Beautiful at All Seasons: Southern Gardening and Beyond with Elizabeth Lawrence
264
Beautiful at All Seasons: Southern Gardening and Beyond with Elizabeth Lawrence
264eBook
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Overview
Lawrence exchanged plants and gardening tips with everyone from southern “farm ladies” trading bulbs in garden bulletins to prominent regional gardeners. She corresponded with nursery owners, everyday backyard gardeners, and literary luminaries such as Katharine White and Eudora Welty. Her books, including A Southern Garden, The Little Bulbs, and Gardens in Winter, inspired several generations of gardeners in the South and beyond.
The columns in this volume cover specific plants, such as sweet peas, hellebores, peonies, and the bamboo growing outside her living-room window, as well as broader topics including the usefulness of vines, the importance of daily pruning, and organic gardening. Like all of Lawrence’s writing, these columns are peppered with references to conversations with neighbors and quotations from poetry, mythology, and correspondence. They brim with knowledge gained from a lifetime of experimenting in her gardens, from her visits to other gardens, and from her extensive reading.
Lawrence once wrote, “Dirty fingernails are not the only requirement for growing plants. One must be as willing to study as to dig, for a knowledge of plants is acquired as much from books as from experience.” As inspiring today as when they first appeared in the Charlotte Observer, the columns collected in Beautiful at All Seasons showcase not only Lawrence’s vast knowledge but also her intimate, conversational writing style and her lifelong celebration of gardens and gardening.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822389767 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/28/2007 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 264 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Elizabeth Lawrence was the author of A Southern Garden, The Little Bulbs (also published by Duke University Press), Gardens in Winter, and Lob’s Wood, as well as many other writings for newspapers, magazines, and gardening bulletins, some of which were collected in posthumous books including Gardening for Love and A Rock Garden in the South, both also published by Duke University Press. A graduate of Barnard College, she was the first woman to receive a degree in landscape architecture from North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University). Lawrence was awarded the Herbert Medal of the American Plant Life Society in 1943 and was honored by the American Horticultural Society and the National Council of State Garden Clubs for her writing.
Ann L. Armstrong is a garden lecturer and writer in Charlotte, North Carolina. She wrote the Wing Haven Garden Journal, a garden planning and maintenance calendar. Lindie Wilson owns Elizabeth Lawrence’s former home in Charlotte, where for twenty years she has maintained the garden that Lawrence began in 1948.
Read an Excerpt
Beautiful at All Seasons
Southern Gardening and Beyond with Elizabeth LawrenceBy ELIZABETH LAWRENCE
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2007 Duke University PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-3887-1
Chapter One
Seasonal Flowers
GARDEN RESOLUTIONS
On New Year's Day I always make good garden resolutions. First, I resolve to catch the weeds as they appear, for as John Evelyn warned in the Kalendarium Hortense (1729), "Neglecting it til they are ready to sow themselves, you do but stir and prepare for a more numerous crop of these Garden-Sins." During a mild January, the weeds come up very fast, and unless they are got rid of they crowd out the seedlings of fall-sown or self-sown annuals.
Then I promise myself that I will prune at the proper time; that I will cut back the firethorn before, not after, it flowers; that I will cut some limbs from Magnolia x soulangiana 'Lennei' before it ruins Cotoneaster lacteus; and I make up my mind to cut back the wild grape before it grows into the double-flowering English bird cherry, and to paint the stumps with that stuff that is supposed to kill woody plants. Each summer I let the grape get ahead of me. Then, when it is pulled out of the tree, it breaks the delicate and brittle branches.
This year I mean to start in January to order the things I have had on mylist for several years. One is the Crinum 'Herald' which Mr. Giridlian says is the first to bloom, and the finest he has ever grown. It might be the finest, for it is by far the most expensive. Another plant on my list is cenizo [Leucophyllum frutescens]. Dr. Solomosy sent me the name of a Texas nursery, Flowerland, that grows it in cans so I want to give it another trial. This nursery also has (in gallon cans) Eucalyptus rostrata [E. camaldulensis], which is considered one of the hardiest species. Last March it was killed to the ground in my garden, but came up again in the late spring. I have it on the northern side of the house and I am sure it would do even better with a southern exposure.
Flowerland also lists Tecoma stans, a tropical shrub, called the yellow elder. As it has proved root hardy at the Hodges Gardens in Louisiana, I think it might be given a trial here. When I wrote to the nursery to inquire about it, the manager, Mr. Ishmael, answered that he would be pleased to send it this way if I wished, but added, "We would be guilty of negligence if we failed to tell you that this plant will freeze in your area." I shall tell Mr. Ishmael that he will not be blamed if it does freeze, for at least I shall have had the pleasure of seeing it and growing it for a summer.
Plants whose hardiness is unproved should not go out until April, but I find that time slips up on me if I don't order them at the beginning of the year. It is better to leave the nurseryman to do the remembering, unless the nurseryman is Wyndham Hayward, and then you had better not order until you are ready for the plants. I mean to try to get some rare amaryllis out of him in the spring.
This January, I have added a new resolution to the old promises to get behind my garden sins; the new one is to take time to enjoy my garden. It has been a long time since I sat in it with a book that I didn't read, and never gave a thought to weeds or watering or plants overgrown by other plants. I have always found it hard to reconcile a resolution to do nothing with one to do everything and do it ahead of time, but I used to find it easy to put my sins and negligences out of my mind. This year I am going to try to recover the talent for leaving things undone. I shall remember the "merry credulous days" and remind myself that
in this dourest, sorest Age man's eye has looked upon, Death to fauns and death to fays, Still the dogwood dares to raise- Healthy tree, with trunk and root- Ivory bowls that bear no fruit, (Though I always did wonder what Edna St. Vincent Millay meant by saying that dogwood bears no fruit; what does she think the berries are?) And the starlings and the jays- Birds that cannot even sing- Dare to come again in spring!
January 1, 1961
FLOWERS FOR CHRISTMAS TIME
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long. (Hamlet)
Stories of singing birds and bursting buds on the night of the Nativity scarcely seem miraculous when we have one of our warm winters. As I write this, on the third Sunday in Advent, there is more bloom than usual in my garden and the neighborhood.
The winter flowers are early and the spring flowers way ahead of themselves. In my garden there is more than a sprinkling of tiny flowers on Spirea angustifolia [Sorbaria tomentosa var. angustifolia], on the way home from church I saw the yellow bells of forsythia and, for a while, I was afraid buds of the oriental magnolias were going to burst their fur coats.
Samuel Cooke, in an old English garden book, writes, "When October and November are warm and rainy, January and February are frosty and cold but if October and November be snow and frost, then January and February are open and mild." In general I have found it true that warm weather before Christmas is followed by cold weather afterward and vice versa.
This is the earliest date I have known for Prunus mume and I have kept records for more than twenty years. The few times it has flowered before the New Year, it has come late in December but this year Elizabeth Clarkson called to say that the first flower of the white mume was open, and as she said it, I looked out the window and saw scraps of pink on my mume.
Viburnum fragrans [V. farreri] also bloomed earlier than ever before. Since the fourteenth of November, there have been small, light, corymbs of creamy, fragrant pink-tipped flowers. The flowers are said to smell of heliotrope, and they really do. Next to V. fragrans is Osmanthus fragrans. Both of these went on blooming even when the temperature dropped to eighteen degrees. But the camellias have never been the same since the morning I found ice on the pool. Even the flowers of Camellia 'Berenice Boddy' are yellow in the center. However, the little wine-tinted flowers of Camellia saluenensis are still pretty, though not as large as they were when they came into bloom in mid-November. They are cup-shaped or, perhaps I should say, chalice-shaped, and about the size of California poppies. They are delicately but definitely fragrant. A nice little shrub that came in a gallon can from Mr. Coleman has bloomed well its second season, in spite of the fact that it is in poor dry soil, and in full shade in summer. Mr. Coleman said he didn't see what I wanted with it since the flowers are so small but I think it is going to be one of my favorite evergreens. It comes from southern China where it makes a large shrub to fifteen feet tall.
I have not noticed any flowering quinces about town (but would be glad to hear of any and anything else I have neglected to mention, for I haven't space to tell of all of the season's flowers), but in my garden the variety 'Pink Lady' has been blooming freely for some time, and the flowers are unusually large. Always, at this time of year, they are paler and prettier than they are in spring. I planted this variety because of a promise of winter bloom, but I don't always get it, perhaps because the bush is not in a warm or sunny spot.
Two asters are in bloom, and the frail lilac flowers of the Algerian iris open even on mornings when there is ice on the birdbath. Sternbergia fischeriana, like a highly polished yellow crocus, was battered by the rain; but the first white hoop-petticoat daffodil is still upstanding and more buds are crowding up.
Yesterday I picked a little white violet, Viola striata. From time to time I hear of violas in bloom in December in various parts of the country, even as far north as Woodstock, New York. Last week I had a letter from Alexandria, Virginia, offering me a plant of the sweet violet 'Prince of Wales'. "You say you have no source for it," she wrote, "but I ran across it on the 'one-cent sale' pages of the Spring Hill Nursery's catalogue. I ordered three in April. Of course they did not bloom last spring but they did begin blooming in the fall. I picked four, protected by mulch, between heavy frosts on the sixth of December."
December 27, 1964
FLOWERS GREET THE NEW YEAR
As the New Year comes around I always wonder what flowers will be here to greet it. The winter heath [Erica carnea], really the spring heath as it blooms in March in the mountains of Europe, is sure to produce a few flowers no matter what the weather, and I have hopes for the Chinese witch hazel.
The witch hazel [Hamamelia mollis] has been in bloom for the New Year only once since I have had it, but now, in mid-December, it is full of swollen buds tipped with glints of gold. Last year, Mrs. Booley's Christmas honeysuckle began to bloom in December, and so did her mahonia which is on the south side of the house and always blooming before those in my garden. The fragrance of both of them came over the fence to me whenever the air was warm.
Beverley Nichols, who was one of the first to write about winter flowers, and seldom (if ever) writes a book without a chapter on gardens in winter, tells in Down the Garden Path how he came home one dreary and bitter afternoon in February, just as it was getting dark, thinking that it was really not worthwhile to make his usual tour of the garden, and certainly not to the farthest corner of the orchard to see if the witch hazel had come out. But he thought better of it and went, and there "in the gathering darkness, with the high, strange wind roaring through the great elm branches above me, I saw that the twigs of the witch hazel had broken into golden stars."
Mr. Nichols puts flowers in his detective stories, too. One of my detective-story-reading friends sent me a passage from Murder on Request, in which one of the characters, returning to his garden in Surrey, long after dark on an evening in January, pokes about the dead leaves to see what has happened since he left. "For the home-coming gardener," Mr. Nichols writes, "it is never too dark or too cold to 'make the tour' and nearly half an hour had elapsed before Charlotte could persuade her uncle to put away his torch and come indoors. In the meantime he had discovered signs of pink in the winter heather, several yellow stars of jasmine, some rather forlorn Christmas roses and, greatest triumph of all, a bud of the first iris to pluck, very gently, in order that he might set it in a wine glass on the chimney piece where, in due course, it would open its petals as flamboyantly as an orchid." And, he might have added, would smell as sweet as a bunch of violets. "Do not forget the importance of picking many winter flowers in bud," Mr. Nichols writes in Down the Garden Path. "It is a secret which brings astonishing rewards."
In my garden the paperwhite narcissus bloomed before Christmas, the first flowers I have had for a number of years. I expect the buds that are still coming will be caught before the end of the year. I know there will still be little white hoop-skirt daffodils in January and I think one of the hybrid hellebores, the Lenten roses, will be out by New Year's. The early one is pure white. Two years ago it bloomed in December for the first time in all the years I have had it, and now, in mid-December, the buds are plump and white.
Mr. W. F. Parker has just called to say he had a double-flowered Carolina jessamine [Gelsemium sempervirens 'Pride of Augusta'] in bloom, with more buds to come. He says it has been in bloom almost continuously since spring. The plant came from Hastings and was bought for the typical Gelsemium sempervirens. None of the botanies or plant dictionaries at hand mentions a double form, but I remember having seen it somewhere and finally found it listed in an old Fruitland catalogue.
The Chinese say the pine, the bamboo, and the flowering plum are the three friends of winter. One of my friends, the Prunus mume (called flowering plum but it is really an apricot), will not bloom for the New Year. It was killed by borers. I have two small seedlings, but I am afraid it will be some time before they begin to bloom, though two seedlings of my tree have reached the blooming stage in other gardens.
Louisa Anne Twamley, one of the early Victorian flower painters, wrote a poem about the friends of winter: the crocus, the snowdrop, and robin redbreast. In my garden winter has another friend, the squirrel, and he is spending this one digging up the newly planted tulips and hyacinths. He had already devoured the crocuses. I doubt whether there will be one for the New Year.
January 2, 1966
WINTER FLOWERS
Barbara Harding asked me why no one knows about the winter daphne, Daphne odora. I thought everyone knew about it, but she says no. When she asks people why they don't plant it, they say they never heard of it. One reason it is not more common in gardens is that it has a name for being difficult. I tried it four times before I managed to get it established. Now it has been in the garden for five years, and I think the reason for this final success is that the plant came in a gallon can. Also, I have learned to leave it alone. It should not be fertilized or pruned or cultivated, and it likes shade and moisture, but must be well drained. Winter daphne is a dwarf shrub and very slow growing. I don't think I have ever seen one much over three feet tall, though it is said to grow to a height of six feet.
Although it is called winter daphne, and blooms all winter at Orton Plantation, and in January at Mrs. Carl Weston's place on the Catawba River, it has never bloomed for me before the first week in February. Last year there was not a flower until the first week in March.
Mine is the variegated form. The slender leaves are tapered at both ends and have wavy cream-colored margins. It is said to be hardier and more floriferous than the type, and certainly couldn't bloom any better. The florets are magenta without and creamy within, and formed in tight little bunches. They pour out what is called the most powerful scent in the plant world, the kind Gertrude Jekyll called "almost intemperate," but no stronger I think than that of the sweet olive or tuberose. It is described as a fruity fragrance. The authors of The Fragrant Year say it is a mixture of orange and coconut. In England it is generally given a favorable situation at the foot of a south- or west-facing wall. It was introduced in 1771 from Japan, but is also native to China.
This is the most un-flowering winter we have had for years. It has not really been cold, for it has not been below eighteen degrees, but we haven't had our usual mild spells. Camellia 'Dawn' keeps on blooming, but I wish it would not. The misshapen flowers are already brown when they come out, and then they get browner. Hanging on for days they are most unsightly.
Wintersweet, Chimonanthus praecox, has been at its best since the first of December. Since we have had so little rain and sleet, none of the flowers have been spoiled and the scent is delicious. Clematis cirrhosa is weatherproof too. It came into bloom early in October, and by mid-January, there were still a few flowers and buds while the whole vine was a mass of silky seed heads. Though it is so little known, it has been in cultivation ever since the sixteenth century when it grew in Gerard's garden in London. He called it traveler's joy of Candia, Candia being a town in Crete, as it is a native of the Mediterranean. The flowers are little greenish bells that hang among beautifully cut leaves that persist all winter, dying away in mid-summer when the vine has a short resting period.
Viburnum fragrans [V. farreri] opened a few flowers just before Christmas, and the autumn cherry made quite a little show, but both are flowerless now.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Beautiful at All Seasons by ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Copyright © 2007 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xiiiIntroduction xv
Note to the Reader xxi
One: Seasonal Flowers
Garden Resolutions 1
Flowers for Christmas Time 3
Flowers Greet the New Year 5
Winter Flowers 7
The Green Winter 8
A Hard Winter 9
Bamboo 11
Storm Damage 13
The Merry Month of May 14
Tender Perennials for Hot-Weather Gardens 16
Flowers in the Fall Border 18
Fragrance in the Garden 19
Fall Additions to the Border 21
Sow Hardy Annual Seeds During September 22
Planting Annuals in Autumn 24
Late-Blooming Flowers 25
The Gardening Year Is Just Beginning 27
Two: Perennials and Annuals
Planting in Relays 29
Badge of Gardening Includes Black Knees 31
Gardening Surprises 33
The Law of Supply and Demand 34
Variegated Foliage 36
Selections for the Rock Garden 38
Tropical Plants 39
Annuals 41
Sweet Peas 43
Peony 45
Tree Peonies and Others 46
Clematis also Flowers in Shade 48
Beautiful Lilies 49
Asteromoea mongolica-- Kalimeris pinnatifida 51
Hellebores 53
The Christmas Rose and Other Hellebores 54
Giridlian . . . A Master of Plants 56
Night-Blooming Cereus 58
The Dividends of Fall Planting 59
Savannah Lands of East Carolina 61
Petasites 62
Three: Bulbs, Corms, and Tubers
Planting Bulbs, Corms, and Tubers 65
Bulbs Through the Seasons 66
Some Early Spring Bulbs 68
Daffodils Need Early Start 70
Specialty Bulbs 72
Crown Imperials 73
Lycoris radiata 75
Amaryllis Family 77
The Surprise Lily 78
Lilies Grow Where None Were 79
Garden Casualties 81
Four: Trees and Shrubs
Planting for Ice Storms 83
Plants for Parking Strips 85
Flowering Trees for the City 86
Street Trees 88
Trees with Colored Bark 90
Witch Hazels 92
Flowering Cherries 93
Serviceberries and Sloes 95
Dogwoods 97
Buckeyes 98
Eucalyptus 100
Honey Locust 102
Osmanthus 103
Hollies 105
Conifers 106
Firs and Cedars 108
Flowering Shrubs 110
March-Flowering Shrubs 111
Viburnums and Other Flowering Shrubs 113
June-Flowering Shrubs 114
Viburnums 116
Pyracanthas 118
Nandinas 119
Hydrangeas 121
Sasanquas 122
Camellia saluenensis 124
E. A. Bowles's Lunatics 125
Five: Vegetables and Herbs, Climbers and Creepers
Fall Vegetables 129
Two Vegetable Gardens 130
Mrs. Hobbs and Her Herbs 132
Sweet Woodruff 134
Dandelions 136
Vines Are Useful Tools 137
Smilax 139
Clematis Hybrids 140
Akebia and Rosa banksiae 142
Ground Covers 144
Ground Covers Pose Problems 146
Tiny Creepers 148
Six: Gardeners and Gardens
Wing Haven 151
Importance of Garden Details 152
Steps in Your Garden 154
Walks and Paths 156
Terraces and Patios 158
Water in the Garden 159
Mr. Krippenndorf's Garden 161
Physic Garden at the Country Doctor Museum 162
Mr. Busbee's Garden 164
A Visit to Italy's Oldest Botanic Garden 166
Colette's Mother's Garden 167
The Splendor of Royal Gardens 169
Gotelli's Collection of Dwarf Conifers 171
The Scented Garden 172
The Gardens of a Soldier's Wife 174
Pioneer Seedsman 176
Young Belgian Guided Southern Horticulture 177
Meet Caroline Dormon 179
She Talks to the Birds 181
The Hunt Arboretum 182
Seven: Gods, Legends, and Rituals
The Gods of the Garden 185
The Ash, a Symbol in History 187
The Tale of the Magical Hawthorn Tree 189
The Holy Thorn Blooms for Royalty 190
The Christian Year Parallels the Garden Year 192
Holiday Wreaths 194
The Advent Wreath 196
Legend and Lore of the Christmas Tree 197
International Christmas Trees 199
The Flowers of the Trinity 201
The Flowers of Passiontide 203
The Story of the Passion Flower 205
Rituals of the Palms 206
Rogation Days-- The Blessing of the Crops 208
Eight: Bits and Pieces
Asafetida 211
Feeding the Birds 213
Honey 214
Organic Gardening 216
Pruning 218
Pruning Should Be Done Every Day 219
Historic Flower Arrangements 221
Bouquet Carried Messages 223
Pomanders 224
Creatures Add to a Garden 226
Index 229
What People are Saying About This
“All gardeners will welcome this splendidly edited collection of essays by Elizabeth Lawrence. They will delight in her elegant prose and subtle humor and will marvel at her breadth of knowledge of plants and literature. I could hardly put it down.”
“Southern gardeners and beyond will welcome the availability of a new trove of Elizabeth Lawrence’s renowned Charlotte Observer columns. Her writing style is personal and conversational and literary in approach, engaging and warm.”
“A new book of garden essays by the incomparable Elizabeth Lawrence is a cause for celebration. A page a day will keep the garden—and you—happy.”