The Little Blue Geranium That Connects Two Bressingham Gardens 

The Bressingham garden at Elm Bank is a popular garden that Massachusetts Horticultural Society members and visitors enjoy throughout the seasons. The garden's beautiful design engages the senses as one wanders the pathways between the beds of perennials, shrubs, trees, and grasses.

Adrian Bloom, nurseryman and gardens designer, wanted to connect the Bressingham name to the garden and did so with an army of volunteers, including Master Gardeners, when he created the garden at Elm Bank during a few very hot days in August 2007. Adrian has since developed other gardens at Bressingham, in Germany and of course in the U.S.A., the culmination of which is the ambitious one acre garden at Elm Bank. He notes: "The informal curves, the island beds, plants and plant combinations are in many ways similar to those used in my own now 17 acre Bressingham Gardens at Bressingham, Norfolk, England."

And that brings us to that little blue geranium.  The "river of Geranium Rozanne" is a central design element in Adrian's gardens.  Recently, Geranium Rozanne ('Gerwat') was chosen by the public as RHS Chelsea Flower Show Plant of the Centenary.  (Mass Hort members contributed to the vote!) Geranium Rozanne ('Gerwat') was first exhibited at the show in 2000. Tall and fast-growing, with violet-blue flowers streaked with red, it is one of the best known hardy geranium cultivars.  Mass Hort may well be able to boast that the Elm Bank "river of Geranium Rozanne" is  the longest in the world.

At Mass Hort, we value our connection across the pond to Adrian's home garden. For those of you who are inspired by Mass Hort's Bressingham Garden, Adrian Bloom and Allan Armitage invite you for a five day educational visit to the Bressingham Gardens in England, September 1-7,2013.  They hope some of you as keen gardeners or professional horticulturists are able to join the trip. It would not only be a fun visit but, perhaps being the first of its kind, be a unique horticultural experience. To learn more about this fabulous trip, contact: amarmitage@earthlink.net   or go to http://allanarmitage.net/garden_vistas for details.

The Bressingham Garden at Elm Bank offers a unique landscape for enjoyment and education. It is only with your ongoing support that we can care for and maintain this beautiful landscape and all of our gardens at Elm Bank.  If you haven't already contributed to our spring appeal, please consider a gift for the on-going care and maintenance so that we preserve the gardens at Elm Bank and fulfill our mission to encourage the science and practice of horticulture and to develop the public's enjoyment, appreciation, and understanding of plants and the environment. Click here to make a secure online donation.

Thank you. Please come and visit us in the gardens.

Warm regards,

Kathy

On Thursday, May 23, 2013, Mass Hort received a grant from the Youth in Philanthropy Program, a subset of the Foundation for Metrowest, in support of the Plantmobile youth education program. This grant will enable Mass Hort's Plantmobile to visit 15 additional classrooms, parks programs, or Metrowest town events. To learn more about the Plantmobile program as well as all the educational offerings Mass Hort has, click here.  To learn more about Youth in Philanthropy, click here.

When I was approached about joining Mass Hort to coordinate the Garden to Table program I was excited. For me, this program offered me the opportunity to pull together most of the things that I enjoy doing, which is building programs, managing activities, and connecting many of the threads of my background - food and gardening . I love to garden, and am the VP of historic Stearns Farm CSA. I love to cook and am a proud member and VP of the North East Chapter of Les Dames Escoffier.  The Blank canvas of the garden presented me with a very challenging and enjoyable opportunity to broaden the scope of our program and offer our members and the community the opportunity to learn about the many culinary aspects of gardening, cooking and preserving.

A very interesting collaboration was formed between the Jean Mayer USA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, one of the few federally funded USDA research centers in the US.  Our program titled Talk and Taste involves a horticulturist, a chef and a nutritionist.

Additionally, we started a program with the Massachusetts Hospital Association to add content to their HEALING program. We are proud that they have asked us to help them with their garden initiative.

With other planning in place, sponsorship of the garden is a priority I was so fortunate to have a beautiful video to use as the best marketing tool I could have imagined.  All the words, meetings, and lengthy discussions would not prove to be as successful as merely sharing this video to potential sponsors. The video can be found on our website.

As a result, we secured the financial sponsorship of private individuals as well as Beth Israel Needham and Newton Wellesley Hospitals,  Stop and Shop and Roche Brothers Supermarkets, Victoria Gourmet (Spice Company), Johnny's Seed, Norse Berry Farm., Blue Ginger, Not Your Average Joes and others to come.

Our tasting event with Chef John Lawrence from Peppers Fine Foods in the beautiful Crockett Garden was a great success.

If your interests are preserving, learn with Jane Lyon owner of Pioneer Valley Vinegar Works how to make it, cook with it and enjoy it, or Preserve your harvest with Bonnie Shershow of Bonnies' Jams. Noted Cookbook author Marissa McClellan will teach us all about canning.

If you are interests are geared more towards local plants and their uses, join us with Steph Aabel, who is a curator at the Harvard University Herbaria. Steph will teach us how to use some of the plants around using various ways to improve our health. We will learn about herbal infusions, tinctures, oils and wines.

If you are like me and find yourself with an abundance of produce from your garden, or Csa and wonder what to do with your garden crop , mark June 26th on your calendar and attend Going Local without Going Crazy, Julia Shanks will help us understand how to bring healthy, local foods into our kitchens and provide tips on how to increase our local footprints.

There is something for everyone! Join us, if you want to start a garden for pure enjoyment, survival, or just to come, learn, grow and join our table at one of our many exciting upcoming events.

Drought to torrential rain, frost to a heat wave, has made spring gardening in the Garden to Table Vegetable garden a challenge this year.

But with the help of lots of volunteers we have made our first harvest of lettuce, radishes, spinach, and tatsoi (an Asian green) and it was enthusiastically received by a local food pantry.  We'll soon be adding beets and salad turnips to the early crops ready to pick.

We've also planted many other crops including beans, onions, carrots, herbs, and everyone's favorite, tomatoes.  Over the next few weeks we'll add heat loving crops like summer squash, peppers, eggplants, and many less well known crops from American and international cuisines.

If you'd like to see the garden for yourself, we're there to harvest on Monday and Thursday mornings between 9 and noon, and visitors and volunteers are always welcome.  We're also having a hands-on learning day in the garden on Saturday, June 22nd, as a follow-up to June 20th's Thursday Night at the Hort's lecture on Vegetable Gardening for Everyone.   Come, learn, and grow in our garden!

$10 off a Massachusetts Horticultural Society Membership...

Give your father or loved one a special gift at a special price!  Mass Hort Member benefits include a $25 gift certificate to Weston Nurseries, a $25 gift certificate to White Flower Farm, a 10% discount at over 70 nurseries and garden centers, a subscription to Organic Gardening Magazine, 2014 Flower Show Ticket(s) and much more!

Individual Membership: $40 (regularly $50)

Family Membership: $75 (regularly $85)

Supporter Membership: $165 (regularly $175)

CLICK HERE TO BUY OR CALL 617-933-4963

Offer valid through and including June 16, 2013

Our beautiful boxwoods are under attack by a new disease.  First seen in England in the 1990's, the blight was found in North Carolina and Connecticut in late 2011.  By last year it had shown up in ten states, including Massachusetts.  Boxwood blight is new fungal disease which is not cured by any current fungicides.

All  boxwood, including the popular 'English' and 'American' varieties, are susceptible to the disease.  Other members of the boxwood family, Pachysandra terminalis (Allegheny spurge) and Pachysandra procumbens ( 'Japanese' pachysandra) as well as members of the Saracoccca species are also attacked by this pathogen.

What does it look like? The blight begins with dark or light brown spots or lesions on the leaves.  The leaves turn brown, fall off while the stems develop brown or black lesions. The leaves are lost very quickly after the first signs of the disease appear.  The roots are not attacked and the plant may try to put out fresh leaves.  Repeated defoliations will kill the plants that don't die immediately.

How does it spread? The fungal spores are spread by both wind and water (rain or sprinklers).  Because they are sticky, they are probably also spread by animals including birds and contaminated clothing and tools. Disease spore on infected leaves that have fallen to the ground can survive five years. But researchers believe that currently the most common method of transmission is when supposedly 'clean' plants are brought into an area of established boxwood.  The carriers may be asymptomatic because they were treated with fungicides that have masked, but not killed the disease. 

Boxwood blight (courtesy Mass Nurseryman's Association)

Warm and humid conditions create an environment where the fungus spreads quickly.  Only high humidity or water on the leaves, not a wound on the plant, is required for the fungus to infect the plant.

There is no known cure.  Fungicides intended to prevent the spread of the disease must be applied to both sides of every leaf and all of the stems.  When you think of how closely spaced boxwood leaves are, you realize that this is probably not a practical  method for the homeowner.

How do I protect my boxwood?  Think carefully before buying any new boxwood until research finds a cure.  If you do buy boxwood, buy only from reputable nurseries.  Once the plant is home, isolate it for a month or longer.

Water your boxwood via drip irrigation, never with overhead sprinklers.  Don't prune, examine or otherwise work with wet boxwood.  Clean your tools and replace your gloves before going from one plant to the next.

Boxwood blight begins as small circular lesions on leaves (photo courtesy Conn. Dept. of Agriculture)

If you think you have an infected plant, remove it, bag it in plastic and place it away from any other boxwood.  Send a sample to a lab for confirmation.  There are several treatable diseases that share symptoms with the new boxwood blight.

If you are replanting an area where boxwood grew, consider another species outside the Buxus (boxwood) family.

Many researchers are working on finding a cure or a control for Boxwood Blight.  Updates can be found on the Connecticut state website (www.ct/gov/caes/pdio) and the ALNA website (www.BoxwoodBlight.org).

By Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor

Growing up in Florida, I was painfully aware that my home state was - pest-wise - a national laughingstock. Every week, it seemed, the pages of Time magazine or the evening news had stories about walking catfish; giant African snails that could eat the paint off of your house; and a large toad, bufo marinus that, when licked, produced a hallucinogenic reaction (although exactly how this was discovered remains a mystery I have declined to ponder).  

 

My assumption was that the rest of the country was some kind of an agricultural paradise and that New England, with its wholesome Norman Rockwell image, was a place where having a garden was a pleasure. The growing season would begin on the first day of spring and conclude with a golden-hued harvest at Thanksgiving.

 

Time has taught me that you shouldn't believe everything you see on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. At the end of May, we consolidated the fifteen miserable kernels of corn that had sprouted (a one-third germination rate) into a single square and re-planted, hoping against hope that, perhaps by the middle of June, the soil temperature will warm up to 70 degrees and it will stop raining. Moreover, we have yet to pick a single leaf of lettuce or spinach off our miniscule plants and entire rows of other crops in our garden are nowhere to be seen.

 

But these are minor irritants compared to what is growing in my vegetable garden. What I have is a bumper crop of bindweed.

 

Bindweed, or Convolvulus arvensis to give the plant its proper name, is something that the national media chooses not to report on. It's a New England specialty, a weed with a 'particularly aggressive root and rhizome system', to quote the Cornell University Extension Service. What that means in plain English is that, once you get bindweed in your garden, you are consigned to pulling it out for all eternity. The reason you don't want bindweed in your garden in the first place is that it will climb other plants and kill them by taking their sunlight and water.  

We never had a bindweed problem until this year; it arrived via a neighboring plot. But here is how bad it is: a month ago, I systematically turned over the soil in our vegetable garden and took out a wheelbarrow full of bindweed roots. This morning, I noticed that little green shoots were poking above the surface in unplanted areas of the garden. And so, I decided to dig out the shoots, roots and all. I followed one slender, white root down a foot, where it began running horizontally, ending in a two-inch-long piece of 'old' root from our neighbor's garden that had been turned under by the tractor that plowed our garden last fall.  

Think about that: a tractor chops up a piece of bindweed root and buries it a foot down. That little piece of root survives being frozen over the winter. Come spring, it has the energy to send out a tendril eighteen inches in search of light. Now, repeat this concept several thousand times. I think I know where the idea for The Invasion of the Body Snatchers came from.

You are probably asking yourself, 'what about herbicides?' What, indeed. A friend recommended an organic solution, a product that is primarily clove oil. Spray it on anything. A day later, the leaves of the invasive weed or plant look like they've been scorched by fire and the root shrivels into nothingness. I sprayed this product on a patch of bindweed. Two days later, the leaves were crispy as advertised. I followed the roots down into the soil. They were prospering; pumping iron. A dozen new shoots already headed for the light.

How about one of those 'kills everything' kind of herbicides? I don't especially care to use them in my vegetable garden, but this was getting serious. The Royal Horticultural Society (bindweed, like Simon Cowell, is an unwanted European export to America) offered the bad news: Spraying in the early spring is 'generally less successful'. Instead, the RHS recommends that one wait patiently, sprayer in hand, until bindweed produces its morning glory-type flower (by which time it had taken over your garden). Even then, the Society cautions, because bindweed roots can reach out twenty feet or more, the herbicide may not reach the 'mother' root. In other words, abandon hope all ye who enter here.

I did find one glimmer of hope in my research. An enterprising gardener reported that she had eradicated bindweed from her garden. She diligently dug out every root every time a shoot broke the surface. She did this day after day, depriving the plant of photosynthesis. I should add, though, that it took eight years.

Florida ultimately capitalized on its exotic pests by creating things like the 'International Walking Catfish Derby' in which fish with rudimentary lungs travel several feet on their pectoral fins. I have sincere doubts that any such fun events are planned by New England gardeners wondering what to do with their bindweed.

by Betty Sanders

BettyOnGardening.com

Finally, summer!  It's been too cold/too dry/too wet and too hot, but it's now officially time to plant like it's summer.  Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, melons and all the other summer crops should go in the warmed ground now.   Plant annuals in the ground or in containers because the risk of a late frost is passed. 

A mulch of heat-treated straw keeps moisture in the soil and retards weeds

 

Peonies, rhodies and other spring bloomers.   When their blooms have died, it is time to prune spring blooming shrubs such as rhododendron, spirea and lilac; and trees such as  magnolia and  dogwood for size or shape.  Doing it now means you will not risk removing next year's flowers.  Even if you do not need to prune, remove all dead flower heads to eliminate a site for diseases and to conserve plant energy.      

 

In the vegetable garden.   After you've finished planting the summer crops, remember to mulch around them to reduce diseases caused by infected soil splashing up on leaves.  Early blight is the most common source of disease in growing tomatoes.  Endemic in our soil, early blight can cause damping-off, collar rot, stem cankers, leaf yellowing and drop, and fruit rot.  Two inches of shredded straw, chopped leaves, or other organic mulch will reduce your soil-borne diseases as well as keeping weeds down and the soil cooler and moister on hot days.

 

You should cease cutting asparagus by the end of June.  Because it is a heavy feeder, add a layer of compost or aged manure to feed the bed for next spring's crop. 

 

Pinch back the tops of annual herbs to promote bushier growth.  Herb flavors are strongest early in the day, so do your harvest then and refrigerate until you are ready to use them.

Pinch back annual herbs like basil to promote bushier growth

 

Replant crops such as corn and beans.  Put lettuce and other greens  in the garden where they will get some shade from taller crops during the heat of July and August.

 

Strawberries should be ripening soon.  Place a straw mulch under the berries to protect them from soil moisture and bugs.  Pick them in the morning after the dew has dried off to increase their 'shelf life.'  Water only with drip lines as overhead watering can spread disease.

 

Roses prove they are worth the effort this month. Whether you are cutting rose flowers to enjoy or trimming back those that have passed, always follow the five leaf rule.  Cut a rose branch just a quarter inch

When trimming roses, cut back to a five-leaflet leaf

above a five-leaflet leaf (see diagram).  This will allow the bush to grow from this spot.  The three-leaflet leaves do not have this ability.  Always use sharp clean clippers in order not to spread disease.  A quick dip in a bleach solution between plants will prevent future problems.

 

Lawn care.  Stop any lawn treatments during the heat of summer.  Move the mower blade to its highest setting, preferably three inches.  At that height the grass can shade out most weed and also keep its roots cooler during the hottest days. 

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Look for more gardening tips at BettyOnGardening.com.