I had so completely tuned out HGTV as a source of gardening instruction or inspiration that I totally missed the July 31 premier of their Martha Stewart show “Martha Knows Best.” My friend Kathy Jentz asked if I was reviewing it, saying:
I really enjoy it – it shows a lot more of personality and is looser than her in-studio shows.
I remember her saying at the Baltimore IGC-East talk that we NEED a new garden TV show. glad she followed thru and made it happen.
Well, damn straight I’ll review it NOW. All 6 of the episodes are streaming here and they managed to transport me away from the horrors of my news feed. So thank you, Martha! May the show’s ratings prompt them to add a few MORE real gardening shows to the line-up of outdoor decorators and house-flippers at HGTV. With the surge in new gardeners this year, the timing seems perfect.
Quarantining with Martha
First, gotta say this show was filmed during the pandemic, from Martha’s quarantine location – a 153-acre farm in Bedford, NY. The farm, in Westchester County, is called Cantitoe Corners. Lots of images here.
(She also has major homes in Maine and the Hamptons – if not more. Curious about all this abundance I looked up “How Much is Martha Stewart Worth” and found it to be estimated “in the vicinity of $628 million as of 2019. Martha Stewart first became a billionaire when her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, went public in 1999.” Okay!)
But back to Martha’s quarantine location, she’s there with her quarantine family (her fellow “detainees”) of at least three essential staffers – a housekeeper, a driver, and gardener Ryan McCallister.
Shown above, Martha and staff enjoy her famous “Martha-Ritas.”
I let myself soak all this in and feel really envious. Not JUST of her wealth and stunning homes and gardens but of her staff, especially gardener Ryan, who has a big role in the show. (If I had to choose, I’d drive myself and hire a cook instead – help that presumably Martha doesn’t need.)
And I hate to objectify anyone, but Ryan isn’t just personable and a good gardener; he’s also easy on the eye. You can follow Ryan on Instagram.
The Episodes
The 6 episodes cover these topics, roughly: vegetable garden, container gardens, trees, pets, paths, and perennial garden. I enjoyed all of them BUT have some questions about some of of Martha’s advice.
Her container-planting technique is, shall we say traditional, the same technique that I learned decades ago – use bubble wrap, a shard over the hole, then landscape cloth liner. Her potting medium is peat, soil (not described further) and vermiculite.
Here’s my question – hasn’t that technique been debunked by science? Or at least by the Garden Professors and the garden communicators who follow them?
Martha has 100+ containers in this courtyard alone.
One tip I will try to emulate is putting little wooden spacers under the pots to keep them from sitting directly on the patio, which would impede drainage. I wonder where to buy them.
The episode about trees is also rule-breaking, even after Martha’s declaration that she’s read lots of books on the subject. To wit: she says to dig a hole TWICE AS WIDE and TWICE AS DEEP as the pot, then to AMEND the backfill with compost. Pretty much everything the Professors Blog says not to do, which is also what most garden communicators (like Joe Lamp’l) are saying these days.
Should these contradictions matter to us? I have no doubt that Martha’s traditional techniques have worked fine for her over her decades of gardening. But I’m a big fan of science, so I’ll concede that the results might have been a bit better if she followed the advice of researchers.
Just like my daffodils bloom like crazy (certainly adequately) despite my ignoring everyone’s advice and tying up their foliage when they start to flop onto my perennials. Maybe they’d bloom a BIT MORE if I did everything I’m told, but I don’t care. I want my perennials not smothered, thanks.
The episode about paths was fascinating to me – especially the humongous job entailed in correctly installing a really good one that doesn’t get weeds. And we’re briefly shown some less formal ones that I can actually relate to.
For help with home landscapes, the episode about perennials gardens is probably the best.
No word yet (that I can find) about whether the show has been renewed for a second season but it has my vote, rule-breaking and all. I just love watching Martha, at 79 and as glamorous as ever, driving a tractor and wielding power tools. Hers may not be Extension Service-level advice but at least we see real gardening and real gardeners, with no instant make-overs in sight.
For more than eleven years I have been growing succulents. Yes, even before they were on the cover of every household magazine in the supermarket! Growing succulents indoors is one area that is particularly challenging, but also oh-so-gratifying.
The folks at SucculentMarket.com sent me a box of succulents specifically for indoors. I truly think plant selection is one of the keys to growing succulents indoors successfully.
Look through any gardening website, decorating magazine or go crazy on Pinterest to see the designs and uses for this group of plants. From containers to wreaths to temporary installations, succulents have compelling shapes and colors that make them ideal for a wide range of displays. This article will provide concepts for basic care and design uses that can easily be incorporated into your home and will flourish in low light levels.
Haworthia zebrina
Care for Succulents Indoors
Not surprisingly, succulents will require less frequent watering than most interior plants. Plants that are continually overwatered will be prone to rot, disease and a general decrease in plant vigor. I like to maintain succulents by monitoring the turgidity, or the stiffness of the leaves. Turgidity is the plant having ample water to keep the leaves full or turgid, resulting in the swollen and dense feeling of a healthy plant. When succulents first experience water stress the leaves will be slightly soft, indicating that the plant needs water. So go ahead and give those leaves a little squeeze! It will help you determine when you should water– by the plant’s needs and not a calendar.
Soil for Succulents
To keep plants dry, good drainage is key for long-lived succulents. I do not recommend special cactus or succulent mixes as necessary if watering can be closely monitored. A high quality, lightweight potting soil does well if plants are to be permanently installed. In my experience, adding generous amounts of Turface, or calcined clay mix, will help to maintain a very light soil well also increasing drainage. For some reason, the pervasive habit is to add sand to soil, resulting is a very heavy and dense mix that is detrimental to succulent health. Additionally, the very fibrous, small root systems of succulents makes them ideal for dropping the pot into existing container displays.
Fairy’s Washboard Plant, Haworthia limifolia
Plant Selection
The variety of jewel-toned succulents that are available can be mesmerizing. From oranges and chartreuse to deep purples and reds, there is a variety of succulent for almost color of the rainbow. Almost all of these will succeed given high level light conditions and low humidity. But what if you have less than ideal conditions? Low light levels can be challenging, and under these conditions it is hard to maintain the deep oranges and yellows of many of these plants. So it may be worthwhile to consider some of the other very architectural succulents that can tolerate low light.
Succulents that tolerate low light levels include Haworthia, Gasteria, Sedum, Aloes and even Kalanchoes. The folks at SucculentMarket.com have even put together an assortment perfect for your dark apartment. These varieties will thrive in darker areas, making them ideal for inside the home. These plants will maintain their growth and serve as long term plants.
Gasteria
Take time to consider adding a top dressing to your plants. Whether in containers or in larger plantings, this will help to keep the plants clean and also set off designs. Are you looking for a more contemporary look? Polished pebbles keep the clean lines you are looking to achieve. Tumbled glass, stone, and seashells are a few options to complete your look with a very professional appearance.
Given the popularity of succulents, succeeding with these plants is a trend that you can achieve.
To grow an urban, edible garden is genuinely an art. Unfortunately, just like art, it can end up costing you quite a bit of money. The good news is that by knowing where to splurge and where to save, you will have enough in your budget to get the best results and the most delicious fruit and vegetables. Read on for some advice.
Save on pots
Plant pots can be surprisingly expensive, especially when you have to buy a lot of them. Fortunately, there are some ways to save on the urban, edible garden cost.
The first is to make your own. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about whipping up those concrete things you’ve seen on Pintrest. Instead, all you need is some scrap newspaper and a special tool. Then you can make biodegradable pots that you can place directly in the ground: something that will not only save you money, but time repotting as well.
Alternatively, why not consider repurposing other containers you have lying around the garden and use those as pots? In fact, just about anything will do including an old welly boot, a kitchen sink, or even the kids paddling pool they no longer use. Just make sure you give them a clean (avoid using containers that have held toxic substances) and line with landscaping fabric.
Save on running costs.
Another area in which you can save money in your urban edible garden is on running costs, with one of the most expensive of these often being water. After all, no matter where you are located, your plants aren’t going to grow without water, and so you will need to give your garden a good soaking at least 2-3 times a week!
Happily, there are some savvy ways you can keep your garden water costs down. In particular, you should consider catching rainwater which is 100% free and use that for your garden. You can even get rainwater harvesting tanks and pumps from suppliers like The Tank Factory online. Something that makes collecting and redistributing rainwater in your garden as easy as pie.
Invest in compost
One area in which you won’t want to scrimp is the compost you use. In fact, if you are going to be eating the produce, you are growing organic compost as a must. This is because it’s both full of nutrients and much safer too.
Invest in seedlings
When growing an edible urban garden, it can be tempting to opt for seeds. In fact, for just a few dollars, you can get a fantastic selection of seeds, including heirloom varieties.
However, seeds require loads of time and love to germinate, as well as specialist equipment such as greenhouses. With that in mind, if you are just starting your garden, or are short on time, investing in seedlings which can be planted straight into the ground is a great idea.
It will also give you the best chance of ensuring a decent edible crop as well. Rather than having to hover nervously over your beds for weeks to see if anything decides to shoot!
This lovely lawn (a spring shot) leads to a beautiful perennial garden south of Buffalo. Some of you have been here.
Not by a long shot. Every now and then, one of the Ranters publishes a post on the benefits of having a lawn and strategies for responsible lawn maintenance. Far from objecting to these posts, I heartily agree with them. When free of needless herbicides and fertilizer and mowed at a reasonable height, lawns do provide rest for the eyes and recreational space for people and animals. I have no problem with them, though I do like to see them accompanied by healthy stands of perennials and shrubs, with a tree or two thrown in.
It’s the framing of the question that I find disconcerting. Do lawns really need defending, as this post implies?
Are they becoming scarce? Are people with lawns being persecuted or ostracized by their neighbors? Are gangs of lawn abolitionists roaming the cul de sacs of suburbia, torching every lawn they see? No. This is not happening. And, sad to say, the words of enlightened industry professionals and naturalists about the problems associated with lawn culture are, for the most part, not being heard by those who need to hear them most. Don’t feel bad, my friends; there is no need to worry about scaring or shaming lawn-proud homeowners. They are not listening to you and they don’t know who you are.
Lawns continue to thrive throughout most suburban and many urban areas of my region, Western New York, and I suspect that this is true throughout the US. If I were to look only at the gardens of my friends, many neighbors, and everyone on Garden Walk Buffalo, I might think lawns are on the decline. But that view would be beyond blinkered.
We just had another lawn-related incident in our largest suburb, Amherst. A retired university official and longtime environmentalist, Walter Simpson, was reported by his neighbors for allowing Queen Anne’s Lace to grow in part of his untreated lawn area, which also harbors a number of other wildflowers (or weeds: it’s up to you) throughout the season. It’s a “mow what grows” lawn, but the QAL was allowed to remain unmowed during its time of flowering. This endangered it, because it can grow higher than ten inches, which is the height limit in this suburban town for anything in a lawn that isn’t obviously a cultivated flower bed. Here’s a quote from one of several newspaper articles on the controversy: “The homeowner said he and his wife suspect the unnamed tipster is a neighbor whose exacting lawn care includes using scissors to trim wayward blades of grass, [noting], ‘That’s not an exaggeration.’”
The QAL was never removed because the town decided—after many phone calls, emails, and other lobbying efforts by the Simpsons and others—to consider an appeal from the Here’s a link to the final article that leads to the 3 or 4 previous articles. It didn’t hurt that Simpson was a high ranking official in the area’s biggest university; he’s used to getting things done.
I’ll be honest; I couldn’t care less about Queen Anne’s Lace. I do admire the Simpsons for maintaining an untreated lawn—which clearly harbors many other plants than turfgrass—in an area where lawns are still worshiped, with governmental ordinances in place to back that worship up. My point is that cases like these arise on a regular basis throughout the country. There is always an enlightened cadre ready to fight lawn culture—as with the Simpsons—but I am pretty sure that lawn adherents consider these people kooks and radicals. And I am afraid these lawn adherents are—by far—in the majority, with, for the most part, the law on their side.
We can murmur kind, gentle assurances that lawns are OK “as long as …” all we want. It won’t help people who don’t have the juice to fight City Hall.
It used to be the case that gardens were purely places you wandered around on foot. Then, people saw that they could make the experience better by bringing indoor elements, like tables and chairs, outside.
In the early days, these weren’t the comfiest. Often manufacturers made sets of cast iron covered in thick paint to ensure that they could withstand the weather.
Even with the invention of waterproof plastics, things were slow to change. It’s only recently that we’ve seen the introduction of weaved vinyl seating and furniture to the garden. Before then, you either had to make do with solid wood or metal.
The following are some of the reasons you don’t feel cozy in your garden and what you can do about it.
You Don’t Have A Canopy Covering
Having a roof over your head is important, even when enjoying time outdoors.
The reason is simple: it protects you from the elements. Sometimes you don’t want to bake yourself in the sun. Other times, you want to sit outside, but not in the rain. Here, having some roofing over your patio and decking can help enormously.
Sitting upright is physiologically stressful. It’s what you do when you’re at work, tapping away at your computer.
Reclining, by contrast, is what you do after a long day in the office. There’s something intrinsically enjoyable about it.
Usually, though, you can’t recline in your garden. You have to make do with seating with straight backs – not ideal.
There is, however, a simple solution: invest in an Adirondack chair. This form of seating is specially made for outdoor settings and lets you sit back, relax, and enjoy a good book. What could be cozier than that?
You Don’t Have A Table
Arbors and regular seating are okay if you want to sit and observe your surroundings. But if you want to do anything else, like eat a meal, you need a table.
Tables are useful for a variety of reasons. For starters, they let you keep all your creature comforts to hand. Nobody wants to balance their hot cup of coffee on an uneven lawn. It’s much better to place it on a proper surface. Plus, you can use tables to dress up your outdoor spaces and make them feel more like regular rooms in their own right. Everything feels much less sparse.
You might think that outdoor spaces don’t require lighting. After all, they have the sun for that.
But if you spend time outdoors in the evening or at night, you soon discover that you need a bit of artificial light to make it feel cozy.
When it comes to outdoor lighting, you have a bevy of options. One idea is to hang strings of fairy lights to your canopies that light up automatically when the sun goes down. Some people use natural candles too. Just be sure that your decking is fireproofed if you go down this route.
My local informal gardening group WAS going to put on a garden tour, so when that couldn’t I began experimenting with virtual tours – online but with the option that local viewers could see many of the gardens in person on their own time. For some reason I promised THREE virtual tours – for spring, summer and fall.
For the Virtual Spring Garden Tour I solicited garden photos and when they were all put together it was clear that the fabulousness of many of the gardens was lost. But I love garden videos – I created a whole nonprofit website to curate them – so I decided that our Summer Tour would be video-only!
Personally, I’d made only a few videos in my lifetime so was thrilled by the offer by Greenbelt Access TV to make them, with my nontechnical help. Perfect.
Melissa’s Garden
,
Melissa Mackey’s garden is a good example of a garden that can’t be captured in photos alone. You need to walk through the narrow side-yard path into the lush, serene, very private garden of a wildlife-loving, life-long gardener and plant-collector. All that behind a townhouse.
Phoebe McFarb, Greenbelt Access TV Station Manager
For this garden I made a few video clips, recorded a narrative about the garden that Melissa had written, and sent it all to Phoebe McFarb at the station to put it all together. It was super-easy for me and Melissa, too.
Melissa in her garden.
Melissa Mackey grew up on a farm in Southern Maryland and has been gardening around her home in Old Greenbelt since 1989. She also enjoys growing vegetables in a Greenbelt Garden Club community garden plot. She is currently President of the Beltsville Garden Club and Secretary of the Greenbelt Community Garden Club. She appreciates the generosity of fellow volunteers and gardeners, from whom she’s learned so much.
10 Streetside Gardens
Like no doubt lots of you, I’ve been walking a lot since the shutdown, and one route in particular had become my favorite – along Lakeside Drive, very close to my house. Speed-walkers like me appreciate its smooth asphalt surface without the tripping hazards along old sidewalks, and there are almost no cars or other pedestrians.
What it DOES have are dozens of real gardeners who garden in the front yard for the enjoyment of all. (Thank you again to everyone who gardens where the public can benefit from them!)
For this video, Phoebe did all the filming, with me pointing out the 10 gardens and any focal points she might zoom in on. Then I narrated design ideas that I thought people could glean from these gardens – not just by watching the video but by seeing those front yards in person. The target audience was primarily local.
Phoebe told me she loved filming plants but this was her first time filming a whole garden, and she was excited about the project. Best of all, this is the street she grew up on, her parents still live there, and one of the gardens on the tour was the home of her best friend during childhoods. So it was a great fit between subject and filmmaker! It was fun working with her.
Amethyst’s Garden
I’ve mentioned my friend Amethyst Dwyer before as my color therapy coach, and you can see why from her truly joyful sunny front garden.
Amethyst
Amethyst and husband Dorian Winterfeld bought their townhouse 21 years ago, after living next door to it, admiring its gardens and interior renovations, and buying it as soon as it went on the market. The garden’s established plantings, pond and amenities had been installed back in 1982 by a previous owner who was a landscape designer. The designer had smartly focused on privacy and screening – in the front garden with small trees and shrubs along the sidewalk and in the back, with extensive privacy screens.
The couple enjoyed their gardens without becoming gardeners until two years ago when Amethyst got the gardening bug – big-time! And this year during the pandemic shutdown, she’s upped her game by growing not just exotic flowering plants but edibles, too. In pots, no less. And adding shade plants to the cool Meditation Garden out back.
So I asked Amethyst to record some videos of her garden and she delivered, sending me three video clips with her own narration and included cameos by a cute dog and cheering husband. I cobbled them together using a new video editing program I’m learning – Movavi. It’s cheap, easy to use, and reasonably comprehensive.
Amethyst is one of several freshly minted gardeners in my neighborhood. Hearing them espouse the joys of gardening is my new favorite thing.
Next Up
Changing things up again, for the final three summer tours I’m doing the filming and editing myself, but with lots of input from the gardeners themselves. I’ll post the results here soon.
Sculpture of Rachel Carson by David Lewis, installed at Woods Hole (photo by Laura A. Macaluso, Wikipedia Commons)
To me, they are little more than hunks or granite or marble, carved into forms of varying aesthetic value. Sometimes, monuments can be masterpieces, as with the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington. This truly tells a story, representing an important history through superb narrative art.
Most of the time, though, a monument is just a guy on a horse or a guy standing in an imposing fashion. His arms may be folded or maybe he’s holding a scroll of some kind. This is when you want to look at the plaque, to see if the sculpture is worthy of your trouble. Otherwise, who cares? Oh, and did I forget to say white guy? I know I didn’t forget to say “guy.”
The truth is that representative statues, throughout the US, are generally of noteworthy males or symbolic mythological figures, with a few nods to women and Black/indigenous/people of color. Is it any wonder that many of the more dubious examples are being vandalized or removed? Of all the commemorative statues in the US, roughly eight percent are of women. I think that may be close to the percentage of statues we have representing Columbus, a truly despicable human who discovered nothing and killed many.
If statues of this type were not so overvalued, I wouldn’t care. But they’ve become a thing. If we must have statues, then why not commemorate those who cared for the earth, who valued sustainability, and who wanted a healthy environment for generations of living things to come?
I wondered how many statues of Rachel Carson can be found and saw out that one was installed in 2013 at Waterfront Park in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. There is also a seated statue of Marjory Stoneman Douglas at the Fairchild Gardens in Miami. There is a park and a wildflower center named after Lady Bird Johnson (and maybe a bust was completed; I couldn’t tell). I don’t think there is a commemorative statue of Lois Gibbs. Clearly, no great urgency fuels the need to commemorate and celebrate the many women who led efforts to preserve our environment.
I don’t care about statues. But I think too many are caring about the wrong ones and not caring about what’s really important.
There I was: at my favorite local garden center eyeing some of the most alluring begonias I had ever seen. It was a warm day in late April; people in masks were merrily social distancing, happy to just be alive and at this Place of Plants that had finally opened its doors to customers after a spring that seemed to go on for years.
I reached a hand toward the beguiling begonia and gritted my teeth from behind my mask. Would I buy this plant? Yes! I picked it up, placed it in the cart and moved a few steps forward. No! I backed up, took the plant from the cart, placed it back on the greenhouse shelf and forced myself to walk away, toward a different area of the store where the plant I had actually come for—a witch hazel shrub—was waiting to be taken home.
In any normal year, I would have bought the begonia with exactly zero thoughts beyond “how many.”
But this is not a normal year—and I am not talking about Covid-19.
I am talking about sustainability. With the departure of the last kid for college in fall of 2019, my husband and I had embarked on a year of trying to do better environmentally. Reducing our purchasing of plastics was at the top of the list and, let’s face it, it is next to impossible to buy a plant without the attendant plastic pot.
It’s remarkable—in a bad way—that an industry that is about beauty and joy and nature is so persistently and steadfastly wedded to plastics that are largely unsustainable. There has got to be a better way or, at a minimum, research and development toward more sustainable plant potting materials. It has become clear during this year that the only thing that is going to change these industries that rely so fully on plastics is for us consumers to demand change via our wallets—by withholding them.
In the meantime, my plan with the offending pots is essentially “take one, give one.” Every unsustainable pot I bring home, I fill with soil and a baby plant from my extensive gardens and put the refilled pots out by the road. Last summer, within hours of putting out the free plants, they were gone. This year I will have a jar for optional donations to the local animal shelter. This is but a small sustainability measure; nevertheless, it makes me feel better and we can all agree that two different plantings in one pot is always better than one.
If you are an avid gardener, the chances are that you are also a bit of an eco-warrior. However, it can be challenging to create a bountiful garden full of flora and fauna without some pesticide usage to manage pests or without utilizing plenty of water during long hot summers. If you are keen to make your garden more eco-friendly, you need to look at recycling materials, reusing items, and reducing your wastage. Take a look at these 3 sure fire ways to make your garden more sustainable.
Go Organic
Organic food has seen a surge in popularity recently, as people are more keen than ever to know what exactly goes into the food and meals. Going organic can be challenging if you are used to using manmade fertilizer to encourage rapid growth for your tomatoes, butternut squash, and brassicas. If you want to go organic, think about generating your own compost. Your food waste from meals such as cooked veg, banana skins, and apple peels, can mulch down to create a beneficial organic feed. This also saves your food waste from going to landfill, having a larger sustainable impact on your wider lifestyle.
And don’t forget to water your plants regularly. The better the watering regime that you have in place, the more consistent growth you will see in your vegetables and plants. Don’t always use the mains water from your home. Consider installing one of the many poly water tanks available to collect rainwater that you can then reuse to design an irrigation routine for your planting.
Think Of Your Flowers
To help out the wildlife in your local area, consider setting aside a section of your garden and dedicating it to wildflowers. Many flowers such as honeysuckles and clovers are great to attract pollinators like bees. Bees are endangered across the globe, so giving them the chance to collect nectar within your garden will allow you to do your bit for insects and bugs. Other flowers and trees will attract birds and mammals, such as hedgehogs, foxes and badgers. If you plant some wild grasses and barleys, these longer grasses will form a great habitat for fox families and badger setts.
Stop Using Power Tools
That powerful leaf blower or petrol mower can cause untold damage to the environment, producing toxic fumes that damage the atmosphere. Rather than contribute to this, look for alternatives. While it may take a little longer, sweeping up the leaves in your garden can be a greener way to clear your lawn. You can also reconnect to nature in a more calm and gentle way. Many mowers are now electric, running off a solar-powered battery. While they were once substandard to their petrol counterparts, they now have the power and battery life to rival the most gas-guzzling machines.
Forget about creating a garden merely for aesthetics and image. As a gardener, you should be showing off your green-fingered credentials. Look to the functionality of your garden and make it sustainable and eco-friendly.
Last week, Susan Harris emailed me regarding my recent article “In Defense of The Lawn” in the July/August issue of The American Gardener magazine. “Can we use it for the Rant?” she said, “Where it belongs?”
Susan is right – it is a rant of sorts, though I like to think of it as a well-reasoned argument. In any case, it’s a discussion I think we should all have; and when I contacted David Ellis, editor of The American Gardener, he kindly permitted us to run an excerpt here to start that discussion. David has also generously provided a discount membership offer to the American Horticultural Society, so you can read the rest of the article (and there is much more) either digitally or in print, and take advantage of other wonderful member benefits.
I am certainly not paid to say this, but I believe that if you’re a gardener in the U.S – or a gardener interested in American horticulture, you should seriously consider joining this excellent organization. More information is provided at the end of this piece.
Now let’s get back to the ranting…
________________________________________
Mine is not a lawn by the standards of the HOA protected subdivision that dominates the landscape less than three miles away. It is not the lawn of golf-courses and nervous groundskeepers further east towards the city. It does not cry out its nitrogen dependence in shades of electric green, nor does it bankrupt the resident gardener with various expensive treatment programs meted out on a meticulous schedule and marked with little yellow flags.
Claytonia virginica in my lawn in mid-April.
Each week, cropped at a machine finished four inches, my lawn in Northern Virginia provides recreational space, control over rampant woodland invasives, and the necessary void spaces that connect cultivated and uncultivated parts of the property and give our eyes needed rest.
Unlike conventional turf lawns, which are usually a near monoculture of one or two lawn grass species, my lawn is a hodgepodge of species—natives and non—including many common broadleaf thugs such as dandelions and plantain. But to chemically eradicate these less desirable plants would mean the loss of other, sweeter species—the claytonia… the violets…and the vast network of trout lilies (Erythronium americanum), whose lovely spotted leaves make up for the rare sighting of a flower.
To term this open space a “lawn” is therefore to be exceedingly generous. But I, and many others who maintain their lawns in this way—and who don’t have to rely on summer irrigation to keep them alive— look out upon them and are satisfied.
Right up until the minute a friend or neighbor informs us we should be ripping them out and planting a meadow instead.
The concept of being judged by one’s lawn has had a long and painful history. Knowing this, it is worth reflecting whether our laudable desire to be excellent stewards of our environment means we are continuing to mete out this judgement clothed in a different set of robes. Are we ignoring the desire of average homeowners to keep their beloved lawns, and, at the same time crippling our own ecological argument by offering idealized alternatives that do not meet their needs?
Untreated but beautifully usable. In pre-COVID days, this space was used once a week with friends during the summer.
A PERSPECTIVE SHIFT
Meticulous standards of lawn care might very well be considered a legacy of growing suburbs in the mid- to latter half of the 20th century. For decades, urged on by a continually “improved” chemical arsenal, homeowners were instructed to treat their lawns like a prized rose bed.
No weeds. No bugs. No discoloration. And, to this gardener at least, no life.
By this standard, the masses were judged, and yet it was only attainable for your average weekend gardener in an average-sized American lot with average amounts of staff (that is to say, none), through the regular application of hundreds of pounds of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides every year, with known and unknown collateral damage to personal health, ecosystems, and watersheds.
In 1962, Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book Silent Spring forced society to think deeply upon the costs of chemical warfare. The average homeowner, however, could neatly categorize such issues as a problem with industrial agriculture, and ignore their own part in the process. The chemical quest for the perfect lawn continued throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s.
And that is only half of the story. Such lawns required at least one inch of water per week to remain healthy and hydrated. In areas of abundant summer rainfall, there was no issue; but in many other areas of the western and southwestern United States, one inch per week required that gardeners tap into a rapidly dwindling resource.
No matter. The subtle and not-so-subtle influence of television, magazines and other national media sources, aided and abetted by the lawn-care industry, pushed a onesize-fits-all approach. So, gardeners continued to treat, water, mow, and obsess about their lawns; and as the end of the century approached, many handed homeowners’ associations further power to require similar, exacting standards of them. Or perhaps more accurately, of their neighbors.
It is no wonder then that gardeners in a new millennium were open to burning their bras. Over the last 20 years, we have seen a positive shift in the way we look at gardens, wildlife, chemical treatments, and our moral obligation to conserve the many fragile ecosystems around us.
Trends towards meadow gardening and the evolution of the New Perennial Movement have opened the eyes of many to the rich ecosystems that can develop in the presence of species diversity and the lack of chemical intervention. Increasingly, gardeners and naturalists find themselves working together to create cultivated spaces that radiate exciting, uncultivated energy. That’s a beautiful thing.
It doesn’t come much more beautiful and ecologically vibrant than this. Waves of perennials offer texture, movement, habitat and food sources at The Delaware Botanic Gardens (Piet Oudolf design).
But in their desire to free both the environment from harm and the homeowner from drudgery by advocating against the sins of the past, is it possible experts have begun to swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction? Fellow garden writers, horticulturists, Master Gardeners, naturalists, and nursery people, I’m talking to you.
Respectfully of course.
We are ignoring the many commendable functions of a lawn, chastising people for wanting those functions, and ignoring a large proportion of homeowners who do not artificially treat their lawns and are instead content to mow a vigorous and herbaceous green space wherever it grows. To those homeowners we offer a—highly arguable—“low-maintenance” solution to a functional space that is neither a problem, nor a high-maintenance headache.
Wouldn’t it be more effective to focus our efforts on helping homeowners to maintain the lawns and open spaces that they love in ways that can equally be loved by the planet?
My Jack Russell Mungo lives and breathes for chasing balls on the lawn. I’d hate to take that away from him.
PURPOSEFUL AND PLEASING
Functionally, a lawn or open space not only provides an outdoor exercise area for children and adults, but a recreational space for gatherings and entertaining—recreational space that a meadow cannot offer. It is versatile, permeable, comfortable to walk upon, and invites the play of outdoor games.
As Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual and Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games wryly remarks, “It’s no fun to play badminton in a meadow when you can’t find the shuttlecock.”
In addition, lawns discourage tick populations where devastating tick-borne diseases like Lyme, babesiosis, and ehrlichiosis proliferate, and they allow pets to roam without harming expensively landscaped areas elsewhere in the yard.
Lawns with healthy root systems act as sponges. When compared to garden beds filled with more double-shred than plants (an unfortunate but popular method of planting in America), lawns provide excellent capture of storm runoff. And carbon. And airborne particulate matter. Where summer rainfall makes lawns viable, they may also be utilized as aesthetically pleasing firebreaks against the ever-present threat of wildfire.
THE LAWN AND LANDSCAPE
From a design standpoint, lawns or other open expanses create areas of rest for our eyes and our senses. “Emotionally, they are breathing spaces,” says Carolyn Mullet, garden designer and owner of the garden tour company CarexTours. “Design is about the interplay of mass and void, and there is a very different intensity to each. Both are needed. Mass is framed and enhanced by void.”
Gardener or no, we recognize this instinctively. Majestic mature trees dotted through open lawns feel calming and restful; conversely, we find ourselves invigorated and energized by the life radiating from tall meadow grasses and wildflowers.
Getting the balance right between these two elements is a skill. Too much void and you are left with a sense of emptiness. Too little and the planting can feel suffocating or chaotic.
A mown framework can help us to appreciate other ecologically dynamic areas in our landscapes, communicating a sense of familiarity and comfort through what Joan Iverson Nassauer, a landscape architecture professor at the University of Michigan, terms a shared “landscape language.” Just as wide, mown paths through the meadow of a large public garden allow us to immerse ourselves comfortably in an inherently energetic environment, mown areas abutting a woodland or meadow at the borders of our yards make the area feel tended and approachable.
A carefully curated late fall meadow at RHS Wisley.
Though some might protest against the ecologically negative and often arbitrary effects of culture on the landscape language being spoken, studies show human beings are naturally and unintentionally fluent in the language of their region. To effect positive ecological changes, it is therefore wise to become fluent ourselves, and stop shouting at them in a different tongue.
Open spaces play a vital role in our landscapes, and for areas of the country where abundant rainfall creates green whether you want it to or not, a mowed lawn is the simplest answer to unending maintenance woes—no matter how the experts protest otherwise.
__________________________________________
This excerpt is reprinted with permission from the July/August 2020 issue of The American Gardener magazine, which is the bimonthly membership publication of the American Horticultural Society (AHS). To view the article in its entirety, click HERE to become a member of the AHS at a special discounted rate for Garden Rant readers. In addition to receiving The American Gardener, other benefits of AHS membership include free admission to more than 340 public gardens nationwide, discounts on seeds and gardening books, and discounts on select educational programs.
Such was the size of the nursery operation that the San Francisco Call Bulletin in 1913 called the Domoto Brothers Nursery the largest in the state. Photo Credit: https://ift.tt/3gSpNq5
When I was growing up, the narrative of North American horticulture, especially ornamental horticulture, was through the prism of a Euro-centric, if not Anglophilic lens. It was not through the perspective of an immigrant one. There was little or no acknowledgment of horticultural legacy that immigrants left in the U.S., even in the annals of horticultural history in my university curriculum. What I learned instead was how early American botanists and nurserymen fulfilled the British hunger for New World plants, especially its trees and shrubs in the 18th century, or the popularity of Japanese plants was closely tied to the Japonisme, the craze for Japanese arts and culture in western Europe and United States. Whether for the prevailing xenophobic attitudes, lack of documentation, or its perceived irrelevance in history, the contributions of immigrant communities have not been acknowledged consistently in a significant way. Last year on my trip to visit gardens and nurseries in the Bay Area, I learned that the old greenhouse ranges we spotted in Richmond were once used for growing roses and carnations. The greenhouses had a sad, forlorn, look of what once had been thriving businesses, although the glimpse of a few roses growing and flowering against such adversity was a bright moment. However, it scarcely occurred to me to connect these greenhouses with the Japanese American community.
Toichi Domoto set up his 26-acre nursery across the San Francisco Bay in Hayward after returning from his studies at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1926. He would continue the rest of his life at the nursery, devoted to breeding camellias, tree peonies, and flowering quince (Chaenomeles). Photo Credit: Courtesy of Domoto Family from A Japanese-American Nurseryman’s Life in California: Floriculture and Family, 1883-1992.
Asian immigrants, especially Japanese Americans, in California oversaw farms and nurseries because these economic endeavors thought to be less threatening to whites. In Northern California, the East Bay and the current ‘Silicon Valley’ (San Mateo, Mountain View, Redwood City), became the hubs for these horticultural businesses since real estate was (and still is today) expensive in San Francisco. With its sunny days and cool nights, the climate was ideal for growing plants. In addition, the expansion of the railroad system in the region meant convenient and direct links to San Francisco where sales were conducted.
Kanetaro Domoto, the co-proprietor of the Domoto Brothers Nursery and father of Toichi Domoto, immigrated with his brothers from Wakayama, Japan and purchased land for the nursery in 1902. Kanetaro and his brothers were able to own land before the Alien Land of 1913, which forbade immigrants from property ownership, took effect. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Domoto Family from https://ift.tt/3gSpNq5
Among the Japanese American nurseries in the Bay Area that caught my attention was the largest and most influential one, the Domoto Nursery. Whereas other nurseries were largely preoccupied with growing cut flowers like chrysanthemums, roses, and carnations, the Domoto Nursery was one of the few concentrating on ornamental plants for gardens and landscapes. It too was a major conduit through which plants new to American horticulture were introduced and popularized. Kanetaro and Takanoshin Domoto, the two brothers who immigrated from Wakayama, Japan, had started the business in 1885. The Domoto Nursery soon gained the nickname ‘Domoto College’ for the multitude of young men trained and employed there before opening their businesses as well. At its height, the nursery spanned 40 acres; the San Francisco Call in February 1912 noted that the greenhouses covered 230,000 square feet and the shed 300,000 square feet. The economic woes of the Great Depression severely affected the Domoto Nursery, leading to its foreclosure and its re-possession of the land in 1936 by the city of Oakland. If Kanetaro was concerned about the nursery’s legacy consigned to anonymity of time, he hadn’t need to worry. His eldest son Toichi carried on the family tradition, cementing the Domoto name farther into history.
Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection
Raised in the family business from a young age, Toichi never envisioned that he would follow his father into the same profession. He had gone to Stanford University in 1921 to study mechanical engineering, but later transferred to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for horticulture. Toichi had realized that career opportunities outside of the agricultural and horticultural industry were limited to those of Asian ancestry. Reflecting upon his childhood among the plants, he said matter-of-factly, if not a bit resignedly: “For me that’s all there was to do. When I was small, I played in the Domoto Bros nursery. As I grew up in the nursery. Later I started my nursery.”
Among the plants that the Domoto Brothers Nursery grew and sold were more than 200 varieties of chrysanthemum. The woodprint illustration of this pink and white chrysanthemum is from the Japanese nursery, which the Domoto Brothers Nursery used to import plants regularly for their business. Photo Credit: USDA National Agricultural Library’s Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection
When Toichi returned to California in 1926 after college, he purchased 26 acres in Hayward to start his nursery. The site was ideal for its water and fertile soil while the real estate prices were affordable. Through a series of bartering for building materials and plants and financing from the principal, Toichi slowly built his nursery from the ground up (during the Depression, he had less than three dollars some days to feed his family from his selling gladiolus flowers in San Francisco; food was scarce). However, the nursery’s development was sadly interrupted when the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066 that ordained the internment of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans in camps. Sensing the imminent arrival of authorities for their forced relocation, the Domotos left the nursery in the care of an employee and moved inland to Livingston in hopes of delaying their inevitable transfer to the camp. Eventually the family was split up, with some in Amache Relocation Center in Colorado and a few returning to Japan. His father, already broken emotionally from the foreclosure of Domoto Nursery, later died at camp, as did another uncle who had been relocated to Milwaukee. Released momentarily through a sympathetic camp administrator, Toichi had to pay a guard to escort their ashes to the family gravesite in California.
The 1896 catalog of Domoto Brothers Nursery featuring ‘Pride of Japan’, which features roses, chrysanthemums, pelargoniums, palms and ferns, tree peonies etc. in its pages. Photo Credit: USDA National Arboretum Agricultural Library’s Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection.
With time for breeding and propagating squandered to internment, Toichi recovered what he had lost and reassumed the nursery work. Because anti-Japanese sentiment was still high after WWII, he was considerate of his presence affecting the business of the nurseries he sought for plants. The plant orders were retrieved early mornings before the nurseries were open for their customers; for instance, his truck would arrive promptly at 6 am to pick up the camellias from Nuccios Nurseries, which was a ten-hour round trip from Hayward to Altadena and back.
Toichi and Alice Domoto who married in August 1940. Together they had two children, Marilyn and Douglas. Marilyn later taught Japanese after doing a two-year study aboard program in Japan while at Stanford, and later studying it in Columbia. Douglas become a doctor based in St. Louis, Missouri. Courtesy of Domoto Family from A Japanese-American Nurseryman’s Life in California: Floriculture and Family, 1883-1992.
One silver lining of being away in internment camp was that the seedlings in the peony fields (5-acres) had matured and were flowering, allowing Toichi to evaluate and keep the promising ones. When Toichi began to concentrate on tree peonies, breeding them was still in its infancy. Although tree peonies could be easily bought from nurseries, they were largely imported from Japan and Europe where flowering plants could be bought inexpensively and marked up once arrived in US. The few people engaged in hybridizing and selecting tree peonies commenced their programs around the same time Toichi became interested; among them was Professor A.P Saunders, still regarded the most successful and prolific breeder of peonies who only named 1 percent of his seedlings, whom Toichi corresponded in letters. Saunders was encouraging of his efforts: ‘You’re a young man yet. Plant as many seeds as you can, and see what you get.” Another individual was Roy Klehm who graciously advised on propagation difficulties, especially with grafting since Toichi was experiencing problems with poor quality rootstocks. Klehm himself had visited the peony fields at the Hayward nursery. In addition to the tree peonies acquired from Japan, Toichi imported the yellow peonies from Victor Lemoine of Lorraine, France; Lemoine had crossed Paeonia lutea with Paeonia suffruticosa to broaden the color range and his cultivars, like ‘Alice Harding’ and ‘Chromatella’ are still cultivated today. Most of the tree peonies today attributed to Toichi’s breeding were named and registered by Roy Klehm, but the best one ‘Toichi Ruby’ has won superlatives from tree peony fanciers for its rich rose red color, fragrance, and clean foliage.
Camellia reticulata ‘Captain Rawes’ was the first reticulata camellia introduced to Europe in 1820 and when the plant flowered a few years later, it was used as the type specimen to describe the species. Toichi Domoto was the first to import ‘Captain Rawes’ from the Hillier Nurseries, Winchester, UK, succeeding only on the second attempt with grafted plants.
Given their slow maturity and lengthy propagation, tree peonies alone were not lucrative for the nursery to sustain itself. Camellias became the bread and butter because they were becoming popular as plants and cut flowers (camellia corsages accounted for a portion of the nursery income during the first three to four years). One of Domoto’s significant introductions to US for his breeding was Camellia reticulata‘Captain Rawes’, which had been grown in Europe for over a century by that time. Imported from China by its namesake to UK, ‘Captain Rawes’ did not flower in a greenhouse until 1826. This plant became the type specimen (the sample that taxonomists use to describe a new species) on which the botanist John Lindley recognized Camellia reticulata in the Botanical Register (1827). In 1936, Domoto imported scions of ‘Captain Rawes’ from the Hiller Nurseries, Winchester, UK, but his grafts nearly all failed, forcing him to request another shipment of grafted plants instead. Seeing that the grafted plants from Hillier’s were side and whip grafts rather than the cleft grafts popular in US, Domoto broadened his perspective on grafting camellias. Reticulata camellias are uncommon in gardens, given their large size (plants can reach up to 50’ in the wild), propagation difficulties, and winter hardiness. When pressed for these camellias’ lack of popularity, Domoto remarked: ‘It’s a big flower, and it’s a rangy-looking plant. You really don’t get the full impact of these varieties until the plant gets good-sized, in order to make any show’. He had hoped to capitalize on their brief popularity but was unable to produce saleable plants in time. On the other hand, his work with the fall-flowering Camellia sasanqua was successful. Its smaller and tighter growth, evergreen foliage, and vibrant flower colors were attractive attributes that possessed enormous potential for good garden plants. ‘Dwarf Shishi’, a seedling of the well-known ‘Shisi-Gashira’, was acclaimed for its compact, slow growth and large dark pink flowers.
The camellia listings by color in Domoto Nursery (Hayward) wholesale list. Photo Credit: USDA National Arboretum Agricultural Library’s Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection.
Toichi continued to work with camellias throughout his life, and one of his lifelong friendships was with Julius Nuccio, the co-proprietor of Nuccios’ Nurseries in Altadena, California. Julius and his brother Joe were Italian Americans who developed a burgeoning interest in azaleas and camellias from their parents’ back garden into a full-fledged 40-acre nursery. Julius and Toichi had met through a mutual friend who was a train express messenger fanatical about camellias. When Julius and his wife traveled up to San Francisco, Toichi and Alice would entertain them at their home –likewise the Nuccios would reciprocate the hospitality in Los Angeles. Decades later Toichi still recalls the boisterous Italian American dinner that Julius’s mother had prepared, calling it the best Italian dinner he and his wife had eaten. When pressed for possible cultural misunderstandings between the Japanese Americans and Italian Americans, Toichi acknowledged the potential for conflict, but pointed that both groups were on equal footing due to their mutual experiences they faced from discrimination. In fact, Julius’s childhood neighbors were Japanese, and there were frequent shared meals at each other homes. Today Nuccio’s Nurseries sells a seedling named after its namesake breeder ‘Toichi Domoto’, a formal double rose pink flower with dark pink stripes.
A selection of camellia flowers featured in the Domoto Nursery (Hayward) catalog. Photo Credit: USDA National Arboretum Agricultural Library’s Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection.
Toichi’s friendship with the Nuccio family was reflective of his generous and sociable personality that made him an ascendant star in the Californian gardening scene. The respect accorded to his knowledge and ease of working with people were affirmed when in 1957 Domoto was appointed the president of the California Horticultural Society, which counted several influential Californian horticulturists and nursery people among its members. Some of these members included Walter Bosworth (W.B.) Clarke whose breeding, selection, and propagation of woody plants, like his namesake Prunus mume and magnolias at the San Jose nursery enriched gardens, San Francisco-based plantsman and nurseryman Victor Reiter of Geranium pratense ‘Midnight Reiter’, Golden Gate Park director Roy Hudson and director of Strybing Arboretum (now SF Botanical Garden) Eric Walther. The society was formed to gather and compare information on hardiness after the Great Freeze of 1932, which caused widespread losses of specimen plants and collections in gardens. At the jovial society meetings, the members would bring in new plants, discuss their growing requirements and their use in gardens and parks. Domoto provided valuable insights as he was outside of the cool ‘fog belt’ of San Francisco where some members resided, and he stepped in with specimen plants for the society’s annual exhibit at the Oakland Spring Garden Show. The Californian Horticultural Society (https://calhortsociety.org) still exists and holds their monthly meetings at the San Francisco County Fair Building.
If there was one social activity that Toichi refrained from partaking, it was visiting the gardens of his customers, many of whom were wealthy and enthusiastic about plants. He felt strongly that gardens were private domains, not vehicles for ego: “[A] person puts a garden in and you don’t like to have every Tom, Dick and Harry. The thing is, that the people that you should like to have come in are the ones that respect that. The ones that you would just as soon not come in are the most brazen that come in.” The one garden that Toichi did have a close professional relationship with was the country estate of Mr. William P. Roth and Mrs. Lurline Matson Roth, heiress to the Matson Navigation Company, Filoli. Enlisted by the previous owners the Bourns who had built the estate, the landscape designer Bruce Porter already had laid out the formal garden between 1917 and 1922; Isabella Worn the horticulturist oversaw the plantings and their maintenance. When Mrs. Roth later became more interested in azaleas, camellias, and rhododendrons, she had Worn visit Domoto Brothers and later Toichi’s Hayward nursery to select and pick up plants. It was through Toichi on his first visit to Filoli did Mrs. Roth reveal her desire to see Filoli preserved as a public garden. Mrs. Roth’s confession and acknowledgement of her mortality may have encouraged him to consider the future of his nursery.
When Toichi realized that his two children, Marilyn and Douglas, were not interested in inheriting the nursery, he began to downsize his business by phasing out his nursery stock. Several dozen camellia seedlings were sent to Nuccio’s Nurseries for evaluation. Downsizing the nursery proved wise because he was able to relax unburdened and maintain his passions in breeding plants. His energies never faltered into his nonagenerian years, although health issues later forced more confinement in bed at home. Every morning at 5 am, he would wake up and go about his routine watering, feeding the cats, reading the newspapers and magazines.
Toichi Domoto captured during the 1992 oral interview, graciously funded by his colleagues and oversaw by the oral history recorder Suzanne Riess. A Japanese-American Nurseryman’s Life in California: Floriculture and Family, 1883-1992.
For someone who experienced racial and societal injustices, Toichi Domoto was remarkably gracious and optimistic. He betrayed no hint of anger or bitterness when reflecting on his significant achievement, which was anything but horticultural:
“Having gotten along with my friends in life, and having gained their respect. I feel that more than anything else, human relations…But the fact that I got to know certain people real well, intimately, so that regardless of their color or race or religion, I knew them as a person, I think that was—those are the two things that I really cherish more than anything else.”
Domoto poignantly added: “When you are out working with plants and flowers, you can’t have hate in your heart.”
Eric Hsu is a writer (his blog is www.plinthetal.com) and gardener with interests in bulbs and woody plants; in addition he is the plant information coordinator at Chanticleer.
Growing Community: Pioneers of the Japanese American Floral Industry. Retrieved August 1, 2020 from www.janurseries.com
Toichi Domoto, “A Japanese-American Nurseryman’s Life in California: Floriculture and Family, 1883-1992,” an oral history conducted in 1992 by Suzanne B. Riess, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1993.
Nuccio. J. (1995). A tribute to Toichi Domoto. The Camellia Review 57(2): 10-11.
Schmidt, W. (1969). Toichi Domoto, Nurseryman: Over sixty years’ experience with flowers. California Horticultural Journal 30: 66-73.
Ukai, N. (n.d.). The Domoto Maple: Bonsai Part I. Retrieved August 4, 2020, from The Domato Maple: Bosai: Part I
I had so completely tuned out HGTV as a source of gardening instruction or inspiration that I totally missed the July 31 premier of their Martha Stewart show “Martha Knows Best.” My friend Kathy Jentz asked if I was reviewing it, saying:
Last week, Susan Harris emailed me regarding my recent article “In Defense of The Lawn” in the July/August issue of The American Gardener magazine. “Can we use it for the Rant?” she said, “Where it belongs?” 
