The Great British Tree Biography

Read this book to have fun with tales, myths, legends, and historical facts about British trees. Mark Hooper says the book aims “to explore the space where social history meets natural history” (p. 9). Along the way he ties events familiar and unfamiliar to many individual trees.

The first short section consists of superstitions and symbolism associated with various types of trees. The birch, for instance, is associated with witchcraft, apparently because household brooms were made of birch twigs bundled with a handle of hazel or hawthorn. Brooms, witches – they go together.

The main body of the book is “An A-Z of British Trees,” one- or two-page accounts of fifty individual (or sometimes multiple) trees in England, Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland. Most are English. Many of the trees are very long-lived. The Ankerwycke Yew has survived since King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, supposedly under its branches. Later Henry VIII is rumored to have courted Anne Boleyn in the same spot.

Lest you think these associations are all from long ago, the Bolan Tree, “an unprepossessing sycamore” (p, 42) in London, was the site of a 1977 car crash that killed T. Rex lead singer Marc Bolan when his car collided with it. A statue and a plaque serve as a memorial.

Of the fifty entries on trees, 19 are oaks and nine are yews. Some individual trees are identifiable; some are not. In “The Knole Oak and the Strawberry Fields Tree,” an oak on the Knole estate in Kent can only be described as a likely candidate for the oak featured in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. But definitely known is the specific oak on the same estate used in a promotional video for the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields.”

Some entries include multiple trees. The account “The ‘Trees to Remain’” explains the many curves in the A303 highway by way of a 1969 hand drawn plan for a bypass marked “trees to remain.” The builders just had to bend the highway around the trees. No species names are given.

These sample summaries are enough to whet the reader’s appetite. Amy Grimes has illustrated the tales with impressionistic art in saturated hues, adding to the liveliness of these stories.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy for The Leaflet, August 2022, Volume 9, Issue 8.

Spring and Summer Wildflowers of the Northeast, two books

“This book is written for all who share an interest in wildflowers.” Carol Gracie writes this statement in the preface for each of her two books: Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast (published in 2012) and Summer Wildflowers of the Northeast (published in 2020), both with the subtitle “A Natural History.”

This subtitle is key, because these are not typical field guides. Instead, they are collections of both charming and rigorous essays about key plant groups in the northeastern United States and adjacent parts of Canada. They are a bit large for a backpack, but instead best for reading at home after seeing the plants in the wild. Unlike most guides, these are very enjoyable to read cover-to-cover.

Of course, most readers of the Leaflet do not live in the Northeast, but I still recommend these books. The selected genera or plant families often have northwestern representatives and the Gracie refers to these to compare similar natural histories.

The author has another stated purpose. “I’m certain that as you become more familiar with the natural history of wildflowers, you will want to become an advocate for their protection and conservation. Many of our once common wildflowers are now rare for many reasons.”

These books are also beautiful, with photographs (by the author) that are both artful and well-chosen to enhance the surrounding text. Further research is encouraged by an impressive appendix of references.

Best of all, Gracie was a wonderful story-teller and these books will increase your love of wildflowers, their pollinators and other animal associates, and your appreciation of the impact on human medicine, gardening, and lore. Sadly, these are the last such books by this author as she died in the fall of 2021. It is a fitting tribute to her memory that in 2022 “Summer Wildflowers” won an Award of Excellence for Natural History and Field Guides from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries.

Reviewed by Brian Thompson for the Leaflet, July 2022, Volume 9, Issue 7.

Reviews, Wildflowers

Gilbert White

“The language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood.”

With this quotation from a letter by Gilbert White, Richard Mabey opened this biography when it was first published in 1986. It offers a nice glimpse into White’s ability to observe and understand nature.

This new edition, with a new foreword but the same opening quotation, brings back to print the man whose single volume, The Natural History of Selborne, helped revise the public view of nature. Published in 1789, Selborne arrived as the rational focus on a well-ordered universe was beginning to clash with Romanticism’s view of nature as wild and alternately terrifying and inspiring. White instead focused on careful and often affectionate observation of natural detail, placed carefully in the setting of an English village. The book marked the beginning of nature writing as we know it.

Gilbert White spent many years recording his observations around the rural village of Selborne in Hampshire. A graduate of Oxford, when that degree alone qualified him to be ordained as clergy, he spent his life in the village where he was born. Mabey records his occasional adventures farther afield in England, usually accompanied by “coach sickness.” He never left England. On a few occasions he acquired a short-term position as curate in a nearby parish, but whenever a permanent place was available, he made little effort to obtain it. He lived on a small inheritance, without paid employment, in the family house in Selborne.

Part of the pleasure of Mabey’s biography is his description, via White’s notes, of Selborne and its neighborhood. The dominating feature is a huge hill Mabey calls “a louring whaleback” that rises 300 feet above street level.

In 1788 the village had 686 inhabitants and was almost totally isolated from the surrounding countryside. White was fascinated by its “hollow lanes,” roads had had sunk below their surroundings due to centuries of wear on the chalk soil beneath them, sometimes by sixteen or eighteen feet. He wrote they “exhibit very grotesque and wild appearances” due to “tangled roots that are twisted among the strata” and from the “torrents rushing down,” especially when frozen. “These rugged gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from the paths above” and “make timid horsemen shudder” (p. 26).

White was also an enthusiastic gardener. He recorded his activities in what he called “The Gardener’s Kalendar.” ( The Garden Diary of Dr. Darwin, reviewed in the Leaflet in May describes a similar, later record by an English amateur gardener.) White planted and tended flowers, often in borders and climbing vines, but he mainly devoted himself to vegetables – more than forty varieties: “including artichokes, endives, mustard and cress, white broccoli, skirret and scorzoner [both root vegetables], marrow fat peas, ‘a remarkable long leek,’ squashes, cucumbers, all manner of lettuces,” plus onions He experimented with maize, wild rice, potatoes – even sea kale (p. 55). The Kalendar records it all.

In 1787, after much delay and prodding from friends and relatives to finish, White sent the first sections of The Natural History of Selborne to the printers He chose an epistolary form. Epistolary novels like Samuel Richardson’s Pamela were extremely popular in the 18th century. White used many letters he had written to friends, but he also created letters he had never sent, and he edited often, cutting some passages, moving parts of others so similar topics appeared together, and added new material. After a flurry of editing and proofreading, with help from friends, at last his book was published in 1789. It received positive reviews, but only in the 1830s, after White’s death, did its sales soar, and its fame make it the quintessential volume of English rural life.

White never married, but he regularly entertained friends and family, including multiple nieces and nephews. After Selborne’s publication he continued keeping his journal and welcoming visitors to his home until his death a few years later in 1793.

In this winsome account of a quiet life, Mabey shows how The Natural History of Selborne emerged from the ever-curious mind of White and the natural and intellectual world around him.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy for the Leaflet for Scholars, July 2022, Volume 9, Issue 7.

You Grow, Gurl!

Known to Instagram followers as an ‘influencer,’ Plant Kween grows over 200 houseplants (the ‘gurls’ of the book’s title) in a small Brooklyn apartment. Christopher Griffin dedicates this book to the grandmother whose love of plants and gardening made a strong impression on him at a tender age.

Written in a conversational style, and providing the expected horticultural details one might need to keep a plant alive indoors, there are many unexpected aspects to this book: it is the first houseplant book I’ve encountered that comes with a playlist! Griffin is the opposite of snobbish, not a seeker of the rarest of plants for their own sake. Plants that can thrive and whose beauty brings delight are the important thing.

While anthropomorphizing plants, Griffin also phytomorphizes humans: “We are basically houseplants with complex emotions.” Caring for plants is inextricably linked to caring for one’s own well-being. He reflects on the ways that we might judge ourselves as ‘not having a green thumb,’ and recounts an apocryphal tale about the term’s origins which puts things in perspective. Griffin takes a forgiving and encouraging stance on gardening as an ongoing learning experience that is open to anyone.

As someone immune to the allure of Instagram who mainly grows plants outdoors, I was nevertheless charmed by this book’s ebullient enthusiasm for growing green ‘gurls.’ To quote the author, “This book is filled with that Black queer nonbinary femme plant parent joy!”

Olmsted South: Old South Critic, New South Planner

Before he was known as a landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted was best known for a series of articles he wrote for “The New York Daily Times” (now “The New York Times”) and later books he published about his travels in the southern United States between late 1852 and the summer of 1854. He was keen observer and reported quite accurately and in great detail on the economic and social structures, especially the practice of slavery.

“Olmsted South: Old South Critic, New South Planner” is a collection of scholarly essays written in the 1970s that in part analyze the change in Olmsted’s attitude during his travels. By the end, he is convinced that slavery is disastrous not only for the enslaved but for the entire society. This would later influence his work as a landscape architect: “Underlying his plans for each park, parkway, campus, and suburb was an understanding of the past expressed in the natural history of the site as well as in the growth and development of American society” (quoted from the Foreword of “Olmsted South” by Albert Fein).

Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s article in the Summer 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century

“A Clearing in the Distance” by Witold Rybczynski was published in 1999 but has stood the test of time. The author takes a personal approach, interjecting his opinions on the actions of his subject: “And now, I feel myself becoming impatient with Olmsted. Why can’t he just get on with it?”

Because of this level of engagement, I recommend this book as a good starting point for learning about both Olmsted’s personal and professional life. The integration of contemporary and modern perspectives and vignettes is a very effective approach for describing an era to readers 150 and more years later.

The author is also adept at illustrating the qualities in Olmsted that best define his profession: the ability to form a long range vision, and live with it through the scrutiny and compromise to conclusion, or to know when to cut your losses and move on to the next project.

Rybczynski’s research includes visits to surviving projects, such Brooklyn’s Prospect Park or Montreal’s Mount Royal. He also is familiar with the Olmsted plan for Tacoma, describing the solution of the hilly site as “an elegant solution” and lamenting that “the railroad directors would have none of it.”

Excerpted from the Summer 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted

This older biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. has stood the test of time and I recommend it. Laura Wood Roper writes in the style of an investigator and reporter. Her book “FLO”, published in 1973, is based on over 20 years of research, including the invaluable input of personal interviews from Frederick Olmsted, Jr. near the end of his life.

While always the observer, Roper’s wry comments eloquently express her opinions about Olmsted’s personality and those of the people with whom he was associated. She gives a more complete picture than most of Mary Olmsted, who was first the wife of Frederick’s beloved brother John. Following his death, she married Frederick and brought not only three stepchildren, but an immeasurable influence on his career.

The author is adept at illustrating the qualities in Olmsted that best define his profession: the ability to form a long range vision, and live with it through the scrutiny and compromise to conclusion, or to know when to cut your losses and move on to the next project. As Roper summarizes, “Nothing in Olmsted’s correspondence suggests that such failures of influence made him lose heart or doubt the eventual effectiveness of his work.” This quality, even more than the landscapes he left us, may be ultimately what makes the life of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. so appealing.

Excerpted from the Summer 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Frederick Law Olmsted: Plans and Views of Public Parks

“Frederick Law Olmsted: Plans and Views of Public Parks” (published in 2015) and “Frederick Law Olmsted: Plans and Views of Communities and Private Estates” (2020) are the most visually rich of any of the Olmsted books in the Miller Library collection. At 11”x11” and well over 400 pages each, these challenge the fortitude of any coffee table but this means that the plans, while still reduced in size, are large enough to interpret and understand easily.

Charles Beveridge was the lead editor for both of these books and has been researching and writing about the Olmsted legacy for over 50 years.

Local readers would find the later volume the most interesting with Olmsted’s plans for the city of Tacoma from 1873. His approach to cities built on hills was to abandon a rectilinear grid system, but rather have “principal streets laid on gradual grades ascending the steep hills.” His plan also included a Capitol Park in anticipation Tacoma would become the seat of government for the state.

This concept was too radical for many of the founders of the city and was never adopted. The results of their decision were shrewdly noted by English journalist and author Rudyard Kipling when he visited Tacoma in 1913. He described the city as having: “ungraded streets that ended abruptly in a fifteen-foot drop and a nest of brambles.”

Excerpted from the Summer 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Frederick Law Olmsted: Plans and Views of Communities and Private Estates

Charles Beveridge was the lead editor for both of these books and has been researching and writing about the Olmsted legacy for over 50 years.

“Capitol Park” in anticipation Tacoma would become the seat of government for the state.

Excerpted from the Summer 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American Landscape

Charles Beveridge has been researching and writing about the Olmsted legacy for over 50 years. He co-wrote (with Paul Rocheleau) the 1995 book “Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American Landscape.” This features the most prominent of the Olmsted projects and is richly illustrated, and includes a chapter highlighting the Seattle park system.

Excerpted from the Summer 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin