For those who attended our Geniuses of Place symposium you're sure to remember John Phibbs, the acknowledged authority on Georgian landscapes, especially those by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton.
He's invited our members to join in his upcoming March series free of charge! Don't miss this opportunity to dive deeper into English style landscapes. See below to learn more about this upcoming course and how to RSVP. First session is this Saturday, March 6!
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.
Morning walks, lunch dates, and weekend meetups just got a whole lot better! The Gardens at Elm Bank will open for visitors on April 1 at 10am. Watch the bulbs pop, soak up the sun, and enjoy the new life in the garden.
P.S. Keep any eye on your email as we plan to welcome back our garden volunteers in the next week!
"Unlock the secrets of seeds and learn seed terminology and characteristics to improve your ability to choose the seed varieties that best meet your needs. In this session, we'll focus on vegetable seeds and navigate aspects of cultivar selection: maturity times, disease resistance, seed saving, and more. "
"On March 18th join Estate Historian, Jeff Groff, as he discusses these notable gardens, their different designers and styles—Victorian, French, Italian, and Colonial Revival—and their owners. Most are lost, but historic photos help recapture these elaborate gardens and their history. Estates that are featured include Dolobran and Allgates in Haverford, Bloomfield in Villanova, Penshurst in Penn Valley, and Timberline in Bryn Mawr."
This month we're highlighting Kennedy’s Country Gardens. Spring is around the corner, don't forget to flash your membership card for a 10% discount with any of our Green Partners.
Tokachi Millennium Forest: Pioneering a New Way of Gardening with Nature
March Horticultural Hints
Your at Home Personal Flower Show
by Wayne Mezitt
MHS Trustee
Logic tells us that just after Christmas time, hours of daylight began increasing, albeit only incrementally at first. Emotionally, daylight deficiency this time of year makes us rather dreary as we are deprived of sufficient opportunities to be outdoors. And this year is proving particularly frustrating with all its cold, persistent deep snow-cover and Covid concerns.
In past years the Spring Flower Shows were always major morale-boosters, enabling us to anticipate upcoming seasonal pleasures. But unfortunately, now, most of these events are cancelled or being conducted only virtually, so we can’t experience the same colors, fragrance and delight of being there. But if you have some early-blooming plants growing in your yard, all may not be lost; creating your own floral display indoors is a practical possibility, and it’s pretty simple to do.
“Forcing” is the term that describes the process that coaxes plants to break their dormancy and initiate their growth cycle in advance of their normal season, inducing them to leaf-out and their flowers to open. Nurseries usually force entire plants for their Flower Show displays; for most homeowners, this is not only impractical, but re-establishing the plant in the garden would be complicated. Cut branches can be just as successfully forced without causing damage to your plants.
The ideal types of branches to force are from those plants that naturally bloom early each spring in your garden, particularly witch-hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia cvs.), forsythia, cornelian cherry (Cornus mas), Lenten rose (Helleborus) and February daphne (Daphne mezereum); you may notice some of these already swelling their buds in your yard on warmer days. Additional possibilities include andromeda (Pieris), red maple (Acer rubrum), shadbush (Amelanchier) and quince (Chaenomeles).
The best time to force for indoor flowers is after the plant’s dormancy requirements have been satisfied, generally mid-February in this region. Choose an above-freezing day and select branches that display prominent flower buds. Use sharp shears, cut from a part of the plant that won’t compromise its upcoming “normal” flower display and consider how the branch will be displayed in your vase. Bring indoors, fill your container with water, arrange and trim the branches to an appropriate length and set the vessel in a bright location at room temperature.
Flowers should begin to emerge in a few days to a week or more. Your actual results will depend upon the type of plant, stage of dormancy, room temperature, light conditions and other factors. Once in bloom, flowers may last a few days or much longer, depending upon similar factors.
You may also want to try forcing plants that bloom a bit later in spring, including early rhododendrons (like PJM), early magnolias, flowering cherry (Prunus) and spicebush (Lindera). If you wait until late March, flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) and wisteria may also be successful.
This has been an emotionally challenging winter for many of us. Creating a personal preview of spring in your home with forced branches might be just what we need to prepare us for spring!
For the past dozen years, I’ve performed an end-of-winter task that is equal parts sheer joy and pulling teeth: I’ve re-assembled an ever-growing coterie of vegetable gardeners.
If you take the responsibility seriously, managing any community garden is not for the faint of heart. Managing one with 75 plots and 85 demanding gardening families is grounds for keeping a defibrillator close at hand, especially in an era when acceptable out-of-door activities are few and far between.
For me, the process began at the end of January with a review of the ‘Gardening Guidelines’. Don’t try to impose ‘rules’ on gardeners. ‘Rules’ smack of dictatorships. ‘Rules’ are totalitarian. ‘Guidelines’ are things everyone can agree to do, especially if they fit on one page. Betty and I reviewed and re-wrote the Guidelines with a view to addressing things that went wrong in 2020. For example, a woodchuck wrought destruction in one garden, so burying fences six inches was elevated from a ‘nice thing to do’ to something expected of every
plot holder. Because of overwhelming scientific evidence, plastic mulch (ground covers) went from being ‘discouraged’ to ‘banned’.
Once the Guidelines were ready, I emailed those gardeners who had left their plots in good condition at the end of the 2020 season. I told them to read the Guidelines and, if they were in agreement with them, they could claim their old plots for a new year. That was on February 1, and I gave them to the end of the month to get a check to me.
That’s when the ‘special requests’ began flooding in. Gardeners with half plots wanted to move up to full ones. Gardeners with full plots wanted to move to sunnier locations. Families that had co-gardened with other families wanted plots of their own.
Oh, and as all this was happening, the town asked how we could make the garden compliant with the ADA – the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Our goal in the Community Garden is to bring in new blood each year. Too many towns, we found, have gardens that are essentially hereditary. To us, that wasn’t fair and, to that end, we’ve expanded the garden twice and split large gardens in half. Our problem is that people don’t want to leave and as noted above, many of those half-plot holders want to move up to full plots.
In an average year, though, 15-20% of gardeners move from town, lose interest, or ‘age out’ (including children reaching an age that being with Mommy in the garden has lost its magic). In 2020, roughly ten gardeners dropped out due to Covid concerns. Those plots were immediately snapped up by a dozen replacements. This year is turning out to be anything but average. The renewal rate from 2020 is above 90% which means, if we give the ten gardeners who want to move up from half plots to full ones, there isn’t any room for new gardeners.
And so, we’re trying to expand the garden yet again – add ten full-size plots. Ground is supposed to be broken in March, but it’s weather-dependent and this has turned out to be a snowier-than-expected winter. I am crossing my fingers everything goes as planned because I’m also putting out the word to prospective new plot-holders. I have visions of my head on a pike.
The ADA compliance question is also turning out to be a surprise. We cast a fairly wide net looking for examples to follow. Almost all responses we received were of the ‘What a great idea!’ variety, and a few added, ‘Please let us know what you do so we can replicate it’, which was an encouraging reply but not especially helpful. As it turns out, accommodating gardeners with disabilities has not been on many town’s radar screens. We did find the gardens constructed as part of the Southwest Corridor project have special wheelchair-accessible raised beds, as does the Audubon Society’s Nature Center in Boston. We’ve submitted a proposal to our town’s Conservation Commission. It appears we’ll be trailblazers once again.
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
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Wanted an Early 21stCentury Book!
Do you have a copy of The American Meadow Garden: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn (Timber Press: 2009) by John Greenlee on your bookshelves? Would you like help in making room on your shelf for new books? If so, the Library would love to receive a donation of this out-of-print book! Then you could come visit it in the Library while we share it with other curious garden lovers. Interested? Please contact Maureen O’Brien at mobrien@masshort.org.
Thank you also to all who donated books for the ongoing book sale in the Library. We encourage you to visit when the Library reopens to browse our treasures and add to your own horticulture library.
Image: The 1899 and 1902 Reports of the School Garden Committee of the Society donated by Larry McClure. These will be added to our Pamphlet Collection that has the 1895, 1901 and 1904 Reports, also authored by Henry L. Clapp.
Featured Collection― Pamphlets
A pamphlet is a little booklet with a soft (usually paper) cover that briefly addresses a particular subject of interest. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word pamphlet comes from a generalized use of Pamphilet or Panflet, a familiar name of a Latin love poem that was popular in the 12th century. We love our pamphlets and have a collection of over 875. They cover a wide range of horticultural topics and several languages. We continue to add to our Pamphlet Collection for future generations.
We are rehousing and labeling our collection of pamphlets. Meanwhile you can view our holdings here.
Want to contact the Library?
While the Library is temporarily closed to visitors, you may contact Library Manager Maureen O’Brien at mobrien@masshort.org with any inquiries or comments.
We are looking forward to seeing you later in 2021. Meanwhile stay safe while planning your 2021 gardens.
Tokachi Millennium Forest: Pioneering a New Way of Gardening with Nature
by Dan Pearson with Midori Shintani (filbert press, 288 pages, $65.00)
Reviewed by Patrice Todisco
The winters are long and harsh on Hokkaido, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago. By September the leaves have turned color and snow will often linger on the ground throughout April. Yet, the island's landscape is lush during the summer months, when the hot sun, abundant moisture and reliably cool nighttime temperatures combine to create an accelerated growing season.
It is in this challenging landscape that the Tokachi Millennium Forest has emerged as one of the most exciting conservation/stewardship initiatives in recent years. Is it a park? Is it a garden? Is it a forest? The brainchild of newspaper business entrepreneur Mitsushige Hayashi, it is all and more—a dynamic landscape that fuses Eastern and Western design sensibilities to reconnect people with nature in a transformative manner.
In Tokachi Millennium Forest, British garden and landscape designer Dan Pearson and Japanese head gardener Midori Shintani share the story of the site's evolution and their ongoing collaboration to assure its success. Hayashi purchased the property just over twenty years ago, as an investment in the future. His goals to offset the carbon footprint of his business and prevent loss of habitat to agriculture and development were matched by his audacious desire to create a landscape that would be sustainable for a thousand years.
On every level and with every detail, the Tokachi Millennial Forest is envisioned as an environment in which the natural world, in all its intimacy, is revealed. At a time when Japan's population is increasingly urbanized, the park provides an opportunity to reconnect to the traditional Japanese view of nature in which spiritual powers infuse animate and inanimate objects. Its purpose is to inspire and educate to create a movement to build a harmonious relationship between mankind and the future.
A Master Plan by the Japanese firm Takano Landscape Planning developed a framework to create a park on the property. Pearson, celebrated for his naturalistic perennial plantings, was brought onboard to create a Garden Master Plan with the intent of adding another layer to the original design vision and enhancing its accessibility for visitors. His solution, a narrative of cohesive experiences appropriate to their settings and illustrative of something specific to the site, was placed within the context of a "walk that would reveal the park in an intimate way as the visitor moved through it."
Testing the idea of what a garden is in the conventional sense while respecting the spirit of the place, Pearson designed a series of garden spaces that drew inspiration from the surrounding landscape. The Earth Garden, the largest earth forming project he had ever done, provided a transition between the forest and the Hidaka mountains, enticing the visitor to move further into the park. The two-acre Meadow Garden, the first
naturalistic garden of its type in Japan, references shakkei, to incorporate the background landscape of the mountains into its composition, reframing it through the plantings to create intimate spaces to draw the world of plants into a new focus.
Viewed as a grand gesture, the Meadow Garden interprets the woodland floor in naturalistic plantings, a concept new to Japan. Planted with thirty-five thousand perennials, this is a highly dynamic and complex undertaking in which nineteen distinct planting mixes were combined in a deliberately random matrix, anchored by the surrounding trees, shrubs and key perennials. A chapter is devoted to the meadow plantings, detailing the plants used in each mix. These are also included in the end notes.
Midori arrived at the Tokachi Millennium Forest in 2008 as the Meadow Garden was being planted. As head gardener, she works in close partnership with Pearson. Their respect for each other and devotion to this particular place has evolved into a deep friendship. Midori's voice is heard throughout the book in a series of evocative essays that provide insight into the traditional Japanese view of nature and the experience of being in, rather than creating, the landscape. Her hope is that "the garden becomes a place where someone's heart returns, and where someone finds their own wild."
A series of productive gardens offer a traditional view of horticulture. Included is a kitchen garden where food is grown for the Garden Cafe, augmented by wild food foraged from the forest. There is a rose garden, planted with forty varieties that illustrate the flower's cultivation as a domestic plant through selection and horticulture, an orchard, and trial beds. Seasonal offerings from all of the productive gardens,
illustrating the Japanese concept of shun, are used in the cafe for a farm-to-table experience. The entire property is managed organically.
Pearson knew from the onset that working with the spirit of the place would humble. While changes to the landscape required boldness due to the property's vast scale, a sense of intimacy was also needed to allow opportunities for personal reflection and discovery. Ensuring the park's long-term viability requires that an enduring relationship with place be established with its ultimate success depending on future generations. This is not unlike the planet
we live on and one can only hope that this particular project, in this particular place, will serve as a model for many others.
Patrice Todisco writes about parks and gardens at the award-winning blog, Landscape Notes.
March Horticultural Hints
by Betty Sanders
Lifetime Master Gardener
The ground is still frozen but planning your 2021 garden should be well underway. If your flower and vegetable seed order hasn’t been sent in, do it quickly. When they arrive, check seeds packets for advice on when to start each variety of seed. Starting them too early often leads to leggy or weak seedlings from having spent too long waiting indoors for warm weather to arrive. Use only sterile soil mixes to prevent damping off (fungal growth) on seedlings.
Take a walk around your yard (staying off muddy ground) and enjoy the earliest flowers. Witch hazels (Hamamelis) are in bloom and cornelian dogwood (Cornus mas) are close behind. As snow cover gives way, look for hellebore blooms to put in an appearance along with the early bulbs such as snowdrops, Siberian squills and crocus. Don’t have any planted bulbs or early shrubs? Make notes on where they would look great
and take photos so you don’t forget why you need them.
With more sunlight coming in the windows, your houseplants should be waking up. If you haven’t already, begin fertilizing lightly to feed the new growth. Don’t forget to keep the humidity up with misting or pebble trays—our homes remain very dry as long as the heating systems are on. Trim off any ragged or weary leaves – the plant will look better immediately, and the new leaves will have room and light to grow.
There is more to gardening than plants. Use these cold and wet days to spruce up outdoor furniture—sand and refinish wood, remove rust and repaint metal. If your refurbishing work cries out for new fabric for the cushions, you’ll be glad you did it when you are ready to use them in the warm months.
Do you have early-season weeds popping up in your vegetable or flower garden? Spread newspapers or cardboard (not shiny or glossy paper!) over your bed now and weigh down with rocks. Remove the material when the soil has warmed enough to start planting, and you will have eliminated weeding those beds from your spring chores.
You can read more of Betty’s horticultural advice on her website
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