Ellen Ann Willmott of Warley Place

Ellen Ann Willmott is no longer as famous as Gertrude Jekyll, yet . . .

“Ellen Willmott soon made a name for herself in horticulture, and helped to finance expeditions to acquire new plants. Queen Mary, Queen Alexandra and Princess Victoria visited her, and her garden became famous throughout Britain and beyond. She was one of two women awarded the RHS Medal of Honour in Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Year, 1897. The other was Gertrude Jekyll.”   This from the Warleyplace.org.uk website which has brief information about EAW and the ongoing work at the estate which was sold after her death in 1934.

Ellen Willmott gave her name to several plants, including Miss Willmott’s Ghost, a sea holly more properly known as Eryngium giagantium. She was much given to secretly dropping the seeds of this silvery, thistle-like plant in her friend’s gardens when she came to visit.

Not all her friends were happy to find this ghostly reminder of her previous visit when they bloomed in their carefully planned borders the following summer.  Was she generous or mischievous?   Hmmmmmmm.

By the time she died in 1934 she was penniless. “Her descent into bankruptcy never interfered with her purchase of any rare plant she coveted. Once, detainted for shoplifting, Willmott called upon her friend the Queen to intercede. The department store, after a yearlong hullabaloo, had to apologize for it’s “error.” As her fortune faded, Willmott became increasingly paranoid, toting a revolver in her handag, booby trapping her home against intruders, and having her daffodil display trip-wired so that air guns would blast anyone attempting to filch a few.

(Taken from Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Eccentric Ethusiast, Plants & Garden News, Val 17, Number 3, Fall 2002, by Ilene Sternberg)”

I have no Miss Willmott’s Ghost in my garden, but last year, when my friend Jerry Sternstein was giving me a tour of his 60 lilacs, he pulled up a root of the single white Miss Willmott. She is now thriving in my garden, surrounded by daffodils. I don’t expect her to bloom this year, but I am cultivating patience.

The Meditative Gardener by Cheryl Wilfong

I met Cheryl Wilfong at a recent Garden Writers (GWA) meeting in Boston. The meeting was excellent with good advice about blogging and writing  given by Richard Banfield of freshtilledsoil.com.  The speaker gave me more than I ever expected, but one of the reasons I attended was to meet other writers, some of whom I already knew through their blogs.

Cheryl brought her book, which I bought, and information about her website, meditativegardener.com.  In spite of a weekend Vipassna session years ago, I do not claim to be a meditator, but I don’t think you need to claim this title to recognize many of the feelings, thoughts and reactions that Cheryl describes.  The book describes many Buddhist and meditative practices which appeal to me, in and out of the garden. Not to mention the gorgeous photographs.

I was particularly taken with the Flower in Your Heart Meditation.  I grow flowers, and yet rarely bring them into the house because the cats always knock the vases over, and I even more rarely give bouquets away, for no reason except affection.  I will be more mindful of this opportunity.

Every day our gardens teach us, about the ways of nature, about the ways to be  generous, and about the ways of the spirit.  So does this book.

Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier

In preparing for a Fashion in the Garden posting I have been reading the spring issue of Vogue magazine. Strictly business you understand. Besides, Tina Fey was on the cover.

Although I wasn’t looking for it, there was a little feature on page 370, The Green List, with John Patrick’s (whoever he may be) five latest (fashion everywhere) faves.  There is seedlibrary.org for heirloom seeds; Emiliano Godoy, an industrial designer who focuses on sustainability; Magnus Larsson, a Swedish architect working to stop the spread of the Sahara!; Ecocradle for shipping materials made of mycelium, —  remember you heard it here first; and Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier.  Well, Dave Jacke is headquartered  right in our own green county. I hope to catch up with him this spring.  I met Eric Toensmeier when he spoke at the local Master Gardener’s Spring Symposium a couple of years ago and bought his book.  I am going to plant perennial Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus- henricus) in my Henry garden.

Who knows who I’ll meet at this year’s Spring Symposium. Check out the full schedule and info.

If you haven’t ever run across a copy of this charming magazine, this issue shows you all the reasons why it is so popular.  Encouragement, humor, peace and a lot of fascinating characters, including the editor, Pat Stone, who gives away some information about himself.  He’d rather be in his canoe than his garden?!

I like the story in this issue about ‘Johnny Lilyseed’ who plants daylilies here and there around his Massachusetts town, reminding me of our own local Daffodil Planter, who secretly planted daffodils along Rte 2 some years ago. Our springs get more beautiful every year, and  Johnny’s plantings led him on to more and more plantings – and a friendship.

It is hard to tell you how much pleasure is enclosed between the covers of each issue.  You can logon to their website for the story of how Green Prints came to be, a sampling of their stories, and subscription info.  In celebration of their anniversary, they have also given me permission to print a story about one of my favorite subjects right here. Manure!

Click here and be patient.  A Load of Manure

A Turkish Delight

Robert Nicholson, Manager of the Lyman Conservatory at Smith College complained about the challenges of all the cloudy weather we have been having, but, once again, he and the crew more than met the challenge of forcing 5000 bulbs to bloom all at the same time. The Conservatory is a Turkish Delight of flower and fragrance, with all the usual bulbs, but also many freesias and delicate species tulips from Turkey.

Opening Night

On Friday evening I attended the lecture by Smith alum, Lynden B. Miller. She described the public gardens she has designed over a long career, and what she has learned about plants that work in public gardens. Fortunately, if you missed the talk you can get all that information in her beautifully  illustrated new book Parks, Plants and People.

Lynden B. Miller and her book

After her talk in the new Campus Center, attendees were invited to a preview of the Bulb Show which will run for two weeks until March 21. The Conservatory is open every day from 10 am to 4 pm. A $2 donation is requested.

Botanical Radiography

In addition to the Bulb Show, there is a beautiful and fascinating display of radiography, The Hidden Beauty of Plants, in the Church Gallery of the Conservatory. These exhibit is a collaboration between the Smith Botanic Garden, Dr. Merrill Raikes, retired radiologist and Robert B. Hallock of the UMass physics department. This exhibit will continue until September 30.

Gardens appeal to every sense. This year there is an audio installation in the Palm House, What Every Gardener Knows. This piece by Susan Hillier (Smith ‘61) is presented in collaboration with the Smith College Museum of Art. It will continue only until March 31.

I have made pickles, which require no cooking, just brine, vinegar and seasoning. Then I’ve spent hours with the canning kettle to finish the preservation process.

Rosenberg has built a substantial pickle business in less than ten years using an ancient system that requires no vinegar, no stove, no canning.. For centuries, cultures all over the world have preserved food by pickling using a fermentation process. Instead of vinegar, ancient cultures learned that brining vegetables and allowing them to ferment for a few days created lactic acid which was a preservative.

Rosenberg follows that process, fermenting organic vegetables in big blue food grade plastic barrels, then puts them in glass jars. The filled jars are stored in the new cooler until time to ship them out to the 300 stores in the northeast selling Real Pickles.

How did a New Jersey boy, growing up in Morristown, and attending Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island end up in Greenfield making pickles?

Rosenberg majored in geology at Brown. He said his interest in environmental issues led him to think about our food system.

His interest in contra dancing, led him to Greenfield, “a mecca for contra dancers. There is no place like it in the world!” Rosenberg said.

While in town for contra dances he learned about Upinngil Farm and spent one summer working for Cliff Hatch who now grows cucumbers for him. That same summer he attended a workshop on pickling at the annual Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) meeting in Amherst. That was the beginning of his interest in naturally fermented pickles that have health benefits, as well as good flavor.

While he worked at other farms, and later as a manager at Iggy’s Bread in Boston he kept making pickles at home. It was while at Iggy’s, gaining business experience, that he got the idea for Real Pickles.

Rosenberg and his partner Addie Rose Holland moved to Montague in 2001, tending a big garden that supplied herbs for Real Pickles for five years before the farms took over. The Community Development  Corporation (CDC) provided the commercial kitchen necessary for the business until last year.

Last March, with the help of. Greenfield Savings Bank who gave them the mortgage, as well as financing help from the CDC and Equity Trust, Real Pickles bought a 12,000 square foot building on Wells Street, across from the CDC. Grants from the USDA and rebates from the utility company helped fund the substantial renovation. Rosenberg said, “It was exciting to see this 100 year old industrial building reveal its heavy timber post and beam construction.”

Rosenberg and his crew moved into the new energy efficient building last July, the same week the cucumber harvest arrived to be processed.  “It was a little nuts around here, but we made it happen. Fortunately we only had to move across the street.,” Rosenberg said.

Real Pickles has a staff of ten (including Rosenberg), who work year round, although the work schedule fluctuates with the seasons. During the busiest seasons part-time people are added. During the 2009 harvest  the crew processed 120,000 pounds of local organic produce in the new certified kitchen.

Rosenberg explained that Real Pickles is a certified food facility with permits from the Greenfield Department of Health and the State Division of Food and Drug, as well as registered with the federal FDA.. They receive periodic inspections from every level.

Rosenberg is committed to supporting a local healthy food supply which supports local farmers and a local economy. To do this he has to be a good businessman. “We do major sales forecasting, looking ahead nearly two years, because we have to work with our growers. They need to know how much to plant and we need to have enough pickles to get us into the second fall when new pickles will be available for sale.”

Of course there are inevitable crop failures or shortfalls. “Every year since we’ve started, we’ve run a tiny bit short of cucumber pickles. Last year Dave Chamutka in Whately said he hadn’t had such a bad year in 35 years of growing cucumbers. “It is really hard to find organic pickling cucumbers in the northeast. If we can’t find them, we just make less product,” Rosenberg said.

We have enjoyed Real Pickles at our house, and I like knowing that there are health benefits. Eating Real Pickles has similar advantages to eating yogurt. All those good bacteria working in our gut. Full information can be found on the Realpickles.com website.

I’m not ready to emulate Rosenberg and have saurkraut and hot sauce with my eggs every morning, but my husband is always ready for sauerkraut and kimchi at lunch and supper.  I’m especially fond of the ginger carrots. Real Pickles are available at Foster’s, Green Fields Market and Hager’s Farm Stand.

Like Rosenberg I am happy to be able to eat locally in every season.

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We may be buried in snow, but the Annual Spring Bulb Show  at Smith College opens on March 6 and runs until Sunday, March 21. Over 5000 bulbs of every variety will be in glorious bloom at the Lyman Plant House, open from 10 am to 4 pm every day.

Between the Rows    February 27, 2010

It makes sense that the cover of  The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot by Chip Brantley should be a still life of luscious fruits. The book is a history of the San Joaquin Valley in California, fruit farming, and hybridization told by a charming young man who meets any number of fascinating characters during his investigations. I learned why the plums I buy at the supermarket in the summer vary so in quality (plums only have a two week harvest period, so the plums of July are not the plums of August) and that there are many delicious pluot or plumcot hybrids, a combination of plum and apricot, that I will be happy to put in my market basket this summer.

It is less understandable why Where the God of Love Hangs Out,  Amy Bloom’s collection of interconnected short stories about the vagaries and varieties of Love, should feature a cherry and a peach.  Apricot?  There is no hint in this book, as sublime as it is,  that life is a bowl of cherries.  Do the fruits compel us to pick up the book and carry it out of the bookstore with us. Or has the bowl of beautiful apples and plums on the cover of her wonderful best selling novel Away become a talisman, promising best sellerdom for this book as well?

Nicholson Baker’s new book, The Anthologist, is about a free verse poet who has put togetehr  an anthology of rhyming poetry. He needs to write the introduction but he is blocked.  In his obsessive peregrinations about poetry, rhythm, popular music, the lives of other poets and his predicament, he has driven away his girl friend and found any number of ways to avoid his desk. The book is a disquisition on poetry and where we find it, learned and often hilarious. It drove me to my bookshelf and the library to reread some of the poets he mentions. Maybe it is not so far fetched that there is a perfect plum on the cover of this book. Maybe he was thinking of William Carlos Williams irresistable plums:

This is just to say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Just thinking.

I didn’t need all the talk about ‘nature deficit’ to think that children can be entertained, educated and nurtured by spending time in the garden, with and without adults. As a child I spent a fair amount of time watching the bugs on my aunt’s black seeded simpson lettuce, while I daydreamed in the sun.  I don’t know how that affected my personality development, but I am sure it was in many good ways.

Black Dog Publishing also believes children will find good things in the garden  and have just published Kids in the Garden by Elizabeth McCorquodale. They are giving my readers a discounted offer that will bring you this $17.95 book for less than you can get it on Amazon.

To order your copy email Jessica (jess@blackdogonline.com) with commonweeder in the subject line. You will get a 40% discount, which makes the cost $10.77 plus shipping.  Jessica will tell you about shipping once she has your address.  I do not make any money on this transaction, I just like to encourage getting children in the garden.

Kids in the Garden is an easy and fun guide for children to use on their own or with adults, and encourages children to learn about gardening, healthy eating and caring for the environment. With easy to follow step-by-step instructions, with bright photography and fun illustrations. The book is aimed at children aged five upwards with adult supervision, then for older children up to 11 to complete on their own.

The book features more than 50 projects, with full instructions on the materials needed, companion plants, saving resources, harvesting seasons, seeds, the water cycle and indoor gardens. There is also a section on wildlife, showing how to encourage animals into your garden, as well as how to make a mini pond, birdhouses, pest patrol, building a wormery, rescuing bees and ladybirds, and much more. The plants and vegetables featured include potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, herbs, strawberries, blueberries, sunflowers and many more. The recipes included are simple to make with the fresh produce and include; one pot jam, minty fizz and easy pizza sauce.

The annual Smith College Bulb Show at the Lyman Conservatory will begin with a free lecture by Lynden B. Miller (Smith ‘60) in the Carroll Room at the Campus Center at 7:30 pm on Friday, March 5.  Miller is a noted public garden designer and will be talking about her new book Parks, Plants and People: Beautifying the Urban Landscape.  She feels that “beautiful parks and gardens are essential urban oases with economic benefits and the power to transform the way people behave and feel about their cities.” After the lecture attendees can tour the Bulb Show.

Miller is currently director of the Conservatory Garden in Central Park which she rescued and restored, but “her work includes gardens for The Central Park Zoo, Bryant Park, The New York Botanical Garden, Madison Square Park and Wagner Park in Battery Park City as well as many smaller projects in all five boroughs and beyond.”  It is heartening to know that as we talk about ‘nature deficit’ in children, we are also coming to acknowledge that people of every age benefit from the beauty and calm of a garden, of natural green space.

In her book, and her work Miller shows us the importance of public gardens, and with luck, will give us new eyes to look at the public spaces in our own communities.

The Smith College Bulb Show runs from March 6 through Sunday, March 21 from 10 am to 4 pm every day. A $2 donation is suggested. In addition to the spectacular bloom there will be an exhibition, The Inner Beauty of Flowers, radiograph and Xray photographs of flowers, and an audio installation of music composed by Susan Hiller (‘61) titled What Every Gardener Knows playing in the Lyman Conservatory Palm House.

I know the Greenfield Garden Club has Weed Mobs before their annual garden tour, but I wonder if any local farms need a Crop Mob?  I’ll bet there are farmer wannabees around. An afternoon of Crop Mobbing might be just the education they need.  Farming aside, “Anywhere there is dirt, community will grow.”