First Lady Jill Biden and the White House Garden

Now that almost everyone concedes that the Bidens will be moving into the White House soon (hopefully, soon enough!), local garden writers like me are pondering what admittedly is the least important question about the transition – will it affect the White House gardens?

First, let’s go to the photos, like the one above of Dr. Biden doing a campaign video from their home in Wilmington. Whether she gardens or not, she clearly HAS a garden, and it looks lovely.

Here’s another photo, presumably in their Wilmington garden, with Champ.

That doesn’t tell us whether she (or her husband) actually gardens, of course, so I tried googling their names with “garden” and “gardening” and the results were slim and unhelpful:

This one shows the Bidens during a party at the official VP home in DC – the Naval Observatory. There’s never been a public tour there to my knowledge, and I had no idea there was a pool – and it’s gorgeous.

Here’s Dr. Biden with Michelle Obama at the U.S. Botanic Garden.

I did a little more research when I visited Rehoboth Beach, Delaware last month and looked for the Bidens’ vacation home there. It was surprisingly easy to find – “Just ask Google!,” a neighbor told me. In anticipation of selling their Wilmington home and moving to the beach full-time in retirement, the Bidens had sold their smaller beach house and upgraded to this 6-bedroom home with an ocean view. (Shown here, with lots of interior photos.) But admittedly, there’s scant evidence here of what might be called gardening. 

So maybe she’s not a gardener herself, and I’m guessing that with First Lady duties on top of her teaching schedule, we may not see her harvesting vegetables with local kids. 

But I’m still hopeful that the new administration will bring changes to the White House gardens and grounds, shown here in my October 2010 post. Maybe she’ll change the Jackie Kennedy Garden seen above; it’s just outside the East Wing where the First Lady’s offices are located.

Time for the White House grounds to get greener?

Big picture, the White House sits on 18 acres, you know, and although Michelle Obama’s kitchen garden was a great addition and essential to her campaign for children’s health, there’s lots more that could be done.

Way back in November of 2008, soon after the election, Michelle Obama’s staff contacted me for advice about a possible White House kitchen garden, which was so thrilling! I know nothing about growing food so I promised to get back to them with an answer. I consulted over 30 local experts and compiled their suggestions in this proposal, which went way beyond what I’d been asked, recommending improvements in lawn care, stormwater management, provisions for wildlife – all facets of sustainable landscaping.

The very disappointing result? I never got a response! I suppose it’s because my answers went waaay off-message. I did have some back-channel communications with Sam Kass, their Food Initiative Coordinator, and was at least able to connect him with some local food-growing and school-garden people. But my dreams of becoming new-best-friends with Michelle herself were dashed, as well as the more modest dream of being invited to the grand unveiling of the new food garden. 

This time, I’m not expecting to be contacted but I’ll do my best to get that proposal seen again. And I’ll definitely be there for the spring 2021 White House Garden and Grounds Tour, after which I’ll respond to the Rant commenters demanding that I condemn the recent changes to the Rose Garden. Any real gardener knows not to judge a redesign immediately after installation – in August, no less, and after its abuse during the convention.

First Lady Jill Biden and the White House Garden originally appeared on GardenRant on November 12, 2020.

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Remembering Aunt Rose

Rose Russell Blakely passed away in late September. Aunt Rose loved her garden. She was 93 years old.

I often visited Aunt Rose, and her garden, in Washington, D.C., since I married her beloved niece and namesake, Rose Cooper, 25 years ago.

Aunt Rose was a real-deal gardener.

A good garden requires give and take. You need to nurture a place. It takes years to learn the nuances of soil types and hidden roots. Ice storms and hurricanes, among other forces of nature, can make a mess.

There is no sure deal.

Other than heavy lifting and hard pruning, Aunt Rose did all of her own gardening chores.

A well-loved garden can’t exist without a patient and deliberate gardener, but even the best intentions can’t slow the hands of time.

Aunt Rose’s garden, her final companion, was a jungle toward the end, but she seemed serenely unaware. She acknowledged regularly that it needed a “little work.” On calls this year, she would ask me when I was coming to visit. “I have questions,” she’d say. She was thinking about a shrub for the back of the garden. Aunt Rose’s mind was failing. Our phone calls became a regular playback of the previous call.

Getting ready for the 2017 Women’s March. L-R: Rose Cooper, Jill Winston, Cooper Francis and Aunt Rose.

The pandemic became full blown. I never got to visit Aunt Rose again but never stopped thinking about a shrub for her back garden.

Aunt Rose gardened in Georgetown, D.C., for 52 years. She worked for Republican senators for many of those and was Kentucky Republican Senator Thruston Morton’s Personal Assistant from 1957-1969. Those were different times. There was more political give and take across the aisle between Republicans and Democrats. Senators would eat meals together in the Senate dining room. Now they relentlessly go off the Hill to make calls to raise money for their next campaigns. 

Aunt Rose knew the Capitol Hill power brokers, and they knew her. She was a force. When Senator Morton retired from the Senate, he told Aunt Rose, “You did a great job, but I was always afraid of you,”

Aunt Rose did not mince words.

 

(She was a life-long Republican but lived her last years in disbelief that the Republicans, and her country, had inherited Donald Trump.)

Later, she enrolled in the garden design program at George Washington University.

She kept good notes.

I have been reading dozens of her typed (and sometimes neatly handwritten) flash cards that she compiled during her studies all those years ago. The breadth of the plants was fascinating. Heaths, heathers, serviceberries, sourwood and hollies were included but also the less familiar golden larch (Pseudolarix  amabilis) and fragrant snowball (Styrax obassia).

I laughed when I saw the styrax flash card. Summer, a year ago, she was staying with us in Salvisa, and while we were enjoying dinner on the porch, she pointed to a tree and said, “That needs to be moved.” I wondered why she wanted to move OUR tree, but she had spaced out. Her dementia was worsening. She imagined that she was sitting in her garden.

The tree was our Styrax obassia—not Aunt Rose’s.

I played along and asked her why she wanted to move her styrax. “It will grow too big for its cramped space,” she insisted.

Mid-September

I worried for months about whether to move our styrax. I knew it might eventually grow too big for our space, but not in my lifetime. (It was already too big for me to move.) I met Aunt Rose halfway this past late winter. I pollarded (pruned and tamed) the limbs to make its future presence less overwhelming.

I have spent many hours pruning, raking, digging and sitting in Aunt Rose’s, long, narrow (150’ x 27’) garden. I can’t stop thinking about her blue, Lobelia siphilitica or the translucent, triangular seedpods of the hardy Begonia grandis, the mottled bark of her elegant Stewartia pseudocamellia or the red, quince blooms by her backdoor.

It’s hard to put my finger on why Aunt Rose’s garden, especially when it was being taken over by knotweed and white heath aster, remained so intriguing. For one triumphant reason, I concluded: Life’s hectic pace slowed down. The sirens of ambulances, heading to the nearby Georgetown Hospital, were drowned out by her garden’s silence.

Her toad lilies (Tricyrtis ‘Sinonome’) and pink anemones persisted unflinchingly. The low-growing Himalayan sweetbox (Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis) would not be overrun by weeds, either. I found a big clump of the equally defiant sacred lily (Rohdea japonica), hidden in a shady back corner of her garden.

Aunt Rose’s last few months were worrisome for her nieces. She was letting go and would not accept help. Aunt Rose lived life her way until the end. She stayed near her garden. It didn’t bother her that the garden needed work—lots of work. She spent Covid days on her sun porch, playing solitaire and looking out over a half-century of life and love.

Tidied up in late September

I kept thinking, since her passing, about the question she repeatedly asked: What shrub would I recommend for the back of her garden? I pored over her flash cards for ideas. I was tempted by a redbud, serviceberry or a mountain laurel.

I settled on summersweet (Clethra alnifolia). Mike Dirr, author and plantsman, sings its praises. “During the summer, the sweet floral fragrance of summersweet can permeate an entire garden… An amazingly adaptable plant in full sun to relatively heavy shade.”

Rose and Aunt Rose walk the garden in Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown, D.C. November 2016.

I’ve kept Rose’s son, and his wife, in mind. They may live there one day.

I’ll make my case for clethra in the months to come.

There have been more important immediate concerns.

Aunt Rose’s nieces cleaned up the garden in solemn gratitude after her passing.

Aunt Rose would be happy.

Remembering Aunt Rose originally appeared on GardenRant on November 11, 2020.

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Brookside Gardens is More Appreciated than Ever

I come to praise a public garden in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. for helping thousands of locals get outdoors in nature, move their bodies and feel a little saner while staying covid-safe. It’s Brookside Gardens, a 50-acre county garden that’s kept its outdoors open all this year. 

As you can tell from this panoramic shot of their Visitors Center, they don’t skimp on color.

My favorite spot in the fall is this line of ginkgo leaves at their purest yellow. 

Near the entrance is their annual display of mums, which normally is indoors but since being moved outdoors it’s more popular than ever. Photo ops galore!  

The display includes a frame for portraits and two selfie stations where visitors could prop up their phones for the shot. 

The Full 2020 Report

I spoke with Ellen Hartranft, Visitors Services Coordinator for Brookside, for more details about how covid has affected the garden.

Sadly, their major holiday events – the Garden of Lights and the indoor railroad display – had to be cancelled.

The Visitors Center closed in March but reopened in mid-August (including rest rooms and the gift shop.) Despite its being closed for so long, with no rest rooms available, visitation this year has been up 75 percent over normal years!

I’m not surprised, hearing from so many of my friends that they’re visiting more than ever, and arranging get-togethers there with family and friends. Nobody’s back yard is as large and safe for socializing as Brookside’s 50 acres. Also, there’s no entrance fee, and parking is abundant.

As a visitor myself – a visitor in the vulnerable age group – I appreciated that only one person is allowed in the rest room at a time. And only six people or family units are allowed in the atrium at a time. To accomplish those safety measures, administrative staff and volunteers have been commandeered into doorman positions.   

Of course lots of things have gone virtual – both adult and children’s programming. But not everything. The spring plant sales went on in person, with curb-side pick-up. Friends of Brookside Gardens held their own plant sale – with record-breaking proceeds!

And the public has been able to hold their own small events there – weddings, memorials, and parties, all complying with the county’s 50-person limit, which includes staff and vendors. (Brookside reduced its event fees to be in line with the smaller event size.)

So kudos for everything Brookside does for the public, especially this year!

Now enjoy a few more scenes from late October.

 

Brookside Gardens is More Appreciated than Ever originally appeared on GardenRant on November 6, 2020.

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We must do better

One of my favorite national parks

While it’s common—and understandable—to believe that certain subjects are somehow beyond politics, one of the reasons I’ve stuck with Garden Rant all these years is that I believe—with my fellow Ranters—that gardening is more than  just a pretty hobby, where we can stroll through our flower beds and bury our noses in a stand of phlox or lilies as the world goes to hell around us.

Gardening is inextricably bound with environmental concerns, that range from the chemicals we deploy to the habitat we provide for wildlife to the natural resources we use (or deplete). It could not be more obvious that concern for the natural environment has become a partisan issue. Over the past four years, in the hands of an administration that values business interests (valid or not) over combating climate change, preserving habitat, or husbanding natural resources, we have seen environmental priorities ignored and actively undermined.

Here’s some of it:

—offshore oil and gas drilling has been expanded, risking ecosystems for dubious gains

—logging, mining, and drilling have been increased and/or acreage turned over to private industry in or near the following national parks/preserves:  Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the Okefenokee Swamp, public land surrounding the Grand Canyon, Bears Ears, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Chaco Culture National Historic Park, just to name a few

—clean air and water standards have been weakened or eliminated

—pesticides such as chlorpyrifos have been kept on the market, despite protests and previous efforts to restrict them

—the Paris climate accord has been abandoned

Gardeners have been seeing the effects brought on my climate change for some years now. While private gardens may not be at the top of the list of what we need for survival in decades to come, they’re not at the bottom either.

Many scientists feel that it’s not too late. Barely. It would be nice to think that politics would have little to do with whether or not we heed scientific advice. I think we know now that’s wishful thinking.  

It’s up to us to do better.

We must do better originally appeared on GardenRant on November 3, 2020.

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Welcome to my …

Photo by Mark Nowak

No, you’ll find no dreadful scenes like the above lurking about my property. There is no need for manufactured horror here. If I want to be filled with fright and despair, all I have to do is take a short walk around the yard. Do you dare to accompany me? All right, but just remember … you were warned!

The Black Lagoon of Misery

This was once a cheerful water feature, with bright orange fish darting through the clear water. Now, the once-pristine pond is more like a swamp, choked with leaves and inexplicably-dead water plants. The fish lurk in the bottom, their only hope possible adoption by a kindly neighbor.

Dark Shadows of Doom Overhead

By the thousands, they rustle in the breeze, still bright green for the most part, taunting us as they flutter down, one or two at a time. They’ll save the big drop until 3 hours before the first major snowstorm. And there they’ll lay for months, ready to be scooped up in heavy, sodden piles after the thaw.

Will the Bulbs Never End?

Who ordered all these? What could he or she have been thinking? Who’s going to plant all these? How much did all this cost? This is madness, I tell you, madness!

The Killing Fields

This is where young, vibrant, healthy, expensive plants are taken to die … slowly. The torture is simple but exquisite. If planted, these perennial salvias, daylilies, and geraniums might make a bright show next summer. If planted—and that’s looking less and less likely.

OK, that’s all for today. Thank you for visiting my little garden. I’m sorry if it has been unpleasant. Once I had beautiful flower beds, lush ferns, colorful container annuals, and much more. Not any more.

The horror! The horror!

(And—oh yes—there’s also next Tuesday.)

Welcome to my … originally appeared on GardenRant on October 31, 2020.

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Why GardenRant has more ads, and how they’ll make it better

Yep, there’s an elephant in the room

Readers, we imagine you’ve noticed a recent increase in ads here on GardenRant – in the sidebar AND in our posts. So unlike the first 14 years of this blog’s regular postings, readers have to scroll through ads to continue reading. We’ve heard from some of you about this and understand that it’s been a painful change.

Others have noticed that our new ads are mostly general interest, rather than gardening-related. In the example above, our site has ads for Xfinity, LinkedIn, Discover card and Lowes. We’ve noticed Toyota and Best Buy, too – and some seriously cool coats from Zulily, which had at least one of us forgetting her deadline and going down a sumptuous retail rabbit hole. 

What’s changed is that finally, about two years after our long-time advertising service (Blogads) went out of business, we have a new ad agency – Mediavine. To become part of their program, GardenRant needed to have good traffic, which we do thanks to you!, and we needed to go through a long approval process similar to someone examining your underwear drawer.

So why did we go through all that, despite the resulting inconvenience to readers (and us) of now having to scroll through ads as we’re all reading? 

Improved GardenRant with Comments that Function!

Bottom line: Sites cost money. And good sites cost good money. We signed on for more ads NOT because any of us hope to quit our day jobs, retire early, or even finance a two-week beach-house rental from our new income – after it’s divided among a five-person writing team. 

So it’s not greed, y’all.

The BIG difference these ads will make is in the site itself, which after 14 years is sorely in need of an update. Our priorities:

• COMMENTS: Number one is fixing the damn comment feature! We comment ourselves – or try to – and get emails about the problems, so we know and we’re so sorry! Composing a comment and getting an error message for your troubles is beyond irritating! We totally hear you. To fix the problem in the past, we moved to a new host, which sadly didn’t fix the problem, so we’ll be moving it again to highly recommended site, and upgrading the hosting account for more capacity. While we all wait for this so-needed change, please be patient and feel free to interact with us on the Garden Rant Facebook page too.
• EXPERIENCE: Better functionality for all visitors – finding the information they want, navigating, browsing, subscribing, faster loading time, telling us we’re full of shit or it’s the best thing you’ve ever read in your entire lifetime, quickly in the comments — all of it.
• AESTHETICS: We may be gardeners covered in soil most of the time, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about appearances. We’re investing in an updated look by a real web designer – our first – and working with a graphic designer to make the web designer’s job even easier. We’ve hired developers and one graphic artist back in 2006, but never a real designer. ‘Bout time!

Believe us, if we could support the site by pulling an endowment out of our collective hats and live happily ever after in the aforementioned beach rental writing edgy garden prose, we’d do it. We didn’t like it when PBS started airing sponsored ads in the middle of Masterpiece Theater, either. But sadly, we find ourselves where PBS was, and hey, we held out a lot longer.

Meanwhile, please know that we greatly value your input (in the opposite of the way that politicians say they value your input) and will be considering your experience every step of the process.

Sticking with our Original Mission 

We loved our original Manifesto and we’re bringing it back to the home page – prominent and proud. We’ve never written articles based on what’s trending, and we’re not going to start now. We’re not incorporating paywalls or forcing the team to do paid webinars in their spare three minutes a day. Nor will you find key words mentioned nineteen times in 600 words so we get 3.5 million page views from Russian bots. You’ll get the same beautiful, edgy mess you’ve always gotten for free – you’ll just need to scroll past an ad for a pet brush to get it.

But hey, garden dogs get dirty right?  Maybe you’ll find some retail rabbit holes of your own in the process.  Thank you to all our loyal readers past, present and future – we look forward to a new site with anticipation.

Timeline?

We expect improvements to speed and comment functionality in early to mid-November, as soon as we move to our new host. Then we expect to kick off our glorious new design in January of 2021.  

 – Susan, Elizabeth, Allen, Scott and Marianne

Why GardenRant has more ads, and how they’ll make it better originally appeared on GardenRant on October 30, 2020.

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Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.

One of fall’s last hurrahs. Symphiotrichum (Aster) oblongifloium on October 27th.

The old joke among horticulturists is that shuffling and splitting plant names keeps botanists off the dole. The botanic name-changing business has been productive, but the consequences of taxonomic tinkering are sometimes painful.

For instance…

The aromatic aster “…by any other name would smell as sweet…” became Symphyotrichum oblongifoium. The jaunty, old botanic name, Aster oblongifolius, was tossed on the ash heap of lost loves.

According to Julian Shaw’s 2014 article in The Plantsman: “Older, Latin-based cultivar names, of which there are very few, as well as species epithets previously used in Aster (masculine), have to be modified to agree with Symphyotrichum (neuter), hence A. oblongifolius becomes S. oblongifolium, and so on. “

Yes. And so on, but Aster is such a cozy name.

Christian Gottfried Daniel Ness von Essenbeck first suspected that there might be a difference between the New England aster (Aster novae-angliae) and other similar daisy-like blooming perennials. With a name such as his own, perhaps he couldn’t resist. In 1833 he named New England asters Symphyotrichum novae angliae.

The name didn’t stick. Aster prevailed until 1994.

DNA evidence eventually proved who daddy really was.

A botanic split ensued, and Symphyotrichum was re-commissioned.

Most asters were in shambles and reassigned to new genera that included Ionactis, Eurybia, Seriocarpus, Doellingera Oclemena and Ampleaster. The rollout of new names challenged the recall of those of us whose memory banks had been robbed of once formidable assets.

I muttered displeasure with the inconvenience but accepted science even if it has taken five years, since the “split,” before I attempted to utter the Latin name. I discovered Symphyotrichum is clunky sounding but isn’t any harder to pronounce than Echinacea.

The aromatic aster has foliage with a sweet fragrance when the small, oblong leaves are rubbed. The species grows from the east coast across the Great Plains in inhospitable, dry soils in full sun. I’ve seen October flowers blooming out of the cracks of rock outcrops near Salvisa.

There are still a few street-legal asters left unruffled, but they are not the ones we see in fields, swamps and woodland edges in North America. Gail Eichenberger calls these ex-asters. What’s left of asters are found predominantly in the old world. The wonderful fall-blooming Asian Aster tataricus is a good example.

Feasting on Aster tataricus ‘Jin Dai’ on October 27th before the long flight home.

I love common names, but when botanists call a spade a spade they would, by their nature, want to figuratively distinguish a tile spade from a nursery spade.

Carolus Linnaeus came up with the clever binomial nomenclature (“two term naming system”) in 1753. The protocol was necessary to provide clarity. It doesn’t suffice to say, ‘Well, it’s just a bluebell,” for example.  A Virginia bluebell (Mertenisia virginica) is different from an English bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta ), and in Scotland, the plant they call a bluebell is Campanula rotundifolia.

Don’t despair. The good news is that you don’t have to kick any commonly called bluebell or aster to the curb.

Common names are often descriptive, folksy, melodic and point to cultural origins. Best of all, common names are free for all.  It needn’t be a stubborn case of Give me liberty or give me Symphyotrichum!

You can call a plant what you want, but science requires tighter reins.

And, yet, for gardening purposes, the new boss, sim-fy-oh- TRY-kum, will grow identically to the old boss (Aster.)

Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss. originally appeared on GardenRant on October 28, 2020.

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Finding and Fixing Our Gardens’ Many Flaws. Now Is the Time!

Right now, here in fall, this is when all the many flaws in my garden are on glorious, full on, full frontal display. Proudly, they flaunt themselves, mocking me to every carload of judgmental suburbanites that drives by, the pilots and passengers who fly over my house, and the hordes of bike path walkers across the street who glance my way, make remarks to one another, and snicker. So the other day, it hit me like a brick. Yes, it’s been a long season. Sure, I’m tired. Indeed, I’m pretty darned burned out. But the constructive response to all this humiliation is not to run across the street and chase around four middle-aged sisters who had, in fact, snickered, but who also counted among their number a county judge, but rather to put on my boots, pick up my spade, and make needed changes.   

Having written that above paragraph, and then having reread it, and then having re-written it, re-read, and then repeated that cycle 2-3 more times, a couple thoughts occur to me. One, writing and gardening are very similar. There is never a final product with gardening. And there wouldn’t be for writing if it weren’t for deadlines. The other thought, and one that worries me, is that not everyone will find the above revelation as earth-shatteringly insightful as I did. 

Agastache ‘Blue Fortune,’ I tried. I really tried. But the soil here is not spare enough to keep you from keeling over. You’re getting moved to the kind of inhospitable site that keeps you trying.

It’s very possible some people are smarter than I. You might fall in that category. And, possibly, even as a small child you knew that poor plant choices and bad design ideas majestically rear their ugly heads in the fall garden, thereby making it easier to lop them off. I, myself, am finding it somewhat appalling that it has taken me almost 40 years of gardening and 60 years of living to discover this pithy truth. So if you are annoyed by how obvious the whole premise of this blog has been so far, I will ask that you read on anyway. I think you’ll be amused by the schadenfreude that comes from observing how much harder life is for some of us. 

Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen,’ like many of us, had a bad 2020. And it wasn’t so hot in 2019 either. It’s on the short list.

I’ll say this one additional thing too before I stop all this paralyzing self consciousness. I might have thought this idea up before, and then simply forgot it. I forget everything. On several occasions when a number of weeks had passed since my wife and I had had marital relations, it was like I was a virgin all over again. I was like, “Wow! That was so incredible! Tell me again what you called it?” 

A memory this bad is why it’s not good enough to just walk around and be accosted by my garden’s many flaws with the intention of fixing them in the spring. Maybe your memory is bad too. If so, fix all you can now. For the remainder, take photos and make notes that you print and bind into a book which you’ll keep in an inconvenient place where it might drop on your foot several times over winter. That way, it won’t be out of mind come spring.  

Have I inspired you to act yet? Because I suspect a lot of you are smiling and nodding your heads sagely, and yet will not get outside and defeat all those unsightly elements in your garden. And, I reckon I know the ironic reason why. It’s because it’s depressing to wander the garden this time of year. And why is that? Hell’s bells, it’s because of all those flaws! The time to strike is now.   

Loved my Crocosmia back in June when it looked like the picture on top, but it has looked like the picture on the bottom ever since. Not quite ready to live without it, I dug it up and relocated the bulbs yesterday. It now lines my neighbor’s side of a rock wall. Maybe the wall will keep it from flopping like a Premier League soccer player. If not, it’ll flop where I can’t so easily see it. My neighbor will, but he’s a lawn guy. Most importantly, I know the blooms will be held above the wall enough that I’ll still get to enjoy them. Moreover, I think my Crocosmia needed dividing anyway, and will look better as a long, narrow clump than it did as an amorphous one. Whether it stands upright or not.

So don’t talk yourself out of doing this important work. Don’t tell yourself that you’re tired and you want to watch football on TV. Don’t fall for your own lie that your garden is already good enough. Don’t remember that the garden center will be a depressing and disappointing ghost town with a shell shocked staff all wandering around like zombies. Don’t be so stupid as to expect you’ll remember all the changes you need to make next spring. Just go outside and start working. 

When I cut down the tree that was shading my Brunnera, I wondered how much sun it could take. Turns out, not this much. It will get moved to a shadier neighborhood, but, lower on the list, that might not happen until spring because I already have a lot of it and know it is quick and easy to transplant them in spring.

Oh, and one other thing. When you go out to judge the good, the bad, and the ugly, make damned sure you’re in a terrible mood. The worst mood you can make happen. Critically important. Your tolerance for tolerance should be way below the norm. If you’re a mean drunk, do it drunk. If you’re a happy drunk, do it sober. If you’re not a drunk at all, watch four hours of the other side’s 24-hour cable news channel before you go outside. With that kind of fire in your eyes, sentiment will not override ugly, and with a sharp spade and some napalm, you can get real. Get really real!  You might be surprised how much less you hate your garden next year!  

So the Aster tataricus, despite being cut back by half in July, is devouring the ‘Stewartstonian’ Azalea. The azalea is also being devoured by lace bugs, which is exactly what typically happens here in calcareous SW Ohio. Something here has got to change, but I haven’t quite decided what. But it’s not looking good for the azalea. Best case scenario for it is that I find a shadier place for it and drench it with sulfur and iron from time to time.

 

 

Finding and Fixing Our Gardens’ Many Flaws. Now Is the Time! originally appeared on GardenRant on October 25, 2020.

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River Farm, AHS’s Headquarters, to be Sold

River Farm, headquarters of the American Horticultural Society

First we all read the big news – that the American Horticultural Society, in order to survive financially, has decided to sell the 25-acre historic property in Alexandria, Va. that serves as its national headquarters, and is considering an acquisition by the American Public Garden Association.

Cue the Uproar

Naturally that sparked a Facebook group called Stop the Sale.

And a petition, sent to me by local outdoor lightening designer Karen Olson Weaver, which began: “River Farm is one of the last public access parks available along the banks of the Potomac… Sign the petition to Save River Farms.” https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeipehOdtvEMCactmgHoaQ_R6XPK_92onLK7JnZSUnIlnsvJA/viewform

And the state senator and delegate for the area posted this article to a local paper:

American Horticultural Society (AHS) has announced that it is putting its headquarters, historic River Farm, the 27-acre property which represents the northernmost of George Washington’s five farms, up for sale on the open real estate market. 

We have heard from constituents with concerns about losing this beautiful and historic property, on the bank of the Potomac River, to development.

Oh, I bet they have! To people who live near there especially, like the childhood friend I toured the grounds with last week, the loss of access to the property would be huge.

Meadow at River Farm.

Interesting bits of news-to-me in that article include: 

The American Horticultural Society first acquired the River Farm property in the early 1970s when Enid Annenburg Haupt, an AHS board member, donated the necessary funds. This acquisition followed an attempt by the Soviet Embassy to buy the property as a retreat during the Cold War. 

White House Gates

Also on the property are the White House gates, first installed at the White House in 1819, during the reconstruction of the structure after it burned during the War of 1812, and used for more than 120 years at the Executive Mansion’s northeast entrance.

The property was valued at nearly $17 million in 2019. 

We have joined a smaller fundraising group that will focus our energy on raising the necessary funds to purchase River Farm. 

Then this week the chair of the AHS issued an update: 

Rather than moving forward with a merger with APGA, our board has committed to maintaining AHS as an independent national nonprofit with its own board, staff and headquarters…As part of this new model, we are focused on building collaborative relationships with APGA and other like-minded organizations who have a shared interest in building and expanding horticultural programming and other initiatives across the country.

In order to move forward with this renewed vision, we are dependent on the proceeds from the sale of River Farm. These funds would create a significant endowment that has been the missing link in our financial viability. Our hope is to find a buyer – a new steward – for River Farm who will work to preserve this beautiful and historic property.

Is raising probably well over $17 million to buy River Farm and keep it open to the public even imaginable? Especially in what must be the most challenging fund-raising time ever?

I’m just reporting the news here, but I’ll add that enjoying River Farm last week on a stunning fall day made me appreciate it more than ever. It’s so sad to imagine its potential loss to the public.

A nursing home therapy dog, sidelined during the pandemic, gets a training refresher at River Farm.

Photos taken by the author in October of 2020.

River Farm, AHS’s Headquarters, to be Sold originally appeared on GardenRant on October 22, 2020.

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Between the covers: What goes into writing a gardening book

Guest Post by Ginny Stibolt

Someone recently asked me if there was a free online version of one of my books Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida. My response was polite, but after thinking about it, it occurred to me that readers probably don’t understand the enormous amount of work it takes to write and publish a gardening book.

The book I’m writing now is “Adventures of a Transplanted Garden: Advice for Gardeners New to Florida”.

Even in these days of free access to tons of unedited information on gardening (and everything else under the sun) via posts on social media, articles on blogs, and other online content, books produced by publishers are both useful and important, because they have been designed for their targeted audience, and curated by editors and others. The end result is a reliable, readable, and organized volume to help you be more successful in your gardening activities.

Each book takes two or three years to research and write, but this is not the end of the work. Here are some of the steps involved in this two to three-year process:

Writing a Gardening Book: The Proposal & Contract:

– If there are coauthors, work with them on the concept of the book and to find a way to split and share the work. I use Google Docs to simplify the sharing, so the latest version of each chapter  is always online. In the case of Climate-Wise Landscaping, I was the primary writer for the odd chapters. There were some jokes about that.

– Write a proposal to the publisher. If the acquisitions editor thinks it’s a viable idea, and the Board supports their decision, they’ll send you a contract with a deadline.

– Have the contract looked over by legal representation, or possibly regret it later.

Writing a Gardening Book: The Text, Photography and Illustrations

– Do the research and write the text for the book.

– Find or take photos to provide examples of the plants, ecosystems, or gardening technique. If someone else is supplying the photos, they will probably need to be paid.

– Find and pay an illustrator to help clarify points or lessons in the book with clear drawings.

Writing a Gardening Book: Copyediting, Peer Review and Rewrites

The publisher assigns a project manager for the book who plays a large role in shaping the book and typically a number of meetings or conference calls happen between the project manager and author(s).

In the case of my four University Press of Florida books, the publisher paid two or three peer reviewers to go over the text to look for errors, suggest topics that are not included in the manuscript, and to analyze the market for the book.

Reading a gardening book is a wonderful escape from screen time and no power is required. Ahhh! “Garden Revolution” by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher provides a different way to think about gardening.

If significant rewrites are suggested by the peer reviewers, they may be asked to review an updated manuscript. This process may add another year or more to the process.

In the case of my first book, the three reviewers had lots of corrections and ideas for what would make it better including reordering the chapters. I ended up rewriting and reorganizing the book which took several months.

Someone asked me if I was mad about having to do all this extra work. My answer was that while it was a lot of work, the book was a much better product in the end and especially without those errors. I had no idea that we don’t have groundhogs in Florida–armadillos and pocket gophers, yes, but no groundhogs.

Then the manuscript is sent to a copy editor who goes through the text with a fine-toothed comb to look for grammatical errors and syntax irregularities. The copy editor also puts in the codes for headers, lists, breaks, etc., so the publishing software can talk to the printing press.

I work with the copy editor to make sure he or she hasn’t misunderstood the text. So there are several exchanges back and forth on this process.

All this input is extremely important, because once a book is published, you can’t go back and fix errors or update it the way we can on a social media or blog post. Authors and their publishers want things to be correct before it goes to the printing press.

Writing a Gardening Book: Design, Indexing, and Industry Review

A book designer then chooses a theme or overall look, arranges the manuscript, and places the drawings and photos within the text. After the layout is complete, the designer generates a pdf file of the book in its final layout with the page numbering in place.

The pdf file is sent out to prominent people in the field for review and for cover comments. This file is also used if someone writes a foreword. Sue Reed and I were thrilled that Doug Tallamy wrote the foreword for Climate-Wise Landscaping.

The pdf file also comes back to the author to fill in page numbers for references within the text, for any minor corrections (no re-writing and nothing that would cause renumbering the pages) and for indexing–one of the more tedious tasks. I could hire an indexer, but I never do, because an outsider won’t have the deep understanding of what people might want to find.

After the cover comments are available and the foreword has been written, then the book designer designs the cover. Thankfully, the authors usually have some say in the final product, though they usually don’t have the final word on the title

Writing a Gardening Book: Release and Marketing

A few months later, I’ll receive the first batch of books. Then the marketing begins. After each of my Florida books was published, I organized a book tour around Florida. That’s when I found out how large our state really is.

In 2018 when two books were published, I created a 52-event book tour from Sept. 6th through Dec. 1. For most events, I’m a speaker at a meeting or larger event and then I sell books after the program. I enjoy the speaking, but I often wish for Scotty to beam-me directly to the events so I wouldn’t have to do all that driving. On the other hand, the backroads of Florida have often provided wonderful adventures.

Marketing is part of the process. In my case I arrange the #FloweredShirtTours where I speak to groups of gardeners. Not many book stores, but chapters of the native plant society like this group, chapters of Audubon or Sierra Club, or garden clubs and master gardeners. In my 52-event 2018 tour, I had three different programs ready: a three-hour native landscaping workshop, a presentation on climate-wise gardening, and a presentation on Florida native gardening.

The Bottom Line

And all for all this work the authors receive 8 to 12% of what the publisher sells the books for – mostly the wholesale price. Here’s the math: A $25 book sold at normal wholesale is $15, and 10% of this is $1.50.

This amount is shared between the authors, and will be held against any advances paid to them. If those small royalties do not add up to the advance (which can be small, or non-existent) the author will not make any further money on the book.

More math: If that same author(s) is fortunate enough to sell 20,000 copies of their book – that’s $30,000 – for two to three years of work – split between authors and any illustrators or photographers that the author has contracted to pay.

In my case, I sometimes split the royalties with environmental organizations: 50% to the Florida branch of The Nature Conservancy for Sustainable Gardening for Florida. 50% to the Florida Native Plant Society for The Art of Maintaining a Florida Native Landscape. 20% to the Florida Native Plant Society for A Step-By-Step Guide to a Florida Native Yard.

Buying books from authors when you hear them speak is the single best way of supporting their efforts.  As they can buy their books at a discount (not as much as you might think), selling them in person allows them to keep more of the profit.

Untold hours went into producing these books, but in my opinion, it’s been worth the effort.

I’ll just keep writing

I’ve shared these details of the book production not to look for sympathy, but so you’d know how much sweat goes into your gardening books. I will continue to write, and while I will probably not get rich doing so, I love sharing gardening advice and plant science information so people can become more successful. It’s part of my advocacy for Mother Nature.

__________________________________________

Ginny Stibolt is the author or co-author of five-going-on-six garden books. Find her at www.GreenGardeningMatters.com

Between the covers: What goes into writing a gardening book originally appeared on GardenRant on October 22, 2020.

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Decrotia, or: How the climate crisis came for my lovely English garden

This hellebore is sad here, but that’s nothing to what happened as the season progressed.

Guest post by Linda McGivern

Left elbow screaming in pain (gardener’s “tennis elbow” is a real thing), I raked up the last pile of yard waste from the shade bed under the London plane tree, scrambling to finish this final garden clean-up before a predicted windstorm scattered the tree’s sycamore-like leaves upon the whole expanse of the garden I had just toiled to put to bed.

I let out an extended sigh and shrugged my sore shoulders. The relief of this season just being over was big. Bigly big.

For this was the season of weather.com as fake news. It was the season of a dearth of water so grave that our seven-acre pond receded into a large mud puddle and the lawn turned crispy in July. It was the season of tough decisions over who got water and who would wait for the promised-by-weather.com-but-never-delivered rain. I am serious when I write that some days I would watch, agog, as a thunderous mass of black rain clouds would pass overhead and seem to part exactly over my town, delivering the longed-for water to the east and west, but none for me.

Winners? That blue Lacecap hydrangea that I paid big bucks for two summers ago got watered. Likewise for the roses, the truly despondent peegee hydrangeas, a few favorite rhododendrons, and all the baby plants I was deranged enough to move to new locations over our dystopian summer of pandemic, wildfire, drought, locust plagues, and a few murder hornets thrown in for good measure. Occasionally I would grimly drag a hose to a few plants (I am talking to you ninebark and Autumn Joy sedum) that had been steady performers, despite the devastation of less than an inch of natural rain in a New England season that usually brings seven or eight inches.

But the withering hostas, conifers, acteas, catmints, baptisias, and alarmingly disappearing hellebores that I hope to god will come back? I lugged the hoses right by them, convincing myself that the mass plant devastation the likes of which I have not seen in my thirty years of gardening is “early-onset” dormancy and not death.

My husband has taken to calling our grounds “Decrotia,” aptly borrowed and modified from the term  “decroded” (decaying + corroded), coined in the movie Napoleon Dynamite. 

Climate scientists say “decroded” is our gardening future and that this is the sort of summer weather we are going to be facing as the planet warms. A number of reports I read this past summer suggest there will be rain, but it will come in violent bursts, rather than extended periods of moderate showers, and drought will be normal. Another suggested we should stop planting hydrangeas and azaleas in preparation for future droughts. Then I read this article:  the headline of which I have adapted for this post. It’s enough to twist the knickers right off of the most patient and committed gardeners among us. 

This (blessedly) past season is more evidence that, yes, climate change is coming and we need to be ready. I am plotting my next moves; how about you?

Decrotia, or: How the climate crisis came for my lovely English garden originally appeared on GardenRant on October 21, 2020.

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