Flower paintings of Ellis Rowan

Flower paintings of Ellis Rowan book cover Ellis Rowan (1848-1922) was an Australian painter, specializing in wildflowers in all parts of that country at a time when the native flora was not well-known by European settlers. She was not trained as a botanist, which made her work of limited use in that field. However, the exuberance and abundance (at least 3,000 survive) of her paintings made her very popular. She typically combined flowers with leaves and stems into bouquets, and worked quickly, being able to paint in watercolors and gouache without initial pencil underlay.

In “Flower Paintings of Ellis Rowan,” Helen Hewson wrote that her images “evoke the particular quality of the beauty of the Australian bush, a beauty which is vivid, yet also elusive and vulnerable.” Hewson notes the limitations of Rowan’s work for botanists, but recognizes that “her work is so accurate that the specialist can identify a large proportion of the subjects with considerable reliability.”

Excerpted from the Winter 2019 Arboretum Bulletin

An Irish florilegium

An Irish florilegium book cover Women botanical artists have made many contributions to horticulture and botany. One of these was Wendy Walsh (1915-2014). English by birth, she also lived in Japan and the United States before settling in Ireland in 1958 at the age of 43. She lived and worked there the rest of her long life, providing illustrations for 33 books, many on Irish gardening and native plants.

Her masterpieces were “An Irish Florilegium,” published in 1983, followed by “An Irish Florilegium II” in 1987. Each contains beautifully printed copies of 48 watercolor paintings that she drew from nature. Roughly, a third of these plants are native to Ireland, while an Irish botanist or plant collector introduced another third. The rest celebrate the cultivars developed by the many fine nurseries and plant hybridizers of that nation.

E. Charles Nelson, a taxonomist with the National Botanic Gardens Glasnevin in Dublin, wrote the extensive plant notes to both volumes and the introduction to the second. Although he was 36 years younger, he and Walsh became fast friends after meeting at the beginning of this project. Their collaboration led to several more books, including three in the Miller Library.

Excerpted from the Winter 2019 Arboretum Bulletin

Beautiful leaved plants

Beautiful leaved plants book cover Brent Elliott, retired librarian and historian of the Royal Horticultural Society, declared that Frances Perry’s writing showed “evidence of reading both broader and deeper than that of most garden writers of the time.”

An example of this historical awareness is her book “Beautiful Leaved Plants.” Perry describes 64 house and conservatory plants, popular in the mid-20th century, but chose to illustrate her selections with images by Benjamin Fawcett (1808-1893). Fawcett was a botanical illustrator who used wood engravings, an unusual technique for the time that is particularly effective in capturing the brilliance and subtlety of foliage. The technique is described in a supplemental chapter by Raymond Desmond.

Excerpted from the Winter 2019 Arboretum Bulletin

The woman gardener

The woman gardener book cover Frances Perry (1907-1993) perceived a lack of gardening information for women in the mid-20th century. As a horticultural lecturer, horticultural advisor (to her county council), and gardening correspondent in England, she noted an ongoing demographic change: more and more women were attending her presentations or writing her letters. Her colleagues, both men and women, had also observed this change.

To address this need, she published “The Woman Gardener” (1955). In addition to general gardening advice, Perry chose topics she thought would have special interest for women. For example, an early chapter is titled “Salads and Quick Return Vegetables” and recognizes that “most housewives will agree that the first requirement of any salad ingredient is that it should be fresh.” Later chapters present miniature gardens in various forms, houseplants, and tips on flower arranging and keeping cut flowers fresh – subjects not typically addressed in other general gardening books of the time. She broke down other barriers of the male hierarchy of British horticulture by becoming the first woman council member of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1968 and, a decade later, vice president of that organization.

Excerpted from the Arboretum Bulletin

The Ladies’ Flower-Garden of Ornamental Annuals

The ladies' flower garden of ornamental annuals book cover Jane Webb Loudon’s most significant work was “The Ladies’ Flower-Garden,” a multi-volume set with each volume focused on a particular type of plants. The Miller Library has the first volume in this series devoted to annuals. While this book is in the Library’s Rare Book Room and only available to view by appointment, many of the illustrations appear in “Garden Flowers,” a book in the general collection by Robert Gathorne-Hardy. These were noteworthy for the time by including many different species on the same plate, set in loose arrangements that show contrasting features while maintaining scientific accuracy. The illustrations were also a big selling point for “The Ladies’ Flower Garden” because, at the time, they were expensive to produce–and Loudon was able to show a greater number of species in a single book.

Excerpted from the Winter 2019 Arboretum Bulletin.

Heirloom Vegetable Gardening : a Master Gardener’s Guide to Planting, Seed Saving, and Cultural History

The book “Heirloom Vegetable Gardening” was a classic almost from the moment it was first published in 1997. The author, William Woys Weaver, is a rare scholar of the kitchen garden with a PhD in food ethnography, or the study of cultural eating habits.

Weaver easily could have written a pompous tome. Fortunately, he is a skilled writer and hands-on gardener (and cook, too) who combines dry wit with both practical and historical information. I am not an extensive vegetable gardener, but his stories are compelling and I happily read the encyclopedia of recommend varieties from cover-to-cover.

If you do grow your own veg and enjoy experimenting, this book is an investment that will pay in long-term dividends. Now there is a new (2018) edition. While much of the descriptive material and selection of the varieties is the same as the original, there are minor updates and additions. Both editions are available from the Miller Library.

The author is especially interested in how certain foods have connected different cultures. For example, I learned that lima beans are well named, originating in Peru possibly 7,000 years ago and named in English after that country’s capital city. The Spanish occupiers observed that the indigenous people reserved the crop for the elite of their society.

Is that why the Spanish disseminated these delicious beans to the rest of the world? Perhaps. However, when Weaver was asked to cook a dinner of American foods by friends in Germany, he had trouble finding a source for lima beans. Northern Europeans have not embraced this food like Americans because they are a warm weather crop and don’t thrive north of the Alps.

Weaver references many historical writings and includes a gigantic bibliography of cited sources in his appendices. Many are quite old (dating back to 1591) but still very useful for gardening tips, such as putting out whiskey to discourage crows from corn. “I would use the brand of corn whiskey called Rebel Yell. It seems to fit the remedy and evoke some of the sounds I now associate with the birds at the height of their raucous inebriation. Incidentally, it works.”

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Winter 2019

A People’s Curriculum for the Earth

[A People's Curriculum for the Earth] cover

The current report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draws our attention to the state of scientific knowledge on climate change. The report confirms that humans are the dominant cause of global warming. The situation is grave, but there is hope. There is time for us to move into action now. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis, a guide for teachers, is an assemblage of articles written by various authors that include important practical activities and ideas on the value of our earth and the urgency of our situation. It is edited by Bill Bigelow and Tim Swinehart, well-known social studies educators in Portland, Oregon. The book is a Rethinking Schools publication, their mission being “fully committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy.”

Using a social studies perspective to consider scientific evidence, the approach of the curriculum takes sides on behalf of the earth. It strongly advocates for planet earth, responding to the evidence, alerting students to social and environmental injustice, while searching for explanations and encouraging activism. Groups of people together – schools, neighborhoods, clubs and other associations – can make constructive changes. Two key themes run through this curriculum, the introduction explains:

“Our curriculum must confront the false dichotomy between the environment and people.”
“Everyone on earth is affected by the environmental crisis, but we are affected unequally – based on race, class, nationality, or location.”

The guide provides information, insights, inspiration and is an invitation to become actively engaged. It addresses a range of grade levels and audiences. This book calls us to see ourselves “as part of a broader movement to build the kind of society that is clean and just and equal and democratic; one that seeks to leave the world better than we found it.” The earth is humanity’s responsibility. The message is that by working together there is a lot we can do. This book is well worth our immediate attention, particularly in this sometimes skeptical political climate.

Published in the November 2018 Leaflet, Volume 5, Issue 11.

The science of gardening

The science of gardening dvd cover Linda Chalker-Scott has written several books found in the Miller Library – all intended to help the home gardener make more savvy choices and dispel many gardening myths that do not stand up to the rigor of scientific review. Now she brings the same messages to a new format. “The Science of Gardening” is a set of four DVDs that contains 24 lessons, each 30 minutes in length.

These cover the whole range of gardening culture and techniques – almost everything except an A-Z encyclopedia of recommended plants. The emphasis is on woody plants and includes considerable detail on growth processes and the ecology of your garden.

A book accompanies the set. It follows the same lessons plans and even includes some questions or projects for you as the student. I didn’t watch all of the lessons on the DVD, but in comparing a few to the book, they are similar. However, I think the visual presentation is richer as Chalker-Scott is a skilled teacher and presenter, and she capably incorporates graphics and video examples to augment her well-researched viewpoints.

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

A tapestry garden : the art of weaving plants and place

A Tapestry garden book cover Marietta and Ernie O’Byrne are very clear about their gardening goals. They are not interested in low-maintenance gardening “with orderly shrubs, surrounded by chipped mulch, and plants that don’t touch,” but neither do they care for plant thugs that dominate their neighbors. To achieve these ends, much maintenance is required and they relish this work. “A Tapestry Garden: The Art of Weaving Plants and Place” captures these ideals as they have been expressed in their two acres of gardens on a farm in Eugene.

The O’Byrnes are famous for their hellebores, so I wasn’t surprised to read about their woodland gardens with profiles of shade loving favorites, including trilliums, arisaemas, and podophyllum. But I didn’t know they had large swaths of sun, too. These includes a riotous summer perennial border (a “full-flowered buxomness of leaning, mingling, sprawling growth”) and a chaparral garden, that recreates the look of the southwest, albeit with plants that can survive a Pacific Northwest wet winter and spring.

In reading this latter chapter, I was reminded of the books by Beth Chatto, especially “The Gravel Garden” (2000), one of my favorite all-time gardening books. The O’Byrnes are not afraid to experiment. The writing (primarily in Marietta’s voice) recounts all the successes and failures in a matter-of-fact way and quietly expounds their right place, right plant philosophy throughout their several garden settings and microclimates.

Both Marietta and Ernie grew up loving nature. Both had college degrees in biology and worked together in their own landscape management company for much of their careers, but when it came to their own garden, they made plenty of horticultural mistakes, especially in the early years. While this at first seems like a book for the gardening elite, I encourage beginners to give it a read. You will be amused by the authors’ misfortunes and encouraged to shrug off your own failures and try again.

As they spent more and more time in their own garden, the authors eventually curtailed some of the maintenance business to start their own nursery. This latter continues today as a wholesale business exclusively selling hellebores. A chapter highlights the beauties they have developed, especially the Winter Jewels series, with stunning photographs. This book also includes a very helpful chapter on their maintenance practices, and maps of the garden inside both covers, in case you get lost during the written tour.

The O’Byrnes even sleep in their garden, enjoying the night fragrances of their summer, sunny perennials and the hummingbirds and other pollinators that are on wing at first light. Their plant palette is very broad, including many natives but also challenging-to-grow plants from around the world. Many of these are grown from seed – often there is no other way to obtain these plants. They have decided, “harmonious chaos is possible in a garden, with denizens from multitudes of countries of origin. Would that we humans could be as comradely as is the diverse plant world here represented.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Holden Journals

Holden journals book cover Holden Village is a Lutheran community center deep in the Cascade Mountains, accessible only by a boat ride on Lake Chelan followed by a bus ride on a mountain road. At 3,000 feet, it is very cold and snowy in the winter, and cut off from Wi-Fi and cell phone reception.

For some this may sound like paradise. It was for Peggy Haug and her partner (now spouse) Juanita, who spent two years there from 2005-2007. “Holden Journals: A Close Look at Nature in the North Cascades” is her record of the flowers and the birds she found in the village and on nearby hikes. Her drawings are augmented with copious notes of interpretation, bits of poetry, and her impressions of living in an isolated village.

This book is also an excellent field guide to the wildflowers, trees, and shrubs of this region and an impressive birding list – 68 species in the first year. Some of the most beautiful drawings are of the colorful leaves and berries of fall, intricately overlapping. It can take several delightful minutes just to read all the notes that she weaves in amongst the plant images.

While the native plants are the main features, Holden Village has surviving plant relics from the nearby former mining village, including daffodils and bearded iris. The latter were captured in an earlier book, “Holden Village Historic Iris“, reviewed in the Fall 2008 issue of “The Bulletin”.

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.