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Books can get gardener through the winter
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Published: December 27, 2008
Like little squirrels hoarding nuts, we green-starved gardeners can gather in a stack of books to get us through the winter months. Yes, there are things to be pruned, cleared or even planted in the yard this time of year, but forget that. The imagination needs to be cultivated, too. Books are a good way to do it.
You could start with Lawrence Griffith's Flowers and Herbs of Early America (2008 Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Yale University Press). Griffith is curator of plants for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and many of the plants featured in the book will be familiar to visitors to the gardens of Old Salem as well. Griffith has combined scholarly research and practical horticulture in a book made sumptuously beautiful by the photographs of Barbara Temple Lombardi, a staff photographer with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Griffith created a garden to grow all of the plants he features in the book from seed. Plants are living history, and Griffith unfolds their stories through sources that stretch back to the third century B.C.
Intriguing history of plants
It seems often the case that texts on historical horticultural end up about as dry as a herbarium sheet, but Griffiths references only serve to enliven the tales these plants hold.
Lombardi's photographs are sensual explorations of form and color. In fact I would caution the gardener/ reader not to expect the real thing to be as beautiful as portrayed in the book. A simple borage flower is transformed into a dew-jeweled sapphire; Indian shot canna becomes a flame of orange, curled into the picture of grace, while a portrait of the tendril of a passionflower is displayed as a tight coil of green spirals. These are photographs bent on illustrating the hidden grace and character that these lovely plants possess.
There are plants in here that one might expect- purple coneflowers and columbines- and then there are weird and wonderful things like strawberry blite and balsam pear that will be as new to most gardeners as the latest catalog introductions.
I worked with many of these plants in Old Salem as one of the museums gardeners for eight years. This book managed to show me these plants in a new light.
Importance of hyper-local
Another book that opened my eyes this year was Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy (2007 Timber Press). Many gardeners, including this one, have been beating the drum about growing native plants for a long while. They flourish in our gardens because they are well adapted to our climate and soils. Tallamy demonstrates how they support native wildlife. His central thesis is that up to 90 percent of our native insects have evolved to feed on specific plants As these plants are displaced with exotic, introduced plants the native insect populations decline and begin a trickle down effect that leads to a reduction in native songbirds and other wildlife dependent on these insects for food.
Tallamy illustrates well how gardeners have contributed greatly to tipping the environment off balance and how they are equally able to turn the trend. As we continue to lose land to invasive species, pollution and development, the need for gardeners to offer islands of respite grows ever greater. Plants and insects are integrally intertwined and interdependent on one another. Understanding the beauty and complexity of these relationships deepens our appreciation of our gardens and the important role we all play.
Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, A Project by Fritz Haeg (2008 Bellerophon Publications, Inc.) is as much manifesto as garden book. Edible Estates grew out of a project to establish demonstration gardens in America's major climate zones that replace the front lawn with productive food gardens. I use the word demonstration garden in more than one sense here. The project seems to be as much about flying in the face of conformity as it is about creating gardens. Edible Estates was created by art and design students and has the feel of an installation, and similarly is about making a statement. The book recounts the experiences of gardeners in Kansas, New Jersey, California and London who have had an Edible Estate garden. It is also includes excellent essays by Rosalind Creasey, Michael Pollan and Haeg himself, among others. This is not a great gardening book, but it is a very entertaining sociology experiment, challenging our perceptions of conformed suburban landscape with what Haeg calls "Full Frontal Gardening."
"Public tastes still favor conformity when it comes to the front yard, and any sort of deviation from the norm signals a social, if not moral, lapse. The abrupt appearance of such a garden on a street of endless lawns can be surprisingly shocking, but after the neighbors watch it grow in, they often come around. Perhaps the threats evoked by this wild intrusion into the neighborhood will eventually be a catalyst for questions. How far have we come from the core of our humanity that the act of growing our own food might be considered impolite, unseemly, threatening, radical or even hostile?"
This quote from Haeg's essay in Edible Estates rattled around in my mind all summer long. Finding new ways to see the things we love makes you love them all the deeper. Is there anything better than a good book on a winter's day?
■ 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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