Notes from the Garden: Creating a Pacific Northwest Sanctuary

Madeleine Wilde was the author of a gardening column in Seattle’s “Queen Anne & Magnolia News” that ran for over 20 years. Near the end of her life in 2018, she asked her publisher, Mike Dillon, to compile and edit those columns into a book. “Notes from the Garden” has recently been published, a treasure to be cherished by all local gardeners.

Wilde’s husband, David Streatfield, professor emeritus in Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington, provides a forward that describes the structure and history of their shared garden. He notes the significant trees and garden places, but also portrays the emotional space their garden provided. It was a sanctuary. It was also a place of remembrances, including plantings that were gifts from her parents, memorials to beloved family cats, or evoke places enjoyed on their travels together. According to her husband, this was also where Wilde “contemplated the issues she wrote about. These ranged from philosophical musings to seemingly mundane garden management issues.”

These mundane issues are typically very practical advice. I learned that re-planting annual nasturtiums in the mid-summer as a way to eliminate an infestation of black aphids. To enjoy early spring ephemerals, bring them inside, washing off bulbs, roots, and all. This extends the life of the flowers with the added bonus the plant can be restored to the garden without harm, allowing the leaves to naturally mature. I noted that bulbs, especially those that are spring blooming, are a frequent component of these essays, with several columns providing guidance for the heady rush of shopping for the best selections before planting in the fall.

As I read Wilde’s articles, in my head I was responding to her ideas as I would with any friend who is also a keen gardener. Most often, this was agreement over shared experiences. Sometimes, I felt the need to disagree, but I might do that with any friend I trusted not to take offense. Throughout, it was a healthy dialog, very much alive and vibrant.

Spring is celebrated for its exuberance, but this is not always a good thing. “The brilliant dandelions appear to double in numbers and showiness every hour. The chickweed mats ooze across the terrain, while that perky pest, named shotweed, seems to be in fast-forward on its second go-round…All dedicated gardeners have their special choice of vigorous thugs to conquer. The ridiculous absurdity is that each year we think we can control all this extravagantly beautiful spring growth. I try to stay amused.”

Excerpted from the Spring 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Sustainable Food Gardens: Myths and Solutions

Robert Kourik has eight books in the Miller Library, the earliest from 1986. In all of these, he emphasizes the importance of adopting gardening practices that work with nature. He is especially interested in the root systems of plants and ways to maintain soil integrity while conserving water and nutrients. Based in Santa Rosa, California, at the southern edge of our region, his writing is easily transferable to Pacific Northwest gardeners.

In the years since his first book, he has continued to learn. His newest title, “Sustainable Food Gardens,” takes the reader on this educational journey. Many of his opinions have evolved in the last 35 years and some have completely changed. Kourik is a good teacher. He has conversational approach to his writing and is good at providing sources and reasons for his opinions, recognizing that some contradict traditional thinking.

At well over 400 pages with large outer dimensions, this is a hefty book. I think it is best treated as a reference resource, to read individual chapters as needed. Important concepts are sometimes repeated if relevant in multiple chapters. While some may be frustrated by this structure, I found it very useful. It is also important to know this does not have a dictionary of food plants. While there are recommended choices for certain situations, another book is likely required for choosing your food crops.

Kourik encourages the food gardener to be realistic about the scale and setting for their garden. What works on a large organic farm, might not be as effective on your small backyard plot or p-patch. Some sustainable planting practices are only intended for warmer climates. Be realistic, too, about the amount of maintenance a food garden requires and don’t over commit yourself.

One chapter is devoted to container gardening, recognizing this may be the only option for many urban gardeners. The intricacies of drip water systems are thoroughly presented, as are the many other concerns of soil choices, fertilizing, and plants that are best suited for this growing environment. But Kourik recognizes that the simplest approach is often the best. “The quick-and-dirtiest way to grow plants like tomatoes on a deck or driveway is to buy a sack of potting soil or compost, lay if flat on its widest side, slit it open, and plant it with tomato or pepper seedlings.”

Excerpted from the Spring 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

The Ultimate Guide to Urban Farming: Sustainable Living in your Home, Community, and Business

Typically, I don’t like books that claim to be the “ultimate” in the title as they usually disappoint. I brought this bias to a book from 2016 (but new to the Miller Library) titled “The Ultimate Guide to Urban Farming” by Victoria, British Columbia author Nicole Faires. I can’t claim expertise on urban farming and its many aspects, but I was very impressed by the thoroughness of this manual on the topic.

It’s important to first know the scope. This is not about edible landscaping or urban homesteading, the latter a term the author describes as “dabbling in a wide variety of self-reliant skills to raise food and make things for their own family like knitting, canning, and beekeeping.” By contrast, the goal of an urban farmer is “intensive food production near or in a city” with the intent of selling most of that food to others.

The author used the city of Havana, Cuba as a model. Forced to become self-sufficient without reliance on petroleum products following the end of the Soviet Union, this city of 2 million gradually developed a localized food system that she encourages Canadian and American cities to embrace. Faires also recognizes that “farms” come in all sizes, suggesting that balconies and window boxes, even indoor light gardens have the potential to be productive income sources.

After these preliminaries, the rest of “Urban Farming” is a systematic and meticulous review of the many, many crops one can consider, including those that might be used for purposes other than food. Besides the expected guidance on planting and growing, this includes the intricacies of harvest, storage, and selling your products. Raising a wide-ranging variety of animals for profit, including fish and shellfish, is also explored.

Excerpted from the Spring 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Vegetable by Vegetable: A Guide for Gardening Near the Salish Sea

Marko Colby and Hanako Myers are organic gardeners in Quilcene, Washington, growing both vegetables to sell in markets and vegetable starts for home gardeners. From their experiences answering the questions of their seedling buyers, they have put together a small (83 pages) but very useful book titled “Vegetable by Vegetable: A Guide for Gardening Near the Salish Sea.”

The sub-title recognizes the similarity of climates over a wide range of coastal British Columbia and Washington. As an example, they note how the growing season around Puget Sound is more comparable to northern Vancouver Island than to much closer areas just east of the Cascade Mountains.

The advice is very direct and encouraging. For tomatoes, “few varieties have complete resistance to fungal disease and some amount of disease is normal (Try not to worry too much!).” I recommend you give this user-friendly little book a try.

Excerpted from the Spring 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

A Beautiful Obsession

I was fortunate to hear Jimi Blake speak at the virtual annual meeting of the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon in November 2021. He radiates enthusiasm for garden plants of all kinds, especially ones newly available to keen gardeners, expressed in a lovely, Irish lilt.

Much of that energy, if not the lilt, is captured in a new book, “A Beautiful Obsession” written with Noel Kingsbury and focused on Blake’s Hunting Brook Garden near the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin. This is not one of the Irish gardens with a favored, western exposure to the Gulf Stream. Instead, it is at a thousand feet elevation with acidic clay, making its limits for plant hardiness similar to many Seattle area gardens.

This is a very personal space. One of his garden areas is named in memory of a former partner. Another after a long-lived canine companion.

Blake’s story is compelling. The youngest child of a large family growing up on a farm, he learned gardening at an early age, greatly influenced by his mother and older siblings. After formal training and a long apprenticeship at an estate farm, he took over a portion of the family property to create Hunting Brook.

From the beginning this was intended as teaching garden. A classroom was built into the new house and courses are taught almost year-round. Teaching about gardening, providing space for retreats, including young people in recovery from drug and alcohol problems in Dublin.

It is also a very kinetic space, as Blake is frequently swapping out old plants for new, and bringing tender plants out of protection every May, only to be returned in October.

Kingsbury acts as the observer as they walk together through the garden, often quoting Blake’s comments about the plants, why they were chosen, which ones may soon be removed. It is not as polished as many books about a collector’s garden, but I liked that informal quality, making reading as much fun as admiring the vivid photographs.

Readers of “Gardens Illustrated” magazine have appreciated Blake’s seasonal selection of plants over 2021. A plant directory in the book provides a similar sampling of his personal style. For example Red Tussock Grass (Chionochloa rubra), native to New Zealand: “I know I use the word ‘favourite’ a lot, but this is my favourite grass. I was delighted to find hillsides of it in New Zealand with sheep grazing through it.”

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Spring 2022

The Book of Difficult Fruit

Book of Difficult Fruit cover

Fruit might be considered difficult because it’s hard to grow, arduous to prepare, almost impossible to buy or else fraught with emotional associations.

Kate Lebo’s talent lies in weaving her personal fascination with the various fruits — and a couple of non-fruits such as wheat and sugarcane — with her efforts to use it in some way. Every chapter has at least one recipe. I’m most tempted to try making huckleberry pie, juniper bitters, pickled rhubarb, and whipped vanilla body cream. She explores historical uses, native habitat and growing requirements. However, the entries are not encyclopedic. Instead, each entry is also an opportunity to remember and reflect on her personal relationships, her own and others’ health challenges and the foods used to manage those challenges.

While preparing for her grandfather’s funeral she discovers an elderberry shrub covered in fruit in her parents’ backyard. She also discovers a missing set of aunts. She includes a recipe for elderflower cordial and throughout the book the mystery of the missing aunts reveals a confounding secret in her own family.

In the chapter on dandelions, filed under F for “faceclock,” an old common name, we learn a little about folklore and childhood rituals of blowing seeds off the puffy seedheads. We also learn how Lebo would weed her dandelion-choked lawn when depression prevented her from doing anything else. The recipe for faceclock greens, fennel sausage and barley soup is recommended for early spring preparation and sounds delicious.

Nothing makes a librarian happier than to help a patron find answers to questions within the books we’ve spent years curating. Even better is when that Spokane, Washington based patron writes a book filled with those answers and recalls the hours she spent researching in the Miller Library (in the chapter on juniper berries). Kate Lebo’s book of essays is compelling, sometimes humorous, and always insightful.

Published in the Leaflet, Volume 8, Issue 12, December 2021

The Northwest Gardens of Lord & Schryver

I have been interested in the history of horticulture in the Pacific Northwest from an early age. However, I only recently learned of the work of landscape architects Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver and their practice based in Salem, Oregon from 1929 to 1969. Their story is told in compelling detail in The Northwest Gardens of Lord & Schryver, a new book by Valencia Libby.

Elizabeth Lord (1887-1974) was a member of a prominent Salem family; her father was a governor of Oregon. After his death, she became the frequent companion of her mother, from whom she learned about gardening and an appreciation of native plants. Lord was already in her late 30s by the time her mother died, leaving her with an inheritance, but also the need to establish a career. She decided to study at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women in Groton, Massachusetts, one of the very few institutions for women interested in this field. “It was a program worthy of any modern department of landscape architecture and included an emphasis on horticulture that is rarely found today.”

Edith Schryver (1901-1984) was from the Hudson Valley of New York and also attended Lowthorpe, but at an earlier time than Lord. Her superior skills as a student quickly led to a position with Ellen Shipman in Manhattan, a landscape architecture firm consisting of only women. In June 1927, both Lord and Schryver boarded a ship as part of a trip co-sponsored by Lowthorpe to visit outstanding European gardens.

Meeting shipboard, they quickly became close friends, and spent four months traveling in Europe together, only part of the time with the Lowthorpe group. Upon returning, Lord still had a year of studies to complete, but by early 1929 they moved together to Salem where they shared a home and garden for 45 years. The firm of Lord and Schryver completed designs in Oregon and Washington for about 200 clients, many of them residential gardens, but also public parks, institutional grounds and a variety of other facilities.

Their impact was greater than just the work on specific projects. Early clients included Richard D. and Eula Merrill of Capitol Hill in Seattle. Libby’s research suggests the work of Lord and Schryver influenced the Merrill daughters, Virginia Bloedel and Eulalie Wagner, in their later creations of the Bloedel Reserve and Lakewold Gardens respectively.

Lord and Schryver were noted for their interest in finding new plants and introducing them to gardeners and the local nursery industry. They were familiar with what was being offered on the east coast and they traveled widely. Unlike many in their profession, this “expertise identified them as consummate plantswomen.” They also embraced the innovations in educational outreach, including the new media of radio, speaking on programs intended for home gardeners and especially for women.

We are fortunate that their legacy is preserved today by the Lord & Schryver Conservancy, which maintains the women’s home and garden, known as Gaiety Hollow. Also open to the public in Salem is the historic gardens at Deepwood Museum and Gardens, the former home of Alice Bretherton Brown, a Lord & Schryver client from 1929 until 1968. This is an important book in the history of both landscape design and the development of ornamental horticulture in the region, and it is also a real pleasure to read.

Published in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2022

Wild World Handbook: How Adventurers, Artists, Scientists–and You–Can Protect Earth’s Habitats

The Wild World Handbook offers something special for all ages, though it’s aimed at ages 8-12. Part biography, part nature guide, part workbook, it’s a visually appealing book you’ll want to dip into over and over.

The nine chapters each feature a particular habitat: mountains, forests, deserts, polar regions, oceans, freshwater, cities, rainforests, and grasslands. For each ecosystem there are two adventurers, scientists, or artists featured, some more familiar than others. George Washington Carver, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Wangari Maathai are among the better-known people featured. The diverse group includes Robin Wall Kimmerer, Almir Narayamoga Suruí, Margaret Murie, Rue Mapp, and many others whose work may be new to readers. Each chapter features conservation success stories, field trips, and do-it-yourself projects, including stewardship ideas and gardening tips.

At a time when hope is more vital than ever, this book reminds us that anyone can do something to help conserve habitats. Check it out!

Published in the Leaflet, Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2022

Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food

When I first heard the phrase “food security” I thought of barriers due to poverty or living in inner city food deserts without grocery stores. After a particularly wet November one year when floods closed the I-5 freeway for a few days I heard the concept also applied to the danger of our region being cut off from the food supply because trucks bearing produce from the south couldn’t get through. Lenore Newman is director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada. Her book Lost Feast introduces another aspect of food security – the plants and animals people consume going extinct. Newman reports humanity has lost over 90% of named vegetable cultivars, and 87% of pear cultivars: “Think of a great library of flavors. For the last century we have been burning all of the books.”

In America, the long-extinct passenger pigeon once flew in flocks so numerous that the sky could be obscured for days at a time. The birds were a symbol of the boundless abundance the new world represented and a reliable food source for Native people and for the waves of poor immigrants that poured in from abroad. But by the second half of the nineteenth century the flocks had grown so scarce that the bird was reserved for the very wealthy at fancy New York restaurants, such as Delmonico’s.

Each chapter starts and ends with an extinction dinner prepared by a friend who has a talent for cooking and a fondness for animals succeeding in human environments, like seagulls and rats. In the chapter that covers cultivated plants such as apples and pears they decide to prepare the ancient Roman dish “pears patina,” which included grated Bosc pears, cumin, pepper, and honey baked with eggs. The author insisted her friend not include “garum,” a fermented liquid fish ingredient the Romans would have added for some tasty funk or as Newman described it, “an essence of low tide.”

In Lost Feast we visit Hawaii, Kazakhstan, British Columbia, Iceland, Alaska, New Zealand and many more regions of the world to explore how plants and animals evolved over millennia to the cuisines we know today.

Most of us know by now that honeybees and myriad other pollinating insects are essential for most all of our favorite fruits and vegetables. Newman details the history of the human-honeybee intertwined relationship and documents why the insects are so crucial for food production. Bees are under threat from pesticides, parasites, and habitat loss – if the bees disappear so will affordable fruit.

Lenore Newman has a passion for regional cuisine, love of food, and an academic’s dedication to thorough research. The historic details she uncovers are never tedious or dry and the reader can trust her as an authority in food history. Her writing style is witty but also serious, as she draws the reader in with personal stories of her research journey followed with deep background information and lamentations on how much food culture has been lost already. To counter the depressing reality of food extinction Newman leaves us with the Zen Buddhist concept of wabi-sabi: “… we should love life while balancing that love against the sense of serene sadness that is life’s inevitable passing.”

Published in the Leaflet, Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2022

Landskipping

After moving from a lifetime in New York City to the flatlands of central Illinois, my friend Cecile decided to buy landscapes painted by local artists to teach the family how to look at the land around them that seemed oppressively monotonous. That was my introduction to the idea of seeing landscapes from different perspectives. Landskipping shows the reader two ways of looking at rural Britain that emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Along the way, the book describes many engaging places.

In the 18th century English travelers began going to the Lake District and other wild places to experience the views. They were guided by writers and painters who encouraged them to look for locations that were sublime or beautiful or just picturesque, each with its own characteristics. A sublime view, for instance, inspired awe or even terror. As tourism grew, specific locations were described to achieve various effects. Crosses were carved in the turf to make clear exactly where to stand get the best result.

Humans could not resist enhancing the views. In the Lakes the Earl of Surrey had a boat fitted with 12 cannons and fired them so his guests could enjoy the awe-inspiring effect of the echoes. William Gilpin wrote a series of Observations (published between 1782 and 1809) on his travels, including sketches of the scenes he described. In some drawings he modified the actual views so they better fit his criteria for the picturesque, much to the frustration of the tourists who tried to match the view to his sketch. Learning about the rage for scenic travel in this period made me understand better Elizabeth Bennett’s disappointment in Pride and Prejudice, when her trip to the Lake District was aborted.

In the second major section of Landskipping, Pavord contrasts tourist viewing for Romantic effect with that of travelers in the same time period, sometimes looking at the same scenes, with an eye to the productivity of the land. The newly created Board of Agriculture commissioned reports on the condition of farming, and the men sent to write them were “pro-landowner, pro-enclosure,” looking to “improve” land, “maximise profit and . . . use labor in the most efficient way” (p. 97). Thomas Lloyd, for example, noted that “’little attempt was made to feed [the soil] with manure or practice the rotation of crops’” (p. 98).

William Cobbett, in his Rural Rides, articles originally published from 1821 to 1826 in the “Political Register ,” described the landscape as it related to the people who worked there. He loved woodlands because they provided easy to obtain fuel for the laborers, who often lived in extreme poverty. Woods, he wrote, “’furnish . . . nice sweet fuel for the heating of ovens; . . . material for the making of pretty pigsties . . .; for making little cow sheds; . . . for the sticking of pease and beans in the gardens, and for giving everything a neat and substantial appearance.’” He added that the “’little flower gardens . . . and the beautiful hedges of thorn and privet; these are objects to delight the eyes, to gladden the heart’” (p. 112). The productive landscape was to him also beautiful.

Along with further meaty chapters on “Rooks and Sheep,” and on the gradual loss of common land, Pavord includes meditations on her own long connection to and admiration for the Dorset landscape she lives in. She leaves the reader with lots of intriguing information about rural Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries and with new understanding of the benefits of gazing at landscapes from multiple angles.

Published in the Leaflet for Scholars, December 2021, Volume 8, Issue 12.