The Triumph of Seeds

The Triumph of Seeds cover

Thor Hanson’s son Noah became fascinated with seeds at an early age. After reading “The Triumph of Seeds”, this is not surprising. Having a father who could tell such compelling stories could make the commonplace imprint on almost any child.

Adults will find Hanson’s stories equally engaging. He is an excellent researcher, interweaving the importance of seeds in botany, ecology, and natural history with their significance in both human history and what you are serving for dinner. Why are the seeds of chili peppers hot? What’s in it for the coffee bean to be full of caffeine?

These questions have chapter-long answers that introduce a wealth of characters, ranging from Christopher Columbus to Johann Sebastian Bach to a barista in Ballard. Through both history and modern culture the relationships between humans and plants (and animals) are very deep, on-going, and ever-developing.

As his son ages, Hanson involves him in his experiments, but the end results are often about more than just the research. Describing the flight of the seed of a Javan cucumber, with its six inch wing, he recalls, “We watched that seed fly for the simple joy of seeing something beautiful doing what it is meant to do. Standing there together, heads tilted skyward, we laughed and laughed until it disappeared from view—a papery wisp at the edge of visions, still rising.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2015 Arboretum Bulletin.

Conifers of the Pacific Slope

Conifers of the Pacific Slope cover

If your exploration of native trees takes you on a trip farther afield, consider bringing “Conifers of the Pacific Slope” by Michael Edward Kauffmann. Inspired as a youth by a family visit to the forests of California, this Virginia native returned to work amongst the majestic trees that stirred his younger self. This field guide is a product of that passion and is designed for easy packing.

The scope is all of the native conifer species of the Pacific Coast from northern Baja California to well into British Columbia, and eastward to the Rockies. This includes some very impressive trees. In addition to the familiar Pacific Northwest conifers highlighted in the previous book, there are the many cypresses, junipers, and pines of California plus representatives from a few other genera, including the most impressive of them all, the coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)and giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum).

While intended as a field guide, the author provides lots of interesting bits of natural history with his descriptions and some wonderful maps that group related species together, including areas of hybridization. These, along with essays at the front and back, make this a book easily readable from cover-to-cover.

Excerpted from the Fall 2015 Arboretum Bulletin.

Native Trees of Western Washington

Native Trees of Western Washington cover

“Native Trees of Western Washington” is accurately described in the sub-title as “A Photographic Guide” to trees that can be found west of the Cascade Crest. Each entry has several photos, and include close-ups of all the parts you will need to help with identification.

The author, Kevin Zobrist, is an associate professor of Extension Forestry for Washington State University but grew up and is based in western Washington, and is a Husky by schooling. He leads the WSU extension program in Forestry for the counties of the northern Puget Sound.

While the forestry background is evident in his descriptions of habitats and growth characteristics, his descriptions are well-rounded and engaging. An example is his interest in the production of syrup from bigleaf maples (Acer macrophyllum): “…it produces an exceptional syrup that has rich maple flavor with hints of vanilla and can hold its own against anything the Northeast has to offer.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2015 Arboretum Bulletin.

Practical Permaculture

Practical Permaculture cover

What is Permaculture? The authors of “Practical Permaculture” go to considerable effort to define the evolving meaning of this term, while emphasizing the ethics and principles on which proponents mostly agree. The most important are care for the earth and the care of people.

The introduction continues with the basics of nature and how the earth “works,” and then the principles of design, using co-author Jessi Bloom’s house as a case study. After that a wide range of topics are considered, and options discussed for sites from the tropics to mild temperate zones – all ways to illustrate how working with our environment instead of against it has proven successful in many different settings and with many different peoples.

The book goes far beyond gardening to consider energy sources and their alternatives, the design and construction of homes, even the processing of human waste – essentially a handbook to all physical aspects of life, including our social structures. Near the end is a list of fifty plants that they consider useful for permaculture landscapes. The list was not what I expected – many of the plants were unfamiliar, especially those that will only thrive or in some cases survive in a tropical climate.

Does this all work? This certainly is a book for generating ideas. I would want to vet the list of the recommended plants carefully. Will they survive? Will they become invasive? If nothing else, this book will make you realize there’s much to consider in all of your gardening decisions.

Excerpted from the Fall 2015 Arboretum Bulletin.

The landscape architecture of Richard Haag

The landscape architecture of Richard Haag cover

Richard Haag’s life story, as told in “The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag”, a new biography by Thaïsa Way, has many twists and turns before he arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Growing up on a family nursery and farm near Louisville, Kentucky, he studied and was mentored on both coasts and in Midwest, but a two year visit to Japan, as one of the first recipients of a Fulbright scholarship to visit that country, he later claimed “changed my whole life.” Here he learned “conservation and economy…[and] working with what you have.”

He came to Seattle in 1958 to develop what became the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Washington. One of the core courses, “Theory and Perception”, Haag taught from 1959 to 1996, “using it to articulate his vision of landscape architecture as a melding of the humanities, the arts, and the sciences, a means of stewardship of the earth and its cultures.”

He continued his private practice as well, and it is from this that he has his greatest fame today, primarily through two projects. The first, Gas Works Park, is the result of a nearly 20-year public debate. Haag’s ability as a designer is almost overshadowed by his ability as a political operator. His techniques for transforming a highly toxic site into a safe place for the public, all with the minimum of soil removal, is also a remarkable. He certainly mastered “working with what you have.”

The story of his work at the Bloedel Reserve is not quite as unqualified a success. Some of his designs, most notably the Garden of Planes, were later removed. Other plans were altered despite the notable accolades they received. A thread throughout this book is the challenges Haag faced to be honored in his profession, and—since he is now in his 90s—to see his projects live on as he intended.

Excerpted from the Fall 2015 Arboretum Bulletin.

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander : making the modern landscape

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander : making the modern landscape cover

In the summer of 2013, I visited Vancouver, B.C. Across the street from my hotel was a wonderful urban space, Robson Square; I spent one morning of my precious two days exploring this space. On the same trip I visited the dazzling new visitor center at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens. Although these two projects had widely spaced completion dates (1983 and 2011), the landscape architect for both projects was Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, the subject of a new biography by Susan Herrington.

Oberlander, in addition to being one of the premier landscape architects of our region, has lived a fascinating life – she and her family escaped Nazi Germany shortly before World War II. She graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1947, one of the first women to do so, and spent several years of her early career on projects in Philadelphia “…working directly with communities and incorporating their views into the design process.”

She and her husband moved permanently to Vancouver in the late 1950s when the city was…”a tiny town…I was able to conquer new ground. In the east I would have never been able to do that.” She also became a mother and this perhaps led to a strong interest in the design of playgrounds, using her three children as subjects in her research on what design elements work from a child’s perspective. One of her most famous projects was the outdoor play environment at Expo 67 in Montreal, which proved more popular than the more structured, indoor Children’s Creative Centre it adjoined.

The Jim Everett Memorial Park on the University of British Columbia campus is one of Oberlander’s more recent projects (2002). Intended for the children of students living in nearby university housing, the challenges were significant: liability issues surrounding playgrounds have tightened in recent years and there were already several demands on the space for junior soccer, festivals, and providing pleasing views from the resident’s apartments. The results relied on a landscaping – berms, sunken ovals, and small mounds – and limited hardscape, mostly seating areas for the parents, to create the play space. There is no playground equipment. In the planning state, one member of the public declared a “playground without a swing-set, slides, and teeter-totters was un-Canadian!” This same parent, observing her children happily at play in the completed park, commented to Oberlander that this was “not so much a Canadian playground as a human one.”

While these small scale projects have been very successful, Oberlander is best known for her larger works, which include subjects in a wide range of settings and climate zones such as the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (1976 and 1997), the Legislative Assembly Building in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (1994), and the courtyard of the New York Times building (2007).

Excerpted from the Fall 2015 Arboretum Bulletin.

Flora Illustrata: Great Works from the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden

New on the shelves of the Miller Library is a wonderful book, Flora Illustrata, about the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden. What makes it so wonderful? Why write a whole book about a library? The editors, Susan M. Fraser and Vanessa Bezemer Sellers, answer these questions in their preface. “We hope that Flora Illustrata captures the wonderful experience of spending an afternoon…among the rustling sound of turning pages, the smell of age-worn paper-worlds of wonder emerging from the heavy sheets.”

Turning the pages of this particular book reveals a wealth of illustrations ranging from the woodcuts of medieval herbals to the brilliant chromolithographs of 19th century seed catalogs. Other images are selected from the Mertz unmatched collection of books on plants of the Americas in their natural setting, often with their attendant butterflies, birds, and other animals.

While it’s hard to tear one’s eyes away from the illustrations, the text, written by experts in botanical and horticultural literature from America and Europe, provides an excellent and engaging history of the writers and illustrators of the books in the collection. It is also an excellent human history as seen from the perspective of botanists, nursery owners, and home gardeners.

For example, Elizabeth Eustis, a specialist in the art history of gardens, describes mid-19th century advertising depictions of fruit trees which intentionally included flaws such as a brown spot on an otherwise perfect apple. “Although a blemish may seem counter-intuitive as a selling point, it could effectively rebut accusations that such plates were unrealistically idealized.” She goes on to explain that even then, “the deceitful peddler was a familiar stereotype…”

Winner of the 2015 Annual Literature Award from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries.

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Fall 2015

A Dictionary of English Plant Names

book jacket

You may never have wondered about the etymology of vernacular names for plants, but Geoffrey Grigson, author of A Dictionary of English Plant Names (Allen Lane, 1974), has. Why exactly is ‘henbane’ (Hyoscyamus niger) the bane of hens, aside from the fact that it is toxic? It might be because the plant thrives on disturbed or hen-scratched earth, where hens would be more likely to find and consume its poisonous seeds (which will either stun or kill them). [There is a more recent interpretation suggesting that the ancient root hen meant death, but the meaning was lost, and relating the name to domestic fowl filled in the knowledge gap. Source: An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology by Anatoly Liberman, University of Minnesota, 2008]

The folk history of traditional English plant names is colorful and captivating. ‘Brank-ursine’ is a 15th century name meaning bear’s claw, describing the shape of an Acanthus mollis flower. One common name for Sedum telephium is ‘Midsummer Men,’ originating in a loves-me-loves-me-not game of the 17th century in which cook-maids and dairy-maids placed pairs of stems in chinks in the wall and waited to see if they inclined toward or away from each other. Every time I consult this book I learn something new and fascinating.

Lucy and the Green Man

Lucy and the Green Man book jacket

For middle readers, this illustrated chapter book follows Lucy, who loves working in her grandfather’s garden over her school holidays. Together, Lucy and Grandpa Will see a magical Green Man called Lob in the garden. While Lucy is back at school, her grandfather dies suddenly, and Lucy decides to seek the Green Man on her own. Even though she can’t get to Grandpa’s garden, she works to create a space for Lob closer to home. Readers who garden, especially in the city, will reflect on the unique magic that comes of hard work close to home.

Published in the August 2015 Leaflet Volume 2, Issue 8.

RHS Plants from Pips: Pots of Plants for the Whole Family to Enjoy

rhs plans from pips book jacket Working in the kitchen, have you ever wondered whether you could grow peppers from pepper seeds? How about a mango tree from a mango pit? This book for gardeners of all ages explains how to germinate a wide range of commonly-seen seeds most people would usually toss in the bin. The entries detail what each plant would need to grow on to maturity, while an illustrated section at the end highlights basic gardening techniques as well as common problems and solutions.

Published in the August 2015 Leaflet Volume 2, Issue 8.