Dear Friends,

 

I hope you and your family are enjoying the summer! Please mark your calendar for July 20th and join us for a Members' Picnic in the Maple Grove to hear music by LiveWire!

 

Best regards,

Kathy

  

Wouldn't you like to have a say in the 2014 American Garden Award competition? This year's plant contestants are Celosia "Arrabona Red", Cuphea "Sriracha Violet", Foxglove Digiplexis "Illumination Flame", and Petunia "Sanguna Radiant Blue". Mass Hort's Goddess Garden is one of the charmed locations in this country which is fortunate enough to display them.

 

Your vote is eagerly solicited, and images, with the opportunity to cast a ballot, will be available until September on the AGA website, but it would be more enjoyable to visit the flowers in person. For example, meet Celosia, which is grown for its fiery red color tinged with a hint of orange. Petunia is a one-of-a-kind bi-color with its pattern of blue that gradually fades into a white ring.

 

 

      Look for this sign in the garden and the cards that you can use to enter a paper ballot.

 

 

 

     Or, if you want to vote online, look for the chance at www.americangardenaward.com. As soon as we know, we will announce the winner.

 

Reviewed by Patrice Todisco

 

For more than thirty years, Alain Baraton has worked and lived at the Park of the Palace of Versailles, the world's greatest garden.  Here, amidst the venerated landscape designed by André Le Nôtre for King Louis XIV, he honed his horticultural skills, evolving from a seasonal ticket taker to gardener-in-chief.  The Gardener of Versailles recounts his journey, serving as both a memoir and love-letter to the place that shaped his sensibilities and stirs his passion.  

 

Baraton begins with the tragic storm that devastated Versailles in December 1992 when more than 10,000 trees, including some of the park's most historic, were destroyed. In disbelief at the park's damage, he was immediately called into action, tasked with overseeing the clean-up and restoration efforts.  These activities empowered Baraton to write his story and acquire "a voice" to use in the service of the gardens he loves.

 

The Gardener of Versailles is neither a sentimental or overly romanticized view of Baraton's tenure at Versailles.  Determined to show the public face of the park, he regales us with tales of idiosyncratic encounters with colleagues, bureaucrats, tourists and the "regulars" who visit daily for any number of reasons, including a desire for solitude, the delusional belief that they are Marie Antoinette or to engage in romantic escapades.

 

Woven throughout, is Baraton's personal narrative which takes him from a directionless teen, haphazardly riding his motorbike throughout the French countryside, to a committed horticulturalist and gardener-in-chief with oversight for 80 gardeners and 350,000 trees. In this capacity, Baraton oversaw the restoration of the park to André Le Nôtre's plan, employing historic techniques while experimenting with wildflowers and grasses in ancillary areas. 

 

As for Le Nôtre, to whom he devotes a chapter, Baraton expresses ambivalence.  "A good gardener, son and grandson of gardeners" who wished to be a painter, André Le Nôtre is described as deeply sad, a social climber who was more of an architect than a gardener with "good connections, means and a king who adored him" in whom Baraton finds no trace of genius.  For inspiration, he looks instead to his trio of gardening greats: Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie, founder of the King's potager, botanist Claude Richard and Jacques Briot, head gardener at the Trianon.

 

Historical commentary aside, The Gardener of Versailles, provides a rare, personal and unprecedented view of one of the most iconic landscapes in the world and a complement to the existing canon of scholarly publications about the Palace, Gardens and Le Nôtre.  Read it for fun or, as Baraton would suggest, joy, the essential ingredient that makes a good gardener.   

 

The Gardener of Versailles was published to popular acclaim in France in 2006 and has been translated into English by Christopher Brent Murray.

 

Patrice Todisco writes about parks, gardens and the public realm at the award winning blog Landscape Notes: www.landscapenotes.com. 

 

 

Each Monday in Weezie's Garden, longtime volunteer Kathi Gariepy leads The Caterpillar Club. Children gather with their parents, grandparents, and siblings to learn how animals and plants grow in the environment, and how we can connect to the land.

 

A former member of the Mass Hort Education Staff and teacher, Kathi engages children with the garden through stories, hands-on props and scientific investigations. Using her knowledge as Master Gardener and member of the Mass Audubon, Kathi is able to share her passion. She brings not just knowledge and enthusiasm, but exciting materials such animal furs, superlative seeds and fun crafts. Kathi has led Caterpillar Club since 2003, and each week, kids return to the Weezie's stone circle with excitement and joy on their face, eager to learn something new about the plants and animals around us.

 

There are still many more opportunities to experience Caterpillar Club. Designed for kids in pre-K through grade 2. Mondays 10-11am, no pre-registration required, $5 donation requested.

 

Here's a look at what Kathi has planned for the rest of the summer:

 

July 14 Flower Power

July 21 Birds in Your Yard

July 28 Turtles on a Log

August 4 Creepy Crawly Insects

August 11 The Rainforest

August 18 How does YOUR Garden Grow? (A look at the Vegetable Garden)

August 25 Beautiful Butterflies

 

 

 

Martin Milmore's Goddesses at Elm Bank

 

 

Already at work with his brother Joseph Milmore (1841-1886), Martin had produced several cabinet-sized busts of famous Bostonians, but for the heroic sculptures that adorned the Society's Second Horticultural Hall, he reached back to Europe for inspiration.  Ceres was copied from a statue in the Vatican, and Flora from the Flora Farnese in Naples. 

 

 

Hort Hall etching

 

 

 

Martin Milmore was so venerated when he died that his more

Francis Parkman, historian, author, and president, 1875-77

 famous contemporary, Daniel Chester French, sculpted Death and the Sculptor for his grave at Forest Hills Cemetery. A few years later, the statue paid tribute also to Joseph Milmore, and Mass Hort honors the older brother by prominently displaying his bust of Francis Parkman. 

 

We're also proud of our bust of Daniel Webster by Thomas Ball and the nobility drawn out of marble by Edward Augustus Brackett in his image of John Lowell.

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel Webster, statesman and original member

John Lowell, Founder

A stroll in the gardens, a visit to the library, and inquiries about the hidden reaches of the Education Building will uncover Mass Hort's treasured sculpture collection. Visitors are always welcome to a brief course in the appreciation of historical art.  

 

We use organic methods and techniques to grow the Garden to Table Vegetable Garden. This means that we're looking for a balanced environment that naturally controls pests (not "eliminates" them) and provides a healthy habitat for beneficial insects and animals.

 

Sometimes, the best way to control pests is to keep them out of the crops in the first place!  We accomplish that on some specific beds with row cover or insect netting, but to exclude them from the garden as a whole, we have fence.  

 

Not just any fence, ours is intended to keep out most of the furry critters that would like a share of our produce.  It's actually three fences.  The lower fence is chicken-wire buried up to a foot deep (to discourage digging critters), which has another 6" or so above ground. The tallest fence is a deer fence, attached to the chicken wire at the bottom and going up 7 feet high to keep Bambi on his side of the garden, and there's a green wooden fence inside to provide structure and definition.

 

This year, the critters managed to find a weakness in the fence.  Our first sign of trouble was that all of the young eggplant and pepper plants had been eaten, many of them chewed through at the main stem, others denuded of all branches.  Yet beds of lettuce nearby were untouched.  This was clearly a fairly large animal - voles are not likely to go after tough pepper plants when yummy peas are nearby - so we started looking for a fairly large hole.  

 

What we found was a place near the gate where the chicken wire had been torn and pulled aside, making it easy for digging animals to come right into the garden and help themselves to our plants.   The solution is fairly straightforward: dig down at least 10-12", making the hole big enough to get to an undamaged section of chicken wire.   Put in a new piece, attaching it to the gatepost and to the undamaged section of fencing. Attach the deer fence, and re-fill the hole.  

 

Further inspection of the deer fence showed that it has other damaged areas about 8 inches off the ground. We're going to add another layer of fence, a heavier one with ¾" mesh, so, as long as they stay on their side of the fence,  we can continue to be good neighbors with the local animals.

 

While the animal damage has slowed down our pepper and eggplant plantings quite a bit, we have had some great crops, including huge mooli (also known as Daikon, a large radish).  Come visit the garden and see what is growing now.

 

by Betty Sanders

www.BettyOnGardening.com 

 

 

It's July maintenance time in the garden.  Whether you are working in the vegetable garden or a flower bed, doing that work in the morning of a hot, dry day gives you a step up.  Weeds dislodged by hand or hoe will wilt quickly and die in the midday sun.  When the soil is dry, you can dislodge weeds without altering the soil structure.  The plants you want benefit from the reduced competition for water and sunlight.  If you water your garden, try to do it early in the morning.  Early-morning watering prevents loss through evaporation in the hot sun.  Water left sitting on leaves overnight provides a perfect breeding ground for mildews and funguses.

Peonies past bloom

 

Clean up spent flowers.  Whether it is the brown mounds of peony flowers, the spent flower stalks of salvia or the seed heads of columbine, remove them now.  Removing the peony seed pods will  leave attractive 'shrubs' for the remainder of the season; trimming back the salvia and geraniums will bring fresh blooms in a couple of weeks; and shearing back leggy annuals such as petunias, verbena or geraniums create neater plants with new flowers.  Remove faded roses to the first five-leaf cluster to encourage new blooms.

Bolting lettuce

 

In the vegetable garden.  Keep picking lettuce, chard, spinach until they bolt (leafy vegetables 'bolt' by sending up a flower stalk that instantly makes the leaves bitter).  As spaces open up, plant short rows of lettuce, beets, carrots (such as Danvers half long that grow quickly) for harvesting into fall.  (I put 3 ft. x 2 ft. squares of lettuce and such between tomato plants to take advantage of the space as well as the cooling shade provided by the tall tomatoes.)  Pull and compost pea vines and plant a row of green beans in their place.

 

Keeping beans, squash and potatoes under floating row

Assassin Bug

covers will prevent attacks by destructive insects such as Mexican bean beetles, Colorado potato beetles and squash and beetles.  The covers can stay over the potatoes and beans until harvest, they do not need to be pollinated.  The covers should come off the squash as soon as the second flower appears - the first flower is always male and only female flowers produce fruit - and by then, the plant is older, tougher and better able to resist insect attacks.

 

A few vegetables can benefit from a side dressing of nitrogen now.  In particular, corn needs a boost from a nitrogen fertilizer along each row when it is knee high.  Vining crops such as tomatoes and squash can use a gentler jolt of fertilizer as they begin to set fruit. Blueberries are turning blue now, but don't pick them as soon as you notice color.  The berries get sweeter each day they stay on the plant so holding off for about four days will yield a much more delicious treat, as long as you have protected them from hungry birds and other blueberry lovers.   

 

Insects, insects, insects!  It looks like another banner year for mosquitoes and ticks.  Protect yourself whenever you are outside from the dangerous diseases they carry.   It's also slug season.  Use only products with iron phosphate listed under ingredients to go after slugs and snails because they are harmless to other wildlife and the environment.  Look for red lily beetles and remove them by hand as soon as you see them. 

 

Please remember that over 90% of all insects are beneficial or benign so don't pull out the toxic spray at the first sight of bugs.  Are they doing any damage or are they just scary to look at?  Can you live with the amount of damage they are doing - a few holes in leaves? Have you tried a hard jet of water or a nontoxic spray?  Will spraying kill bees or other pollinators who are already endangered by the many toxic products used on lawns and gardens?  Learning to live with the other creatures in the garden that are doing little or no harm is an important step for all gardeners.

 

 

 

Two years ago, Betty and I came to the conclusion that our home was just too big for two people.  Like many aging Baby Boomers, we decided it was time to downsize. 

But being an avid gardener makes downsizing complicated.  Neither of us wanted anything to do with those 'active adult communities' where gardening is restricted to what you can put in a pot on your front porch, or where the 'community garden' is shared with, well, the community.  We needed some property to go along with that new home.  An acre at least.  And maybe two.

Have you gone looking for raw land in eastern Massachusetts recently?  Maybe we're too picky, but after 18 months of looking at lots bisected by wetlands, lots sidled up to utility long-distance transmission lines, and lots where the roof peak would sit at eye level with the street, we made the reluctant determination that the lot we wanted probably already had a house on it.

This old house

Six months ago we found that perfect site.  A private acre and a half on a winding street.  A sad, 74-year-old house beyond repairing.  A neighborhood of attractive older homes of the same size we want to build.

We were, of course, promptly outbid for that property by a developer, who had in mind to erect a grand Starter Castle suitable for a family of ten.  But we persevered and in early June we found ourselves the proud owners of a now-vacant lot.  This autumn, our new 'right-sized' home will rise on the site.

What has happened since we signed the purchase and sale agreement says a lot about who we are.  Most people would throw themselves full-time into designing the perfect compact house, worrying about how furniture will fit into fewer rooms and pondering choices of paint colors.  We've done our share of that, but an equal amount of time has been devoted to siting a raised-bed vegetable garden, determining which if any trees on the property are worth keeping and positioning a porch that will provide three seasons of natural light for houseplants.

Meanwhile, back at our current home, a vast project is underway to populate the new garden even before the adjacent house's foundation has been dug.  We have already divided and conditioned upwards of a hundred hostas.  They sit in a special bed, potted and identified.  Other perennials have been divided or marked for division in the fall. 

The runners of favorite shrubs, once unceremoniously pulled up and composted, are now lovingly potted with the maximum amount of root.  One especially prized and uncommon shrub, a chamaecyparis 'Snow' that has grown to monumental proportions in our back garden, has a now-four-inch-high, well-rooted cutting. 

Fifteen years ago, we did this on a much more modest

Part of the transplant garden

scale.  A few favorite perennials were dug up and thrown into pots.  They rode from our home in Virginia to our new one in Massachusetts along with those household belongings (e.g., wine) we refused to entrust to movers.  The aquilegia (columbine) 'Biedermeier' and peony 'Alfred's Crimson' we brought from Alexandria are still part of our landscape a decade and a half later, and will have honored locations at our new home.

The satisfaction in going through this admittedly time-consuming process has little to do with saving money.  What is in our transplant bed is just a down payment on a landscape.  Betty all but stopped adding to our garden a year ago and, instead, started making lists of trees, shrubs and perennials she will purchase in the spring of 2015.  Populating a 60,000-square-foot property is going to make the owners of a few select nurseries and garden centers very, very happy.

No, the satisfaction is that we are doing a favor for whoever purchases our home.  For example, a wonderful patch of delicate blue Siberian iris is just now passing out of bloom.  That Siberian iris needs to be divided.  It is now eighteen inches in diameter and has a small but definitely 'bald' center.  This fall, we will take up the entire colony, clean out the center and break the resulting ring into three or four segments.  One of those segments will go with us to our new home. The remaining iris will be replanted with a fresh helping of compost.  Like the hostas we have already divided, the re-planting should be good to 2019 or 2020.

Chamaecyparis - Snow

The best part is that when we begin planting that new garden in earnest next spring, we will intermix a group of familiar old friends with a larger cast of new ones.  Those old friends will be touchstones; a reminder of what we left behind.

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Neal Sanders is the author of eight mysteries, the most recent of which is 'A Murder at the Flower Show'.  You'll find his books in selected stores and at Amazon.com