Garden Visitors: Sharing Plants and Ideas

Morgan English, Helen O'Donnell, Laurie Merrigan and Maggie Tran

Helen O'Donnell, brought three of her gardening friends for a visit last month. Helen had just returned from a stay at Great Dixter and Maggie was the 2012-13 Christopher Lloyd & Historic Botanical Garden Bursary Scheme (HBGBS) Scholar at Great Dixter. I was flattered that they made the trip to see my garden in October.

I was happy to share this bergenia that I got from the late, great Joanna Reed about 20 years ago. That is one of the best parts of gardening: sharing plants from beloved gardening friends. Joanna was an important mentor to me and I was pleased to pass along her plants to a new generation of gardeners.

Helen snatched a few seedlings of Heleborus foetidus. I think I got this plant from Charles Cresson's Swarthmore, PA garden around the same time I got Joanna's bergenia.

Giacomo Guzzon, an Italian Landscape Architect working in London, also came for a visit last month. Giacomo has shown me around several public gardens in London and I was pleased to have him come for a visit. He is standing in front of one of my stewartias that he has long admired on my blog.

I have been playing with the idea of adding smaller stewartias with the two established trees to create a grove, rather than a pair of symmetrical verticals. Giacomo liked that idea especially because the trees are not exact clones.

He suggested that I support this smaller tree to encourage growth vertically rather than horizontally.  I staked the two main trunks, hoping to encourage a multi-stemmed tree, soon after Giacomo left to visit the New Hampshire White Mountains.

Another excellent suggestion was to move, remove or screen the door in my deer fence at the lower boundary of the Woodland Garden. The unsightly door is an unintended focal point that I stopped noticing many years ago. It was very helpful to have a friend critique strengths and weaknesses of the garden. Thanks Giacomo!

Joanna's Bergenia

Bergenia cordifolia with Indian Pot and Stone Pedestal

According to my gardening journal, on May 5, 1997, I got a division of Bergenia cordifolia from the late Joanna Reed's garden in my hometown of Malvern, PA. I didn't know the plant but was willing to try anything Joanna suggested. I brought a single plant home and every year I divided it. One year, I happened to plant a division on the shapely drained slope flanking the granite steps down to what I now call the Blue Bench Terrace. It was the right plant in the right spot and it prospered beautifully there.

The bergenia's russet-colored leathery paddles of foliage contrasts well with the gray granite steps and the bluestone patio this time of year. It is also the perfect compliment to the rusted Indian pots from Michael Trapp's Connecticut shop I got about a dozen years ago. In April, it will have rose-colored blooms that seem to hang on for several weeks. Here in New Hampshire, any plant that peaks in December and April is highly prized.

Bergenia cordifolia is an extremely useful plant but what I treasure most about this unnamed cultivar is that it came from Joanna's garden. It is a lasting memento of her garden and the time I spent there when I was just beginning to learn about gardening.

Early Magnolia Season in the Elliotts' Garden

The Entrance to Bill and Eileen Elliott's Garden

Magnolia x loebneri 'Leonard Messel'

The Newly Formalized Vegetable Garden

Plant Labels: Discarded Flatware from the Recycling Center

The New Lutyens Bench Border

The Compost Pile

A Woodland treasure: Hepatica nobilis

In a normal year, late-April is the beginning of the magnolia season in Bill and Eileen Elliott's garden. This year is different (every year is different for a gardener) and the season has begun about two weeks earlier than usual. So this morning, I drove with my friend Susan to the Elliott's garden in the rural village of Hancock. You see, the magnolia I helped Susan plant in her garden several years ago isn't doing so great and she may need a replacement. I thought the Elliott's garden would be the ideal place for Susan to see how well various varieties of magnolias fared in New Hampshire.

I met the Elliotts in 1997 in Joanna Reed's garden in Malvern, PA. They, like me, had traveled from New Hampshire to visit Joanna's garden. Joanna was a superb plantswoman and had a garden chalk full of unique and interesting plants from all over the world. Joanna, a former president of the Herb Society of America, also studied at the Barnes Foundation Arboretum and was well know as an expert in woody shrubs and trees. Joanna, in her late 70's at the time, was leading several visitors around her garden and I struck a conversation with an interesting couple who were also fascinated by Joanna and her garden. As it turned out, they were from nearby Hancock, New Hampshire and were keen gardeners with a special interest in woody plants. One of trees that I saw in flower for the first time is a favorite magnolia of Eileen's, Magnolia sieboldii. In New Hampshire, Magnolia sieboldii blooms in late May. It has white cupped flowers with a delightful citrusy fragrance and 2 inch long carmine fruit which are a garden feature in August and September.

When we arrived at the Elliotts' garden, you could see the Magnolia x loebneri 'Leonard Messel' from the street. It is a cross cross of M. kobus and M. stellata. It has fuscia-pink flowers and is hardy to Zone 4. The Elliotts also have the cross 'Merrill', an Arnold Arboretum introduction with magnificent white flowers. They have several of 'The little Girl Hybrids' in bud, ready to flower in the next week ot two. The hybrids are a cross of M. lilliflora 'Nigra' and M. stellata 'Rosea' and are all shrubby growers with reddish purple flowers. The have girl's names, 'Ann', 'Betty', 'Jane', 'Judy', Ricki' and 'Susan'. They were selected for a slightly later blooming time in an effort to avoid the frost damage of M. stellata. Later in the season, the yellow flowering magnolias will be followed by M. sieboldii. Bill mentioned they also planted a bigleaf magnolia, M. macrophylla, I believe, which is not fully hardy in Zone 5 and has never flowered for them.

The Elliotts live off the grid, without electricity. They were early followers of Helen and Scott Nearing and share their philosophy of living off the land. The grow their own food in a large vegetable garden. Eileen had just planted some of the seeds and showed me her new labeling system: old knives they reclaimed from the recycling center. In the last several years, they have been adding formal elements to the vegetable garden and new paths paved with granite cobblestones.

Somehow they have also found the time to have a large ornamental garden with all kinds of unusual and hard to find trees, shrubs and perennials. Any plant that has any unique and garden-worthy characteristics that are hardy in Zone 5 are sure to be somewhere in their garden. While I was there, I spied an especially beautiful hepatica with red foliage and light purple flowers blooming in their woodland garden.

In the next several weeks, I hope tho visit the Elliotts' garden to follow the progression of magnolias. I will also have the opportunity to find plants with simultaneous blooming times that I can use as companions to magnolias or to place as a much needed contributor to the early spring gardening picture in my own garden or the public gardens in the Peterborough Parks.

Joanna's Hands

Joanna Reed sent me this picture along with her Christmas card in 2000, less than two years before she died at the age of 85. I grew up in Malvern, PA, but it took me 16 years after moving to Colorado and then New Hampshire to find a gardening mentor in my home town.

Joanna and her husband, George, moved to their home, Longview Farm, in Malvern in 1940. The house was built in 1780 and was in desperate need of repair when they bought it. Joanna's gardening career began when she had a chance meeting with Dr. Albert C. Barnes. Dr. Barnes collected fine art and formed the legendary Barnes Foundation http://www.barnesfoundation.org/ in Merion, PA and his wife, Laura, had launched a tuition-free school of horticulture at the Barnes Foundation Arboretum. Dr. Barnes had car trouble in front of the Reeds' house and asked to use their phone. While waiting for a tow truck, Dr. Barnes convinced Joanna to enroll in the first class at the horticulture school and she began to study and propagate woody plants.

I had heard about Joanna and finally met her in 1996. I was just beginning to make my own garden and she encouraged me to learn my shrubs and trees. I was inspired by the huge katsura tree, Cercidiphyllum japonicum, that she had propagated from her classes some 50 years earlier. It was in her garden that I saw hellebores and epimediums for the first time. I was also introduced to one of my favorite trees, Magnolia sieboldii in Joanna's garden.

I got my own katsura tree in 1997. When I was visiting Charles O. Cresson, another wonderful and very generous gardener from Swarthmore, PA, and he offered me a 3" tall katsura seedling. I planted it on axis with wooden steps to the lower woodland garden and waited. Last spring, I installed the French doors on that same axis. Now when I open the French doors, I see a 25 foot tall Cercidiphyllum japonicum. It is a reminder of my dear gardening friend and her constant optimism to plant small trees and watch them grow in your garden.

Joanna's garden is profiled in three books: The Authentic Gardener by Claire E. Saweyers, The Unsung Season by Sydney Eddison and Star Ockenga's Earth on her Hands.