Everything will start hopping at Massachusetts Horticultural Society's The Gardens at Elm Bank when Ribbit the Exhibit makes its debut on May 26. Twenty whimsical copper sculptures by artist J.A. Cobb will be placed throughout the gardens. These oversized frogs will bring wonder and whimsy to The Gardens at Elm Bank. This exhibit will be FREE for Massachusetts Horticultural Society members or included with daily admission.
Returning this Summer!
Music in the Garden set to kickoff in May
🎶 🎵 🎶
Many thanks to all who joined us last season as we took on the adventure of garden concerts in the middle of a whole new world. Even with very limited group sizes we were blown away at the amount of support and interest we received!
As a MHS Member you will be the first to grab tickets for this seasons Music in the Garden series! Tickets will go live next Monday, April 12 so keep an eye on your inbox for the link to reserve your spot(s). Be sure to have your membership number ready, if you're unsure of your number please contact our Membership Associate, Zee Camp.
We have a need for volunteers to re-shelve books, cover books, and provide spreadsheet data entry. Must be able to commit to two hours per week as needed.
We are also looking for a remote volunteer to help us proof read and edit spreadsheets on the recipients of Medals awarded by the Society.
This popular event is now taking place TWICE a week
Listen in on the storybook adventures narrated by our Garden Educator, Melissa Pace. Bring a blanket or chair and join the squirrels, birds, and other garden creatures as we spread out in the grassy Maple Grove, picnics welcome!
Join us every Monday and Wednesday at 11am, this drop-in event is Free for MHS Members or included with general admission.
Find an Unknown Plant in the Garden?
We've teamed up with PlantSnap & the APGA to 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 button on your mobile device.
Last year we opened the gardens early, extending our hours and days as well as lengthening our open season. We became the heart of our community in a way we never had before. Our visitation numbers doubled as guests from all over Massachusetts came for the safe and open spaces. They truly appreciated the power, peace and connectedness of a beautiful garden. We have, once again, opened early and extended our hours and garden season.
Please make a contribution to our Garden Opening Fund and give us the help we need to continue maintaining and improving our gardens and guests’ experience. Thank you!
"In this class we'll cover choosing varieties that do well in your site, how to prep your site and how to plant, care and tend your dahlias throughout the season. Learn what to watch out for and how to plan and treat common pests and diseases. Dahlias need a little love and support, but in the end you're rewarded with a gorgeous flower garden and beautiful cut flowers." April 13, 6pm
This month we are highlighting Lakeview Nurseries. Spring is here, don't forget to flash your membership card for a 10% discount with any of our Green Partners.
Knowing the origin of the plant (tree, shrub, perennial, annual, etc.) and the method that was used to propagate it can be helpful in understanding what to expect for its role in the garden. It’s worthwhile to understand that each and every plant was created by either “sexual” or by “asexual” propagation, and that how it originated plays a role in determining its characteristics. Being aware of these fundamental propagation differences can influence decisions about how a plant is best utilized in designs and installations, and how it will perform in future years as it grows and matures.
Plants grown from seed (sexually-reproduced from seed [or spore] from the mother plant) often have variations in color, foliage, speed of growth, size and other characteristics: each seedling is a genetically diverse individual. Seed-grown plants often seem to be identical to the original parent, but sometimes variations occur, differing from expectations. Plants typically grown from seed include most annuals & vegetables, many herbaceous perennials, ferns and many species of native (and non-native) plants.
Characteristics of plants propagated as a single clone (asexual or vegetative reproduction) differ from seed-grown plants because they are genetically identical to the original plant. Vegetative propagation methods include
stem and root cuttings
layering
division of plant segments
grafting/budding
micro-propagation (tissue culture).
A grower chooses a propagation method based upon many factors, including the individual species/cultivar characteristics, production feasibility, customer demand, time of year, resources available and cost/value of using a specific technique. Many edible fruits are clonally produced.
Plants can often be propagated using more than one method, sometimes resulting in differing outcomes as the plant matures. Occasionally a distinguishing cultivar characteristic like foliage-variegation is not stable and the resulting plant reverts to “normal”. Understocks used for grafted plants often have tendencies to produce undesirable non-clonal growth below the graft/bud union: this should be recognized and removed to maintain the integrity of the desired cultivar. Some rootstocks for grafted plants can influence the growth and other characteristics of the resulting plant (dwarfing-rootstocks on apple trees, for example). Some micro-propagated plants tend to retain their juvenile growth characteristics longer than anticipated and require a longer period to look “normal” in the garden (some micro-propagated Hosta clones).
Occasionally, when challenged by changing environmental factors, some genera and species have become susceptible to unexpected diseases/insects. Examples include American chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, rose-family fire blight, dogwood anthracnose and other problems. If cultivars can be selected for resistance to specific problems and then vegetatively propagated as a clone, this can compensate for general species susceptibility, resulting in a healthier plant.
Single-clone cultivars also offer unique opportunities for predictable growth and uniformity which may be beneficial in many design and landscaping
situations; they are also more appropriate for large-scale production with a predictable final product. Clones can also be patented and trademarked, resulting in potential financial incentives for the developer.
On the other hand, being genetically-identical also increases opportunities for unforeseen problems to affect all those clonally produced plants (rather than just susceptible individuals when genetically-diverse seedlings are used). And occasionally, a clone selected for certain desirable characteristics turns out to be inadvertently susceptible to previously unrecognized problems.
For example, the ‘Cavendish’ banana, developed as a seed-free and resistant clone, has now become the most widely available banana worldwide. ‘Cavendish’ was itself selected and clonally-propagated because it proved resistant to the disease that in the 1950’s unexpectedly devastated a previously-selected clone, ‘Gros Michel’ (“Big Mike”). But recently, ‘Cavendish’ is showing serious susceptibility to a pervasive fungal strain previously unrecognized, requiring intensive/expensive production measures and pesticide applications, and now threatening its commercial feasibility going forward; this has potential to become a major disaster for the entire banana industry worldwide.
Genetic diversity is the answer to resolving or avoiding clonal problems like this, but the result is usually less predictability and uniformity. Seedlings germinated from seed produced by clones are not clones themselves, and they may hold the possibility of perpetuating some of the desirable clonal benefits in some cases. But for the present, more and more of the plants used in our landscapes and gardens are vegetatively-propagated because of the obvious benefits they afford the producer and end user.
Why do we feed birds in the winter? It certainly isn’t out of altruistic motives. Outdated conventional wisdom notwithstanding, they don’t need our handouts. There are reasons not to feed birds: they drop seed husks that must be cleaned up, and feeders attract unwanted attention from four-footed nuisances with bushy tails and far too much free time on their paws.
I can think of two good reasons for luring birds to our garden. They’re pleasing to look at and, if they opt to stick around for the balance of the year, a bird can eat a third of its weight in insects every day. Whether you have a lawn or a garden, having some resident hungry insect eaters on continuous patrol can go a long way toward keeping pests under control.
We’ve been feeding birds for six years now, with two poles supporting sunflower and suet stations year round, and a separate hummingbird feeder from May to September. We have enough takers that we go through a ten-pack of suet cake and 25 pounds of sunflower seeds every month in winter.
A few weeks ago, Betty wondered aloud why we shouldn’t do more to entice birds to stick around for the summer. She specifically had bluebirds in mind as we have two males and two females that have regularly congregated at our feeders over the course of the winter.
Credit Missouri Dept. of Conservation
She just happened to have a plan for a bluebird box. “You can build this,” she said, offering me a sheet of paper dense with instructions.
No, I can’t. There is – and I can produce scientific evidence – a ‘shop gene’ in males. It is activated in eighth grade when junior high school boys are ushered into classrooms filled with drills, saws, routers, and sandpaper. They emerge from that class with all the necessary skills to build anything they will need to survive. Home Depot provides booster shots.
I did not take Shop in junior high. I squandered that opportunity and instead took journalism (lot of good it did me). I looked at Betty’s proffered document, which I could not have built in a year, much less a few hours. I went on the internet and found her house was actually one of the easier ones to build.
I took the practical way out and went to our local hardware store where we purchased two Audubon-approved bluebird boxes, plus two, six-foot galvanized steel poles. Elapsed time to purchase and install? Two hours.
The feeders are now placed at opposite ends of our rear garden. One stands adjacent to an Amelanchiercanadensis (shadbush or serviceberry), which reference books tell us are bluebirds’ equivalent of a standing reservation at a four-star restaurant. The other is anchored midway between a Chionanthusvirginicus (American fringetree) and a bird bath. Suet and sunflower seeds are a few wing flaps away.
Both houses have already received inspections by interested parties and, the literature says, in New England, bluebirds choose their nesting site by early May and can raise two or three broods over the course of the summer and fall. The instructions also say not to open the hatch and peek. The birds will make their occupancy known.
What we want, of course, is a horde of hungry birds looking for a meal; pressing their beaks down into the soil in search of grubs, and plucking insects off shrubs. Because we’ve never applied any chemicals to the garden, everything in it is safe to eat.
We’re looking forward to an interesting, and visually entertaining, gardening season.
Available: housing for committed couples hoping to raise a family in exchange for light yard work. Have two cozy units available adjacent to all amenities. Open house today. 26 Pine Street – rear.
Neal Sanders’15th mystery, ‘Murder Brushed with Gold’ has just been published. You can find it and his other books at Amazon.com and in bookstores.
From the Stacks
By Maureen T. O’Brien, Library Manager
His name was André Michauxand we should all remember his name,for he was one of the most remarkablehuman beings of the 18th century,or of any century.
André Michaux was born near Versailles in France, a child of farmers on the King’s estate. Michaux studied under the preeminent French botanists of the age and became the Royal Botanist serving the King as a naturalist, explorer and collector. One of his first missions was to the Middle East and on his return, he was given the plum job of a ten-year scientific mission to North America. While there, he traveled as far west as the Mississippi, north to Canada and south to Florida and the Bahamas. He was friends with America’s leading botanist William Bartram, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
He established two gardens in North America: one in New Jersey, the other in South Carolina and introduced many new plants to North America. Michaux shipped to France between 60-70,000 trees to replenish its forests that had been decimated by war as well as many new plant specimens. Upon his return to France, the monarchy had been abolished and as a result so were Michaux’s financial resources. As a result, he began to write books and undertook an expedition to the South Seas where he died of a tropical fever.
Hundreds of plants new to science bear his name. Even today, each year botanists from North America make the pilgrimage to Paris to study plants in the Herbarium Michaux housed in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle.
Image: The Original Library as published in the August 10, 1831 edition of the New England Farmer. The Society posted its notices, reports, letters and other important documents in this publication.
Update ― Pamphlets
Last month we talked about our Pamphlet Collection. In 2000, the Pamphlet Collection was transferred from the Society’s Library in Boston to Elm Bank. We recently founded the original card catalog for those pamphlets and did a complete inventory. We are happy to report that all but one of the original 497 pamphlets are on the shelves. We hope to find the missing pamphlet as it is likely misplaced among other Library items.You can see all titles in the collection, including recent additions, in an updated searchable list on our webpage here.
Thank you to volunteer Iva Hayes for her assistance in verifying the inventory and affixing new labels to the documents that will facilitate locating and re-shelving the items.
In the Windows – Books on Plant Hunters
Our Collections are Growing…
Thank you to Alya Shklovskaya for her in-kind donation.
Come Visit…
The Library is open on Thursdays, starting April 1, 2021, 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 Mother’s Day and other gift giving events.
We are partnering with the Natick Public Library and have a Little Free Library right outside the Education Building’s front door. There you can access a wide variety of free books to take home, including horticultural magazines and books.
Garden Portraits: Experiences of Natural Beauty
by Larry Lederman (The Monacelli Press, $50.00)
Reviewed by Patrice Todisco
One of the primary challenges of capturing a garden's essence through photography is the ephemeral nature of time. With each hour of changing light and season, transformations occur. Unforeseen qualities may emerge (or disappear) in a matter of moments. Each moment is different with unique opportunities for exploration and revelation.
In Garden Portraits: Experiences of Natural Beauty, photographer Larry Lederman embraces this challenge through a series of photographic essays of sixteen gardens which he visits throughout multiple seasons and times of day to analyze their
design and study their character. Each garden has been created by deeply committed owners with the passion and financial means to create and maintain them as expressions of beauty and places of refuge, designed to nourish the spirit and feed the soul. In many senses it's a perfect alignment of interest.
As an observer, Lederman is patient. If a garden, as he professes, is a portal to the natural world, then a photograph is both a permanent record of a moment in time and an opportunity to "succinctly capture essence, plumb the ineffable, [and] touch the wellspring of wonder that birthed the gardens to begin with." As portraits his photographs seek to reveal the power and mystery of the unanticipated which are offered as "visual tone poems" that evoke the spirit of the place.
While each garden Lederman portrays is unique, most are located in the lower Hudson Valley and southern Connecticut. One is in the Hamptons. What they share is that they are large, complex, luxuriant and, by and large, privately owned. Richly layered and biodiverse, the gardens’ varied elements include water, woodland, meadow, farm fields, orchard, specimen trees and flowers. As a photographer, Lederman explores these elements in a painterly fashion, emphasizing the patterns and abstractions found in nature.
Many of the gardens profiled in Garden Portraits: Experiences of Natural Beauty were designed in partnership with prominent landscape architects and designers. Accompanying text, written by Thomas Christopher, provides insight into those relationships as each garden's design evolution is shared. We learn that when famous English horticulturalist Penelope Hobhouse visited the Cullman Garden and was asked what the garden was lacking, she responded, "Change nothing." Patrick Chassé, on his first visit to the Merrin Garden told the owners, "If you want to do a great garden, I'll work with you. If you don't want a great garden, I'm not your man." Thirty years later, he continues to work in partnership with the garden's owners, Edward and Vivian Merrin.
Photographs by Larry Lederman, courtesy of Monacelli Press.
It is both this sense of time and privilege which Lederman's garden portraits evoke. The gardens profiled have been thoughtfully chosen. Like all landscapes, they are constantly evolving, unfolding each season to reveal subtle changes. Like a Zen Master, Lederman is there to record those changes with his lens. As portraits, his images capture the subtle expressions of each garden's unique personality and spirit. "One of my greatest joys is when people come here and get to experience what I experience every day…" says Fred Landman, owner of Sleepy Cat Farm, in the book's concluding paragraph, "…It's a project of more than twenty-five years."
Patrice Todisco writes about parks and gardens at the award-winning blog, Landscape Notes.
April Horticultural Hints
by Betty Sanders
Lifetime Master Gardener
Spray dormant oil now to control mites and insects in your trees and shrubs. Commercial dormant oil sprays have an emulsifier added to allow the oil to mix with water. Spraying trees now, before buds break and leaves appear, will kill eggs and insects while not affecting foliage or harming birds or mammals.
In the flower garden. Any remaining perennial tops from last year should be cut off and removed before new growth begins. Perennials and bulbs can be fertilized with a small amount of fertilizer applied around (not on) the plants. A thin top dressing of compost around the plant will enrich the soil.
Resist the temptation to apply mulch. Applied too early (and April is too early in Massachusetts), the mulch will slow down your garden by acting as a blanket, preventing warming and keeping the soil colder than the air. Later on (say, in May), those 2 to 3 inches of mulch will keep down weeds and dress up your garden.
Strawberries. Start your strawberry bed as soon as the soil can be worked. For new plants, start a new raised bed by creating one at least eight inches deep using a mixture of good soil and aged manure or compost. Because strawberries prefer to grow in a somewhat acidic environment, test the soil for ph and, if it is greater than 6, amend the soil as needed with lime. Make the holes about 8 inches deep, then create a small mound of soil in the center. Fan the roots over the mound so they are spread throughout the hole. Be certain the crown of the strawberry is placed so that it is half under the level of the bed and half above when the soil has been firmed in place. This way it will not be likely to rot or be smothered. Water thoroughly and mulch. Heat treated shredded straw makes an excellent weed free mulch that will also keep developing berries clean.
Check before you sow early vegetables. The best test of soil readiness for a home gardener is to take a small handful of soil and squeeze. If it holds together a wet clump, or heavens forbid, water squeezes out, you need to wait and hope for sunny dry days. Seeds put into cold wet soil will rot. Soil should crumble apart like chocolate cake. Further, working wet soil with tiller or spade will destroy the soil’s structure. But as soon as it is ready, plant peas and turnips, onion sets and spinach, cabbage and lettuce.
What, and what not, to prune. Everyone likes to prune in April, but follow these guidelines: Prune spring blooming trees and shrubs only after the
flowers are finished. Don’t be in a hurry to prune off brown areas on evergreens. They often will regrow the needles that have suffered winter kill. A light scratch with your fingernail on the branch will show green if the wood there is still alive. If you have fall-flowering shrubs, this is your last call to prune them.
