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.

Alpine flora of the Canadian Rocky Mountains

In the late 19^th century in western Canada there were two women who had a lot in common. Mary Schäffer Warren (1861-1939) and Mary Vaux Walcott (1860-1940) were both of Quaker families living in Philadelphia, arguably the center for science and culture in America at the time. They both developed strong interests in the natural world, and developed the skills to paint in watercolors the native plants they found.

They joined a trip of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences to the Rockies and Selkirk Mountains of eastern British Columbia and western Alberta in 1889, traveling together part of the way on the top of a box car! They brought this same adventuresome passion to hiking and exploring the peaks, returning every summer for many years. Much of their stories are found in “A Delicate Art: Artists, Wildflowers and Native Plants of the West” by Mary-Beth Laviolette.

The pathways of the two Marys eventually diverged. Warren married her first husband, Charles Schäffer, whom she met in during one of these summer trips. He was an avid amateur botanist and together they continued their study of the local flora with the intent of publishing a field guide, using his text and her illustrations, both color paintings and black-and-white photographs.

Sadly, Charles Schäffer died before the book was completed, but his friend and fellow member of the Academy, botanist Stewardson Brown, completed the text. “Alpine Flora of the Canadian Rocky Mountains” was published in 1907. It profiles 163 plant species including trees, shrubs, and ferns, but the focus is on herbaceous wild flowers. The illustrations are lovely, but the book suffered by comparison to other popular field guides of the time by not quite satisfying either a professional or a general audience. The text is brief in its description of the flowers and foliage, and lacks the lyrical treatment of the guide published one year earlier by Julia Henshaw.

After that accomplishment, Warren became more of an explorer. Quoting author Laviolette, this “meant getting used to riding a horse, camping in all kinds of weather and travelling in the company of men who were neither family nor spouse.” She eventually moved to Banff, Alberta, married her second husband, guide Billy Warren, and is best known today for her mapping and discoveries in what is now Jasper and Banff National Parks.

Excerpted from the Winter 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

North American Wild Flowers

In the late 19^th century in western Canada there were two women who, while not sisters, had a lot in common. Much of their stories are found in “A Delicate Art: Artists, Wildflowers and Native Plants of the West” by Mary-Beth Laviolette.

Mary Schäffer Warren (1861-1939) and Mary Vaux Walcott (1860-1940) were both of Quaker families living in Philadelphia, arguably the center for science and culture in America at the time. They both developed strong interests in the natural world, and developed the skills to paint in watercolors the native plants they found.

The pathways of the two Marys eventually diverged. Mary Vaux Walcott continued visiting the region every summer, but typically in the company of her two brothers, who were interested in studying the glaciers. As the only daughter, at age 20 she was expected to look after her father and brothers after the death of her mother. As Laviolette writes, the three siblings had “many summers spent in the western alpine, and for Mary in particular a lifelong commitment of over forty years in the area. To come were the pleasures of mountain rambling and backcountry camping in addition to the study of wildflowers and, on an entirely different scale, glaciers.”

Walcott finally broke this pattern by getting married at age 54 to Charles Doolitte Walcott, who she met in the mountains, and who was the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Together, they intensified their study of native plants, resulting in the publication of the five-volume “North American Wild Flowers” from 1925-1929. The Miller Library has only volume five of this set, with 76 of the 400 original prints, but all are reproduced in the 1953 publication “Wild Flowers of America” and most are part of a splendid new (2022) collection “Wild Flowers of North America.” These later publications are both in the library’s general collection.

While titles suggest a comprehensive collection of the native, flowering plants of the United States and Canada, the emphasis is on the places where the Walcotts’ explored. The Canadian mountains and foothills fill in for much of western America, including our state, while the other emphasis is the Atlantic seaboard. The southwest species are mostly missing, but these are still impressive works.

Excerpted from the Winter 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin, updated June 2023

Studies of Plant Life in Canada

Catharine Parr Traill (1802-1899) and Susanna Moodie (1803-1885) were sisters who immigrated to Canada from England in 1832. Both newly married, they were part of a movement of settlers from Britain seeking to escape poverty by moving to Upper Canada (now the province of Ontario), where they hoped to establish a prosperous new home.

The reality was quite different. Although they settled within 50 miles of each other, the harshness of travel and limited communications prevented them from visiting each other for two years. “Sisters in the Wilderness” is a biography by Charlotte Gray about the two sisters who both eventually thrived as authors in their new home, despite a bleak beginning.

The sisters had a relatively good start in life. Gray described their household of six sisters and two brothers – all who lived long lives – as rich in books and creativity. The family was related to Sir Isaac Newton and inherited much of his library. But the father died young, and the family was left with limited resources. Out of this experience, six of the siblings became published authors, a very unusual success rate spurred by necessity.

The two Canadian sisters were especially prolific. Susanna Moodie is best known for “Roughing it in the Bush,” her 1852 book about her early years in North America. Her work was the inspiration for modern Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, in her 1970 book of poetry, “The Journals of Susanna Moodie.”

However, the focus of this review is on Catharine Parr Traill. Named after the surviving, last wife of King Henry VIII of England (and a distant relation), she was a survivor herself, living to 97 and achieving a great deal of fame in her later life, primarily for her books about the wildflowers of Canada. She was an avid field botanist and “took a serious interest in every aspect of a plant: its appearance, its life cycle, its medicinal and food value, its relation to other plants.” She also recognized that the wild country in which she struggled to survive was beginning to disappear, and along with it many of the native plants.

To help with her research, she acquired a small library of books intended for professional botanists. However, her goal was to publish a book for a more general audience. She began by writing articles for both Canadian and American popular magazines.

Traill was an excellent observer and writing, but she lacked the artistic skills to illustrate the book she hoped to publish. By the 1860s, her sister’s children had grown up and one of them, Agnes Moodie Fitzgibbon (1833-1913), was an accomplished painter. Fitzgibbon also became a tireless promoter of her aunt’s book, signing up many buyers before the book was printed. A young widow, she drew ten illustrations for the book and printed 500 copies of each. She then engaged her three daughters, ages 16, 13, and 10, at their dining room table to hand color every one – a total of 5,000 illustrations!

“Canadian Wild Flowers” was published in 1868. The timing was excellent, as it was just a year after Canadian independence. Traill writes in the Preface: “With a patriotic pride in her native land, Mrs. F. [Agnes Moodie Fitzgibbon] was desirous that the book should be entirely of Canadian production, without any foreign aid, and thus far her design has been carried out; whether successfully or not, remains for the public to decide.” This gamble was very successful as the book was indeed a popular expression of national pride. The Miller Library has a facsimile of this book.

Traill’s contribution to this first book was in the form of narrative descriptions of the plants in the illustrations. As this only totaled 30 species, the botanical information is limited, but the sumptuous illustrations ensured the book’s popularity.

Traill’s second wild flower book, “Studies of Plant Life in Canada,” was published in 1885 with the rich details of author’s significant knowledge of the native plants where she had now lived for over 50 years, roughly 100 miles northeast of Toronto. Once again, her niece (now remarried and credited as Mrs. Chamberlain) provided the illustrations, but these are smaller and were printed using chromolithography, a relatively new process that eliminated the need for hand coloring. Instead, the focus of this later book (in the Miller Library collection) is on the text with descriptions of over 400 species, including trees, shrubs, and ferns.

Excerpted from the Winter 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Canadian Wild Flowers

Excerpted from the Winter 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill

Excerpted from the Winter 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

A Delicate Art: Artists, Wildflowers and Native Plants of the West

The pathways of the two Marys eventually diverged. Warren married her first husband, Charles Schäffer, who she met in during one of these summer trips. He was an avid amateur botanist and together they continued their study of the local flora with the intent of publishing a field guide, using his text and her illustrations, both color paintings and black-and-white photographs.

Like Warren, Mary Vaux Walcott continued visiting the region every summer, but typically in the company of her two brothers, who were interested in studying the glaciers. As the only daughter, at age 20 she was expected to look after her father and brothers after the death of her mother. As Laviolette writes, the three siblings had “many summers spent in the western alpine, and for Mary in particular a lifelong commitment of over forty years in the area. To come were the pleasures of mountain rambling and backcountry camping in addition to the study of wildflowers and, on an entirely different scale, glaciers.”

While this title suggests a comprehensive collection of the native, flowering plants of the United States and Canada, the emphasis is on the places where the Walcotts’ explored. The Canadian mountains and foothills fill in for much of western America, including our state, while the other emphasis is the Atlantic seaboard. The southwest species are mostly missing, but this is still an impressive work.

Excerpted from the Winter 2022 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin