A tapestry garden : the art of weaving plants and place

A Tapestry garden book cover Marietta and Ernie O’Byrne are very clear about their gardening goals. They are not interested in low-maintenance gardening “with orderly shrubs, surrounded by chipped mulch, and plants that don’t touch,” but neither do they care for plant thugs that dominate their neighbors. To achieve these ends, much maintenance is required and they relish this work. “A Tapestry Garden: The Art of Weaving Plants and Place” captures these ideals as they have been expressed in their two acres of gardens on a farm in Eugene.

The O’Byrnes are famous for their hellebores, so I wasn’t surprised to read about their woodland gardens with profiles of shade loving favorites, including trilliums, arisaemas, and podophyllum. But I didn’t know they had large swaths of sun, too. These includes a riotous summer perennial border (a “full-flowered buxomness of leaning, mingling, sprawling growth”) and a chaparral garden, that recreates the look of the southwest, albeit with plants that can survive a Pacific Northwest wet winter and spring.

In reading this latter chapter, I was reminded of the books by Beth Chatto, especially “The Gravel Garden” (2000), one of my favorite all-time gardening books. The O’Byrnes are not afraid to experiment. The writing (primarily in Marietta’s voice) recounts all the successes and failures in a matter-of-fact way and quietly expounds their right place, right plant philosophy throughout their several garden settings and microclimates.

Both Marietta and Ernie grew up loving nature. Both had college degrees in biology and worked together in their own landscape management company for much of their careers, but when it came to their own garden, they made plenty of horticultural mistakes, especially in the early years. While this at first seems like a book for the gardening elite, I encourage beginners to give it a read. You will be amused by the authors’ misfortunes and encouraged to shrug off your own failures and try again.

As they spent more and more time in their own garden, the authors eventually curtailed some of the maintenance business to start their own nursery. This latter continues today as a wholesale business exclusively selling hellebores. A chapter highlights the beauties they have developed, especially the Winter Jewels series, with stunning photographs. This book also includes a very helpful chapter on their maintenance practices, and maps of the garden inside both covers, in case you get lost during the written tour.

The O’Byrnes even sleep in their garden, enjoying the night fragrances of their summer, sunny perennials and the hummingbirds and other pollinators that are on wing at first light. Their plant palette is very broad, including many natives but also challenging-to-grow plants from around the world. Many of these are grown from seed – often there is no other way to obtain these plants. They have decided, “harmonious chaos is possible in a garden, with denizens from multitudes of countries of origin. Would that we humans could be as comradely as is the diverse plant world here represented.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Holden Journals

Holden journals book cover Holden Village is a Lutheran community center deep in the Cascade Mountains, accessible only by a boat ride on Lake Chelan followed by a bus ride on a mountain road. At 3,000 feet, it is very cold and snowy in the winter, and cut off from Wi-Fi and cell phone reception.

For some this may sound like paradise. It was for Peggy Haug and her partner (now spouse) Juanita, who spent two years there from 2005-2007. “Holden Journals: A Close Look at Nature in the North Cascades” is her record of the flowers and the birds she found in the village and on nearby hikes. Her drawings are augmented with copious notes of interpretation, bits of poetry, and her impressions of living in an isolated village.

This book is also an excellent field guide to the wildflowers, trees, and shrubs of this region and an impressive birding list – 68 species in the first year. Some of the most beautiful drawings are of the colorful leaves and berries of fall, intricately overlapping. It can take several delightful minutes just to read all the notes that she weaves in amongst the plant images.

While the native plants are the main features, Holden Village has surviving plant relics from the nearby former mining village, including daffodils and bearded iris. The latter were captured in an earlier book, “Holden Village Historic Iris“, reviewed in the Fall 2008 issue of “The Bulletin”.

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Visionary Landscapes

Visionary landscapes book cover In “Visionary Landscapes,” Kendall Brown profiles the lives and gardens of five designers born in the mid-20th century – three in Japan, two in the United States – who have practiced their craft primarily in North America. The new gardens they have designed, mostly in the last 30 years, are pushing the evolving concept of Japanese-style gardening.

Hōichi Kurisu is perhaps best known regionally as the curator of the Japanese Garden in Portland from 1968-1972. After he left the garden, he stayed in Portland and his company has thrived in designing, building, and even maintaining mostly residential gardens in that area and inspiring gardens throughout the country.

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to hear David Slawson, another of the profiled designers, speak at the Cleveland Botanical Garden and see the garden he designed there. Brown describes Slawson’s gardens as presenting “a greater awareness of regional landscape gained from having seen it beautifully manifest in microcosm.”

The examples in this book show that the expressions of traditional Japanese garden design are subtle, but this also gives more options. We live where most Japanese plants thrive, but not all gardeners are so fortunate. For example, after listening to the talk, a librarian colleague of mine was excited that she could incorporate Slawson’s ideas to her home desert garden in Phoenix.

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

The Japanese Garden

[The Japanese Garden] cover

Sophie Walker trained as a garden designer in Britain, displaying her skills to acclaim at the epitome of English gardening institutions: the Chelsea Flower Show. To broaden her design skills, she studied Japanese style gardening. She describes her new book, “The Japanese Garden,” as essentially a workbook of those studies.

The author presents a series of chapters on different themes with essays by others from many backgrounds interspersed and augmenting her studies. Topics vary widely, from our relationship with nature or the tenets of Buddhism as they apply to gardens, to the use of courtyard gardens or favorite flowers and trees. Concluding each of her chapters are photographs of gardens that embody concepts she presents.

Throughout, she looks for connections or contrasts with Western (European and American) traditions, or how icons of Western design or art have been influences by Japanese traditions, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Claude Monet and, in present day, David Hockney. She observes, “visiting a Western cultural landmark – a palace or cathedral – cultural and historic context is unavoidable. But in the Japanese garden, context is deliberately confused, as is scale.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

An Orchard Odyssey : Find and Grow Tree Fruit in Your Garden, Community and Beyond

[An Orchard Odyssey] cover

Editor’s note: This book was purchased with a grant from The Washington State Nursery & Landscape Association, which offers a certification program for horticulturists. These experts help clients to solve garden challenges successfully with experience, education, and knowledge of horticulture.

Orchards create special dimensions to a sense of place. Growing fruit trees and nut trees is both art and science, and heightens our contact with and appreciation of the interrelated ways of nature. An Orchard Odyssey: Find and Grow Tree Fruit in Your Garden, Community and Beyond by Naomi Slade of the United Kingdom provides insights into not only the reasons for orchard-growing but also the methods. The book highlights the benefits for people and the environment, as well as the local economy and community. It is inspiring to both plant and food enthusiasts.

I was fortunate to grow up on an old orchard homestead in upstate New York, and I have vivid memories of picking Northern Spy apples and packing them into rugged burlap bags in the chilly late fall weather. Climbing the trees to reach the highest branches was an exercise in possibility, capability, vulnerability, and achievement. Warm apple pies and hot mulled cider comforted us all winter long – the ultimate reward. So the odyssey is familiar.

Naomi Slade divides An Orchard Odyssey into two parts. The first part is called The Orchard in the Landscape. Chapter one covers orchard history, From Wilderness to Cultivation. Chapter two, An Orchard Tapestry, describes traditional and chance approaches to design. The Conservation and Biodiversity chapter details an ecological community. The Orchards in the Community chapter is made up of growing, sharing, and foraging, discussing the environment, the local economy, and fruit heritage in the neighborhood.

The second part is called An Orchard of Your Own. It includes the following chapters: Creative Orchard Design; Fruit Trees for Every Space; Tree Planting and Care; and Enjoying the Harvest, with a recipe for Rumtopf, a traditional German delight consisting of fruit preserved with rum and sugar to serve during the winter holidays.

There are many ways to gain hands-on experience with orchards. The Western Cascade Fruit Society and affiliated chapters throughout Western Washington have as their objective “to bring together new and experienced fruit growers who will promote the science, cultivation and pleasure of growing fruit-bearing trees, vines, and plants in the home landscape.” The mission of City Fruit in Seattle is to “promote the cultivation of urban fruit in order to nourish people, build community and protect the climate.” The Community Orchard of West Seattle partners with Nature Stewards and provides a home-scale model for an organic urban orchard. Produce goes to volunteers as well as the South Seattle College Food Pantry. Another example is Piper’s Orchard within Carkeek Park, which was restored in 1983 as a community project. Washington State University offers diagnostic resources for fruit tree pests and diseases through their Hortsense website and Master Gardener outreach in every county. The Western Washington Fruit Research Foundation offers a list of recommended varieties for the region. Washington State is, of course, a leader in orchard production.

By planning, planting, and preserving orchards, a community invests in the future to counter environmental threats. The process provides environmental benefits and economic potential, cultivates continuing education in life science, expands knowledge of one’s neighborhood, fosters aesthetic value, encourages community and puts food on the table. What could be a better way to spend time?

Published in the September 2018 Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 5, Issue 9.

The New Rules Of The Roost: Organic Care & Feeding for the Family

Robert and Hannah Litt of Portland wrote A Chicken in Every Yard, published in 2011. They regard their chickens as pets to pamper and keep safe – they only eat their eggs. This book will tell you how to do the same.

On a visit to the island of Kauai in Hawai’i, the Litt family discovered that chickens have naturalized and do quite well looking after themselves. This led to a new book, The New Rules of the Roost (2018) that incorporates some of this avian independence. Now the setting for their home flock is “more dynamic, so that our chickens can safely forage for food and scratch around, but when and where we want them to.”

How does all this work with the garden? Very well, if you consider the hens as part of the family – it just takes a lot of compromise and ingenuity.

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Fall 2018

Ornamental cherries in Vancouver

Douglas Justice of the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden is the author of “Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver”. Published by the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, this excellent guide celebrates a rich collection of urban flowering cherries, some 40,000 trees as of the 125th anniversary of the city in 2011.

Ornamental cherries are a major component of the Washington Park Arboretum, especially along Azalea Way. This book’s photographs include close-ups of flowers and an example of the tree in a landscape. Leaves are described as they emerge, in the full leaf of summer, and as they color in the fall. Sadly, this book is hard to obtain (we are still hoping to add the 2014 edition to the Miller Library) and is not available to borrow and take with you strolling in the Arboretum next spring.

However, there is much to learn from a visit to the library. For example, the Yoshino cherry (Prunus x yedoensis ‘Somei-yoshino’) is of uncertain origin, but is famous for the Hanami (cherry viewing) festivals in Japan. This is also the cherry of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D. C. and at “The Quad” on the University of Washington campus. Another widely planted selection is the Kanzan or Kwanzan cherry (Prunus Sato-zakura Group ‘Kanzan’), perhaps because the “apparent good health of this cultivar often borders on the miraculous.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Japanese gardens and landscapes, 1650-1950

Japanese gardens and landscapes book cover Wybe Kuitert has written two deeply researched books on the history of Japanese gardens. The first, “Themes in the History of Japanese Garden Art” (1st edition 1988, revised 2002 – this later edition is at the Miller Library), is the history from roughly 900 to 1650 CE, concluding when “the practice and theory of garden art became established in a way that does not differ much from our own days.”

Kuitert’s new book, “Japanese Gardens and Landscapes, 1650-1950,” brings that history up to near present day. Despite his conclusion in the earlier book, I found this history surprisingly dynamic. During the Edo period (1603-1868), gardens of the “daimyo,” or regional rulers, became quite fanciful. “These were Disney-type re-creations that functioned primarily as leisure environments.”

This was also a time when variegated plants and flowers with unusual and flamboyant forms became popular. As printing techniques became more widely and cheaply available, there was an explosion of published gardening books, codifying some of the earlier customs but with a loss of their symbolism. Kuitert laments this, describing these books as only a “crowd-pleasing version of garden traditions and ideas.”

After Japan opened to the West in the mid-1800s, there was much upheaval in all ways of life, including gardening. Western-style gardens appeared and Japanese garden designers who studied in the West were in high demand.

For local readers, this book’s profile of Jūki Iida (1889/90-1977), the major designer of the Seattle Japanese Garden, will be of great interest. Kuitert reviews Iida’s early training and his developing understanding that there exist two worlds of Japanese gardening: the formal, built garden and the naturalistic garden. By his emphasizing the latter approach, Kuitert credits Iida as “a key figure in democratizing the long tradition of garden-making in Japan” and for making individual gardens more accessible to everyone.

Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

The Bee Tree

[The Bee Tree] cover

The Bee Tree is composed of two parts. The first part will appeal to a younger audience, and presents in words and pictures the tradition of harvesting honey in the Malaysian rainforest. Bees build the honeycombs on the tualang trees, the tallest trees reaching heights of about 250 feet. Hauling their special tools, honey hunters climb the trees with skill and courage. Gathering the honeycombs is a cooperative venture with rituals that express gratitude for the food and medicine that honey provides. The hunters share their bounty with friends and neighbors, and also sell the honey in local markets. The honey hunt is central to the culture and way of life of the indigenous people of Malaysia.

The second part of the book covers basic background information for adults on Malaysia and its peoples, the rainforest, the giant honeybee, and the tradition and future of the honey hunters. As for the future for honeybees: “As long as there is the rainforest, there will be bees, and as long as there are bees, there will be honey, and as long as there is honey, there will be honey hunters.” The giant honeybee, Apis dorsata, is crucial as a pollinator. It is a keystone species, important in the preservation of the entire ecosystem in the rainforest. It is another beautiful example of the interaction of plants and pollinators and their importance to a culture that preserves natural systems.

Published in the August 2018 Leaflet, Volume 5, Issue 8.

Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest

[Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest] cover

Summer is a great time to see butterflies and now there is an excellent new field guide. Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest by Robert Michael Pyle and Caitlin C. LaBar is the perfect tool to guide you in identifying and learning about the more than 200 species that are native to Washington and Oregon. It “is intended for everyone who wishes to study, watch, collect, photograph, garden, or otherwise enjoy butterflies responsibly.”

This Timber Press Field Guide has a sturdy, rain-resistant cover designed for field use. The Miller Library copy is an important reference source and not available to check out, but you can use it to compare with your field notes. Alternatively, check out Pyle’s earlier (2002) The Butterflies of Cascadia. The major difference between two books is the quality of the photographs. The advent of digital photography and the special expertise that new co-author LaBar brings have produced stunning results.

Each description includes range maps (within Washington and Oregon), habitat, host plants, and when the species is “on the wing.” Carefully documented are the often significant differences between males and females, and between dorsal (with the wings open) and ventral (wings closed) views.

Pyle also writes poetry, and his pleasure in the subtleties of language is evident in the anecdotal section under each species. He describes unusual sightings, gives hints for distinguishing between similar species, and relishes quirks of nomenclature. If you are city bound this summer, he even identifies those species that thrive despite intense urban environments.

Published in the August 2018 Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 5 Issue 8.