Email
Print
A garden takes on the imprint of its creator
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: January 3, 2009
A few days before Christmas, a friend hunted me down to give me a packet of seeds. It was not a Christmas gift per se -- I knew that it was coming -- but it was welcome. Ann Long had gotten this seed from a dear friend and mentor of mine, Flora Ann Bynum, who passed away a few years ago.
Flora Ann created the historic horticulture program at Old Salem and lived and gardened there as well. When I worked as a gardener at Old Salem, we were always looking for plants that we didn't have that would fit into the museum's historic parameters. In other words, "new" old plants.
I came across the sunset hibiscus, Abelmoschus manihot, and we both started growing it. The name springs from the Arabic a'bul misc, meaning father of musk, a reference to a species whose seed is used in perfume. The sunset hibiscus is a beautiful plant. An okra relative, it has beautiful creamy yellow, funnel-shaped flowers that unfurl from spiral buds.
Significance of gift
In the center of the blossom is an eye of deep maroon. The petals are delicate and crepe-textured, and the flowers are borne at the ends of long, thin branches. The leaves are large and fingerlike, and they, too, are carried on slender stems, forming a plant that is tall, open and extraordinarily graceful. I remember thinking upon seeing its first flowers, "how has this one escaped me."
Sunset hibiscus is an annual in our climate, one you that must be started anew each year from the seed. I had neglected to do so. So Ann's gift was greatly welcome. And though the plant is beautiful, the significance of this gift goes back to Flora Ann. It now carries her memory.
Flora Ann was the first woman of real Southern gentility I ever met. She always made you feel as though you were the teacher and she was the student. But you seldom came away from an encounter without feeling enriched by it. She was learned in botany, horticulture and history, but always modest about it.
A mirror of its creator
Historic plant varieties and their references can be muddled and confusing. When Flora Ann wanted to know about something, she would just grow as much of it from as many sources as she could find and compare until she thought that she had the right thing. This made for a kind of living library of bulbs that she kept lined out back. It was always a pleasure to stroll about these beds with her.
It is hard to watch the inevitable decline of gardens that have lost their gardeners. Though Flora Ann always had help in her garden, there was never any doubt whose garden it was. Like any good garden, it was a mirror of its creator. Though we often try to preserve gardens as the legacy of the gardener, it seems an honorable but ultimately hollow attempt. The gardener brings something creative to the garden with each passing season -- something inexplicable but as necessary as a fresh layer of compost.
Plants are living history. The stories they carry through cultures blossom along with their flowers. We add our personal histories to their horticultural, biological and historical stories. They are perfect repositories of these stories because they are living, constantly returning, things.
As we grow older the metaphors that the garden is so steeped in -- life, death, resurrection, continuity -- become more poignant. Their stories resonate with a deeper level of significance. The winter garden at the end of the year is an obvious reminder of the gardener's mortality. But the seeds in the back of the desk drawer, forgotten in the garage or tucked into the cold soil carry the germ that begins the season anew.
■ 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.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
