Keyword: Reviews

“Garden On, Vashon!” is a most intriguing book, and one that’s hard to categorize. In some ways, it’s a basic gardening book, tailored to the specific soils and microclimates of Vashon and Maury Islands. At the same time, author Karen Dale is telling the history of the islands from a ground-up perspective, beginning with the last ice age, but rapidly moving to the human history of the last 100 years or so.

She easily moves from history to present day, from accounts she has researched to her own style of memoir. The result is charming and recommends this book to readers of regional history as well as gardening. Throughout there are lots of gardening tips, such as when to plant for winter crops and when/how to prune your apples. Or not. “All over the Island these old apple trees stand—carpeted with green moss, shagged over with lichen and mistletoe, into their second century but still bearing fruit.”

Vashon is famous for its history of fruit growing, with the Strawberry Festival a fixture of every July. Unfortunately, there are very few strawberries grown on the island anymore, even though the crop was a mainstay in 1909 when the Festival began. Why has this happened? This is a fascinating story, which this book addresses from a historical perspective, but also from the author’s empirical efforts to understand the difficulties of growing a good crop of this luscious fruit.

The stories of island nurseries—such as the Beale Greenhouses, once one of the largest producers of cut-flower roses and orchids—are thoroughly documented, as is the Vashon Garden Tour. This latter chapter includes a lot of names, but even a casual read through shows how closely tied the island horticultural community was and still is to Seattle and the rest of the mainland.

Excerpted from the Spring 2015 Arboretum Bulletin.

Donald Olson brings extensive experience as a writer of novels, plays, and travel guides along with his passion as a gardener to “The Pacific Northwest Garden Tour.” He also brings the zeal of a convert. As a native Minnesotan and world traveler who now lives in Portland, he extols our gardens, our native landscapes, and our climate – yes, even the grey of winter.

The focus is on the three major metropolitan areas of the region: Seattle/Tacoma, Vancouver, B.C., and Portland, and this book is essential to consult for travel to any of these. Even as a nearly life-long Seattle area resident, I discovered there are local treasures awaiting my discovery, including the Evergreen Arboretum and Gardens in Everett and the newer gardens of PowellsWood in Federal Way and Soos Creek in Auburn.

Donald Olson praises the 1915 design by the Olmsted Brothers of the Dunn Gardens in Seattle, noting how the “essential Olmsted aesthetic remains intact” a century later. He notes that reds, purples, and whites were favored in the design, while yellow was “severely frowned upon.”

At the end of this Dunn Gardens entry, Olson mentions the newer Curators’ Garden, tucked in behind the visitor center and created by co-curators Charles Price and Glen Withey “…using a bright, brilliant palette of plant color decidedly different from the muted tones favored by Olmsted Brothers. There’s even yellow.”

No trips in the planning? This is still a book easily read cover-to-cover, especially for the history and the author’s often witty turns-of-phrase. The Lake Wilderness Arboretum “…rescues old gardens that have lost their owners and moves them phlox, stock, and marrow to new digs at the arboretum” while at the Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden it was “…Betty who wore the plants in the family.”

Like most garden tourists, I enjoy visiting destination nurseries, and many are included by Olson, especially those which have lavish display gardens. Of course, you’ll read about the gardens and nurseries you know, but don’t skip over the unfamiliar; I’m already thinking of a garden tour in the Portland area to share the author’s special passion for several of his recommendations there.

Excerpted from the Spring 2015 Arboretum Bulletin.

“Field Guide to the Wild Flowers of the Algarve” introduces the rich Mediterranean flora of the southernmost province of Portugal. Several indigenous plants have become mainstays of western horticulture, including species of Cistus, Quercus, Euphorbia, and Narcissus. This is also a major tourist destination – a chance to combine fun in the sun with serious botanizing!

Published in the March 2015 Leaflet for Scholars Volume 2, Issue 3.

Bill Terry and Rosemary Bates both had extensive careers in journalism. It shows in the quality of their interviews in “Beauty by Design,” a book about gardeners in a “passionate pursuit of perfection.” These profiles capture in just a few pages the personality of their subjects, and the intimate relationship of gardener to garden.

Every chapter reads like a memoir. All would captivate readers within a wide spectrum of artistic interests as many of the subjects are artists in a different medium, including painters, a potter, and poets. Terry and Bates conclude that “these gardeners, indeed all gardeners, are alchemists of nature, art, and artifice.”

Some of the eleven individuals or couples profiled are familiar names around Seattle, including Dan Hinkley, Linda Cochrane, George Little, and David Lewis. Most are better known in the gardening circles of southwest British Columbia, but a common theme is they have spent a significant part of their lives in other places, and have been strongly influenced by very different climates, traditions, and histories.

An example is Robin Hopper, a potter living in Metchosin, British Columbia, near Victoria. He describes the fusion in his garden as “Anglo-Japanadian.” He is quite familiar with the various styles—he counts five—of Japanese gardening, and acknowledges their impact, but the description of his garden makes it clear that it has its very own style.

“The forest floor is all happy chaos: hostas mingling with hellebores (H. foetidus) in flower, the leaves of hardy cyclamen, bits of iris, various self-seeded woodland wildlings, and, most delightfully, the flowers of the white fawn lily (Erythronium oregonum). Birds and bugs must love this place.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2014 Arboretum Bulletin.

Roy Forster was the first curator and director of the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, British Columbia, designing much of the plantings that help make this one of the outstanding botanical gardens in our region. “For the Love of Trees” is in some ways his autobiography, but in a most unusual format, as he uses his own paintings to tell most of that story.

His life has taken him to many locations, providing a wide range of subjects for the “Arboreal Odyssey” of his sub-title. After making comparisons to Homer, he clarifies that “the giants of my story are not fearsome cyclopean monsters but giant redwood trees, ancient venerable pines, and cedars that ascend to the sky.”

Many of his subjects are found in another gem of the Vancouver landscape, Stanley Park. While the large conifers are well-represented, my favorite piece is of a particularly large red alder (Alnus rubra), shown in winter time “when the red dormant buds, twigs and catkins show on the naked branches, contrasting with the somber green of the coniferous forest.”

Travels have given him many more stories, and the human elements that surround his trees are significant. A hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) is seen in front of the Glastonbury Tor, the legendary burial place for the Holy Grail. A venerable olive tree (Olea europaea) dwarfs the gates of Les Collettes, the garden of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir in southern France.

Throughout, Forster shares his philosophy on trees, which is also his philosophy on life. He describes the profits of his life as a tree planter in public landscapes: “The rewards are of a different kind, consisting mainly in the joy of observing the vigorous growth of the trees over the decades of life, knowing they will be there long after the planter is gone. There is a kind of love in that.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2014 Arboretum Bulletin.