Two gardens in New Jersey

Superb placement: Bismarckia nobilis

Among the many gardens I saw on my American tour in September one of the most captivating was that of Silas Mountsier in Nutley, New Jersey, an acre of fine design and solid structure, with the summer planting being almost entirely in shades of green. In creating the garden Silas has been assisted for nearly twenty years by Richard Hartlage - he of the wonderful Calycanthus x raulstonii 'Hartlage Wine', bred in his time at the then North Carolina State University Arboretumn (now JC Raulston Arboretum), and with a solid background in real gardening, but now a landscape architect based in Seattle. The collaborative result is delightful: exciting yet peaceful at the same time. The garden has been much written about, as a web search will show. Here are a few pictures that I hope capture something of its charm and the attention to detail that has gone into it.

Strong structure in shades of green: Silas Mountsier's garden, Nutley, New Jersey

The garden houses a large collection of sculptures and other artworks, carefully placed in the landscape - or the landscaping is carefully placed around them.

A broad bank planted entirely in clones of Hakonechloa macra, subtly different in both summer and when sere in winter. It is strimmed off in late winter before daffodils emerge from below it.



Dramatic foliage in Graham Hardie's garden.



Remarkably, however, the Mountsier garden is one of a pair. His partner, Graham Hardie, has his own house across the street, and here he and Richard Hartlage have created another remarkable and beautiful space. In this case, however, the planting is in vibrant colours and textures from flowers and foliage - though all combined with remarkable touch. Lushness there is, but it's not overwhelming and although bright it's not gaudy: the planting is controlled by strong lines and structural shapes that prevent it from becoming just a jungle. Though very different, the two gardens, like their owners, complement each other and make a great couple. I thank Silas and Graham for a lovely afternoon.

Contrasts in form, texture and colour in the Hardie garden: lush but controlled.

Roadside planting in Graham Hardie's garden: the standards are Euonymus.

Kim Blaxland 1941-2011

Viola pedata, Carol Lim's garden, Pennsylvania, April 2009

Kim Blaxland, who has died aged 70, was one of the foremost experts on the genus Viola, developing her interest as an amateur to a high degree of competence, publishing technical papers as well as horticultural articles, and with her expertise sought-after by others. She travelled all over the world to see and study violas in their native habitats: one of the highlights of her botanical career was her discovery of a new species of Viola in Turkey and her publication of it as Viola dirimliensis Blaxland, in no less than the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society (2004).



Kim Blaxland
(img. C. Blaxland)

I got to know Kim when she joined an Alpine Garden Society Tour of the Eastern Cape, led by Dave McDonald and myself. She had come out to South Africa early especially to see Viola decumbens, the only species in the Western Cape, which she saw at the Fernkloof Nature Reserve near Hermanus.  Her quest attracted the attention of the local media, and an article about her visit is available online. On the tour she was huge fun and extremely enthusiastic about all sorts of plants. In the small town of Nieuwoudtville, where accommodation is limited (tourists only go there in flower season) she and I shared an apartment loaned by - we presumed - an elderly lady. It was a 'Marie Celeste'experience as it looked as if the owner had gone out by the back door as we came in. In common with others in similar situations we found that the toilet seat was covered by a knitted cover, an amenity we found rather repellant, so promptly took it off.

We met up once again, in Pennsylvania, where she lived with her husband Chris, a vet, having emigrated from Australia (Eucalyptus blaxlandii is named for a connection of the family) - they remained very much Aussies at heart, with their family living there. Sadly she developed pancreatic cancer and fought it for several years but lost the battle about ten days ago. She was one of those people I should have loved to have known better and seen more of, and regret that that opportunity has now passed.

Viola riviniana, Colesbourne, April 2011









Christmas chutney

'in the cauldron boil and bubble'

 Back in October, when I cleared away the tomato plants there was no time to turn the remaining fruit - reddish or still green - into chutney as I'd normally do. So I roasted them for a bit in the oven, then froze them away: now, needing freezer space, I've spent the evening realising their destiny. It's a long, hot process, reducing a pile of mixed fruit and veg into something that one hopes will be both tangy and semi-sweet. This is the recipe I usually use, with proportions expressed in parts:


A lachrymosity of onions


 2 parts tomatoes (green and red)
1 part chopped cooking apple
1 part diced onion
0.5 part sultanas (didn't have any today, so I used chopped-up dates and dried figs)
1 part soft brown sugar
sufficient vinegar to boil it all in
a teaspooon or two of chili flakes
2 big garlic cloves
a lump of root ginger, grated
2 tablespoons of mustard seed
salt

Tonight I used, by mistake, equal parts of tomato, onion and a mix of rhubarb and apple - luckily the proportions are not really crucial. The pan needs a lot of stirring, and I hasten the reduction process by scooping out excess liquid from the surface with a gravy ladle - this liquor is also bottled and makes a tasty ketchup. The result is perhaps a tad too sweet, but it's very tasty and will be great with a strong cheddar or well-flavoured ham.

Just-filled jars

The most high and palmy state of Rome

Washingtonia robusta at the Spanish steps

It's the time of year - especially on such a horrible cold, wet and windy day, with the first snowflakes of the season coming down - to reminisce about warmer times and happy days in the sun, so this is the first of a few posts, catching up with things I missed earlier.

Phoenix canariensis

When we were in Rome in August I thought that an interesting theme would be to photograph palms - Roman pines being somewhat overdone - and to see what species were grown outdoors there. The selection proved in fact to be quite limited, and no more than might have been tried by adventurous British gardeners in the early and mid 2000s (we didn't visit any botanical gardens, where there might have been a wider diversity). The difference is, however, that all these species were thriving rather than lingering, and in the hot sun and around fine buildings they are seen to their best advantage: a Phoenix shivering by the Thames does not have the same presence as one by the Tiber. Here are a selection of pictures, hopefully conveying something of this.



A fine old Chamaerops humilis on the Capitoline Hill.



Trachycarpus fortunei by the Villa Medici



Chamaerops seedling in the Forum

The title of this post is a quotation from Hamlet, and as I learnt from A.N. Wilson's engaging book, The Elizabethans (2011), it is an example of hendiadys, the coupling together of two words to make one sense. It was a usage that took root and flourished in 16th Century England, with Cranmer's prayer book ('erred and strayed', 'devices and desires', 'to have and to hold') and Shakespeare's plays ('slings and arrows', 'lean and hungry', 'wasteful and ridiculous') being particularly rich in hendiadys: they make for euphonious reading and the English language is greatly enriched by them. Hendiadys - when one looks for it - is everywhere. I see that, unconsciously, one has crept into the first paragraph ('wet and windy') and, more appositely, Kipling's 'dominion over palm and pine' is another.


Butia capitata, by the bus stop, Tivoli



Uhuru

Today is the 50th anniversary of the independence of Tanganyika Territory from Britain - an event celebrated and commemorated as Uhuru, meaning freedom or emancipation in Swahili. Tanganyika united with Zanzibar in 1964 to become Tanzania, the country I regard as my second home. I wish its citizens well on this special day.

To mark the occasion I thought it would be interesting to think of two important horticultural plants originating in Tanzania, the African Violet Saintpaulia ionantha and Busy-lizzie, Impatiens walleriana. Most of the country is too low-lying and hot for its plants to be cultivable in anything but very specialised conditions, but the mountains rise to more temperate elevations. Although there are true alpines on the highest peaks they have also proved to be impossible to cultivate successfully, and these two species come from forested areas that are warm, but not too warm.

Saintpaulia ionantha

The story of the discovery of Saintpaulia ionantha is quite well known: it was discovered in the hills above the coastal town of Tanga in 1892 by Baron Walter von St Paul-Illaire, a German colonial administrator. He sent seeds to his father in Germany, who in turn supplied plants to the Herrenhausen botanical garden near Hanover. There they were recognised to belong to a new genus, which was named Saintpaulia. The modern view is that they are extremely closely related to Streptocarpus and could indeed be placed in that genus, but the flower shape is very distinct, making the continued separation useful.

Saintpaulia was soon recognised to be a useful ornamental plant, with the German nurseryman Ernst Benary offering plants in the 1890s, but  the potential of African Violets as houseplants was not realised until the Californian nursery Armacost and Royston released a series of named and possibly hybrid cultivars in 1926, including the famous 'Blue Boy'. Its popularity increased after the Second World War, when African Violets became incredibly popular and breeding and selection took them to new levels. In Britain Rochfords, the great houseplant specialist, and the breeder Tony Clements popularised them, and with their ease of propagation (poking a leaf through tinfoil into a jar of water) they were easily passed around. These days their star has waned, though they are still ubiquitously available: I saw a pair of plants shivering on the pavement outside the Cirencester pet shop yesterday.

Saintpaulia 'Rana'

Their native forest habitat in the ancient mountains of eastern Tanzania is now greatly threatened and many populations have been lost, but it is the plants' adaptation to this habitat that makes them so successful as houseplants. They're tolerant of low light conditions, and seasonal rainfall and their habit of growing in thin soil over rock enables them to withstand erratic watering in the home, while the equable temperatures of the forest understorey are imitated by central heating.

Looking back it now seems very odd that in my youth Impatiens walleriana was still recommended as a houseplant for growing in pots, to be propagated in much the same was as Saintpaulia and, like it, passed around via plant stalls at church fetes. The development of the Busy-lizzie from a rather gawky potplant to a universal dumpy, floriferous bedding plant in the past three decades has not, to my knowledge, been properly explored and documented.

Busy-lizzies in the garden of Graham Hardie,
New Jersey

The wild species Impatiens walleriana is found in the mountains of a wide area of eastern Africa, from Kenya to Zimbabwe and Mozambique, but it was introduced from Zanzibar to Kew in 1896, supposedly  by the British consul and keen botanist Sir John Kirk, though I think this story (related by the botanical historian Alice Coats) needs investigating. For a long time it was known as Impatiens sultani, in honour of the Sultan of Zanzibar. In the wild it is a plant of disturbed damp places - alongside pathways in the forest, for example, usually with flowers of magenta-pink, but they are variable in shade, giving breeders plenty to work with. And how the breeders have worked with it, making it the second most popular bedding plant in the world (after pansies) and a staple of the summer garden. Now its existence as a bedding plant is threatened by the disease Impatiens downy mildew, so its days of eminence are probably numbered - the snootily-derided Busy-lizzie will be much missed.

Good reads

The long winter evenings have given me a chance to try to catch up with the piles of reading-matter that have developed over the past few months and as it's the season when pundits come forth with their recommendations for books for Christmas, I thought I'd give brief reviews of some of the noteworthy horticultural books I've been reading.

Seamus O'Brien signing books at the
London launch in June

First must come Seamus O'Brien's magnificent In the footsteps of Augustine Henry, which is undoubtedly the book of the year for me. It's a large, heavy tome (367 pp) published by Garden Art Press, who have done Seamus proud with their layout and generosity of images (both in number and size). The text tells the lifestory of Augustine Henry, the Irish botanist, who, while a customs official in China in the 1880-90s, made immense collections of herbarium specimens that revealed the botanical wealth of central China more fully than ever before, and paved the way for the influx of western plant hunters a decade or so later. But it is also the story of Seamus's own journeys in China, following Henry's travels and seeking the same plants on behalf of the Irish National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin  and Kilmacurragh, where Seamus is curator. In addition it sets Augustine Henry's work in the perspective of his times and his contemporaries. The three strands are skilfully woven together in superb narrative, and illustrated by appropriately contemporary images. I think this must rate among the best plant-hunting books of all time and absolutely essential for anyone interested in the flora of China and the history of its exploration.

Taking shelter ftrom the rain in the conservatory of the US National Botanic Garden in Washington D.C. in September I came across a display of large prints of parts of trees - a leaf bud unfurling, flowers, fruits, etc, all reproduced at huge size in the most perfect detail: plant photography of a sort I had never seen before. They were reproductions of images used in the book Seeing Trees with text by Nancy Ross Hugo, the photography by Robert Llewellyn (Timber Press). The book sets out to get one to look at trees in detail, rather than as objects in the landscape, and this is done by vivacious text and the images. The images are in fact composites of numerous shots of the subject, taken at different points of focus and then assembled into one perfectly sharp image by software designed originally for piecing together pictures taken by microscopes. The results are stunning and it's unfortunate that the book is relatively small in size, as they were mind-blowing when printed large - but even so they are gorgeous.

Another book with superb photographs is Bob Gibbons' Wildflower Wonders of the World (New Holland), a celebration of dramatically floriferous landscapes across the world from the machair of the Outer Hebrides to the Tien Shan and the Californian desert. The only significant omission is that there are no images of the Peruvian or Chilean deserts flowering after rain, but this is unimportant when presented with such delights as a meadow of Cypripedium in Estonia or the earliest spring flush of Tussilago and Petasites in Georgia. Each full-page plate is matched with opposite text on the area and its plants, with hints to the best time to go to see the sights for oneself

I have only just got The Smallest Kingdom (Kew Publishing), a book about the Cape flora and its introduction to cultivation. The text is by Mike Fraser, and many beautiful watercolour illustrations of plants and wildlife are by his wife Liz, done while they lived in South Africa for twelve years. (The blurb says that they now live in the Scottish borders, "but have yet to acclimatise." Funny, that.) To add to Liz's paintings the resources of Kew's art collection (and other sources) have been ransacked for historical images, to add great richness to this beautifully designed book. Wit is apparent in, for example, the inclusion of Beatrix Potter's picture of Peter Rabbit knocking over pots of pelargoniums as he flees Mr. McGregor's impending boot, and the love of the Frasers for the Cape flora shines through the book.

 I am currently reading Margaret Willes' The Making of the English Gardener (Yale University Press), a serious historical study of horticulture in Tudor and early Stuart (1560-1660) England. Its subtitle Plants, Books and Inspiration says a lot about its subject matter as the author delves into all aspects of gardening at this time, considering both the grandest and lowliest of gardeners, their plots and their plants. As a period of great innovation in garden design and architecture, as well as wonderfully rich in plant introductions, it is an era well-worthy of such a fine review and the book should be read by anyone with an interest in garden history or the origins of our garden flora.

Lighter stuff, but very thought-provoking - or chuckle-inducing - is Anne Wareham's The Bad-Tempered Gardener. Based around her experiences of creating, with her husband Charles Hawes, a contemporary garden (the Veddw) in the Welsh borders, it challenges accepted practice, the idiocies of gardening 'experts' who voice their nonsense in the press, and generally has a pop at any target that presents itself. Here's one sentence, answering the question of what the image of gardeners is in the public mind:  "We are either eccentric middle-aged ladies, getting off on the excitement of watching Toby Buckland with his spade, or hoary-handed sons of toil (who on earth were they?)." I do hope the 'expert' ladies of the press have absorbed its message.

The only book in this selection not published this year is Gardeners, by Diana Ross (Frances Lincoln, 2008), which I have belatedly acquired. It is a series of pen-portraits of gardening folk first written for the journal Hortus, shrewdly but kindly catching their characters in a few pages of prose. There are no illustrations: one must imagine the subjects. Some of them are friends and colleagues and I have to say that they come across in these pages as they do in person, which is surely an indication of how well they are portrayed. If you need one small present for a good friend, give them this.

 Last, but not least, is an impulse buy from the Wisley bookshop, Stewart McPherson and Donald Schnell's Sarraceniaceae of North America (Redfern Natural History Productions). It is a fat doorstop of a book (809 pages) covering in great detail the remarkable diversity found in the pitcher plant genera Sarracenia and Darlingtonia. The latter is one of my favourite plants, and I've had an interest in carnivorous plants from my days at Oxford when the Botanic Garden grew a good collection well, and Barrie Juniper was researching their morphology, but I don't grow many now (except Darlingtonia).  So buying this book was a whimsy, but such research and effort needs to be supported, and it is a great example of what a hortico-botanical monograph should be. A bit more copy-editing wouldn't have gone amiss, but for less than £40 it is a triumph. In the series, also with Stewart McPherson as principal author are Pitcher Plants of the Old World (i.e. Nepenthes and Cephalotus) in two volumes, and Sarraceniaceae of South America (i.e. Heliamphora). I suspect that these tomes will all be regarded as classic references and will soon be snapped-up by carnivorous plant enthusiasts, so it is probably wise to acquire them now.

I cannot afford all the books I fancy, so there are a few titles I would be happy to find under the tree on Christmas morning.  Among them are The RHS Encyclopedia of Conifers, by Aris Auders and Derek Spicer in 2 volumes, evidently a must-have reference; Christopher Grey-Wilson's Guide to the flowers of Western China - the first (just about) portable fieldguide to the area and, not to forget an old love, The Amboseli Elephants: a Long-term Perspective on a Long-lived Mammal by Cynthia Moss, leader for forty years of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in which every elephant in the Amboseli ecosystem (Kenya) has been monitored as an individual, as part of a family and as part of its population: spending time with Cynthia watching the Amboseli elephants was a huge privilege and one of my most memorable experiences.

Cutting-back hellebores

The 'woodland' path earlier today.

Developing hellebore buds.

Cutting-off the old leaves of the hellebores, which I've been doing today, is an important winter task - it tidies up the plants, enabling emerging flowers to be seen easily and it is said to help control fungal disease, but there are two other important considerations. Firstly, big hellebore leaves are very smothering of smaller plants below them, and in wind they move around, flattening anything in their radius. In a garden like this, crammed with small bulbs betwen larger plants, that can be quite damaging. Secondly, while hidden under the protective layer of old leaves the buds are particularly vulnerable to being eaten by mice or voles. Removing the leaves denies them this shelter from predators (mostly owls here) and the buds are usually left unmolested thereafter.

When asked about defoliating hellebores, I usually say that it's a good job to do around Christmas, really just as a peg to hang the task to: you don't want to cut the leaves off too early, when the plant is still benefitting from them, or too late, when the new shoots are coming up and have to be carefully avoided. In most seasons Christmas is about the ideal time, but with the mild autumn and early winter there is too much movement in the garden to wait until then. The hellebore buds are developing, and snowdrop noses are emerging fast. In some corners here there are masses of Cyclamen coum seedlings under the hellebores, and these also need exposure to light. I try to snip the petioles as close to the base as possible, cutting them individually with secateurs. To reduce the risk - I hope - of transmitting the transmission of Helleborus net necrosis virus ("black death"), I wipe the secateur blades with methylated spirits between each plant. It may just be ju-ju and a waste of time, but one feels to be doing the right thing!

A swarm of Cyclamen coum seedlings  - an excellent reason to defoliate the hellebores above them..

The path later: hellebore leaves all gone and Galanthus plicatus 'Three Ships' visible.