Gardens do not just spring into life from nowhere. The essence of gardening is contemplation, consideration and imagination. An engagement must emerge with place, with landscape, history, ecology and design intent. The possible must be separated from the impossible, the boundaries tested. A new garden is a series of experiments—a living, moving art form. One with a plan, but with acceptance that such a plan is fleeting, hopeful and ultimately will not survive contact with nature and people but must rather evolve. It is why there is joy in the winter, in planning, hoping and anticipating.
In many ways, an organization is similar. Before the growth comes a plan, but one that can flex, can adapt to the particular history, place and circumstances. That recognizes that people must be at its heart, and that it must evolve.
These past months MHS has been through such a process. The senior team and board have considered, contemplated and planned. And we have set a purpose and a course. One that has structure and rhythm and purpose, that can adapt and evolve without breaking, that brings meaning and inspiration.
Over the coming months and years, we believe that there will be ever more visible and vibrant growth from the hidden work undertaken this past year. The Garden at Elm Bank will slowly evolve with us. The historic Olmsted Landscape will slowly emerge again, and MHS will move purposefully into our community with programs designed to get everyone growing together.
I am most thankful for each one of our members, new and longstanding, for your support of MHS. From our inception in 1829 we have had this motto—‘for the public good.’ In 2021 this has been reaffirmed internally and we look to each of you to make it true in every program and activity that we undertake. I look forward to sharing with you in coming months exactly how we intend to do so.
We've still got plenty of summer left, and plenty of summer concerts! Bring friends, bring a blanket or chair, bring food, and get ready for some great shows!
Sigalit Landau, Salt Stalagmite #1 [Three Bridges], (detail), 2021
Opening next month, Seeing the Invisible is an unprecedented new global exhibition bringing the digital experience into the physical world. This international collaboration features work by over a dozen leading artists from across the globe. Stay tuned and sign up below for updates!
Earlier this spring Deborah presented her sold out lecture, A Piet Oudolf Story. Now it’s time to see her work! Join us for a guided tour of Deborah Chud’s Piet Oudolf inspired garden. Located in the Boston/Chestnut Hill area, Deborah Chud embarked on a five-year journey that has resulted in an in-depth knowledge of Oudolf designs and an unprecedented understanding of what makes Oudolf’s gardens so mesmerizing. This tour is EXTREMELY LIMITED in size. Get your tickets early before they sell out! Sturdy footwear recommended for possibly wet grass, gravel, and inclines.
"A clever comic whirlwind about a gardener with supernatural secrets." Courtesy of Huntington Theatre Company, our members will receive a discount of $10 off tickets. Use code HD10 at checkout! The show runs August 27-September 26, 2021.
We are currently accepting tree donations for our 2021 Festival of Trees. If you or your organization wish to sponsor or provide a tree please complete the form at the link below and email it to festivaloftrees@masshort.org
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 the Maple Grove garden.
Natural Lawn Alternatives
Grass can be a lot of upkeep, with fertilizing, weeding, watering, and cutting. There are many alternatives if you're looking for plants that are drought-tolerant and fast-growing. Here are some natural lawn alternatives if you're looking to fill in some spaces with new plants, or if you're looking to replace your grass lawn entirely!
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!
Boston Outdoor Preschool Network (BOPN) is thrilled to announce the addition of a new full day toddler and preschool class at Mass Hort! Opening in September 2021, the full day class will operate Monday through Friday, 8:30am-4pm, and will serve children ages 15 months through 6 years. Children in the full day class will spend most of their day outside exploring nature and will also have a classroom in the Education Building for lunch,
rest time, and child-led learning and play. BOPN also offers half-
day preschool and summer program at Mass Hort for ages 2.9 through 7 years old. BOPN remains committed to connecting children with meaningful experiences in nature, honoring child-directed learning and play, and a deep nature connection. Enrollment is open now.
Featured Articles
The Fragrance Dimension in Your Garden
The Abandoned Garden
From the Stacks
'England's Magnificent Gardens' Book Review
August Horticultural Hints
The Fragrance Dimension in Your Garden
By Wayne Mezitt
MHS Trustee
Of all our human senses, our sense of smell is surprisingly-often not considered as we plan our gardens. Human olfactory perception is widely considered one of the most important elements in forming and recalling experiences. Certain odors evoke specific memories and images, creating pleasurable associations in our minds, so the fragrance factor can play an important role in the enjoyment of our gardens.
Recall the rich aroma of moist, freshly-turned soil in your spring garden, the unmistakable tang of a just-mowed lawn, the sharply-pungent air following a summer thundershower. These distinctive aromas occur when specific fragrance molecules are released into the air to be picked up by odor receptors in our nose. Similarly, fragrant plants release aroma molecules in ways that include movement of the air, touching or brushing-by plant parts, crushing or rubbing leaves and stems, and even merely the heat of the sun. Interestingly, fragrant plants tend to be avoided by deer, rodents and many undesirable insects, even as they attract beneficial pollinators.
Mention fragrance, and most people instinctively think first of flowers. In nature it seems that flowers first evolved to ensure species survival by enabling the plant to produce the next generation. Pollinators like bees and butterflies are attracted to bright colors and odors that appeal to them, and their activity enables the flowers to set seed. As compensation for their lack of visual attraction to pollinators, highly fragrant flowers often tend to be the least colorful (although plant hybridizers continue to develop plants that combine both color and fragrance).
Each season offers its own fragrant flower choices: witch-hazel (Hamamelis), daffodils and Daphne open the spring, soon followed by lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria), Viburnum, lilacs (Syringa), mock-orange, honeysuckle and the roses. Summertime features phlox, daylilies
Clethra ‘Ruby Spice’
(Hemerocallis) and lilies, summersweet (Clethra), butterfly-bush (Buddleia), and the Summer Azaleas (Rh. arborescens &viscosum). Many tropical and annual plants also feature scented flowers.
The aroma of leaves, stems and other plant parts can be even more powerful than flower fragrance in the garden. The plants we call “herbs”, like rosemary, thyme, lavender, basil, oregano and mint, are most obvious for their foliage fragrance. Other herbaceous perennials with aromatic foliage include yarrow (Achillea), hyssop (Agastache), mugwort/wormwood (Artemesia), bluebeard (Caryopteris), sweet woodruff (Galium), bigroot cranesbill (Geranium macrorrhizum cultivars), beebalm/bergamot (Monarda), sage and Russian sage (Salvia and Perovskia), and lavender cotton (Santolina). All these plants are suitable for New England gardens, many are drought tolerant, and some even have distinctive silvery-colored leaves that add to their visual appeal.
Woody plants hold their form and often their foliage year-round; these are some that feature fragrant leaves or stems: sweetfern (Comptonia); conifers like fir (Abies), juniper, pine (Pinus), spruce (Picea); many of the small-leaf Early Rhododendrons like ‘PJM’, ’April Snow’, ‘Olga Mezitt’; Sassafras; Viburnum sieboldii; chaste-tree (Vitex).
Choose locations for plants that release their fragrance when brushed along a pathway or beside a gate or doorway so they are easily touched when passing by. Try some in pots for a movable fragrant landscape. Aromatic groundcover types are good for planting in the walkway, between stepping stones and along the edges of a deck or patio where they are underfoot. Choose a site for those that emit pleasant aroma as air moves around them downwind from gathering areas, around the edges of a pond or lawn or deck, or outside your bedroom window.
Each of us differs somewhat on how we perceive fragrances. Some of the odors that we find appealing are less enjoyable to others. By choosing those plants that offer the aromas we enjoy, and by placing them in appropriate locations in our gardens, we can easily take advantage of this often-underutilized dimension for the enjoyment of our outdoor spaces.
It has taken me almost twelve years to realize this, but I now understand my wife and I run the gardening equivalent of a pet adoption service.
Think about this: at an animal shelter or similar organization, there is a never-ending demand for kittens and puppies. Why? Because, with a newly-weaned domesticated animal, all things are possible. You will instantly bond with an adorable creature than will reward you with years of unstinting love and affection.
What’s wrong with an older animal? Sure, they’re still attractive, but you know from experience there are going to be vet bills, litter tracks in the laundry room, chewed shoes, and inexplicable sullen moods. Adult pets are a hard sell.
An overgrown community garden plot
Now, think about this: Every February, my wife Betty and I announce the availability of our town’s 80 community garden plots. Returning gardeners and would-be newbies beat a path to our door to sign up. They uniformly have vision of lush, verdant plots overrun with pestilence-free zucchini, tomatoes,
beans, and herbs. Humans, it seems, have a love affair with the gardens they have not yet planted.
Even in May and June, if a gardener finds his or her plans have changed, filling the space is as simple as putting out an announcement to existing plot-holders that an additional space is available. We choose a replacement by lottery from as many as a dozen applicants.
But, what about the end of July? That is another story.
On July 16, I received this email from a third-year gardener: Hi Neal, Our plot is all cleared out and available for someone else as we don’t need it anymore.
No explanation. Not even a ‘sorry to leave you in the lurch’ post script. Just a 600-square-foot space with weeds. The fence had been taken down and the vegetables removed.
There is no value in getting angry in such circumstances. It is possible some tragedy befell the departing gardener’s family (though leaving up the fence for the balance of the season would have been a nice gesture). I would feel awful sending out a blistering reply to the issuer of that email, only to learn of a death or life-threatening disease casting a pall over the family. On the other hand, it is also possible the gardener was offered a house on the Cape for the month of August, or just got tired of waiting for the rain to stop.
No matter the reason, I was left with the equivalent of a middle-aged dog or cat. The question on the table was, how do we make this animal adoptable?
The key problem is called ‘growing season days remaining’. The first frost can come in mid-September. In short, the remaining growing season is 60-65 days. Not to mention you can’t buy (short of emptying your IRA) fencing or stakes. Or plants. Or any seed package you’d be proud to plant. We didn’t have just a middle-aged dog on our hands: we had one with arthritis, worms, and a heart murmur.
So, what did I do? The only thing I could do. As soon as I read the message we headed straight to the garden. I dug a new trench for a fence. Betty weeded prodigiously. I raided the community garden’s shed (where gardeners can over-winter their supplies) for a gate and enough stakes and fencing to make the garden usable. (I will send apology letters to those whose ‘reserve’ materials I purloined, with a promise to put the materials back where I found them.)
In four days, a fence went up
The garden after getting cleaned and refenced
around a clean, weed-free garden plot. Work investment? Between the two of us, about 25 hours of very hard and sweaty labor.
Then, I started the process of giving it away. Not all of it to one person: no one is willing to make that investment in energy. Instead, I offered it in pieces: six, 100-square-foot parcels suitable for a square of corn, a mound for pumpkins, or a few rows of lettuce or beets. A good community garden manager keeps a mental inventory of plot holders who have sighed and said, “If I only had a little more sunlight…” or “I would love to grow tomatillos but they take so much space…”
The garden after being replanted
By the end of the week, the garden was filled.
A fair question to ask is why I didn’t see it coming. I sort of did. I regularly walk the paths of the garden’s acre-plus and look in on each of the 80 plots. I check for a lot of things but, mostly, I check for effort. I am the Garden Ogre, but I try to be a patient ogre. We’re all volunteers here. I nudge, I cajole, I offer encouragement. I don’t want to throw people out of the garden; I want them to abide
by the garden’s guidelines, enjoy themselves, and come back next year.
In mid-June, following one of my walks, I sent the gardener a note and a photo of a weedy area of the plot. Usually, my ‘Ogre-grams’ draw a response along the lines of ‘I’ll take care of it this week.’ The one to this gardener earned me the reply, “I disagree about the weeds. Other gardens look worse.”
Thus began a back-and-forth that ended with that July ‘adios’ email. No matter; the space has been filled by ‘good’ gardeners who appreciate the extra space.
Neal Sanders’ newest mystery, ‘Murder Brushed with Gold’ was published earlier this year. You can find it at Amazon.com and in bookstores.
From the Stacks
By Maureen T. O’Brien
Library Manager
"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
Featured Collection―Honorary Medals
We honor outstanding work and accomplishment with public recognition and awards. Publicizing the honorees and the award ceremony raises public awareness of their work and its importance to society for something that may otherwise go unnoticed. The award need not be monetary, as the award alone provides satisfaction on both the giver and the recipient.
The Society’s 1829 Constitution recognized the importance of rewarding accomplishments in horticulture. At that time, its awards were monetary but as early as 1845, the Society began to award medals and plates. By the early 20th century, cash payments were eliminated and the award process was redefined. In addition to awards at exhibitions and for excellence in garden design, the Society initiated a program to annually bestow medals to
George Robert White Medal of Honor,
the highest award of the Society.
recipients that represented the highest standards of horticulture, its honorary medals.
One of the frequent questions that the Library receives concerns awards. Often time consuming, a project was started to researching and consolidating the history of the Honorary Medals of the Society. You can see the results here. There is still formation to add as we delve deeper into our Archives. Thank you to volunteers Kathy Trumbull, Karen Mallozzi, Heidi Kost-Gross, Maureen Horn and Jennifer Wilton for their assistance on this project. Future projects will cover awards at exhibitions and by the Visiting Garden Committee.
In the Windows―Books on Winners and Books for Sale
Our Collections are Growing…
Thank you to the New England Herb Society for its generous donation of books that complements our collections perfectly. Also thank you to Andrea Schoenfeld for her in kind donation of seed catalogs.
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.
England's Magnificent Gardens
Reviewed by Patrice Todisco
Leaflet Contributor
Gardening made history during the pandemic, skyrocketing in popularity in a global boom not seen since the Victory Garden movement of World Wars I and II. Seed sales soared with Burpee selling more seed than any time in its history, Johnny's Selected Seed's posting a 270% increase in spring sales and Stokes Seed Company selling four times its normal amount of gardening products.
England's Magnificent Gardens: How a Billion-Dollar Industry Transformed a Nation, from Charles ll to Today by Roderick Floud (Pantheon Books, 432 pages, $40.00)
Yet for all its popularity, the full economic impact of the garden industry has not been fully appreciated, much less cohesively studied. In England's Magnificent Gardens economic historian Sir Roderick Floud addresses this oversight by asking a basic question—during three hundred years of English gardening and landscaping history how much did gardens cost to make and maintain?
The amount of money spent on making and maintaining gardens, when translated into modern values is staggering. We learn that between 1762 and 1779, at
the height of his career, Capability Brown, the original "design and build landscape architect," had an annual income that exceeded $25.6 million in modern value and surpassed $64 million on two occasions. By comparison London's Royal Parks and Gardens, paid for by the public, are conservatively estimated to have cost $19.2 million in modern values annually or $6.4 billion over 350 years. A relative bargain.
Floud calculates the cost of making and maintaining a garden within the context of the cost of other items at the time based on average earnings and the economic conditions of the period. These amounts are translated into modern values and converted to both pounds and dollars. Comparisons to contemporary garden expenditures are provided. Both privately and publicly financed gardens are included.
A chapter is devoted to the practice of garden design and the role of designers should you, like me, be fascinated by the vast amount of money Capability Brown earned. Floud clarifies that the practice of landscape and garden design has changed considerably over time, evolving from a gentleman's pursuit to a profession. He examines how status and networking were critical to the success of early garden designers. As for Capability Brown and his enormous earnings, he designed and managed large, complex, projects, engaging hundreds in sophisticated feats of engineering and construction.
The sums of money spent on gardens continues to be huge. Annual U.K. expenditures on nurseries, garden centers and landscape contractors equal more than $14.1 billion, which does not include the amount spent on paid gardeners, value of the labor of garden owners or the cost of the land that is used. Gardens occupy two percent of the U.K. land surface which if made available for building is valued at a minimum of $960 billion. Should you want to exhibit at the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show it will set you back $1.3 million.
Floud maintains that gardening is "one of the earliest and largest of the creative industries that play an increasingly large role in England's economy and society, yet it remains undervalued." To that end he details its influence on innovation and technology, reminding us that the canals and lakes of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gardens anticipated the canal networks of the Industrial Revolution, the iron and glass used in greenhouses to provide light and air to plants transformed buildings worldwide, central heating was developed for plants before people, and steam engines were used in gardens years before manufacturing.
Synthesizing garden, social, cultural and economic history in a compelling and highly readable manner Floud has created something new and noteworthy—offering insights into garden history that are important and transformational. As such he invites others to use his work as a launch for further inquiry and England's Magnificent Gardens as an invitation to explore the financial underpinnings of the more than 1,500 listed gardens in Britain of historical interest. Are the British unusual in the amount of money they spent and continue to spend on gardens and gardening? He challenges others to investigate.
For centuries gardening has been one of England's greatest industries yet it has not been recognized as such. Why does it matter? Floud reminds us that without proper recognition and understanding of the value that gardens and gardening play in the economy there is a lack of governmental support for the resources necessary to fund horticultural education and park maintenance and operations. Plant nurseries that are undervalued and not viewed as important as other types of manufacturing are susceptible to land development. The green fabric of the country, so critical to its identity, is at threatened.
If you are hesitant to read an economic history of England's gardens as a summer title I encourage you to reconsider. England's Magnificent Gardens is engaging, imminently readable and will appeal to a broad audience. Floud is an economist who fortunately loves gardens much to our benefit.
Patrice Todisco writes about parks and gardens at the award-winning blog, Landscape Notes.
August Horticultural Hints
by Betty Sanders
Leaflet Contributor
The season is far from over. Yes, the beach or the lake beckons, and you feel as though you’ve been on a kneeling pad forever. It’s easy to say it’s time to relax. August, though, is the month all that work comes together.
In the garden. Keep weeding! The weed seeds you prevent now are the weeds you won’t have to pull next year. And, keep your garden clean. Take off any leaves infected with mildew or other diseases and place them in the trash (never the composter) along with the weeds you pulled. It is better to sacrifice one plant with persistent problems than to allow it to spread throughout your garden.
Remove spent flowers from perennials and annuals. Your goal is more flowers, not seeds. Keep the flowers coming by encouraging the plant to use its energy to set more buds. Keep your garden looking at its best by cutting back any plant that has finished flowering, leaving enough foliage to add energy to the roots but allowing space for the late bloomers to shine.
You can get an extra bloom out of your annuals by deadheading spent flowers in August
August brings the insect hordes. Always treat insects with the least toxic methods available. Most of the insects you see do little or no damage to plants and can be left alone. Those seriously damaging plants can sometimes be removed with a hard spray from a hose which sends them to the ground where they become other bugs’ dinner. Others can be hand-picked. (no one ever said gardening was easy!)
Keep picking from your garden
In the vegetable garden. Keep picking! If you let cucumbers or squash, beans or any other vegetable over-ripen - producing seeds - the plant will think its work is done and stop producing flowers and setting fruit. Replant peas, beets, green beans and lettuce and you’ll have a new crop in September. In late August, remove flowers from tomato plants. There’s not enough time for them to set fruit and ripen before frost. And. removing new
flowers tells the plant to devote its energy to growing and ripening the fruit already in the vine.
Time to plan next year’s garden. August is the month to order spring bulbs. You will have the best selection from any grower if you order early. Tulips, daffodils and other spring beauties don’t want to go into the ground until the soil temperature has dropped to 55 degrees and you are turning on your car heater in the morning. Look at photos you took this spring and judge where more bulbs are needed. When you plant, remember bulbs look best in groups, single bulbs spread out along a border or walkway have very little visual impact. If you sometimes have visits from Bambi and Thumper, daffodils and hyacinths are deer resistant, tulips are deer (and rabbit) candy.
Look for sales. If woody plants are on sale, shrubs like winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata) and red twig dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) add structure and color while trees such as paperbark maples show off beautiful bark in the winter landscape. Many garden centers have begun discounting plants, but there is still time for new trees and shrubs to settle in before the ground freezes.
MHS is switching to electric and needs your help. A donation to our green mower fund of $139 will take the equivalent of one car off the road for 5 years. That’s just $2.32 each month! Your donation will help reduce air pollution so that we can go green by mowing green!
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.
David Epstein’s Ch. 4 Horticultural Segments
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
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!
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