Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

[Wilding] cover

Isabella Tree and her partner, environmentalist Charlie Burrell, own the 3,500-acre property known as Knepp Castle Estate. Her book Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm recounts the Knepp Wildland Project that took place over 18 years starting in 2000 after a failed effort to make the farm profitable with modern, intensive techniques. Their idea, inspired by a similar project in the Netherlands, was to undo many centuries of land management by introducing hardy large herbivores and then stepping back to see what would happen. The author defined it as: “Rewilding — giving nature the space and opportunity to express itself – is largely a leap of faith.” Take a look at a a 15-minute video of Tree introducing the concept.

This book was enjoyable to read because Tree describes various wildlife, birds, insects, mammals, and livestock from an amateur’s enthusiastic perspective rather than with a dispassionate scientific voice. Tree keeps the pace of the narrative moving, yet provides enough details of animals, ecology, history and even governmental regulations that the reader understands why they choose to rewild despite considerable obstacles.

Her narrative of the slow evolution of rewilding their large property takes place over three decades. The story of the farm pasture and woods, neighbors, various national agencies and the wider economy is interspersed with detailed accounts of rare birds, land-use history, heritage breeds of livestock, and the inner workings of ecological interdependence. Tree’s special fondness for the turtle dove is appropriate: nearly extinct in Britain, it is thriving at Knepp.

The role of plants is integral to animal habitat. Tree learns that animals, specifically large herbivores and predators, directly contribute to remaking plant communities which then evolve to support even more species of wildlife. Their philosophy could be boiled down to: increase biodiversity, stay hands-off, build resiliency — repeat!

Neighbors and their notions of a tidy, well-cared-for, pastoral landscape proved to be the most vociferous opponents of allowing their land to revert to a wild state. Tree attempts to understand their unease by looking into the social and psychological impact of living in a controlled, tidy, managed environment. Neighbors saw the Knepp project as abuse and gross negligent abandonment. The author remarks how the oldest neighbors remember the hedgerows and all the birdsong now absent in the agriculturally productive countryside. She also repeatedly points out how their land is marginal and even with modern equipment, chemicals and “improved” breeds they could never make a profit. She wonders why farmers, and governments through subsidies, spend so much on producing food when so much of it wasted, thrown away, uneaten by consumers or worse, never even making it to market because of the low prices received for commodity crops.

Readers interested in regenerative agriculture, ecological restoration and climate change mitigation will find Wilding an inspiring source of hope.

Published in the Leaflet, June 2020, Volume 7, Issue 6.

Naturalizing Bulbs

In “Naturalizing Bulbs”, Rob Proctor does not provide the usual alphabetical recital of genus, species and varieties. Instead, he begins with a series of essays on the aesthetics and practicalities of weaving bulbs into the landscape. These chapters both inspire and provide a dose of reality of what works, based on broad climate zones throughout the United States.

Next, he steps back and looks season to season, again considering the pros and cons of choices for different regions. These two approaches give the reader a clear understanding of the decisions we each need to make for our own gardens.

Proctor is an aficionado, writing about the varieties he knows well. He doesn’t list all you could plant, but rather what you should plant – classics that combine beauty with health and garden reliability.

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Summer 2020

Olmsted in Seattle : Creating a Park System for a Modern City

[Olmsted in Seattle] cover

Most people in Seattle know that the name Olmsted is connected to the city’s landscapes. This elegant book presents both the context and the details of that connection. The text is clear and engaging, and the photographs and maps are handsome as well as instructive. For the many landscape designs, the reader may want to keep a magnifying glass at hand to help with details.

Two popular movements help explain how Seattle movers and shakers came to hire and support the plans of the far-off and famous Olmsted Brothers, a Brookline, MA firm. Most significant was the City Beautiful Movement, which spread the idea that any city worth anything needed to be beautiful. The other was the Playground Movement, which encouraged cities to develop many playgrounds, so that even poor children could grow up healthy and “moral.”

Olmsted in Seattle carries the reader chronologically through the planning and execution of plans for many of the city’s parks and boulevards. John C. Olmsted, who visited Seattle and created plans in 1903 and 1908, was the nephew (and stepson) of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., of New York’s Central Park fame. Ott shows the progress, the politics involved, and the compromises necessary to carry out the plans. One compromise: In 1909 John Olmsted noted that walkways should have been included parallel to several drives, including Lake Washington, Montlake, and Washington Park. In our current need for more such paths for bikes and pedestrians, we can surely wish those had been built.

“Borrowed landscapes” were a major part of Olmsted’s planning. He designed each park to take advantage of its natural contours, but especially to use views of mountains, water, and other vistas to make the park seem larger than it was. The gorgeous mountain and water views from Fort Lawton, for instance, informed Olmsted’s plea to acquire it as a park, a wish only fulfilled years later with the inclusion of Discovery Park.

Near the end of the book Ott shows how the concepts that Olmsted promoted, such as curved paths, have been adapted in the decades afterward, so that the Olmsted influence continues.

The whole history depicted in Olmsted in Seattle is worth reading. On the other hand, readers in a hurry can just use the excellent index to trace the history of their favorite parks. Or they can just page through, admiring the photos, informational side bars, and awesome maps.

Published in The Leaflet, Volume 7, Issue 5, May 2020.

Oh, La La! : Homegrown Stories, Helpful Tips, and Garden Wisdom

[Oh, La La!] cover

“I am a storyteller.”

Ciscoe Morris is an expert gardener, eager to share his knowledge with those at all levels of gardening ability. But this self-assessment from the introduction of his new book is also very accurate. He grew up in a large family of storytellers and that skill came first. Later, gardening became the framework for his tales.

“Oh, La La!” is a fine collection of short essays, each no more than a few pages. You can open the book anywhere and immediately be engaged, no matter the topic. Later, you’ll realize how much you learned.

There are three main settings: his home garden, the Seattle University campus where he worked for many years, and the many locations from his travels. While the plants take center stage, the interactions of the gardener with other people and with animals – especially beloved dogs – are the memorable highlights.

I have several favorite stories. One of the longer chapters lays out the many – usually unsuccessful – ways to control moles, concluding, “if nothing else works, you can learn to live with moles.” Another lesson confirms my personal experience with the Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens var. glauca). It belongs in Colorado, safe from the spruce aphids that devastate this species in our mild, maritime climate.

Ciscoe promises this is not his last book. “I already have an idea for the next one. Oh, la la: I can’t wait to get started!” I can hardly wait to read it.

The Outdoor Classroom in Practice, Ages 3-7 : A Month-by-Month Guide to Forest School Provision

[The Outdoor Classroom in Practice, Ages 3-7] cover

How are we going to save the world? Focusing on forests is a step in the right direction. In education, the forest school has been defined in the UK Forest School Research Summary as “an inspirational process that offers children, young people and adults regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence through hands-on learning in a woodland environment.”

UK expert Karen Constable provides teachers with a wealth of ideas and experiences for outdoor learning by cycling through the year month by month. The Outdoor Classroom in Practice, Ages 3 – 7; A Month-By-Month Guide to Forest School Provision demonstrates how a forest school-style learning experience can be introduced and used in an everyday early childhood educational environment.

Although developed in the UK, the activities are meant to be adjusted to blend with existing curricular plans to fit the needs of children anywhere in the world. Entries cover managing the site, preparing resources, working with parents, and making evaluations. Risk assessment is an ongoing concern. Activities described in this book include muddy fun, looking for landmarks, creating camouflage, building fire safety, making a tabletop garden, staying dry on rainy days, and much more.

Fiddleheads Forest School in the Washington Park Arboretum is one of Seattle’s innovative outdoor preschools. Forest school programs help to build self-esteem, confidence, independence, and happy young people. Creating a love of the outdoors in real time in all weather in all seasons is best started early to last a lifetime.

Given our environmental concerns today, there is urgency to the purpose of this book. It will help to prepare children with a voice to act for preservation of our common environment. It’s our shared future, especially theirs.

Published in The Leaflet, Vol. 7 Issue 4, April 2020

Bulb

For pure opulence, nothing matches Anna Pavord’s “Bulb”, a compilation of the author’s favorites of primarily spring-flowering selections. Each is described with such heartfelt devotion that you know they must be good. She includes some newer varieties but the treasures are the older, time-tested names that just keep giving every year.

The photographs make this a book to drool over, including several two-page spreads. The text is practical, including observations such as the coloration and texture of the foliage and the ability of the flower to stand inclement weather. She has a keen eye for what goes well with each selection, including perennials, shrubs, and even trees.

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Summer 2020

Landmarks

[Landmarks] cover

In Landmarks Robert Macfarlane develops his conviction that fully knowing a landscape depends on knowing the many carefully specific words people have used to describe it. To this end he builds this book around types of land: mountains, woods, waterways, and more. Each chapter consists of a section on his encounter with an author who has written with verbal precision about one type, followed by a glossary of terms (usually not used in the first part of the chapter) gathered from multiple regions, dialects and languages of Britain and Ireland.

Chapter 10, titled “The Black Locust and the Silver Pine,” focuses on John Muir, a Scot who came to America. Macfarlane quotes from Muir’s works and notes his accomplishments, such as convincing Teddy Roosevelt to set aside Yosemite as a national park after the two men had camped there. “‘Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees,'” Muir had written, and Roosevelt listened.

Macfarlane writes with much felicity. Here he is on the bristlecone pine: “Muir loved the bristlecone pine for its extravagantly torqued and gnarled form, and for its extreme resilience to the adversities of gale, avalanche and flame that the mountains threw at it. He was a bristlecone pine himself in that respect, and though his words lay dormant for decades, they would eventually germinate and grow with astonishing consequence.”

The glossary for this chapter, titled “Woodlands,” has subcategories of “Branches, Leaves, Roots and Trunks,” “Fallen Wood and Cut Wood,” “Woods and Woodlands.” Entries give the word, a brief definition, and the source. For example, “celynnog – abounding in holly (place name element) – Welsh” or “chissom – first shoots of a newly cut coppice – Cotswolds.” Many terms have delicious sounds, though some mysterious for an American to pronounce. This glossary runs to ten pages, and like all the others in the book gives a dizzying array of specific terms, many already lost in popular usage or rapidly disappearing. We lose the way to connect closely to the land, Macfarlane believes, when we lose these words.

The pleasures of this book lie in Macfarlane’s poetic nature writing, in making or renewing acquaintance with other inspiring nature writers, and savoring all those words.

Published in Leaflet for Scholars, Vol. 7 Issue 3, March 2020.

The Ferns of Great Britain

One of the earliest fern books, ”The Ferns of Great Britain” (published in 1855), is better known for its illustrator John Edward Sowerby (1825-1870) rather than the botanist who wrote the text, Charles Johnson (1791-1880). While this was not typical, it is perhaps because Sowerby was also the publisher. There is no record of professional jealousy, as the pair produced several other books on wild flowers, poisonous plants, grasses, and useful plants found in Britain and Ireland.

The Sowerby family included four generations of noted illustrators from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. For this book, John Edward Sowerby created forty-nine, exquisite copperplate engravings and, in a bit of mid-19^th century marketing, sold the finished books in three versions. The images could be left uncolored for 6 shillings, be partially hand-colored for 14 shillings, or fully colored for 27 shillings, a range of about $42 to $189 in US dollars today. The Miller Library copy is partially colored, the best of both worlds as it shows both detail and beauty. Johnson’s text was also outstanding, describing Blechnum boreale (now B. spicant or Struthiopteris spicant), the deer fern as “a highly beautiful fern, well worthy of cultivation as an evergreen little liable to injury by frost, and, during the summer presenting an elegant contrast in its varied fronds.”

Excerpted from the Spring 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Ferns of Great Britain and their Allies

The Victorian fern craze of the late 19^th century was noteworthy for its inclusiveness. All classes of English society were engaged, and participants included men, women, and children. One of the leading botanical authors and illustrators of the time was Anne Pratt (1806-1893) who because of a childhood illness was encouraged to pursue botanical illustration. That she did very well, publishing more than 20 books popularizing botany.

Her ”Ferns of Great Britain” (1^st edition 1855, the Miller Library has an undated edition from approximately 1871) was one of her major works and was later combined into a six-volume work that included flowering plants, grasses, and sedges. Her writing shows a clear understanding of the science of her subjects, but she also appreciated the pleasures for the amateur: “It is pleasant to see the rambler in the country searching through green lane or by dripping well for the feather fern.”

Excerpted from the Spring 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

How to Know the Ferns

While the Victorian fern craze of late 19^th century Britain had less impact in North America, one noted author who recognized the need for a guide to the ferns of the northeastern United States was Frances Theodora Parsons (1861-1952), who wrote the field guide “How to Know the Ferns” (1899). Parsons was very active in New York City and State politics and active advocate for women’s suffrage. Her autobiography, written late in her long life, talked little of her botanical writing that included three other books. However, during her active botany period, before the death of her second husband in 1902, her books were very popular.

She recognized that “in England one finds books of all sizes and prices on the English ferns, while our beautiful American ferns are almost unknown, owing probably to the lack of attractive and inexpensive fern literature.” Unusual for the time, her books were both written and illustrated by women, the artists being her sister and a long-time friend. Parsons books were also noted for the covers of their bindings, designed by book cover artist Margaret Armstrong.

Excerpted from the Spring 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin