Human Flower Project

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Indoor-Outdoor Methodists

From the days of its early “field preachers,” Methodism advocated mixing up interiority with the great outdoors. A beautiful window in Oxford makes that luminously clear.

Detail from the Flower Window c. 1878
Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, Oxford
Photo: Brother Lawrence

In the tall, gleaming panels of church windows, one expects to see saints in heavy robes and Bible-toting evangelists. But this is Wesley Memorial Church in Oxford, England, and as with so much of Methodism the rules are gently broken.

Rather than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we see lilies, grape vine, bull rushes and pomegranate (roses and camellias also). The Flower Window at the west end of the chapel is gorgeous and, we understand, completely original in design. One source says its theme is “flowers of the English countryside” but church secretary Dorothy Stepney says the sources are Biblical.

Perhaps there’s some influence of both. Methodism sprang up here in Oxford. A few university students in the early 17th century – including John Wesley, his younger brother Charles, and George Whitefield—formed a “Holy Club” and soon began their own ministry. Led by Whitefield’s then-radical example, they turned to “field-preaching.”

“I thought it might be doing the service of my Creator, who had a mountain for his pulpit and the heavens for a 
sounding board; and who, when his Gospel was refused by the Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges.” So Whitefield addressed 200 coal miners in February 1739, as in defiance of church convention, he preached in the open air of Kingswood.

John Wesley preaching on his father’s tomb
Epworth churchyard
Image: via Wesley Online Center

How daring was this in the 18th century?

Isaac Taylor, critic of the early Methodists, had to admit: “Ten thousand might more easily be found who would confront a battery than two who, with the sensitiveness of education about them, could mount a table by the roadside, give out a psalm, and gather a mob.”

First, they preached outside because the established churches would not have them, but soon only the out of doors would do— Whitefield and Wesley were drawing crowds too huge for any indoor venue.

The Wesley Memorial Methodist Church came about nearly a century later, but we think its floral window, along with the Bible references, strives to bring the outdoors in. (Recall that the arts and crafts movement, with its total immersion in naturalistic design was in full swing.) The window was created in the 1870s, to honor Rev. G. Maunder “whose energy and enthusiasm led to the building of the present church.” But we think the window also remembers the daring founders of the faith, their suspicion of organized religion, and dedication to “itinerancy.”

“Wesley Preaching Outdoors”
Guernsey Flower Arrangement Society
Forest United Methodist Church, July 2007
Photo: God and Marmalade

A mason “Mr. Symm” also carved flowers inside the church. Dorothy Stepney writes, “The carving in stone on the arcade capitals represent twelve different kinds of English plants.  I am afraid that we do not know what the plants are.” Nor have we been able to locate a photograph with enough detail to help. We hope one day to visit Wesley Memorial ourselves and see the local plants carved in stone, but in the meantime, perhaps a gentle “itinerant” HFP reader/photographer will document this intriguing example of floral church art.

Many thanks to Dorothy Stepney for her kind correspondance about the church, its history and its ornamentation.

May 26-28th of last year, the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church in Epworth, North Lincolnshire, celebrated Charles Wesley with a special flower festival. Parishoners made flower arrangements based on Wesley’s hymns (“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” and many more). And in July 2007, Forest United Methodist Church in Guernsey depicted moments in Charles Wesley’s life with flower arrangements.

We close with a verse from one of his hymns for Whitsuntide:

Impart the salutary pain,
The sudden soul-condemning power,
Blow on the goodliness of man,
Wither the grass, and blast the flower,
That when their works are all o’erthrown
The word of grace may stand alone.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Bloom—Guitar Gardening with Eric

Strings are six green fuses that drive the flowers from Eric Johnson’s guitar. Nine years in the making, his Bloom is a prolific beauty.

Bloom/Eric Johnson
Photo: via Amazon

Talk about “Eric” with the guitarzans of Austin, Texas, and they’re most likely twanging about local wonder Eric Johnson. We’d never heard of him till we moved to town in ‘99, but catching Johnson’s “SRV” (tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan) on the radio one afternoon, we phoned the DJ. Who was that???

What makes EJ ripe for HFP is his most recent musical offering, a collection called “Bloom.” There are lilies, plumerias, and sunflowers sprinkled around the liner notes, but beyond decoration there’s Johnson’s talent – a force of nature. No matter how many styles he sprouts, Johnson keeps true to his fixation—tone.

We find his playing pure, aromatic – even intergalactic. Johnson’s critics call him a “gearhead” – who labors so fervently for technique he loses his soul. We don’t hear it that way. For us, his playing is as bracing as eucalyptus. Not just “I Want to Take You Higher” but “I Can and I WILL!”

Continue Reading

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Mighty Floozy: Rose of Sharon

Korea’s beloved national flower gets no respect in many parts of the U.S. Do you chalk it up to aesthetics, history or character?

Korean postage stamp of the national flower Mugunghwa, issued in 1993
Photo: Koreastamp

Though landscape designers work out of doors, they’re privy to their clients’ interior lives. One customer fantasizes a Roman empire on a quarter acre; another lives in terror of pink.

Years ago, we asked our landscape designing friend Mac Reid what his work as botanical confessor had taught him about flower snobbery, and Mac allowed that, yes, around Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky, there was one definite plant non grata: the Rose of Sharon. (Hibiscus Syriacus L. ).

Too easy to grow? Too blowsy? Too, dare we say it—pink?

Those very qualities that made Rose of Sharon distasteful to Kentuckians strike people quite differently on the other side of the world. Mugunghwa (Rose of Sharon) is revered in South Korea, the national flower. And it will be in special evidence there today. Not only is this bloom season for mugunghwa, August 15 is a national holiday twice over, so the Korean emblem has sprung up all over Seoul.

Continue Reading

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

‘Wake Up the Energy Field!’

Showman, designer, and mobile gardener Simple lets go another wonderland before an audience of plant experts, among them seedsman-writer-fan Allen Bush.

Musicians jamming in Simple’s garden
Douglasville, PA
Photo: Rita Randolph

By Allen Bush

I am impressed by those who love their gardens. I like all sorts and have shamelessly cribbed from many. I admire English gardens - especially in England - and am still trying to figure-out what a native garden can be (having planted dozens of Kentucky native species.)

My favorite gardens are kindly tended though not always thoroughly weeded.  They run the gamut from fussy to messy. I confess to a fondness for plants, though in some gardens they are scarce. Few are design originals….

A few weeks ago, my next door neighbor brought over Shocking Beauty, a book written by Thomas Hobbs, the author and garden-center owner from Vancouver, Canada. There are colorful plant combinations in dazzling garden photos from Mt. Cuba in Delaware to Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland. This leads to Hobbs’s own inspired garden, surrounding his 1930s Mission Revival-style home. Toward the end he writes about an occasional epiphany, “Being overwhelmed by what you see (in gardens) is an experience that does not happen very often.” He adds, “Gardening without fear means taking risks that saner heads would never contemplate.”

…another way of saying, a garden should be fun. Simple’s is FUN!

Though Simple’s gardens have not become fodder for a coffee table book, I’d lay down a twenty and bet Hobbs would be impressed.

Continue Reading

Monday, August 11, 2008

Base, Superstructure, Giverny

John Levett tries focussing downward and rediscovers the gap in Marxism—a garden.

Essay and Photos by John Levett

This started with Dave Mackay. Sitting in the garden on a day that was almost Summer I thought of Dave. He played for a variety of football clubs in the ‘60s & ‘70s and was well known for football-with-violence. One story has a journalist knocking on Mackay’s front door on a Saturday afternoon to let his wife know Dave had finished the game with a broken leg. Her (alleged) response was “Whose?”

1953. I got my first pair of birthday football boots. Not just any pair. A pair ‘As Worn By Stanley Matthews.’ No doubt as personally worn and dispatched by Stan immediately on his return home from that Coronation year’s FA Cup Final (Backpool 4 - Bolton 3). In such a year not a sign of a ‘Wayne,’ ‘Kevin’ or ‘Glenn,’ let alone fancy Dans like ‘Ronaldo,’ ‘Didier,’ or ‘Raphael.’ Stans, Alfs and Berts all round—English, working class and tea drinkers.

Continue Reading

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Garden as Doorway through Time

Speaking in California on her new book Yard Art and Handmade Places, Jill Nokes gets a pointer from a friend—backward in time, down a well-beaten trail in old San Antonio. Thank you, Jill!

Mission San Francisco de Espada, San Antonio, TX
Photo: Jill Nokes

By Jill Nokes

Late last spring, while I was visiting California to give a book lecture, someone asked if I had ever noticed “that charming little swept dirt yard just outside the entrance to the Mission San Francisco de Espada” in San Antonio.  Like most people’s visits to the eighteenth century missions in San Antonio, mine had been limited to taking out of town guests to see the Alamo, and, once, a quick drive-by tour of Mission Concepciòn de Acuña.  Somehow I had never taken the time to explore the eight-mile “Mission Road.” This concrete trail connecting seven missions begins downtown with the mythic shrine of the Alamo, and follows the San Antonio River to the southernmost Mission Espada.  Although I have spent countless hours looking at ancient churches all over Mexico, I had only a vague understanding of the old presidios and religious compounds established less than one hundred miles from my home.

Soon after returning from California, with another lecture scheduled in San Antonio, I used that as an excuse to shanghai my good friend and preservationist architect Morgan Price to go with me to search for the vernacular garden that had so intrigued my California friend.

Continue Reading

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Jasmine Song for the Olympians

Beijing will serenade medalists with jade chimes, ancient bronze bells and “Mo Li Hua”—a flower song centuries old.

Chinese jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum)
Photo: Ivette Soler, Germinatrix

Like a bad penny, John Williams’s “Olympic Fanfare” keeps turning up, only lots louder than a penny—tooting in your head. Rip Van Winkle, this clip’s for you….

Williams wrote the bloated jingle for 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles, and twenty-four years later it’s going to require mass neurosurgery to free us of it.

Today, we were gladdened to learn that musical directors of the 2008 Beijing Olympics have taken a different approach, more ancient chimes, less Hollywood horns. Tan Dun calls it “jinshengyuzhen - gold sound and jade vibrations.” Here he describes his musical philosophy and instrumentation in relation to Taoism and Zen.

What most pleased us was Tan’s decision to make “Jasmine Flower,” a Chinese folk song, the theme of this year’s medal ceremonies. Even Westerners may actually have heard “Mo Li Hua” (Jasmine Flower). The song dates from the Qing dynasty, and Puccini made it the theme for his operatic princess Turandot.

If you’re preparing for the games and would like to be able to sing along to “Mo Li Hua,” there are loads of youtube recordings. Our favorite is this duet – recorder and a Chinese zither (Gu Zheng). Another pretty instrumental version comes from this chamber music trio: harp, cello, and violin. And how about played on a banjo at the kitchen table?

Continue Reading

Monday, August 04, 2008

Botany à la Cart

A 350-year-old research garden wheels out an innovation in plant education. And now, the public’s invited. Thanks, EarthScholars, for this trip to Chelsea. 

At the Entrance to Chelsea Physic Garden
Photo: EarthScholars™ Research Group

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

There is small and wonderful “secret” walled garden in southwest London within the Royal Borough of Chelsea that no plant enthusiast should miss. This is the Chelsea Physic Garden, founded by the Society of Apothecaries in 1673. Its purpose was to promote the study of botany in relation to medicine, then known as the “physic” or healing arts. Here, apothecaries’ (pharmacists’) apprentices were trained to identify medicinal plants.

This hidden garden is located on a 3.5-acre section of the grounds surrounding Chelsea’s most famous building--the Chelsea Royal Hospital--an elegant building designed by architect Christopher Wren and completed in 1694. Elsewhere on the grounds, the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show (“the ultimate event in the gardening year”) is held each May. 

The average price of a house in Chelsea (reported by the BBC, from 2007 data) is $10,189,471. Here is a “Global Ultra Prime Residential Area,” frequented by Princes William and Harry.  For 300 years, this garden was closed to the public, admitting scientific researchers only. Then, in 1983, due to financial expediency, the garden’s administration was transferred to a new independent charity, and it was decided to admit the public on a limited basis. What a joy! Ordinary folk could finally see behind those high and venerable stone walls.

Continue Reading

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Preemptive Peace Rose

Peace preparedness, in the Capitol or the nursery, takes foresight and work. Consider a French rosarian, a Texas libertarian, and thousands of people out today protesting conflict with Iran.

Originally “Madame A. Meilland,” this is one of
the most popular roses in the world and the parent
of more than 300 rose cultivars.
Photo: J. Scott Bovitz

Ron Paul, libertarian Republican, has not been our most favored candidate to be the next U.S. president, but his has been the clearest moment thus far in the campaigns. At a debate of Republicans in June 2007, Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked: “What’s the most pressing moral issue in the United States right now?”

Ron Paul answered without hesitation:

I think it is the acceptance just recently that we now promote preemptive war. I do not believe that’s part of the American tradition. We, in the past, have always declared war in the defense of our liberties or to aid somebody, but now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war. We have rejected the just-war theory of Christianity. And now, tonight, we hear that we’re not even willing to remove from the table a preemptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security!

Paul was referring to the ongoing Iraq War, of course, and to the threat of war on Iran. From bizarre rumblings last year, there is now legislation soon to come before the U.S. Congress that would demand that the president initiate sanctions against Iran. House Resolution 362 also calls for --

Continue Reading

Friday, August 01, 2008

HFQ #3: 10,000 Mini-Roses? Si?

Liza’s company in Israel makes itsy-bitsy things: “We write names and messages on one grain of rice and sea shells,” she says. “We put a dried rose or a flower in a glass vial and make personal pendants.” So she is seeking to buy a big load of tiny dried “Si” roses. “We need a large amount—10,000 or more.”

(Readers may recall our brief post on miniature roses that pictured “Si” posed with a penny.)

If you can help these traders and thereby foster the cause of world mini-osity, let us know or directly. As always, we are not vouching for this company in any way, just passing along a request. Venture at your own risk (baby steps advised).