From my perspective, those of us who appreciate the value of horticulture and the natural world need to make a more compelling argument for using real Christmas trees. Big-box stores shamelessly promote the convenience of "Real-Feel" artificial trees, usually produced in a foreign factory, boasting natural-appeal-marketing terminology like "realistic", "true needle" and "natural series", along with pre-lit, scent stick, fire-retardant technology! Sure, an artificial tree asks for minimal effort to set up and put back into the box for another use; but largely comprised of non-biodegradable polyvinyl chloride (PVC), so when it outlives its usefulness, disposal is not beneficial to the environment.

  

Fortunately, nurseries, garden centers, big-box stores, community/service organizations and individuals continue to offer widely-varied choices of cut trees (starting in recent years even before our Thanksgiving dinners are prepared!). A measure of family commitment is involved with choosing, cutting, transporting, setting-up, decorating and removing a real Christmas tree, but the authentic aroma and touch of a natural tree is unmistakable. And utilizing the tree's branches for wildlife habitat or mulch after the holidays makes it far more nature-friendly.

  

Admittedly not all real trees offered at Christmas are locally grown, but they're all sustainably produced and support local endeavors. Governor Baker has designated the Friday after Thanksgiving as "Green Friday", recognizing of the value of Massachusetts Christmas tree growers to the environment and our economy, encouraging us to shop locally. 

  

As environmentally-concerned consumers, our Christmas challenge is to choose between the value of tradition/authenticity of a real tree or the well-marketed convenience of "reusable" PVC. Pervading our winter-solstice-holiday celebrations (our society's recognition of nature's cycles), the surfeit of artificial trees certainly contributes to the rapid erosion of our personal connections with the natural world. You'll notice that even the trees on display at our annual Mass Hort's Festival of Trees are artificial, an unfortunate necessity, because Massachusetts law prohibits indoor cut live trees at a public event.

  

Certainly the expectations and rewards of using a real tree are different; they strongly represent what the Christmas season is truly about. It's easy to show that you care for this festive season's natural sustainability values - choose a real tree!

  

Mass Hort is excited to invite you, your children and students to compete at the 2016 Boston Flower and Garden Show (March 16-20). We would love to have more kids experience the Flower Show and make connections to professionals and enthusiasts in the plant-science world.

  

There are a number of competitions that youth (ages 6-18) can enter. The competitions have wonderful connections to art and science, and we hope you will consider sharing this opportunity with the kids and teachers in your life.

  

Click here to read about the twelve photography, amateur horticulture and floral design competitions. Kids can enter competitions as individuals, and teachers are welcome to enter their entire classrooms.

  

Please help us spread the word to those who might be eager to explore this exciting opportunity.

  

New this year, Mass Hort is also hosting workshops for kids to grow and care for plants they can show in the amateur horticulture competitions. Throughout the Festival of Trees, we are running three hands-on workshops to teach kids (aged 8-16) how to propagate cuttings. Each child will bring home two plants! For more details on these workshops, and to register, click here.

  

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Katie Folts, Education Coordinator, at kfolts@masshort.org or 617-933-4973.

Monacelli Press:  2015

  

Reviewed by Patrice Todisco

  

Structures

Borders

Play on waters

An endless pathway

     

When the calendar was flipped to 1981, President W. Robert Mill told the Board of Trustees that they needed to vote on an annual budget that would involve three of the Society's most important assets.  A decision was looming as to which would be the most beneficial to sell: the building, the rare book collection, or Horticulture magazine.  He said that the Executive Committee, at its March meeting, would be charged with making recommendations, so advocates for the retention and expansion for one or the other were lining up. Executive Director Roger Dane presented the 1981 budget with the warning that it could be met only if one of the aforementioned assets were sold. Mr. Dane said that he thought that selling Horticultural Hall to the First Church of Christ, Scientist would involve its restoration and continuing occupation by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

     

The Trustees were also trying to lift restrictions on some of the endowment funds and suggesting that in the future, donors be asked to give funds while granting their use to the discretion of the Society.

     

Along with books, art works were considered likely to be sold.  It was voted, though, that the portraits of past officers and the three Gold Medals owned by the Society were not to be parted with.  In light of unsuccessful results from numerous campaigns to boost circulation and advertising, it was decided that Horticulture would be the first asset to go, with the proviso that that there be an attempt to retain its current staff.  The Trustees accepted the offer from a partnership called "Horticulture Associates", which was composed of New Yorker magazine and Eliot Wadsworth II of White Flower Farm.  They would continue to publish from space in Horticultural Hall, for which the Society would expect rent.

     

As a result of this sale, the financial stability of MHS seemed assured, and more good news came from the Justice of the Suffolk County Probate Court, who signed an order modifying restrictions on the uses of various restricted endowment funds.  Income was now payable yearly for general purposes of the Society, as well as support for its shows.  The income would be approximately $34,000 a year.  Later, another source of excitement was the discovery of the Eleanor Tudor Trust Milk Fund, which would yield $30,000 a year.  The Trustees hoped to use the funds to help children enjoy horticultural activity.

     

Attempts to dispose of artifacts through auction houses were not fruitful, so they were retained.  And in spite of the specter of downsizing, the membership looked forward to hosting the Annual Congress of the American Horticultural Society, which was to meet in Boston in September.  In honor of the meeting M. H. S would present a show called "Yankee Gardening - Yankee Ingenuity".  It would feature energy efficient greenhouses.

     

To begin almost every meeting, though, there was a question about what to do with the building, and in retrospect, it becomes obvious that the Society's leaders were hesitant to move.  They made plans to rent out unused space to appropriate tenants.  The question was still uppermost at the beginning of 1982, when Phyllis Anderson was elected President.  There was an emphasis on educational activities and media publicity at the Flower Show.   In fact, the 1982 Flower Show was a resounding success, having shown a profit of $265,000, which was a record. Eager to maintain the Hall as a jewel of the community, the Executive Committee decided on a compromise: it would advise the Board of Trustees that they enter into an agreement with Historical Hall Associates, which had been successful in adapting other venerable buildings for commercial purposes, to undertake the revitalization of Horticultural Hall.

  

If you live in southern New England and you ever thought a florist or floral designer did an especially imaginative job choosing the flowers for a wedding, flower show, or garden club presentation, you should probably include the Boston Flower Exchange in your thanks.  At the 'flower exchange', as most people refer to it, the aforementioned florists and designers can browse 13 wholesalers under one, 75,000-square-foot roof that is wall-to-wall displays.

The flower exchange is a venerable institution that has its origins back when greenhouses in the hinterlands around the city grew summer and winter blooms (notably carnations, roses and camellias) for the carriage trade.  Over time, 'outside' flowers were allowed in. 

Today, the source of most flowers is South America and the Netherlands.  They're flown in overnight and, beginning at 2 a.m., the flower exchange wholesalers collect their orders at Logan Airport, bring them to the market, sort them, and have them ready for sale before 5 a.m.  I can attest that at 6 a.m. the flower exchange is in high gear.  By 9 a.m. the stalls are mostly bare and the market formally closes at noon.

The beauty of the flower exchange is the breadth of offering and specialization.  One stall specializes in 'tropicals', another in orchids.  If you can't find the right shade of the specific flower you need at Chester Brown, try Cupp & Cupp or Carbone.  If you need 100 dozen roses in the exact same hue of cream for a wedding next Saturday, explain your need to the salesmen at Riccardi and let them ensure your order is filled.

Although not part of the Boston Flower Exchange, life for those florists and designers is made easier still by the presence of Jacobson Floral Supply.  Housed in a supermarket-sized building adjacent to the flower exchange, Jacobson offers everything imaginable (except cut flowers) someone could need. 

You would think that every city would have its own flower exchange.  You would be wrong.  Most cities - including most major cities - have widely dispersed wholesalers, requiring florists and designers to either establish a strong rapport with one of those wholesalers, or else to drive from one end of (say) Houston to the other to find what they need.   Out-of-town designers who come to Boston for events have nothing but high praise the institution, and uniformly wish it was replicated back where they came from.

You would also think that the future of the Boston Flower Exchange would be as secure as the North End's Paul Revere statue.  Again, you would be wrong.  The flower exchange led a peripatetic existence for decades before settling in the old CycloramaBuilding in the South End in 1923.  By 1963, however, that building's future was threatened by redevelopment and the Exchange's Board of Directors went looking for a permanent home.

They found it a mile away in a desolate, 5.6 acre, plot hard

by the elevated Southeast Expressway amid gritty, abandoned industrial loft buildings.  Built on land that was once part of Boston Harbor, a functional, one-story building with ample parking and loading docks opened in 1971.  Jacobson Floral Design built their store on an adjoining plot.  For more than four decades, florists and designers had a readily accessible, central market where the lone complaint was crime (ameliorated by a steel fence around the perimeter of the property, and then more recently by a much improving neighborhood).

But in the second decade of the new century, that part of South Boston has become exceptionally attractive to developers.  In September 2014, the Exchange's Board received an unsolicited offer of more than $35 million or the site.  Other offers quickly followed.  In May 2015, the vendors who make up the Board voted overwhelmingly to accept the offer from a still-unidentified buyer.  The transfer and closing of the market will take place before December 2017.

The reality of the closing of the market - and the apparent likelihood that there is no replacement facility on the

horizon - has started to sink in among those who have always relied on the flower exchange.  One highly regarded North Shore floral designer mused about the situation during a floral demonstration last week.  His favorite wholesaler - one who has always found just the right blooms for demanding clients - is contemplating retiring rather than relocating, a devastating change that would add an unwanted, new layer of complexity to what is already a demanding business.

I think about the fifty-plus amateur designers who enter the competition at the Boston Flower & Garden Show on each of its two entry days in March.  They receive no compensation for their designs, only a ribbon or two.  To earn that ribbon, they'll spend many hours (sometimes several dozen),

creating a unique design at home.  Then, the day before they enter their design in competition, they converge on the flower market between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. where they'll spend an hour or more searching out the perfect blooms among several wholesalers.  Those flowers will go back home where the designers will take a day to 'condition' them.  The following morning, those same designers will descend on the Seaport World Trade Center at 5:30 a.m. to create their masterpieces.  This is all for a ribbon and the satisfaction of having created something beautiful for others to admire.

That frenzy of competition is replicated across half a dozen other 'major' shows across the region each year (Topsfield, Marshfield, Barnstable), plus across several dozen club shows where the more ambitious designers eschew supermarket flowers in favor of those from the flower exchange.

An end of an era is on the horizon.  There's no petition to sign or rally to attend.  It is simply progress.  It is also a case where the future - at least for floral designers - may not be as bright as the present.

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Neal Sanders is the author of nine mysteries.  His tenth, 'How to Murder Your Contractor' will be published in early 2016.  You can find Neal's books at Amazon.com and in bookstores.

  

 

On Monday, November 16, we did something new in the vegetable garden.   For the first time, we had a real November harvest for our food pantries!

 

As was mentioned in the previous issue of the Leaflet, planning for this harvest started months ago.   During the summer, our intern Bryce worked on keeping our leek bed weeded, which gave us a big enough crop so that we could send some on November 16 and still leave some in the garden to overwinter for an early spring harvest.      Some of our garlic was cured, so it could be sent as part of the November harvest and be available for folks to use for Thanksgiving or beyond.  The later harvest also meant that we were able to wait and harvest our "strawberry" popcorn at the perfect state of dryness for easy shelling and popping.  This is an heirloom that many people may have never seen before - beautiful, red, miniature ears with a delicious flavor far beyond the common popcorn in the grocery store!  We're delighted to be able to share this crop with the community.

 

We also used some season extending techniques to include crops like lettuce in this harvest.  Our lettuce was grown under row covers, a lightweight fabric that allows light in but helps protect the plants from excess cold.    We had harvested unripe tomatoes before frost and layered them into crates stored in a cool but not too cold place, which allows them to ripen gradually.  This worked - while not all of the tomatoes ripened, we did have some ripe tomatoes to send in November.  And we'd pulled up pepper plants roots and all and tucked them into large tubs in our unheated greenhouse (a cold frame would work as well). We didn't expect to have the plants make new peppers, but we were hoping for extra time to allow green peppers to ripen, and that worked, too.      These are all easy gardening techniques that can be done at home with a minimum of equipment.

 

We harvested 106 pounds on November 16, split between our two food pantries, and our final total for the year is a bit under 3500 lbs. While that's down from last year, our diversity of crops was up and our season lasted longer.

 

Harvest is not the end of our gardening season!   We've been out in the garden cleaning up our beds and starting to prepare them for next year - some have cover crops, some have compost or manure, some have leaves.    Next year's garlic has already been planted as well, with a layer of dried alfalfa on top that will break down over the winter and provide nutrients as the garlic grows.

 

Some parts of the garden don't get cleaned up until spring.   This allows the garden to support natural lifecycles - both by providing seeds to birds, and creating spaces where our native pollinators and other beneficial insects can overwinter. Even if we are done harvesting for the food pantries, the garden still helps to "feed" a healthy environment, all winter long.