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Old Salem sharing its heirloom varieties
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Published: August 16, 2008
Old Salem Museums and Gardens have recently begun to sell heirloom plants in an outdoor area adjacent to the T. Bagge shop. The brick patio, dappled with shade from overhanging crape myrtles, makes a delightful little sales area between the Moravian Book and Gift store, which was originally the Elias Vogler store, and the 1775 T.Bagge store. The plants are displayed on rough-hewn boards suspended between barrels.
There is a bit of irony in it, but heirloom plants are becoming increasingly difficult to find despite their proven record of toughness through the years. Despite this confirmed reputation, modern nurseries are more likely to offer the newest, the brightest and the biggest in their sales areas.
According to Matt Noyes, Old Salem's director of horticulture, there is a lot to be said for heirloom varieties. They are often drought-resistant and able to withstand insect infestations. They are open-pollinated, so the seed can be saved from year to year. Many varieties are native to this area and so are well adapted to our climate and conditions. Several attract beneficial insects to the garden.
Emotional component
Noyes says that there is an emotional component to these plants as well. For some people, they evoke long-dormant memories of grandmothers' garden. The nursery also creates an opportunity for visitors to Old Salem, a living-history museum, to take home a piece of living history.
Vonnie Hannah, Old Salem's greenhouse manager, is new to the world of heirloom plants but has quickly adapted to producing plants for both the sales area and the gardens. She has filled the space with flowers, herbs and a few vegetables, such as peppers. The offerings change according to season. Hannah propagated all the plants in a nearby greenhouse.
They include such herbs as horehound, a pungent plant with woolly silver covering of hairs on its leaves. Horehound was cultivated by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and the name refers to its use in the treatment of dog bites. Today it is most commonly encountered in cough drops. Tall plants of sesame can be found in the Old Salem nursery. This common component of our daily diets is rarely encountered in plant form. Sesame looks like a tiny foxglove flower and is followed by one-inch long seed pods, which contain the familiar seed, arrayed in a neat little row.
Several peppers
There are a few peppers offered in a "spice" collection, three different varieties to a pack. They include long cayenne, sweet red cherry and the unusual "fish" pepper, a beautiful variegated plant that bears small, conical red peppers of extreme heat.
Noyes says he hopes to offer more heirloom vegetables as time goes on. The nursery is especially strong on heirloom flowers. Native, herb and heirloom plant enthusiasts can combine their passions in plants such as butterfly weed, whose beautiful orange flowers attract many of our butterflies as well as play host to the monarch butterfly. The plant, which is also called pleurisy root, was used to treat that ailment. The great blue lobelia has summertime spikes of blue flowers. Its botanical name, Lobelia siphilitica, reveals its historic medicinal use.
There are such common culinary herbs as basil and rosemary alongside such unusual decorative ornamentals as the sunset hibiscus. This annual relative of the cotton and okra has beautiful pale chiffon-yellow flowers about 4 inches across on a spiny, tall-stemmed plant. One of my favorites is the caracalla bean. Grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, this bean family plant is grown for its curious snail-shaped flowers that have a delightful scent of hyacinths.
Several other annuals that are offered are outstanding performers and seem to remain relatively undiscovered. These include the old-fashioned petunia with flowers in pale shades of pink and white that emit a spicy fragrance in the evening. If they get leggy late in the season, a hard pruning will start them anew. The tassel flower, an orange bloom the size of a shirt button, dangles from a 2-foot stem and is perfect for weaving in among larger flowers. Globe amaranth with clover-like flowers that form dense globes in the garden is drought-tolerant and blooms its head off.
Scattered throughout Old Salem are native trees as represented on the original Moravian surveyors' list. Noyes noted the difficulty of finding nursery-propagated native trees in our area as he attempts to expand the collection on Old Salem's properties.
Lamenting the disappearance of our native trees as urban sprawl continues to engulf the areas around Winston-Salem, Noyes says that he hopes to be able to introduce more native trees for sale in the nursery as time goes on.
"Old Salem is primarily a living-history museum, but if we can afford some environmental stewardship in this way we will do it," he said.
■ Old Salem Museums and Gardens plant shop, between T. Bagge and the Moravian Book and Gift store, is open during normal business hours for the museum. For information, visit www.oldsalem.org or call 721-7300.
■ If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal
, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to
gardening@wsjournal.com.
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