‘Millennium’—dark red buds open to dark pink, distinctly blue-green foliage
‘Pennsylvania’—clear light pink flowers, apple green leaves
‘Weston’s Parade’—dark pink with an orange eye and dark green foliage
Some garden centers also offer plants of the species mentioned above (arborescens, viscosum, bakeri and prunifolium) that are the parents of these hybrids. For example, Azalea ‘Henry’s Triumph’ is a distinctive prunifolium cultivar that displays bright orange (non-fragrant) blooms for 2 weeks or more in late July.
Vegetable gardeners are optimists. They have to be because, otherwise, they’d never lift a hoe again after they saw their first tomato hornworm.
We have a plot at the community vegetable garden in our town. It’s a sunny, 600-square-foot space that has some of the richest soil in New England. Because we also manage the garden, we field all the questions and problems
from our 80-plus fellow gardeners. As you read on, please keep in mind that this is a good year for vegetable gardening.
Cucumber beetle
Credit: Johnny's Selected Seeds
Mexican bean beetle
Credit: Wikipedia
For example, in May, everyone was coping with an infestation of cucumber beetles, reporting their cucumber vine leaves had little holes in them. By mid-June, plants were disappearing overnight. By now, any squash, cucumber, or soybean plant that isn’t being grown under a row cover is an endangered species. You may ask, why not just allow the little critters to have their way and peacefully co-exist? Because their parting gift to your garden is a nasty thing called bacterial wilt, which will manifest itself as you start harvesting your fruit.
Now, the first of the Mexican bean beetles have been spotted. This charming pest chomps on green beans and anything that looks like a green bean (the bugs are apparently far-sighted), including mung beans, soybeans and alfalfa. You know you have a Mexican bean beetle infestation because, one day, you come out to your garden and all you have are skeletons of leaves. Again, row covers are the lone salvation unless you’re not averse to dowsing your vegetables with exceedingly non-organic bug killers (which we don’t allow in the garden).
Squash vine borer moth
Credit: Purdue University
Last week, someone asked Betty about the cute little orange and dark gray moths on her squash plants.
Betty patiently explained that they are the adult manifestations of Melitta curcurbitae, otherwise known as the squash vine borer. They lay a mass of eggs under a summer or winter squash vine, and two few weeks later, there go the zucchini, butternut squash, and melons.
By August, we’ll have ‘late blight’ to look forward to. Late blight, which is endemic in the South, can kill a tomato plant in less than a week. Last year, even our ‘blight-resistant’ tomatoes ultimately succumbed to the disease; leaving green, never-to-ripen tomatoes in its wake. There is no cure: once the fungus spores reach your garden, the tomatoes are goners.
Because of the threat of these pests, our community garden this year looks like a Red Cross aid station. White row covers shield green beans, zucchini, yellow squash and a couple of other things that have been cloaked so long our gardeners confess they have forgotten what’s underneath them.
Yet, despite the alarming reports noted above, this is turning out to be a great year for vegetables. Our corn is on its way to being more than just ‘knee-high by the Fourth of July.’ The twin heat waves in June caused our lettuce and spinach to bolt, but also meant our green beans, chard, onions, garlic, and zucchini are all ahead of where they would otherwise be. Our peas produce pods by the gazillion and the beets we’ve pulled are plump and juicy, without a hint of the ‘woodiness’ that can affect that temperamental crop. This morning, our gardening neighbor cheerfully gave us a fistful of rhubarb stalks because her harvest is so bountiful.
The only way to keep your sanity when you grow vegetables is to assume the best. We plant, we weed, we pick off the bad bugs, we water and we fertilize. We cross our fingers and imagine the taste of that first tomato and fresh-picked sweet corn. Gardeners count their wins, not their losses.
Neal Sanders is the author of 15 New England-set mysteries, many with horticultural plots. His latest book, Murder Brushed with Gold, was published this spring.
From the Stacks
By Maureen T. O’Brien
Library Manager
"Most of us find that we that as the number of our years increases
we are apt to pass more and more of our time at the library table,
within easy reach of our shelves."
Adrian Hoffman Joline
At the Library Table, Boston: The Gorham Press, 1910, p. 14.
Featured Collection: Furniture
A library table evokes fond memories for book lovers. It provides a wonderful surface to pile your books for easy reference, a writing surface and place to rest as you pour over your finds. It is a working table, not a showpiece; rather each scar represents a moment of pleasure and discovery.
The furniture at the Library at Elm Bank is from Horticultural Hall in Boston. We use “Hort Hall’s” original library table, Windsor and Eldred Wheeler chairs, card catalogs and filing cabinets every day. While beautiful, they are meant to be used and not just admired. The beautiful hardwood bears evidence of many years of frequent and hard work.
Restored Library Table
Recently volunteer Kathleen Glenn, who is working on the Transcription Project, visited the Library and offered to polish our furniture. She has brought the furniture back to life, showcasing the beauty of the natural grain of the pieces. Kathleen is now working on rehousing the Edwin Hale Lincoln film negatives and newly found glass plates. Thank you, Kathleen!
We are in the process of revitalizing our layout in the Library to make it a better space to sit and enjoy your finds. The stacks are staying of course, but we will be hanging selected portraits from Hort Hall and hope to acquire a short bookcase to place under our windows for our sale books. If you have one you would like to donate, please contact mobrien@masshort.org.
In the Windows – Books on Furnishings and Books for Sale
Our Collections are Growing…
Thank you to Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, Tower Hill Botanic Garden, Barbara Scolnick, Heidi Kost-Gross, Sarah Vance and Anne Simunovic for their in-kind contributions to the Library. Anne’s contribution of a limited edition of The Natural History & Antiquities of Selborne & a Garden Kalendar by The Reverend Gilbert White, M.A. (1900) was especially precious as it contained a multipage handwritten letter from the author. She also donated More Pot-pourri from a Surrey Garden by Mrs. C.W. Earle (1899), a welcome addition to our 19th Century Collection.
Come Visit…
The Library is open on Thursdays, from 9 am to 1 pm. We are also open by appointment (email: mobrien@masshort.org) and by chance.
Thank you to all who donated books for the ongoing book sale in the Library. We encourage you to visit the Library to browse our treasures and add to your own horticulture library. A previously used and loved horticultural book is an environmentally friendly and pennywise gift for your gift giving needs.
We are partnering with the Natick Public Library with a Little Free Library right outside the Education Building’s front door. You will find a variety of free books to take home, including horticultural magazines and books.
Monarchs and More: Of Gardens and Butterflies
Reviewed by Patrice Todisco
Leaflet Contributor
"The Monarch butterfly is, in my opinion,
the most interesting insect in the world."
Miriam Rothschild, The Butterfly Gardener
There is nothing more beautiful than seeing a monarch butterfly against the backdrop of a deep blue sky. Which is why the continuing, steep decline in the monarch population is of such concern. The decline is so serious that on December 15, 2020 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that following an extensive status review, the monarch is now a candidate under the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, no action will
be taken for several years because there is a backlog of other species awaiting that designation.
While monarchs lack state and federal legal protection to keep their habitat from being destroyed or degraded, there is much that can be done to educate one’s self about how to ameliorate the environmental threats to not only to monarchs, but also the entire butterfly population, which is also in decline.
Start with the basics and familiarize yourself with the work of the Xerces Society, an international science-based non-profit organization with a mission to protect the natural world through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats. Named for the Xerces Blue butterfly, the first butterfly known to go extinct in America, their work with scientists and local citizens focuses on conservation and education.
Their most recent publication is 100 Plants to Feed the Monarch: Create a Healthy Habitat to Sustain North America's Most Beloved Butterfly (Xerces Society, 286 pages, $16.95). Designed as a highly visual field guide, it features practical information on how to restore the monarch's native habitat. A section is devoted to the 'extraordinary' milkweed, the only plant on which a monarch lays its eggs and later subsists. Thirty-one species of milkweed are profiled, followed by three non-milkweed host plants and sixty-six notable wildflowers, shrubs and trees that are essential for sustaining monarchs with nectar during their adult life. All are beautifully photographed in full color with their uses and native range identified.
Gardening for Butterflies: How You Can Attract and Protect Beautiful, Beneficial Insects (Timber Press, 282 pages, $24.95) also written by staff of the Xerces Society, provides a more comprehensive overview of how to design habitats and choose native plant species that will support butterfly conservation. Accessible and well-designed, it includes sections devoted to designing a butterfly garden by region, basic garden designs, North American plants and plant selection, installation and maintenance tips and gardening for moths. Its premise is that butterfly gardeners can change the world and its goal is to empower the home gardener to do so.
Planting for Butterflies: The Grower's Guide to Creating a Flutter (Quadrille, 143 pages , $16.99) is a jewel of a book that is both practical and charming. Written by BBC researcher and presenter Jane Moore and illustrated by James Weston Lewis, its focus is on the UK where there are 59 species of mostly native butterflies (compared to approximately 525 species in the US). Three quarters of the butterflies in the UK are in decline and mores species are critically endangered than ever before. Noting that one's home garden is part of a bigger ecosystem, Moore encourages the planting of green corridors and provides a purely personal selection of links and information, including on how to participate in the Big Butterfly Count, which you can find on the North American Butterfly Association's homepage.
Perhaps you are imagining something bigger than exploring your backyard and
the ecosystem that you have created therein. Bicycling with Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Butterfly Migration by outdoor educator and field researcher Sara Dykman (Timber Press, 280 pp, $27.95) will serve as a vicarious guide to such adventures. Chronicling her nine-month bicycle journey following the path of the Eastern monarchs, as they travel to Mexico and return to their Northern habitats, Dykman deftly blends scientific and sociocultural observations in a compelling, personal narrative. Close to home she visits The Monarch Gardener in Ipswich and makes a presentation to children at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge in Sudbury.
Butterflies are endlessly fascinating to children so it's no surprise that there are many high-quality books designed for this audience. Recently published, Explore the Life Journey of One of the Winged Wonders of the World: Monarch Butterflies (Storey Publishing, 47pp, $16.95) by Ann Hobbie, chair of the board of directors at Monarch Joint Venture, provides a clear description of everything you need to know about Monarchs in bold, colorful illustrations. Elegantly illustrated, The World of Butterflies (White Star Kids, 63pp, $14.95) by Rita Mabel Schiavo invites the reader to take a journey through the extraordinary magical world of butterflies, unveiling the many secrets that different species have to hide. And for sheer beauty, the oversized picture book Sensational Butterflies (Tilbury House Publishers, 80 pages, $29.95) by Ben Rothery will mesmerize readers of all ages.
It is this sense of wonder that butterflies evoke that permeates The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World's Favorite Insect (Simon and Schuster, 236 pages, $17.00) by award-winning author Wendy Williams. Explored within its pages is the worldwide role that butterflies, one of the earth's most resilient creatures, have played throughout history. From fossils discovered in a
Colorado lakebed to the groundbreaking discoveries of Maria Sibylla Merian, whose lifelong study, during the 17th century, of caterpillars, butterflies, moths, and the plants that made their existence possible laid the foundation for the study of modern ecology, The Language of Butterflies is both a fascinating and illuminating read.
"Look about you at the little things that run the earth," biologist E.O. Wilson is quoted as saying in The Language of Butterflies, an apt metaphor for those of us whose gardening pursuits are measured by small successes. And the occasional monarch.
Patrice Todisco writes about parks and gardens at the award-winning blog, Landscape Notes.
July Horticultural Hints
by Betty Sanders
Lifetime Master Gardener
July brings, on average, the highest temperatures and lowest rainfall of the year. Here are six ways to help your garden weather New England’s toughest month:
Weed like your plants' lives depend on it. They
Boston rainfall by month
do - your plants will be competing with weeds for water, sunlight and nutrients, and the weeds are, too often, better at grabbing available resources. Your flowers and vegetables win the fight only when the weeds lie, gasping for breath, in the aisles or in a bucket.
Water just the plants, not the entire garden.
Water deeply. Really soak your plants – just your plants and not the garden as a whole. You want the roots to have water available down where the heat of the day doesn't penetrate. Watering down to that depth will encourage your plants to stretch down their roots. It really happens like that: plants can 'learn' to grow a certain way through training, and getting water down deep works remarkably well.
Water early and low. When you water mid-day, you’ll allowing the water to evaporate rather than getting to your plants. Watering low (meaning right down at ground level) ensures the water doesn't have much chance to evaporate. If you can't water early, water late - when the sun is setting. To prevent spreading plant diseases, keep the water off the leaves as much as possible.
Water as close to ground level as possible to get water where it's needed.
Remove the spring (cool weather) plants that can’t take the heat. They won’t look good after the 90+ degree days anyway. In the vegetable garden, that means things like spinach and lettuce; elsewhere, it means those early pansies and their short-lived brethren.
Help stop evaporation. Heat-treated straw, seaweed from the beach (first washed in fresh water), and other mulches that will allow the water to pass through and prevent the sun from evaporating the water out of the top inches of the soil. Saving water at the root level is very important when the soil has heated up—like after a few days of 90+ temperatures.
Leave the lawn alone. Your grass wants to go dormant in the heat of summer; don’t fight Mother Nature. Trying to keep it lush and green by excessive watering or fertilizing serves only to create a cycle of chemical (and water) dependency that is both expensive and, ultimately, not all that successful.
Compost tip. Growing plants consume the nutrients in the soil, so replace them naturally with good compost as a mulch. You’ll get two jobs done (mulching and fertilizing) in one. And, unlike chemical fertilizers, mulch will improve the soil health at the same time.
We want to see what you love about the gardens! Share your favorite plants, flowers, and sights from the gardens and tag us on Instagram and Facebook.
Find an Unknown Plant in the Garden?
We've teamed up with PlantSnap & theAPGAto help our garden visitors learn more about the plants they see while visiting.
PlantSnap can currently recognize 90% of all known species of plants and trees, which covers most of the species you will encounter in every country on Earth. Identify plants, flowers, cacti, succulents and mushrooms in seconds with the click of a buttonon your mobile device.
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