Human Flower Project

Gardening & Landscape

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Altitude Fear & Latitude Envy

The saturated colors of mountain flowers are legendary, but are they worth an anxiety attack? We search for a flatter alternative.

Ryuzu falls and mountain flowers, 1997
Nikko National Park, Japan
Photo: Kohei Tanaka

We are alpi-phobic…Something about having grown up on the banks of a huge, sluggish river, maybe, or hearing one too many Appalachian folk songs where a woman’s dragged into the hills and smashed in the head with a rock. For us, just the idea of driving “into the mountains” tightens the throat.

After reading about flower color today, though, we have reason to overcome this neurosis.  EarthScholars Jim Wandersee and Renee Clary wrote in their essay on the floral spectrum several months back: “More vivid colors are seen in cooler stands of flowers growing in places like Alaska. The intensely bright fuchsia of fireweed flowers makes driving Alaskan highways ‘a journey into the Land of Oz.’”

Gentians, in Bhutan
Photo: Nancy Holyoke

Nancy Holyoke sent us a photo of gentians she spotted in Bhutan, a blue the likes of which we’ve never seen on even the most psychedelic morning glory. Wouldn’t this be worth suffering through the claustrophobic shudder that steep slopes bring on?

Like a lot of folks, in and out of lederhosen, we’d assumed that tropical flowers (like the hibiscus blooms you see on Hawaiian shirts) were the brightest of all, but that’s not so. “Twelve years of observation among the vegetation of the eastern and western tropics,” wrote A.R. Wallace, “has convinced me that this notion (of more colorful tropicals) is entirely erroneous.”

“The beauty of alpine flowers,” Wallace noted, “is almost proverbial. It consists either in the increased size of the individual flowers, as compared with the whole plant, in the increased intensity of color, or in the massing of small flowers into dense cushions of bright color. It is only on the higher alps above the limits of frosts, and upward towards the perpetual snow line that these colors are fully exhibited.” We have a sick headache.

Another 19th century botanist, “M. Flahault in going north from France noticed in Zeeland that many flowers had already brighter colors. In Norway the colors of nearly all flowers were brighter, and he gives a list of 16 native and 12 cultivated plants in which this difference was especially marked. He also caused seeds of 14 species to be sown the same season in Paris and at Upsal in Sweden, with the result in each case but one of brighter colors in the northern locality.”

-- from Arthur Alger Crozier’s opus: “The Modification of Plants by Climate (1885)

We’d brave quite a lot to see intensely beautiful flowers, but before we invest in hiking boots, there may be another way.

An inkling came in a note this morning from our cousin, painter Melinda Waring. “All you artists out there,” she wrote, “will understand, when I say an overcast day has more light than a sunny day.” And then we retrieved this long treasured post card of Van Gogh’s bulb field

Flower Beds in Holland
by Vincent van Gogh (1883)
Image: National Gallery of Art

The sapphire blues, golds, whites (and one patch of lavender) are brighter for the two brown barns anchoring each side of the painting, a fringe of dark hills in the distance, and the very cloudy skies.

For a more contemporary view of the same phenomenon, here’s a photo from the Dutch government.

A tulip field, with lilies and narcissus in Northern Holland
Photo: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

This region of Northern Holland is of course one of the most popular floral tourist attractions all year, anywhere in the world. Even though Holland’s tulip bulb industry is dwindling (gradually migrating from the Netherlands to Poland and facing competition from China), The Keukenhof, in Lisse, still draws 700, 000 visitors each year. The tulip season there is just winding down.

Could it be that the qualities Wallace attributed to alpine height were really the effects of distance from the equator, of northerliness – of perception? Certainly the EarthScholars’ example of color intensity, Alaskan fireweed, could help make that case. As could M. Flahaut’s investigations, Paris to “Upsal.”

As a flower lover, we will trek for color. But as a flatlander, we’d like to begin our quest for intensity via latitude (and cloud cover) rather than by taking on altitude. Let’s keep in mind the Dutch, including Vincent.  Instead of boots, we’ll buy a locket and fold in it this heartening observation from the mighty Felder Rushing, a fellow Southerner, likewise in search of more vivid flowers:

Holland is “farther north than Nova Scotia…. The angle of the sun is so low way up there, colors get ‘punched up’ and seem more vivid than they do in our muggy heat, which washes out a lot of the blue and green. Same thing in England, New England and British Columbia. Because of the climate, many plants grow better. And because of the angle of the sun, they simply look better.”

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Proto-Peony Pilgrim, at Ashland

Too early for the flower show, but just in time for a zillion blinking buds.

Cyndy Clark overlooks the heavily budded peony bed
at Ashland, the Henry Clay home, Lexington, KY
Photo: Human Flower Project

Religious pilgrims go in certainty; they know the saint’s fingerbone, kept in a golden box since the second century, will be there at the cathedral, whenever they arrive. It’s floral pilgrims who need faith or, short of that, an open-mind. The forsythia’s over, and so are the weeping cherries, but you had forgotten about lilacs. The peonies aren’t in their glory, but the buds are.

With friend and gardener Cyndy Clark, we made our pilgrimage to the big peony garden at Ashland, a historic home in Lexington, Kentucky, one week ago. Only five or six beautiful clumps were flowering; most of the garden was leafy and covered with huge plump buds.

Bud with juice, and bloom, Ashland, Lexington, KY
Photo: Human Flower Project

The Garden Club of Lexington installed the bricklined peony beds in 1986. “Dozens of Saunders hybrid peonies were donated by Bobbi Van Meter in honor of her mother, Alice McIlvain Prewitt, owner of Walmac Farm.” Mrs. Prewitt had been a longtime member of the club, which maintains the walled garden at Ashland, too.

A.P. Sauders was an early peony hybridizer from Canada.  We wish we could tell you names of these particular cultivars, in bud and in bloom, but we found no tags anywhere (it really wouldn’t be in keeping with Lexington style, you know).

Now about those buds…Some, tight and green, looked like brussell sprouts – has anyone ever eaten one and can account for how they taste? Others buds were blinking, “tears” at the edge of chartreuse, pink, and wine-purple eyes. A few more had cracked like eggs, with pink, cupped feathers lifting open.

True peony lovers know that different varieties open at different times through the season (generally early May through early July). For the peony gluttons out there (count us in!) here’s a website that purports to offer a seven week cycle of flowers, with varieties grouped by their bloom dates. Florists are intensely interested in the habits of peony buds, too, as these prized cut-flowers ship at bud stage.

The most curious feature of the Ashland peony garden is what’s NOT there – ants – even though many hundreds of buds were secreting shiny syrup.

Our mother’s peonies in Louisville have always had ants circumnavigating the buds. We’d thought that ants were somehow good for these flowers. (Peony buds attract wasps, too.)

Ants aplenty on Anne Ardery’s peonies, in Louisville, Kentucky
Photo: Human Flower Project

“The garden myth is that peonies need ants on them in order for the buds to open properly,” wrote Hanna at This Garden is Illegal, in May 2006. “This is not true. A peony bud will open just as well with or without the ants.” She goes on to write that the ants do prey on other insects that can be harmful to peonies. So perhaps it’s “mythological” in the best sense: true, but not widely understood.

One of the early Saunders peonies at Ashland, April 27, 2008
Photo: Human Flower Project

Today we imagine that Ashland’s garden is in full blowsy flower, swarming with people. Henry Clay, the Kentucky politician who once lived here, is famous for telling his fellow U.S. Senators: “I had rather be right than president.”

REALLY, Henry? Well, you got at least half your wish. Loving the garden in bud, we can’t go so far as preference. We had rather found the peonies in bloom.

Friday, May 02, 2008

How Does Your Garden Reblog Grow?

With book clubs, meet-ups, and contests, the field of garden weblogging is now a thicket of online writers and photographers. Reblogging sites that collect posts from other blogs have helped bring the field into focus, partly by raising questions of copyright and profitability. Caren White, editor of one of the first garden reblogs—Garden Voices—talks about what’s happened and where it all may be heading.

Back in late 2005, we were contacted by a fellow named Joshua Mack about whether we’d like Human Flower Project to be included in a compendium of weblogs, a new venture called Garden Voices that was branching off of gardenweb.com. This popular spot where gardeners shared advice and photos had recently been purchased by iVillage, an online media group targeting women.

We were flattered and—as the flattered should always be—leery. Human Flower Project, many days, has little to do with gardening. And there was a more craven concern: Did it make sense to turn our unpaid labor and thought over to a for-profit enterprise, one featuring makeup tips and stories titled “Do You Cook Better Than His Mom?” —especially when we wouldn’t share in any of those profits? 

Eventually we settled on what seemed reasonable terms—Garden Voices would post our headlines and subheads but no photos or stories in full, provided they’d include a link back to Human Flower Project (other blogs apparently have other arrangements). There were a few bumps along the way, but eventually things smoothed out, thanks to Caren White of Middlesex, New Jersey. Caren, with her own A Gardening Year site, tends the Garden Voices reblog, and has been unfailingly accommodating.

Garden Voices, a compilation of hundreds of gardening weblogs, began in 2005
Image: Garden Voices

And so it went for over two years. Until late January 2008. For several weeks Garden Voices, which had grown into an international choir of weblogs, shriveled to a few squeaks and then went dumb.

When we wrote Caren to ask what was happening, even she was perplexed. Was Garden Voices malfunctioning, on hiatus or plain dead?

NBC/Universal had acquired iVillage for $600 million in 2006; by early this year there were lots of pieces moving on the corporate chessboard. The new management tried an iVillage TV show, which was cancelled in March. Thirteen iVillage employees lost their jobs earlier this year, and the remaining ones were shuffled from the New York offices to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The Healthology website (purchased for $17.2 million in 2005) was discontinued; would Garden Voices be next?

The site is back up and running now. But during the uncertain weeks of February we corresponded with Caren, taking the vagaries of the reblog as an opportunity to learn about Garden Voices. We asked Caren about the set-up of the site, its past (since in February its future was an open question) and her outlook on the gardening blogsphere. With many thanks to Caren, here you have it:

HFP: When did Garden Voices begin and how? What was the motivation behind the site?

Caren White: Garden Voices was begun late in 2005.  I can’t speak to how or why it was launched.  Joshua Mack who headed the team who developed and ran the site has left iVillage for personal reasons.  I do know that he had originally intended that it be a “blog about blogs”.  This wasn’t communicated clearly to me at first so I came up with my own concept of what it should be and ran with it.

When I began garden blogging in 2005, there were not a lot of garden blogs and the few that were out there were difficult to find.  I wanted to create a site where anyone interested in reading garden blogs would be able to find blogs on any topic related to gardening from anywhere in the world.  I deliberately reached out to bloggers outside of the US because I was interested in gardening outside of the US.  It took about a year, but I reached my goal of having blogs from every continent except Antarctica.  I’m still trying to reach my goal of blogs from every state. 

Initially, there were a lot of articles from the Home & Garden sections of regional publications that were great as fillers, but as the number of blogs increased, I dropped them and the site is now purely garden blogs.  I was also asked to blog on the page but I found it too difficult to maintain multiple blogs.  I gradually stopped blogging and commenting.  I really wanted the focus on the blogs themselves.

Caren White, editor of Garden Voices, also operates A Gardening Year, works another job and volunteers at Rutgers Gardens, where she’s pictured here
Photo: Mary Anne MacMillan

HFP: How did you come to be involved in it? And how do you maintain the site?

CW: Josh contacted me initially in November 2005 about adding my blog to the page.  Then he asked me if I would be willing to be the editor.  I did a post about my initial involvement. 

His original estimate of 1 to 2 hours a day to update the page was right on the money.  I was expected to update once a day, Monday through Friday.  I’m an overachiever, so I try to update twice a day, seven days a week.  Each update takes about an hour.  I check the feed to see all the new posts, skim them for content, “snip” them, tag them and then publish them through Movable Type software.  All of this was set up and is maintained by iVillage/GardenWeb.  I have no control over anything except the blog contents.

What took up a lot of my time initially was hunting for blogs to add.  I would spend 2 to 3 additional hours a day surfing the web, reading blogs and emailing bloggers asking if they would like to add their blogs.  Two things I asked for to help bloggers find me, was an “Add Your Blog” link on Garden Voices and a button for bloggers to add to their blogs.  They did add the link to the sidebar, but when the email addresses changed after NBC bought iVillage last year, the address on the link was never updated.  Development of a button for bloggers to use on their blogs was started, but never finished.

I’ve stopped recruiting blogs for the page due to space limitations.  The template is frozen at 40 entries.  There are already too many blogs to be able to fit everyone’s posts every day.  I requested an increase from 40 entries but was told that Garden Voices is not a blogroll.  Instead, I should choose “the best” posts of the day and publish those.  I’m not comfortable judging other people’s blogs so instead I publish the first 40 posts in my reader.  Occasionally I get complaints from bloggers that their posts are not appearing.  I always explain why and then make an effort to ensure that their posts get in more regularly.

Despite the fact that the “Add Your Blog” link no longer works, bloggers are still finding me.  They either leave comments on my garden blog or email me.  Here’s a hint to bloggers who want to get on sites like Garden Voices:  have an email address on your blog.  It’s so much easier for someone like me looking to add blogs to a site to be able to email a blogger directly rather than leaving a comment on a post.  If you are concerned about privacy issues, do what I did and have a separate email address for your blog.

I’d also like to do a shout out to Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening who gives out my email address to bloggers who want to add their blogs to Garden Voices.  Thanks to her, I’ve been able to add some really awesome blogs to the site.

HFP: Have any garden bloggers asked to be removed from the site?

Continue Reading

Friday, April 25, 2008

A Tall Order—Large Stature Trees

What lengths would you go to for shade, good drainage, and year ‘round beauty? Urban arborist Georgia Silvera Seamans explains the benefits of tall trees and ways to plant these giants successfully in cities. Thank you, Georgia.

Cycle path, Lincoln Parkway, Buffalo
Source: Heartland

By Georgia Silvera Seamans

The “Right Tree in the Right Place” (RTRP) concept encourages municipalities, NGOs, and homeowners to plant trees shorter than 25 feet under overhead utility lines. The crowns of large stature trees, encroaching on wires, can cause a number of problems: downed branches that interrupt utility service, tree trimmers’ perilous contact with live wires, and the conventional pruning of tree crowns into U-shapes (these tend to be structurally unsound and are nearly always unattractive).

Consequently, following RTRP along roads and in neighborhoods with overhead wires yields a short canopy. Redbud, purpleleaf plum, crape myrtle, “flowering” cherry, crabapple, Japanese lilac, and trident and hedge maples, these small stature trees both look and function differently than do streetscapes of large trees like elm, London plane tree, sweet gum, tulip tree, ginkgo, oak, and linden.

Let’s consider some of those differences.

Setback trees on private property create sidewalk shade.  Berkeley, CA.
Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans

The aesthetic contribution of short stature trees tends to be limited to their flowering season, while the arching canopy effect of larger stature trees is a year-round feature. Also, short canopies, while beneficial to wildlife, produce smaller ecosystem benefits.  (See “Street Trees: Let’s Think Outside the Wires.” Short stature trees have tremendous habitat and food value.  Take urban birds.  They utilize different layers of the urban forest canopy. As Julie Zickefoose writes in Natural Gardening for Birds, short stature hawthorns provide berries, while larger stature ashes and locusts provide nesting.)

Here are other benefits provided by larger stature trees:

• They provide more shade for infrastructure like streets: “shade on the street segment with large-stature trees will reduce costs for repaving by $2,900 (58%) over the 30-year period compared to the unshaded street. Shade from the small-stature trees is projected to save only $829 (17%)” (From Why Shade Streets? by the Center for Urban Forest Research, 2006).

• In terms of air pollution, “the annual net reductions for pollutants range from 10.1 lbs for a 40-year-old large tree to 0.7 lbs for a 40-year-old small tree. And values range from $64 for a 40-year-old large tree to $1.62 for a 40-year-old small tree” (Center for Urban Forest Research, newsletter, January 2005).

To learn more, here are three good resources (al pdf files): the CUFR’s 2003 newsletter “The case for the large tree”; 2001 Factsheet #1 about the benefits of large front yard trees; and Dr. Greg McPherson’s 2003 article, “A benefit–cost analysis of ten street tree species in Modesto, California, U.S.,” published in the Journal of Arboriculture.

Another deficit of the Right Tree for the Right Place formulation is its ignorance of design factors.  Street trees are typically planted at the street edge of the sidewalk.  Wires are generally sited towards the edge of the sidewalk, too.  With this inevitable conflict for over space, streets with overhead wires are usually planted with short stature trees.  But, street trees could be planted on the building side of the sidewalk or in front yards (preferably through an easement so that the city has some oversight about removals).  There are actually several such “setback” programs in the U.S.  The City of Boston Parks Department sponsors one, (and is enabled to do so according to Massachusetts General Law).  Public trees can be planted on private property as long as they are within 15 feet of the public right of way.  EarthWorks Projects in Boston, MA, initiated the Setback Trees Project in 2007, self-described as planting “trees on private property for the common good.”

Bumpout (note this bumpout is not connected to the sidewalk) – tree is just outside overhead wires.  Berkeley, CA
Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans

There are other design possibilities.  Trees could be planted in bump-outs located beyond overhead wires, in traffic circles at neighborhood intersections, or in the center of neighborhood blocks (see photo below).  (Traffic calming is one co-benefit of planting trees in the center of the roadway or at an intersection.)

And overhead wires could be buried.  This is an expensive proposition; according to The Seattle Times, the cost to the city of burying utility wires for a local project was $350-$400 per linear foot.  In another Washington community, the cost of burying electric, phone, and cable wires was estimated at $2500 per foot.

However, tall urban street canopies provide considerable benefits long-term.  The conflict between large stature trees and overhead wires is not new.  In his fascinating book, Republic of Shade, about the American elm (Ulmus americana) in New England, Thomas J. Campanella describes anti-elm sentiments expressed in an 1853 article from the New York Times:

“Most American cities were in urgent need of a pruning.  Larger, ‘weedy’ species should be removed at once, (the Times writer) argued, and replaced with smaller trees ‘of a character that can be trained around the wires.’ Elms, very big and very weedy, must be sacrificed to appease the goddess of electricity.”

Appeasing the gods of electricity: large trees pruned into u’s under wires on Old Brownsboro Road, Louisville, KY
Photo: Human Flower Project

Campanella also notes that changes in road technology affected trees.  Street surfaces before 1890 did not restrict “the passage of water, nutrients, or oxygen to the roots of adjacent trees,” but asphalt and concrete paving “virtually sealed the surface of the street,” depriving trees of all three. 

Another dimension of “Right Tree in the Right Place” is to select species according to the size of the growing area—most often the square foot of the sidewalk cutout or width of the tree lawn (the grass strip located within the sidewalk).  This is a very reasonable concept.  Healthy trees depend on adequate root systems, which requires sufficient area to grow.  Often, according to landscape architect and arborist James Urban, we look up at tree crowns and ignore what’s happening below ground.

Different cities have different standards.  In the City of Boston, the minimum tree well area is 24 square feet, often a 3x8 foot or 4x6 foot sidewalk cutout.  One East Bay, California city’s minimum standard is 2x2 feet or 4 square feet!  Generally speaking, a foot of root area supports an inch of trunk diameter.  Accordingly, at only four inches in diameter at breast height, a tree with a well area of 4 square feet has maximized the initial growing area for its root system.  This tree will seek additional space either within the sidewalk (made visible by buckling) or in someone’s front yard.

A small cutout clearly will restrict the size of the tree that can be planted initially.  For example, a 2x2 foot area cannot adequately accommodate a tree that is two inches in diameter whose root ball is two feet in diameter.  On average, for every diameter inch at planting, a tree needs a year to establish.  So, a two inch tree will take two years to establish.  Although, a 15-gallon tree (the size frequently planted in a 2x2 foot cutout) will establish faster, its aesthetic and functional presence is less significant than a larger diameter tree.

The 2x2 foot area is the minimum, so presumably a larger growing area will be provided if the sidewalk can accommodate it.  Although a 3x8 or 4x6 space is significantly larger, it can only support a 24-inch diameter tree within the original cutout.  Ideally, street trees would be given larger growing areas for their root systems.  However, if the sidewalk is space constrained (Americans with Disabilities law requires four feet of clearance for accessibility), what are the options? 

Annie’s Oak, Berkeley, CA
Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans

One option is to install structural soil beneath the sidewalk.  Structural soil is an engineered medium that supports root growth while simultaneously satisfying engineering load-bearing requirements.  The most well known structural soil recipe was developed by Cornell University’s Urban Horticulture Institute.  An older version of structural soil is sand-based, also known as Amsterdam structural soil.  The most significant difference is that CU soils can achieve a greater level of compaction (important for load bearing) and still sustain root systems than can the Amsterdam soil – 95% versus 85-90%.  The installation of structural soils could be undertaken as sidewalks are repaired, redone, or created.  Like the burying of overhead utility wires, this solution is costly, but again, the potential benefits to a city, its trees, streets and people are significant. 

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Geobotany: Rocking the Garden World

Nature first put flowers on stone pedestals, but gardeners of the Picturesque school followed, with painterly landscapes of their own. Well done, say the EarthScholars: But, please, give rocks equal time!

Trees, Fort Greene Park, 2004
by Kerry O’Neill

By James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group

Unwittingly, people view landscapes through the lenses of their prior knowledge and experiences. They compare the new landscapes they visit with ones they already know.  Given that more than half of the world’s inhabitants now live in big cities, more and more people lack an extensive personal knowledge of nature. Nor have most people, urban or otherwise, traveled to explore a variety of conserved natural ecosystems —experiences they could use in making comparisons and aesthetic decisions about the new landscapes they encounter.

There are many theories about how humans perceive landscapes. The Australian environmental scholar Andrew Lothian poses the question: Is landscape quality inherent in the landscape or in the eye of the beholder? He opts to defend the latter.

R.P. Taylor, writing in the journal Leonardo, recalls that, “In art school I was told that Monet’s water lilies calm the observer, while van Gogh’s sunflowers electrify. To what extent, however, do paintings [of landscapes] really affect the observer’s physical condition? The foundations of this question date back to 1890, when the connection between psychological states and physiological states was first considered.”

A famous African Savannah,
the Maasai Mara
Photo: Masai Mara

Judith Heerwagen, in her article on the Psychosocial Value of Space, notes: “Drawing on habitat selection theory, ecologist Gordon Orians argues that humans are psychologically adapted to and prefer landscape features that characterized the African savannah, the presumed site of human evolution….If the ‘savannah hypothesis’ is true, we would expect to find that humans intrinsically like and find pleasurable environments that contain key features of the savannah that were most likely to have aided our ancestors’ survival and well-being.”

Features of the savannah landscape include a fairly unobstructed “big sky” view, a high diversity of flowering plants, scattered clusters of trees with high canopies, swaths of open grassland, occasional rocky outcrops, multiple visual corridors, and topographic changes to enhance predator surveillance and long-distance escape movements.

Do humans really prefer these, or other, particular landscapes? History shows us that colonialists and emigrants sometimes attempted to transform their new landscapes of residence into replicas of those they had known. Presuming the superiority of “The Old Country,” they tried to mimic what they considered “civilized spaces”—importing plants, seeds, and even rocks from their landscapes of origin.

Just as people’s first maps showed their tribes or cities at the center of the world, it is common for us all to judge new landscapes by the rather xenophobic criteria of familiarity and congruence with our original cultural values and preferences.

In 18th century England, complex debates developed about the essence of beauty in the landscape--with followers of the ‘Sublime’ school inspired by wild, natural landscapes (simultaneously fascinating and startling), while those of the ‘Picturesque’ school wanted ‘painterly’ landscape views (human-designed to be blurred, disjointed, and soft composites of color and contour).

Followers of the latter were willing to have flowering plants moved from their traditional positions in borders or against walls, provided they were regrouped to form non-linear, painterly compositions (“painting with plants”). The eye of the landscape artist (painter), with its aesthetic understanding of nature and training in the principles of composition, was thought to be the best guide to good planting design.

Plant Hunter Joseph Dalton Hooker’s Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya (1849-51)
Image: Garden Visit

The Picturesque school had a pronounced effect on landscape design. It both justified using foreign plants in British gardens and provided a system of compositional principles to harmonize the intermingling of exotic and native plants and natural objects. Instead of the plantings being natural of themselves, landscape designers were to use art to imitate rugged natural scenes in aesthetic ways.

In the second half of the nineteenth century the Picturesque Style was used, for example, in the making of woodland gardens. Landowners on the western shores of the British Isles installed rhododendron woods, arranged in “painterly compositions.” As can be seen from Hooker’s print (above), the art that inspired Paxton’s landscape (below), making effective use of jagged irregular lines of plant and rocks, represents the furthest possible conceptual distance from an artificial geometrical regularity. In contrast, fractal geometric patterns predominate—for both plants and rocks.

Landscape at England’s Birkenhead Park, Designed by Joseph Paxton
Photo: Garden Visit

Like Charles Darwin, Joseph Dalton Hooker saw the need to integrate botany and geology to understand nature. When he was only 5 years old, Joseph regularly attended his father’s botanical lectures at the University of Glasgow, and displayed a genuine interest in the subject. Because his parents thought Glasgow High School’s curriculum was too limited, he and his brother were withdrawn from formal schooling to be home-schooled. In those days, botany was still regarded as merely a branch of medicine, so like every other young Glaswegian botanist in his day, Hooker studied for his medical degree at the University of Glasgow. This education later proved to be quite expedient because, in 1839, Sir James Clark Ross, famous discoverer of the magnetic north pole as well as his father’s good friend, offered young Joseph the position of Assistant Surgeon on Clark’s expedition to the Antarctic, aboard the discovery ships Erebus and Terror.

This four-and-half-year voyage allowed Hooker to botanize in many lands and also to notice the natural relationships between botany and geology. At the Kerguelen Islands, where Captain Cook had managed to collect just 20 new species of plants, Joseph identified and collected over 150 different species, including flowering plants, 3 ferns, 35 mosses, and the rest lichens and seaweeds. This was no easy task, as the cold, harsh weather and rough terrain made collecting very challenging. Hooker wrote: “Many of my best little lichens were gathered by hammering out the tufts, or sitting on them till they thawed.” Joseph later became assistant director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, near London.

One result of the English affinity for Picturesque landscape design was an enthusiasm for rock gardens. A European rock garden, also known as an alpine garden, features extensive use of rocks or stones, along with plants native to rocky alpine or tundra environments. 

Alpine flowers on tundra along Trail Ridge road
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Photo: Q.T. Luong

In 1803, Europe’s first alpine garden was constructed at Belvedere Castle in Vienna. The best rock gardens were designed and built to look like natural outcrops of bedrock (e.g., limestone, sandstone). Stones were aligned to suggest a bedding plane and plants were often used to conceal the joints between the stones. This type of garden was especially popular in Victorian England as well.

The first rock garden of appreciable size to be constructed at an American botanic garden opened at Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 1917. Today, some of the best alpine rock gardens may be viewed at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland; Le Jardin Botanique Alpin du Lautaret, Grenoble, France; Cambridge University Botanic Garden, Cambridge, England; Royal Horticultural Society Garden, Wisley, England; New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY; Devonian Botanic Garden, Devon, Alberta, Canada; Göteborg Botanical Garden, Gothenburg, Sweden; Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, Vail, Colorado; Jardin Botanique de Montrèal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; and the Tromso Arctic-Alpine Botanic Garden, Tromso, Norway.

A Picturesque rock garden at Chatsworth Manor, England
Photo: Michelle Anstett

Although the use of rocks as decorative and symbolic elements in gardens can be traced back to very early Chinese and Japanese gardens, rock gardens dedicated to growing alpine plants have a shorter history. During the age of the great plant explorers (basically, the 1800s) there was great interest in the exotic discoveries being brought back to England, and people wanted to grow these amazing new treasures successfully. Although others had previously written about growing alpine plants, it was actually Reginald Farrer who, with the 1919 publication of his two-volume book The English Rock Garden, rocked the gardening world for the first time. There was great interest in Farrer’s method and approach to creating large-scale, naturalistic settings for growing alpine plants.

(For more about the man credited with starting the rock gardening craze, read Nicola Shulman’s biography of Farrer).

Alpine Crevice Garden
Alpine Garden Society Center
Pershore, Worcestershire, England
Photo: Stone Garden

Because our own research group focuses on the integration of botanical and geological knowledge, we strongly recommend that public rock gardens interpret both the plants and the rocks that are present. The public trails we have designed always include geobotanical interpretation. As visitors tread the rock garden’s paths examining the alpine plants, we think it is helpful for the visitors to understand the geologic history of any garden site, to know what kind of rocks they are seeing and their influences on plant growth.

We appreciate, for example, University of Florence’s Botanical Garden exhibit that interprets the geobotany of the alpine plants of Italy’s Dolomite region via a simulated outcrop of limestone derived from the Dolomite Mountains themselves. Similarly, we think the rock garden at the Botanic Garden of Montreal is exemplary from a geobotanical perspective. It’s not only a rock garden, but also a mineralogical garden, with rocks and minerals drawn from all over Canada.

Finally, if you live in the US, be sure to experience the Denver Botanic Garden’s remote 1.5-mile Walter Pesman Trail through the alpine tundra on Mount Goliath, a mountain peak section of the Mount Evans area within the Arapaho National Forest (17 miles from Idaho Springs). Volunteer guides will interpret not only the plants but also the rocks that you see in this “nature-made” alpine rock garden, but only during the summertime days when the alpine flowers are in bloom, June 26th to August 7th. (Reservations are required: phone 720-865-3539). The Denver Botanic Garden within the city also has a fine rock garden, with thousands of different rockery plants collected by Panayoti Kelaidis--the godfather of American rock gardening.

We conclude with a passage from author Donna E. Schaper: “Building a quiet [sanctuary] of stones and plants, slowly and meditatively over time, is [a rock garden’s] true meaning. Process over product, journey over destination, forever a work in progress—rock is the best metaphor we have of everlastingness.”

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Carmen: Red Hot, Yellow Acacias

The original bad girl, Bizet’s gypsy heroine, casts a floral spell, but why do opera productions always get her bewitching blossom wrong?

Francesca Zambello as Carmen, Royal Opera House, 2008
Photo: Telegraph

Seeing the opera Carmen for the first time this past Friday, we met Amy Winehouse’s great-great grandmother.  The lady with churning hips and long black hair, on the loose while her boyfriend keeps winding up in jail, first came along 150 years ago. Georges Bizet was inspired to compose his opera after reading of this femme fatale in Prosper Merimee’s novella published in 1845. Look out!

‘’She was wearing a very short red skirt which revealed white silk stockings with more than one hole in them, and dainty red morocco leather shoes tied with flame-colored ribbons. She wore her mantilla lowered in order to show off her shoulders and a big bouquet of acacia at the opening of her blouse. She also had an acacia flower in the corner of her mouth, and she walked swaying her hips like a filly on a Cordova stud farm.”
—from Prosper Merimee’s Carmen

That flower, as opera buffs know, has its own role in the drama.

Franco Corelli as Don Jose, in jail,
in love with the wrong woman
(and holding the wrong flower)
Photo: Sandy’s Opera Gallery

A squadron of French soldiers, stationed in Sevilla, Spain, is killing time outside a cigarette factory. The working girls come out for a smoke break, and all the guys go apoplectic for the brash and gorgeous Carmen. She winks and sings, sidling up to a few of them. After teasing the whole regiment, she at last tosses her “acacia” flower to a standoffish sergeant, Don Jose, who tucks the blossom inside his uniform.

He’s a goner, of course. Carmen soon gets into a nasty girlfight (marvelously staged by Austin Lyric Opera, with many fistsful of convincing hair-pulling). The smitten Don Jose helps her escape arrest, and for his trouble gets thrown in prison.

In Act II, our hero is released and finds Carmen dancing on tabletops and flirting with a bullfighter in a bar on the edge of town. He prepares to tell her off – or worse—but reaching inside his coat, pulls the blossom out. (In last Friday performance, it was a pink fragile thing that shattered right on cue.) And so begins his aria.

La fleur que tu m’avais jetée,
Dans ma prison m’était restée.
Flétrie et séche, cette fleur
Gardait toujours sa douce odeur…

The flower that you tossed to me
Stayed with me in my prison.
This flower, withered and dry,
Never lost its sweet perfume.

As Don Jose clutches his flower and pledges his love, Carmen gazes off. For the first and only time in the drama, she seems concerned, maybe confused is more like it, confused by tenderness.

Acacia retinoides:
relative of Don Jose’s floral love charm
Photo: Floracyberia

Meanwhile, we ask, what is a red flower doing on stage? Acacia blooms are bright yellow!

From looking around, it seems a very common mistake by the props managers for this opera. Carmen’s temper and the Andalusian setting make red roses or carnations the obvious choice, that is to say, cliché.

But acacia, often called “mimosa” in southern France, has a lot more to offer here than mere faithfulness to Merimee’s story.

In the 19th Century, when both the fictional and operatic “Carmens” were born, several species of acacia were imported from Australia to Southern France and became hugely popular both as landscape plants and cut flowers. Hundreds were planted as ornamentals around the homes of wealthy English and Parisian vacationers, who escaped to the Cote d’Azur in winter. Happily the mimosas bloomed as early as December, a relief from all that gray.

A wreath of acacia in Provence, along the Mimosa Trail

Today’s travelers in Provence take the Mimosa Trail in February through Rayol Canadel, Ste. Maxime, and Tanneron (a major acacia growing center) to Cannes Mandelieu (Merimee’s old stomping grounds), and finally the perfume industry capitol of Grasse.

As well as scenting Don Jose’s uniform, acacia farnesiana is the major ingredient in many perfumes, among them Mimosa pour Moi, and L’Eau d’Azur. “Fragrances in which mimosa plays a vital part, but is not the main theme of the fragrance, include Farnesiana by Caron, Chanel Nº 5, Moment Suprême by Jean Patou, ... Paris by Yves St Laurent, Byzance by Rochas, Amarige by Givenchy as well as Summer by Kenzo.” One source describes the acacia scent as “sweet, heady, almondy.”

Placido Domingo sings Don Jose’s aria in Carmen, with faux acacia blooms, in a 1978 production by the Vienna State Opera, filmed by Franco Zefferelli

If you’d like to hear what melted Carmen’s heart (temporarily), here are a few fine tenors singing “La Fleur que Tu M’Avais Jetee” (The Flower Song). Jussi Bjorling clutches a rose bud. Franco Tenelli fumbles something red. But, here is Placido Domingo in 1978, performing with the Vienna State Opera AND some round yellow flowers, acacia at last. Leave it to the Austrians to get the flowers right! Bravo.

Friday, April 18, 2008

In Iris Society, ‘It’s What You Like’

Dishwater blondes, clowns and upturned beards, the American Iris Society has seen it all.

Members of the American Iris Society, in Austin, Texas
for their annual meeting, toured the mammoth iris bed
at the Natural Gardener on April 17, 2008
Photo: Human Flower Project

Peachy, icy, frilly – and then there’s the one that looks like a grimy t-shirt.

Iris fanciers must be the most broadminded of all floral enthusiasts, because there’s a greater range among the flowers they breed, grow and travel cross country to see than any flower–type we know.

You orchid people may take issue. But who has seen a two-tone brown orchid? Who’s bred one the color of rag and named it “Ugly Duckling”? We saw Ugly Duckling and many fairer species with our own eyes yesterday, tagging along with the experts as the American Iris Society descended on Austin for its annual weeklong convention.

Miracles of azure, crystal puffs and mongrels in several shades of tinkle-yellow…what a range of color! Shapes too. We saw iris blooms delicate as meringues and others like smashed pinwheels, enough to make a small child cry. Much to their credit, the iris people seem to enjoy them all. Here was one the color of a puddle. “You either like it or you don’t,” Jim Morris of St. Louis told me. “I like it.”

Jim Morris of St. Louis, an iris grower since childhood and veteran of many meetings—thus the badges—took notes on the flowers Thursday; the year’s winning iris will be announced Sunday, April 20
Photo: Human Flower Project

There have been lectures, judges training sessions, and classes for the 430 participants, but the highlight, as at every iris convention, has been the garden visits, seven in all. Thursday, April 17, the group bussed west of the city to the Natural Gardener, one of Austin’s premier nurseries, to check out the 800-plus varieties that have been grown in the big full-sun bed made just for them.

Convention locales are decided at least two years in advance. That way, breeders can send their rhizomes ahead to be planted and get established so that by meeting time, if all goes well, they’ll be in full, healthy flower.

Some of the irises had “bloomed out” before the AIS members arrived. Other plants were still a just few green blades, but scores more were performing well. Jim Morris, who’s raised irises since childhood, was taking careful notes, as were many others. On Sunday evening, all the convention-goers will cast ballots for the best flowers they’ve seen this week.

Augustine, a bearded iris (non-space age) bred by O. Schick, 2005
Photo: Human Flower Project

Barbara Sautner, president of the Iris Society of Minnesota, explained that judges look for “branching, bud count, and growth.” (To our surprise and chagrin, fragrance doesn’t matter.) Sautner, and many others, too, lingered by an unnamed seedling, AM0010550-3, bred by Anton Mego of Slovakia. These are new varieties that have yet to be introduced to the market. “They want to see if we like it,” said Patricia Wurtele, of Ramona, California. From all the eye-bugging and finger-pointing, Mego’s tall purple, yellow and red iris is a winner, and for a $15 registration fee, will get a name. Since this lilting three-tone iris had thrived here in Texas, how about “Jimmie Dale Gilmore”?

A successful seedling, as yet unnamed, from Slovakian hybridizer Anton Mego
Photo: Human Flower Project

Sautner said that several of the nation’s biggest iris companies are located near Portland; Schreiner is in Oregon today, though it began in the 1920s in Minnesota. “They started bringing in iris from France and the Mediterranean that couldn’t survive our winters,” she explained. So the big hybridizers eventually moved west.

We’d never thought of Central Texas as iris land (not like back in Kentucky). Skimpy white “flags” are among the earliest flowers here in Austin, often blooming in mid-February and spent a week later. We have some pretty, but also frail, passalong purples that flower in March. And our neighbors David and Wendy Todd have many tall Louisiana iris, bright yellow, now blooming around their pond.

But the huge bearded hybrids these iris experts most admire are Bouvier des Flandres compared with our local fidos. There are double scoops of sorbet – like the aptly named Trinotostare. And the iris socialites appear to be especially taken with “space age” varieties. These irises, Richard Wurtele told us, were introduced over the past ten years and bred with weird beards. Rather than hanging down, a little bristle down the center of the iris “fall,” these beards are flexed into “horns, spoons and flounces.”

Hybridizer Jack Worel talks to Jean Morris and Barbara Sautner about
his Silver Creek iris, which has taken to Central Texas beautifully
Photo: Human Flower Project

Jack Worel, from Osseo, Minnesota, said that hybridizing iris is fairly easy (Note: Jack may be at a genetic advantage—his great aunt Elsie Peterson was one of the first iris judges in the U.S.). On Thursday his Silver Creek, a white iris with a deep orange beard, drew a crowd. “Wow, what a clump!” exclaimed Jean Morris of Baldwin, Missouri, as she scribbled in a notebook. Jack said that Silver Creek is the offspring of Michelle Taylor, another white iris, and Shirley M, pink with a blue beard. Loaded with cigar like buds and rippling blooms, it seems to like it here in Austin.

A “space age” iris with upturned beard and plicata (speckles)
Photo: Human Flower Project

After encountering Worel’s beautiful white iris, as well as Hurry Up Sun, Augustine, and Full Figured, we will have to give bearded iris a try. Patricia Wurtele says these spectacular hybrids aren’t hard to grow, so long as they’re shallowly planted and receive a half day of sun. They do like water (a problem here) and good drainage. “And they’re hungry flowers,” she says, recommending alfalfa pellets to enrich the soil.

But just because a hybridizer can concoct an iris with a red, spoon-shaped beard that sticks two inches in the air, does anyone want one? Apparently so. “It’s what you like,“ Jim Morris says serenely. We like Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Kim Il Sung: Orchids & Embalming

Nothing’s too good for the former leader of North Korea, or his corpse.

Magenta orchids fill Pyongyang, North Korea,
for Kim Il Sung’s birthday and the new year, April 15
Photo: Gao Haorong, for Xinhua

Given the hostile silence between the U.S. and North Korea, it only makes sense that April 15th—the dreaded filing deadline for taxes here—is the jolliest day of the year there.

It’s the birthday of Kim Il Sung, who was North Korea’s leader from 1948 until 1994. Nearly half a century long, his reign (a more fitting word than “administration") includes what’s known on this side of the Pacific as The Korean War, which we understand has never formally been declared over by the U.S. We assume this diplo-lunacy is observed in North Korea, too.

Kim Il Sung’s birthday has been called “the North Korean equivalent of Christmas Day,” but it’s also New Year’s Day. His son and successor, Kim Jong Il, had the calendar changed to honor his father and start the year off April 15th.

The 2007 celebration of Kim Il Sung’s birthday, Pyongyang
Photo: Marc in North Korea

In Pyongyang, the capitol, official celebration has been ongoing for about a week. You can tell because magenta orchids have been amassed in the city’s public spaces. There are indoor hillocks of them, and pots filed in rows before giant paintings of the former leader, depicted lolling on the grass in suit and tie as smiling throngs surround him.

The holiday flower is a species of dendrobium orchid named for Kim Il Sung in 1965, on a visit to Indonesia. President Sukarno was showing the North Korean leader around Bogor Botanical Garden, when Kim admired this garish bloom. It was a new orchid, as yet unnamed, bred by one of the garden botanists (still unnamed). The story goes that Sukarno spontaneously honored the North Korean Leader by naming the purple flower for him.

Ever since, ”Kimilsungia," as the orchid is known, has symbolized the president. And with huge displays in April, it’s as if his ghost drapes Pyongyang like a heavy purple robe. We’ve never seen these New Year’s displays in person, but the photographs are intriguing. We see a huge outline of the North Korean nation, right down to the 38th parallel, packed with orchids. Many displays combine propagandist landscape paintings—the grinning Kim Il Sung flanked by 2-D flowers—and masses of live blossoming plants, creating diorama effects that are, in our view, quite marvelous.

Live orchids and painted ones honoring Kim Il Sung, 2007
Photo: Marc in North Korea

We understand that this year’s festivities had to be scaled back a bit due to the sorry state of the North Korean economy (our two nations do share a few things), though apparently, the cultivation of KimIlsungia remains a top national priority even in hard times. ”Despite the shortage of electricity, the greenhouses of Kimilsungia are always well taken of. During the famine and energy crisis of the late 1990’s, KCNA carried reports about how patriotic citizens asked the state energy bureaus to shut down their home heating systems during winter so that there is enough electric power for the glories of Kimilsungia.”

In the U.S. expenditure on flowers is routinely flouted as evidence of wastefulness. Politicians who spend freely on flowers or on their personal adornment are held up for ridicule.  But the North Koreans see things from a different angle. To mark the new year, the NK News Agency has announced with pride that $800,000 (USD) is being spent annually to preserve Kim Il Sung’s body, “the 9th eternally-preserved corpse among the former socialist countries’ leaders.” See for yourself, at the Mt. Keumsoo Memorial Palace; year round, there must surely be purple orchids near the mummy case. Kim Il Sung has been dead 14 years.

And to think John Edwards was shamed for a $300 haircut!

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Twickenham, or London ‘Recovered’

Unfolding a map of London, John Levett sets out for an old bastion of privilege; crossing a bridge, here are magnolias, a common, a view. Thank you, John.

Mogg’s postal district and cabfare map of London
Image: Emonson Family History

By

I was almost born in London but not quite. My mother’s labour came too early for that so I was diverted elsewhere but we arrived there some six years later. I grew up in the fiercely middle class suburb of Bromley. My mother ran a small grocer’s shop and was visited at yearly intervals by the freeholder to see what needed doing to the property then did nothing. For the post-war British middle class, time was going to have to stand still at some point and it was in the early 1950s that time came to an end for those of a certain age in Bromley for whom the Coronation year of 1953 was possibly ‘the last best time.’

I came to this thought from having discovered a cousin. I write ‘discovered’ but should, maybe, describe her as ‘recovered.’ I lost contact with what remained of my extended family in the mid-’90s for reasons it would take a book to explain and another to describe what led me to seek them out; my cousin and her husband were the only ones I once knew who were still living. They were of a generation born at the start of the ‘Long Weekend’ of the 1930s who came to maturity in the early 50s and would now be enjoying the fruits, benefits and cookies of non-compulsory activity — life with the kids, safaris (didn’t those go out with Grace Kelly, Clark Gable and Mogambo?), walks across Indian beaches, watching the sun go down on Ayers Rock. They won’t be doing any of that; my cousin has a degenerative neurological condition and the only treatment is to make the decline easier than it might otherwise be. But describing her as ‘recovered’ is still appropriate.

I’m not getting here into a palaver about the resilience of the human spirit or the beauty of the inner self; knowing you’re degenerating and losing contact with all the facility you once had isn’t uplifting—not for you nor anyone around you. This was the time you looked forward to; promises you made to yourself and each other; something deserving after the toil and toeing the line. Not to be. I started visiting my cousin regularly, catching up on both our lives and the trip-ups in both. Our pasts are always there but this past also had something concrete.

Fenced tree, Ham
Photo: John Levett

As a result of the various deaths in the family my cousin had become the ‘keeper of the family archive’—the snaps of a century. There’s too much to tell here so I’ll cut to the chase. The family had become Londoners in the second half of the nineteenth century, coming down the fifty or so miles from Suffolk and setting up their stall in south London near Greenwich before spreading throughout Kent. Looking through the family albums and reflecting on the scattering of the seeding family a quaint thought came to me—how little of London I’d known outside its south-east boundary and its arterial roads into its centre. I noticed how I’d always travelled into London by the same routes and out the other side by a similarly familiar trail. Throughout my growing-up years I’d clung to the safe—same buses, same trains; same clubs, same pubs; same bookshops, same record stores—never touching another point on the London boundary.

Last Thursday I took out a map of London and found out where I’d never been. There was a lot of it. I looked west along the course of the Thames—Barnes and Chiswick; Richmond and Twickenham; Brentford and Hounslow; then north through Harrow, Ruislip, Northwood; south even to Wimbledon and Kingston. I’d never had any cause it seems. I could attach associations—Battle of Britain fighter squadrons, sport, horses, births and deaths —but no compulsive need to trip off there. So I chose. Twickenham would do.

Dutch House, Twinckenham
Photo: John Levett

The moment I chose I knew why I’d never been there. Twickenham is home to the English Rugby Union and throughout my growing years rugby was associated with the class enemy, chinless wonders, hooray harrys, unearned privilege, family advantage and not the sport of the sons and daughters of toil and soil. It’s changed; they’re now as unremittingly bourgeois as the rest of western Europe. I trooped down from Cambridge and caught the 11.50 out of Waterloo. Another first; I’d never taken a mainline train from there before. (Footnote: John Schlesinger made a film of Waterloo station early in his career, Terminus 1960.) I passed through Clapham Junction and made a note that I’d never been there either. Thence to the suburbs.

St. Alban’s Church, Twickenham
Photo: John Levett

Twickenham promised nothing. Like every suburb, town, city in this increasingly dis-United Kingdom it’s got the full complement of corporations in the High street (with the singular exception, as far as I could see, of Woolworth. Whatever happened to them? I used to spend an afternoon in Woolworth as a kid just looking at stuff). I took off for the nearest available Thames bridge some two miles away.

As I walked I began to warm to the place. Much of the housing development was post 1880s and was in great debt to the early patriarchs of Modernism—Voysey, Webb, Townsend. It tails off into early 1900s pattern-book eclecticism but there are enough features on enough houses to stop for. As I closed on Teddington lock I stopped at St. Alban’s church. It was begun during the high point of mid-Victorian self-confidence and opened to the prayerful in 1899, curtailed its activity when the subscriptions dropped off and fell into disrepair. Like many similar parish enterprises it now serves as an arts centre. I crossed the Thames into Ham.

Ham Common
Photo: John Levett

Now I knew that ‘Ham’ had something to do with a bend in the river and that didn’t take much working out but beside that I knew nothing. So I asked. Ham is on the southern boundary of Richmond Park which is deemed to be a Royal park which means that some Royal stole the land from the peasantry who held it in common. That Royal was Charles I who clearly paid heavily for the theft. Needless to say the payment didn’t involve handing back the land. Some common land was left; cunningly named Ham Common and a fine spot it is. Having walked around the backside of Ham and getting the impression it was all 1920s social housing with the inevitable mock Tudor affairs, Ham Common was a joy. I sat down and got all this info chatting with Alfred who had come here after demob from the last war. (No doubt there will shortly be a generation, if it hasn’t already arrived, for whom the term ‘the last war’ will mean no more than ‘the last war before the present one’ and each indistinguishable from any other.)

Alfred married Bettie and moved into Bettie’s family home because it was just off the Common and Bettie wasn’t moving because they’d never get anything as lovely. Bettie’s parents died within the decade and they had the place to themselves and their own family. Bettie knew a thing or two.

From Alfred I got the history—the Common, Richmond Park, Ham House, the ferry across the Thames, his family, other families, that house over there, the murder there, the plane crash. It was the warmest day of the year so far so sitting around was fine.

Magnolia, blooming in Ham
Photo: John Levett

When Alf took off so did I. Walking the back streets. You could make a forest from the number of magnolias in bloom. I often think that should I have space one day for one plant only then the magnolia it should be. I’ve never cared about the flowering season of anything I’ve ever planted (my rose garden has largely been and gone by high summer) and the lift to the spirit that magnolias bring is special.

I walked past Ham House towards the Thames and chose to walk the bank to Richmond. Not that there was much choice. My London means a bridge available whenever needed; not a walk of a mile or paying the ferryman.

One feature of the London A-Z is that it has no contours so I was surprised by Richmond Hill rising some couple of hundred metres from the Thames and a view straight through to the southern Weald. It’s not Table Mountain nor the view from Machu Picchu but I’d never seen it before; never seen this view of the Thames other than the one passing Charing Cross; never knew London was this tall; never felt the surprise of a city new to me. I may seem small beer but I thought once I knew it all. Then a few more pennies dropped. The habits of my early years I’d taken with me through decades. Always took the same route to school; always got off at the same bus stop, never one stage before or one after; strolled from this place to that, looked in the same store windows; it seemed to me that I still do. I realized it was the same with my cycle rides; anti-clockwise out of Cambridge whichever point of the compass I was aiming for hence I always get the same scenery at right and left.

View of the Thames from Richmond Hill
Photo: John Levett

It may seem strange that something that is someone else’s daily grind gives a heart a leap. But then it should; there should be wonder in small things; there should be daily discovery; there should be looking up; there should be a daily new horizon. Sitting on the top of Richmond Hill I hoped that the Richmondians took joy too as I do walking along the Backs. It’s often forgotten that people pay good money to visit what we see as our own back garden. Two days ago I found a small booklet on Cambridge architecture contemporary in 1960 on a market stall. I was struck by how much I’d never noticed; bold-for-its-moment design, bold-for-any-age innovation that had now been blended by its generic successors. Yesterday I started a walk wide-eyed and camera-laden looking for this stuff. The stuff I was looking for is not King’s College Chapel nor Wren’s Trinity Library which means it’s no doubt continually under threat; 1960s concrete is not beloved, hospital architecture disappears with changing demands, pupils outgrow schools, shopping arcades fall with the styles they sell. But there is a remarkable volume of seen-as-disposable building that I’d never noticed, never seen as more than purely functional (which maybe accounts for its success and continuation). It seems that in twenty-first century fashion I’d easily cast off easily-acquired, soon-too-familiar views. I’ve begun to rethink, review two favourite cities. Fun for all the family.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Street Trees: Let’s Think Outside the Wires

Local Ecology’s Georgia Silvera Seamans explains why, in choosing a city’s trees, there’s a lot more to consider than power lines.

Hawthorn tree in bloom: short, showy, and nectar rich
So why isn’t it a choice of Oakland’s city foresters?
Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans

In urban settings, human tensions arise over the selection of large stature or small stature street trees.  The “Right Tree in the Right Place” planting policy recommends that short stature trees – 25 feet or less – should be planted beneath utility lines because the canopies of these trees do not interfere with overhead wires.  But emphasis on height alone neglects larger issues—of ecosystem value. 

Large stature trees—like red oak, London plane tree, or sweetgum—do interfere with overhead wires, but they also provide greater ecosystem benefits than do small stature trees: they sequester (store) more carbon, filter more particulate matter from the air, and intercept more rainfall via leaves, trunk, and soil (and slow runoff into storm drains). And, because of their larger crown spread and evapotranspiration capacity, larger trees cool larger areas of surrounding air (cooling nearby infrastructure and buildings, too).

In a study of Berkeley’s street tree canopy conducted by the USDA Forest Service Center for Urban Forest Research (CUFR), researchers found that city trees saved $12.58 per tree in annual electricity costs. As for capturing stormwater runoff, the average street tree intercepted 1,478 gallons, a value of $5.91 per tree annually. The researchers also found that, overall, larger stature trees provided the most benefits: the average small, medium, and large deciduous street tree produced annual benefits totaling $32, $79, and $96, respectively. (Note: Author Georgia Silvera Seamans, assisted by Qingfu Xiao, research scientist at UC Davis, obtained this information as part of a research grant with Urban Releaf.)

Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba): as with many large trees, its flowers aren’t showy
Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans

Though not all short stature trees have showy floral displays, they tend to have larger, more conspicuous flowers. Most people think of herbaceous perennials as the plants that attract bees and butterflies, but flowering trees are definitely popular with wildlife too. As cities make tree selections, they should consider the “wildlife-value” of species that produce fruits, seeds, nuts, catkins, and acorns.  A tree’s wildlife-value in the larger ecosystem, something not usually quantified, involves its floral services for small, highly mobile species like butterflies and bees and some birds.  Hummingbirds, for example, utilize showy flowers for nectar.  As well, floral displays attract insects on which non-nectar eating birds rely.  Not only are the showy flowers of shorter stature trees attractive to birds and bees, their exuberant flowering draws “oohs” and “aahs” from us humans.  I have never visited Washington, D.C., in the spring, but I have heard the buzz about the mass blossoming of the Mall’s 3,000 cherries.  (At this year’s San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, the USDA Forest Service created an urban forest garden.  The sign below the coast live oak, interestingly enough, listed the aesthetic monetary value of the oak over 40 years as $5,210.)

Given the dual appeal of short stature trees, I was curious to see which varieties municipal urban forestry departments selected.  A natural choice for a case was the City of Oakland.  I am an intern of urban forestry issues for the City of Oakland Mayor’s Office.  Oakland’s street trees are managed by its public works agency.  The city’s Official Tree Species List, as of November 2007, has a limited palette of small stature trees.  The list contains seven species: Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo), Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis), Crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), Photinia (Photinia fraseri), purple leaf plum (Prunus cerasifera ‘Thundercloud’), Evergreen pear (Pyrus kawakamii), African sumac (Rhus lancea), and Water gum (Tristania laurina ‘Elegant’).  Many of Oakland’s residential streets are lined with overhead utility wires, so I expected a longer list of short stature trees.

Of these seven species on Oakland’s approved street tree species list, four have documented wildlife value.  According to the USDA Forest Service Silvics Manual of North America (1990), the eastern redbud nectar is used for honey production (and the fruit is eaten by cardinals, bobwhites, ring-necked pheasants, rose-breasted grosbeaks, white-tailed deer, and gray squirrels).  The crape myrtle attracts “beneficial insects” according to the UC Davis Arboretum plant database, but it does not give a list of insect species.  Water gum or Tristania laurina provides nectar to honey bees; these bees are common to very common visitors of the water gum flowers.  The UC Berkeley Urban Bee Garden project also observes that water gum flowers occasionally attracts small, native bees.

A powerline-centric view of urban tree selection
Image: Pacific Gas & Electric

As mentioned previously the primary limiting factors in planting the right tree in the right place with regards to overhead utility lines is height; trees should be twenty five feet or less in height at maturity.  Of the seven species listed by the City of Oakland as “small,” two can attain thirty feet in height: the crape myrtle and the purple leaf plum.  Two of the species categorized as “medium” are listed with heights of twenty feet: the bronze loquat (Eriobotrya deflexa) and the Saint Mary magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora ‘Saint Mary’).  In general, magnolias are medium-sized trees, but I gather that the Saint Mary variety is typically twenty feet at maturity.  The flower of the loquat attracts bees (and birds eat the summer fruit). 

The City of Oakland does not list the hawthorn.  I have noticed bees buzzing around and landing on hawthorn (Crataegus species) flowers in my Berkeley neighborhood.  My casual observation is supported by the UC Berkeley Bee Garden project.  Crataegus laevigata attracts five to nine honey bees every three minutes for pollen and nectar, while C. phaenopyrum (Washington hawthorn) attracts five to nine honey bees every three minutes and occasionally attracts small and medium bees for nectar.

Of course, wildlife value is not limited to short stature, showy, flowering trees, and flowers are not the only source of value.  Linden trees (Tilia species) attract bees in great numbers according to observations made by the Cornell University Arboretum.  The valley oak (Quercus lobata), according to the UC Davis Arboretum plant database, attracts butterflies, beneficial insects, and birds.  But, the valley oak does not make a good street tree.  Urban sidewalks are not designed to accommodate this large, broad-crowned California native that requires “deep soils where it can tap groundwater.”

A coast live oak in its namesake city, Oakland, California
Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans, Local Ecology

Actually, the City of Oakland is named for the oaks that used to cover its land area.  The coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) is conspicuously absent from the city’s list of large tree species.  This species would require a large growing area and the majority of residential sidewalks in Oakland are six feet wide; a four-foot right of way is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act.  To see an urban mature coast live oak (and its optimal growing space), visit Oakland’s City Hall Plaza.