We are reinventing our company. Since 2006 we have been transforming from a small but extremely diverse regional mail order nursery into a larger and more broadly assorted national research and production company with several nurseries, test gardens and a greater online presence.

One of our perduring services is a close personal contact with customers. We invite you to Open Days at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, PA, and at the original site in Kingston, WA—now our zone 8 and 9 research and display gardens. We held many Open Day weekends in 2009—with most of the proceeds donated to The Garden Conservancy—and plan more for 2010. Please stay tuned to this website.

Another way to talk to our customers is through email and weblog media. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed our Heronswood Nursery emails and my Heronswood Voice blogs. Soon we shall upgrade our web services for 2010, with everything up and ready in a couple of months.

Now enjoy a new blog about the current vogue for eternal love, sustaining beauty and enduring fidelity. (Edward Cullen might consider becoming “vegan”.) In any case, our passion is for stamens, chlorophyll and deep roots. Like you, we love new, rare and unusual plants. However, if you’re looking for Heronswood cultivars that will live many long, moonlit years, you’ve come to the right blog. These special selections will help you serve your new-found lust, or recurring addiction.

A few ground rules, so to speak. For a kind of immortality—not absolute—you must look first to the trees, and in general the taller, the better. Of all plants, the woody plants tend to be the longest lived. Larger more than smaller, alas. Some shrubs live an extremely long time because they can rejuvenate from the roots, if well established in the garden.

Heck, Kristen Stewart should get to know the Trembling Aspen, in particular the stand of them out in Southern Utah. It’s not only beautiful (even from a jet plane at 40,000 feet), it’s also over 75,000 years old and comprises one single plant, about 100 acres in size. It is, in effect, a single “tree” organism.  Try that in “Twilight“.

To add to today’s cinematic theme, I point out that woody vines can be extremely long-lived too, twining and wrapping themselves around, well, their sturdier neighbor. “Love the one you’re with!”

Here’s the timeless line-up:

Trees:
Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Dawn redwood) – This will last, under normal conditions, at least 200 years.

Shrubs:
Buxus microphylla japonica ‘Morris Midget’ – minimum 50 years

Buxus sempervirens ‘Elegantissima’ – minimum 50-60 years

Hydrangea, any, as well as the related vines, such as Schizophragma hydrangeoides ‘Roseum’– minimum 35 years

Rosa ‘Eddie’s Jewel’– minimum 50 years

Rosa noisetliana ‘Darlow’s Enigma’– minimum 50 years

Tsuga canadensis ‘Cole’s Prostrate’(a dwarf form of a woodland coniferous tree) – minimum 75 years, lasts up to 150-200 years

Wisteria brachbotrys ‘Shiro-kapitan’ – minimum 50 to 60 years up to 100s

Wisteria floribunda ‘Violacea Plena’ – minimum 50 to 60 years up to 100s

Wisteria macrostachya ‘Blue Moon’– minimum 50 to 60 years up to 100s

Perennials:
Helleborus species and Heronswood cultivars– minimum 40 years

Paeonia (Itoh Hybrid Peony) any, such as ‘Kopper Kettle’– minimum 40 years

Papaver – any Heronswood varieties – minimum 50 years

Grasses:
Panicum amarum ‘Dewey Blue’– minimum 15 to 20 years

Pennisetum orientale ‘Karley Rose’ PP12909– minimum 25-30 years

Dried plants and herbarium books go just so far and no more—flat, drained on a page or a bit dusty and stiff in a vase. Not quite so much for your descendents and their descendents—but not bad.

Heronswood’s more genuine “everlastings” are alive and, well, green-blooded. All they need is a bit of planning up front and then ongoing attention. I’ve always thought that they’re a bit like pets. Only they last longer, need less care . . . and don’t bite quite as often.

Norman Borlaug died recently (12 September 2009) at the age of 95. Borlaug began life as an Iowa farm boy, was trained as a plant pathologist at the University of Minnesota, and went on to direct some of the most important plant breeding efforts of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for those efforts.

Borlaug is father of the “Green Revolution”, which began after World War II. Green Revolution agriculture is often criticized because of its reliance on pesticides, hybrid technology, and intensive water use, but it is also widely credited as having saved more human lives, particularly in the Third World, than anything else in the history of the human species. Later in life, Borlaug conceded that there might be some merit in these criticisms but that the Green Revolution was a good start in the right direction.

A good start it was, but we still face many of the same problems that Borlaug encountered. One of these is excess soil salt, or salinity. Salinity is a soil condition characterized by a high concentration of soluble salts that inhibit plant growth. Excess soil salt is a problem as old as agriculture. The civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, the area centered around modern-day Iraq, are thought to have dissipated as a result of climate change and excess soil salt that destroyed their agriculture.

Soil salinity is one of the primary abiotic stresses affecting plant growth and quality. As much as 6% of the earth’s total land area is affected by excess soil salt. Much of this arises from natural causes. Rock weathering releases soluble salts, and rainwater itself contains 6–50 ppm sodium chloride. Clearing land for cultivation and irrigation are two other causes of increased soil salinity; both raise the water table and salts are then concentrated in the root zones of plants.

Salinity is a common element of arid and semiarid lands, but it is also found in regions with moderate rainfall such as the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, particularly where irrigation is used. Poor quality irrigation water and poor drainage can make it worse. And irrigation is important in agriculture. Only about 15% of all cultivated land is irrigated, but irrigated land is about twice as productive as rained land and accounts for about 30–40% of the world’s food production. Breeding salt tolerance in plants is an important goal for plant scientists.

Now, what’s a salt? Salts are ionic compounds, and ionic compounds are characterized as having an electrostatic bond between metal and nonmetal ions. Ions are charged atoms. In water, salt dissolves as the ions composing the salt disassociate. If the water evaporates and the concentration of salt in water (in solution) becomes too great (saturated), the salt precipitates out of solution and becomes solid once more. Sodium chloride (table salt) is the primary salt involved in soil salinity; the primary ions responsible for salinization are sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and chlorine.

Sensitivity to salt differs in plants. Some are tolerant while others are quite sensitive. Plants that grow in salt marshes and estuaries where the salt concentration may vary diurnally are (not surprisingly) able to thrive at much higher salinities than can woodland plants; this is easily demonstrated. But salt is so common in soils that all plants have evolved the ability to cope with and adapt to some degree of salinity.

How does salt affect plants? There are two basic ways. First, high salt concentrations in soil make it harder for plant roots to extract water from the soil. This is purely the result of osmosis, the movement of water across a semipermeable membrane, as in a plant cell, from an area of high water potential (low salt concentration) to an area of low water potential (high salt concentration). When the concentration of soil-water salt rises above a threshold, water will tend to flow out of the plant. If plants had no way of regulating this process, they would quickly dehydrate and die. Second, in a saline environment, salt enters the plant and accumulates. With time, it can reach toxic concentrations.

Both can be exacerbated by environmental factors such as sunlight, air temperature, and humidity, but of the two, osmotic stress has the most impact, and after soil-water salt exceeds a certain threshold its effect on plant growth is more or less immediate. Salt accumulation, on the other hand, has a more gradual effect. Stress from salt accumulation occurs later in the plant’s life cycle, and only at very high levels of salinity does its effect dominate.

How do plants adapt to increased salinity? Traditionally, plants have been described as either “excluders” or “includers” of salt, those that select against its uptake or those that regulate its accumulation. In most plants, a little of both strategies is seen. Other plants adapt to salinity by completing their life cycles rapidly and avoiding the toxic effects of accumulated salt altogether. These are worthwhile summaries but trivial answers to complex processes.

All plant functions ultimately result from the genes that plants possess that control and coordinate growth in concert with the constraints of the environment, and that plants mount a coordinated response to their environment is easily demonstrated. The physiological manifestations of salt tolerance and the salt-stress response have been pretty well described. Traditional plant breeding of the type that Borlaug directed has produced quite stress-tolerant crops, mainly by introducing traits from stress-adapted wild relatives. So great progress has been made, but our understanding on a molecular and cellular level is only piecemeal.

Teasing answers from several issues will provide insights into the processes that cause salt tolerance and toxicity in plants. For example, what molecular processes control salt (actually ion) compartmentalization in plants, and what accounts for tissue tolerance and osmotic adjustment? How is salt transported once inside the plant? A gene family responsible for initial entry of ions into plants has been identified and gives us some insights. One fascinating question is how do the leaves know the roots are in salty soil? Clearly, they do because leaf growth rate is reduced proportionally to the concentration of salt in the soil solution and not to the salt concentration within the leaves. What accounts for this long-distance communication within plants?

In the next few decades, we will answer these questions. And in the process, we will have taken more steps in the right direction.

       —Frederick Dobbs

After giving a speech to 600 garden writers in North Carolina last week, I returned in a state of uncertainty—had anyone heard the underlying message?  It was too cerebral, I think, to read a speech to a bunch of pumped up enthusiasts who wanted to chat about the gorgeous Sarah Duke Gardens that surrounded us.  So, I’ll try again.

Dear Garden Writers

As we plant our flowers and vegetables, we are different from the people we were just one year ago.  Turning up the soil, we enrich it with a new and improved compost elixir.  We endeavor to build on last year’s successes and correct or avoid our past missteps.

Gardening tastes evolve, shift and expand.  Maybe this will be the year we create a colorful oasis in the shade, or fashion a meandering border like one of Mrs. Jekyll’s.  Over the winter you’ve been using more and more root vegetables—parsnips, rutabaga, etc.—in soups and dishes.  Perhaps they deserve their chance in the sun.  And there are so many lovely and fragrant climbing vines, where shall we grow those?

We in the seed and plant business are also in the business of re-creating ourselves each year.  We seek to answer and anticipate the changing tastes and needs of gardeners.

Each year at Heronswood, Burpee and The Cook’s Garden, we want to inspire and excite our customers with new varieties.  We look at every phase of the customer experience, and try to improve how we do things.  We want to make the process as fast, easy and informative as possible.

When gardeners come to one of our sites or order from our catalogs, we want them to feel a serene confidence in choosing us.  We want customers to be, not just satisfied, but substantially happy.  From time to time, we hear customers who are, in fact, ecstatic.

It’s time for us in the gardening business, and writers, to reexamine our approach and get better—a lot better.  We have an extraordinary story to tell.  People—millions of them—are waiting to hear it.

And we must continue to get better.  We are privileged to work in such a magnificent field, one with so many fascinating dimensions.  There are so many paths to the garden.

From looking at gardening catalogs, websites and journalism, you would think we want to keep this passion of ours a secret.  We’re parochial.  We tend to talk in a sleepy monotone, scarcely audible in our noisy world.

I’m not advocating hype, hard-sell or finger-jabbing ferocity—although I know some of you can jab with the best of them.  I could show you jab-wounds.  Far from it:  I’m advocating persuasion and seduction.  And, above all, knowledge. Give them what the British call “shiny bits”.

Consider other forms of popular recreation:  music, sports, design, food, fashion, fitness, reading, popular entertainment.  The people in those fields bring bravado and brio to their writing.  Good writers care about their subject and make you care.  Everyone remembers a good story.

Good writers whet your appetite, fire your curiosity, inspire you.  They convey a conviction and point of view that turns you on.

Let me tell you something.  Gardening is sexier, smarter, cooler and more interesting by far than music, sports, design, food, fashion, fitness, reading, or popular entertainment.  It’s more creative, more dimensional, more engaging and deeper than any of those things.  Gardening is the real deal, the last, best refuge from vulgarity and a dumbed down culture.

There are going to be millions of readers wanting to know about gardening.  Vegetables have become the new rare perennials, while the latter are utterly mainstream in the garden world.  Don’t pigeonhole yourselves as “garden writers”.  Just write features about the “news” that is the current explosion in gardening and wave it in your editor’s face.  “Over here!  Headline story!”  The good ones will hear you.  Remember:  great first sentence.

I’ve given about 100 interviews in the past year, and most were to non-garden writers.  Reclaim your place in the publishing world, both offline and on.

There’s another side to this situation, too, and that is the business.  We in the product vendor community have to step up to the plate as well, and do more creative advertising. 

No slackers allowed.  No hesitation on this particular battlefield.  It’s a moment to be bold, if there ever was one.  Imagine:  a growth industry in the midst of a recession.  There are few better opportunities than the one facing us in the next several years.

Thank you.

(The following is the speech I gave to The Garden Writers Association last night at their annual convention in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Despite the familiar first sentence and a few other tropes, it’s a new piece.  Enjoy!)

2009 has been one extraordinary year in the history of American gardening.

As if on cue, a panoply of developing trends all pointed gardenwards, opening the garden gates to the most dramatic resurgence in American gardening since the Great Depression.

Of course, the current economic slump has proven an effective recruiting tool for new gardeners, who reap extraordinary savings by growing their own fruits and vegetables.

But the financial quagmire is just one of many causes for the cornucopia of new gardeners.

One contingent has started gardening due to well-founded concerns about food safety. This fussy crowd, it seems, prefers produce that hasn’t been mass-produced, shipped thousands of miles, exposed to carbon monoxide, and then gassed with ethylene.

The slow food movement, which emphasizes the freshness and flavor locally grown produce, has inspired many, who now harvest their own food right in their very local backyard.

Then there are the new epicureans, foodies who would no sooner dine on a hothouse tomato than serve spam as an entrée. That chorus of oohs and ahs issuing from the garden is the characteristic mating call of the foodies—summoning their partner to come and marvel over the serene delicacy of sweet corn, the sublime fragrances issuing from the tomato patch and the sensuous blue-black hues of the zaftig eggplant.

The thundering herd of gardeners over there? Why, that is the stampede of Baby Boomers, now nearing retirement. The Boomers’ children having flown the nest, this super-sized demographic has increasingly discovered a creative and rewarding form of recreation. The Baby Boomers’ landing in the garden reminds me of Arthur Koestler’s maxim: “Recreation is re-creation.”

The wide-eyed group over there, in plaid shirts and overalls?  They are seekers after something they have been unable to find on the internet, a wide-screen TV or their iPhone: authenticity. They are by now a little disenchanted with life in webville. They saw themselves as rulers in the empire of information: only to discover they were mere clickstreams, cookies and avatars in a corporate web. But in the garden they go from virtual to virtuous, their efforts rewarded with nourishment, flavor and beauty. In the garden they can connect to their planet, the seasons and themselves. Here, among the plants and flowers, the only tweets come from the birds.

The fitness craze has engendered its own gardening army. You can’t miss this crowd. They’re running, bicycling, or at the gym. When they aren’t busy burning calories and subduing their heart rate, you might see them in the supermarket, scrutinizing the labels on boxes and cans lest a gram of transfat or corn syrup corrupt the temples of their bodies.

Now the fitter than thou have jogged into the Great American Garden because they want to fortify their well-tuned bodies with the freshest, most nutritious food they can find. Soon fitness magazines will blazon headlines like “Turn Your Mulch to Muscle Power,” and “Weed Your Way to Fab Abs.”

To confirm that this is the Year of the Gardener, President Obama decided to create a vegetable garden on the grounds of the White House. Tens of thousands of new gardeners burst into bloom. Hail to the Chief Gardener!

It’s a new world that we – gardening writers and gardening companies – find ourselves. Just minutes ago, we were the old economy, a fragrant, sleepy corner of the American commerce, where bees accounted for most of the buzz. Newspaper editors and television producers gave even more space and time to celebrities and mindless controversies. Consumers seemed increasingly consumed by electronic gadgetry that kept them up-to-the-minute on the price of everything and the value of nothing. Going into the 21st century, everything—commerce, tastes, trends, news—seemed to be spinning faster and faster.

The English writer G.K. Chesterton wrote of what he called “mankind’s favorite game,” which he called, “Cheat the Prophet.” Writing at the dawn of the 20th century, when writers like George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells were prophesying mankind’s destiny, Chesterton explains how “Cheat the Prophet” is played. “The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.”

If the trend forecasters, cool hunters and secular prophets of our time foresaw this Great Garden Revival, they were uncharacteristically quiet about it. Or maybe, because I was in my garden, I failed to notice them.

Brothers and sisters of the garden, we are privileged witnesses of and participants in a new era of gardening. As gardening’s champions, we all need to do a better job inspiring those new to gardening and better serving the needs of veteran gardeners.

Gardening is front-page news this year. Americans who have never touched a trowel are now aware of the White House garden, the savings they can reap from growing their own, and the nutritional bonanza that is the home garden. Michael Pollan, among other writers, has made Americans keenly aware of what is at the end of their forks. The great Tomato Blight of 2009 became fodder for newspaper editorials.

Gardeners are coming to us. Millions more gardeners are waiting in the wings; underground, in a state of latency, like seeds they await the day the earth grow moist and warm, and the sun burn brighter, before they burst into bloom.

Dr. Coué, the early 20th century proponent of the power of positive thinking, created the mantra, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” The gardening business and writers now need to every day, in every way, get better and better.

To help make the Great American Garden a 21st century reality, we have to show conviction, ingenuity and enterprising spirit. Wannabee gardeners need to be supported with easily accessible information and inspiration. We need to promote the garden’s role in our schools and communities. Our veteran gardeners should have instant access to answers for their gardening questions.

Up to now, gardening has been an insular culture. We are believers all, and there is a reassuring familiarity—not without its charms—that pervades our books, catalogs, websites and articles. By contrast, look back at seed catalogues from the 19th century—and well into the 20th—there is an excitement, a sense of discovery, a “wow factor” that pervades their pages.

Gardening will always have its dreamy, otherworldly component; the garden may well be the last vulgarity-free zone in our culture. Yet, as people blessed with a passion, let’s share this passion with our readers, editors and customers. The garden’s extraordinary rewards and delights are welcome news—an antidote to much that’s wrong with civilization. My Fellow Gardeners, our moment has arrived. Let’s make the most of it.

On this, my 200th blog, I get to say whatever I want in a top ten list, in no special order. 

They don’t make Labor Day like they used to.

The shifting forms and meanings of labor have rendered Labor Day our most nebulous national holiday. For example, in gardening—a leisure activity—Labor Day is incorrectly considered the close of the season. For holiday-goers, it marks the end of summer—despite schools regularly starting weeks before the first Monday of September, and the calendar signaling the estival end two weeks later. Vacations and education seem conceptually quite remote from the industrial world that gave Labor Day its original meaning.

However, before some savvy marketer comes along to rebrand Labor Day (points of difference, unique selling propositions, call to action, etc.), let’s first decide what we are talking about when we talk about labor.

Labor has its roots in the Garden of Eden. In the Book of Genesis, God, divinely piqued by Adam and Eve’s snacking on the apple plucked from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, condemns mankind to a life of work.

God tells Adam the rest of his life will be given to labor, as a result of sin. “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree, about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it’, cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.”

Adam, Eve, and their descendents—namely us—got off lightly. The Old Testament God had a notably short fuse, punitive streak and large arsenal of reprisals. Compared with plagues, earthquakes and floods, a life sentence of labor seems lenient.

But for God’s punishment, it’s hard to imagine how people were going to acquire their nourishment. Would grapes fling themselves into waiting mouths? Lettuce toss itself into bowls? Eggplants daub themselves in olive oil, roast themselves and vault upon the tongue? God’s decree created not only labor, but also the world’s oldest profession: gardening.

Since that awkward afternoon in the Garden of Eden, labor has been our fate. But its role, meaning and value are ever changing. For some, “labor” denotes unions like the UAW and Teamsters; but the American labor union is now an endangered species, vanishing faster than an Arctic glacier. In 1945, more than one-third of employed Americans belonged to unions; union membership stands now at 12.5%. If you exclude government unions, the number shrinks to 7.8%.

For others, “labor” might imply work performed at a place of business, whether office or factory. Today, though, the divide between company and home, work and leisure, is increasingly blurred. Americans are at work everywhere—you can’t avoid them. Homes, cafes, parks, libraries, trains, planes, cars, and even sidewalks now comprise the Great American Office—a 24/7 virtual workplace extending and interconnecting wherever there are radio waves or fiber optic cable.

Increasingly, modern-day workers rely more on their heads than on muscular or manual skill to stoke the new hybrid engine of American commerce. Liberated from the dictates of timeclocks and the confines of cubicles, today’s “knowledge workers” view their Bedouin work life as a major advance over their parents’ 9-5 corporate grind and light years from the sweaty daylong exertions of workshop and field.

Such workers exult in what they view as their new freedom and flexibility. Their cherished Blackberries, I-Phones and netbooks liberate them from humdrum office life. This love affair with technology smacks of what Marxist theory terms “false consciousness”—the failure to recognize that the instruments of personal oppression and exploitation are self-imposed. It’s also a romance the modern union bosses have a rough time finding room in. Thus, most New Age labor is neither especially gilded, much less gilded. In our mercurial 21st century marketplace, job security, fringe benefits and health plans are sometimes as rare as sightings of Cesar Chavez.

When it comes to etymology, the word “labor”, like all indispensable words—”human”, “culture”, etc.—derives from agriculture, specifically the word for plough. Only since 1835 has the general term “labor” served to designate a broad category of workers. Until then, “labor” meant onerous work, travail.

Yet, there is one place where the meaning of labor can be freed of ambiguity, alienation and anomie. To get there, let’s go right back to where we, and labor, trace our origins: the garden.

In the garden we can rediscover labor’s original—and perhaps even prehistoric—meaning, purpose and satisfaction. I foresee that the garden will emerge, repurposed, and become an essential new element of not just the nation’s evolving life style, but also a more familiar, less alienated conjunction of work and pleasure.

On this Labor Day, consider how supplying your family with fresh, nutritious and safe homegrown food is one job that will not be downsized, where you will always be your own boss, and where you truly reap the fruits of your labors. Here truly is a labor of love.

2009 has been one extraordinary year in the history of American gardening.

As if on cue, a panoply of developing trends all pointed towards the garden, opening the gates to the most dramatic resurgence in American gardening since the Great Depression. First and foremost, the current economic slump has proven an effective recruiting tool for new gardeners, who reap extraordinary savings by growing their own fruits and vegetables.

The cornucopia of new gardeners has gravitated to the garden for a range of reasons. One contingent started gardening due to well-founded concerns about food safety. The locavore movement, with its emphasis on acquiring locally grown produce, has inspired many, who now harvest their own food right in their local backyard.

Hear that? The chorus of oohs and ahs is the sound of gardening’s epicures, foodies besotted with the taste of ten-minute old broccoli, European tomatoes and exotic herbs from the garden.

The thundering herd of gardeners over there? Why, those are the Baby Boomers, nearing retirement, their brood of children having flown the nest, who have discovered a creative and rewarding form of recreation. The wide-eyed group over there, in plaid shirts and overalls? They are the seekers, looking for something they have been unable to find on the internet, a wide-screen TV or their iPhone: authenticity. In the garden they connect to their planet, the seasons and themselves.

The trend towards healthier lifestyles has engendered a veritable gardening army: they’ve landed in the Great American Garden because they want to fortify their well-tuned bodies with the freshest, most nutritious food they can find. And when the President and First Lady decided to create a vegetable garden on the grounds of the White House, tens of thousands of new gardeners burst into bloom. Hail to the Chief Gardener!

Gardening is, by its nature, a serene corner of the cultural landscape. Other than the occasional cacophony of crows squawking for our fresh sweet corn, we don’t get much excitement around here. We gardeners comprise one of the quieter interest groups in the land, our murmured bromides all but drowned out by garrulous trout fishermen and vociferous birdwatchers. Gardeners reckon life not in minutes, hours or days, but seasons.

Yet, bewilderingly, one key ingredient is missing from this great new flowering of the American garden: flowers. While sales of vegetables, herbs and fruit seeds have surpassed the wildest hopes of the country’s nurseries, there has been a commensurate drop-off in the sales of flower seeds and plants. In these belt-tightening days, it appears America’s gardeners seem to regard flowers as somehow superfluous, a luxury to dispense with in tough times.

In flower gardening, your rewards are reckoned, not in salads, soups and souflés, vitamins, antioxidants or fiber. The pleasures derived from flower gardening speak not to the body but to the human spirit.

When dining at restaurants, and there is a bud vase or a small bouquet of fresh flowers on the table, I often perform a feat of legerdemain for my dining companions. With a dramatic sweep of my arm, I snatch the flower vase and conceal it under the table. “Now,” I ask, in my best magician voice, “see anything different?”

It never fails: my companions instantly recognize something significant is now missing from the table – and it’s not just a vase with a lily or two. It’s as if a divine light switch has shut off, and the table, aglow and alive just moments ago, now looks dead, drained of beauty and warmth. Once the vase is back on the table, the flowers’ magic is back at work, lighting up the table, and dancing in the eyes of my companions, whose relief is unmistakable.

The effect of my floral disappearing act is no fluke. Science is just now beginning to apprehend the effects of flowers on our lives and surroundings.

A recent Rutgers study set out to explore the impact of cultivated flowers on human emotions. Flowers, when presented to women, unfailingly evoke the Duchenne smile: the term of art for the spontaneous teeth-baring grin of delight and gratitude. Flowers, researchers discovered, exercise an instant impact on happiness, with lasting effects of boosting mood, enjoyment and life satisfaction, diminishing depression and anxiety. Flowers make the home more welcoming and create positive emotional feelings in visitors. People who buy more flowers are happier. In this anxious, uncertain time, flowers are no luxury, but a blissful necessity.

My grandfather prospered during the Great Depression by growing sweet peas and violets. Not only were they popular, they were essential to combating depression. The late 1920s and early 1930s saw also similar streaks of popularity in cosmetics, movies and inexpensive mass entertainment, such as the hugely popular Century Of Progress back in my hometown of Chicago.

But there’s more: the flowers you grow in your garden have significant advantages over purchased flowers, which are days old, and often exposed to carbon monoxide and other pollutants, in their cultivation and shipping.

Your flower garden is not only harmonious, colorful and fragrant, it will also enhance the value of your home. Ask any realtor. Plus, the flowers you gather will have a radiance and freshness money can’t buy – and at a fraction of what they would cost at retail.

The tribe of new American gardeners who have opted out of flowers are missing much of the garden’s magic, beauty, harmony, color and fragrance. Right now, they can plant fall flowers, as well as bulbs to bloom next spring. I hope they will conduct their own experiment with flowers in the garden and the home. Their glittering Duchene smiles will be all the proof I need that the experiment has proven a success.

This growing season at Fordhook has been frightening. Normally, I expect a couple of monsoon like periods, a few days in late May, and another few days in late July and a couple in late August, max. However, for 2009 the reverse has been true. The only normal days have been, all combined, about one week. Just a couple of days longer than the time it takes a carton of milk to spoil – that has been the extent of our warm season. Forget about tomato sauce. We even had a record year for lightening. And now this darkest of summers is nearly over.

However dreadful it has been on the vegetables, our “anti-summer” has been little different from a slightly gloomier-than-average English summer. In a word, this summer has been “nirvana” for our perennials.

Ideally, perennial gardens resemble symphonic orchestras, as is often mentioned in popular gardening books. Except that, instead of the normal 80 to 90 musicians playing, say, “The 1812 Overture”, you have 5 or 6. This makes Tchaikovsky sound a bit weird, to say the least. So, it’s not a very good analogy. If you’re looking for a big symphonic sweep, you need a crew of full time gardeners and several acres of land, at minimum.

I always like to listen to a symphonic orchestra, or orchestral symphony, or whatever it is. It has a very satisfying feeling. It reminds me of the Talking Heads song, “Heaven”, when he says that heaven is a bar where everyone leaves at “exactly the same time”. Good line!

Perennial gardens are just as dreamlike or fantastic – they never bloom anywhere near the same time. Thus, the reality is you have to zoom right in on your favorite candidate and love him, or her, up. (I always think of plants as “hims” or “hers”. Generally, the girls outnumber the boys.)

Recent brain research has found that the eye picks up the “macro” and “micro” simultaneously – that we focus not on either but on both at once. Perhaps this is what the ancient eastern philosophies called the “third eye”. In any case, our brains get a powerful, multi-focal workout in a large perennial garden.

Once a friend of mine said his garden was “heroic” in that there’s always one perennial showing off at any given time. Sometimes, he said, it amounted to a lone, comedic sort of performance – a stand-up solo, so to speak. Nothing else was even trying to bloom. Other times, the “hero” was dominant over a lesser, subordinate – or supporting – cast. More like a “concerto”.

At our new perennial and ornamental shrub gardens at Fordhook Farms, just as at the first Heronswood in Kingston, the successional nature of the plantings is so strong that there are always several heroes competing for favor. More like Babylon than Jerusalem. The original “heronistas” would say all roads lead to Kingston, as was the case last Sunday, August 30th, when we opened Mecca’s doors for a warm and sunny day’s reception, with all proceeds going to The Garden Conservancy. We had almost 400 guests in 6 hours!

The dates for the next Open House weekends are Fordhook Fall Open, Friday & Saturday, September 25 & 26 in Doylestown; and then the very next Sunday, October 4th, at Heronswood West in Kingston, Washington. Technically, you could go to both, if you have a lead foot – in a hybrid car.

Hope to see you there!

It is always an unusual event when you copy someone else and end up discovering that you made the original.

As I mentioned last winter in “Camp Obama“, the President and First Lady might have considered breaking ground on their starter garden in private rather than in public.

Maybe it’s just my innate sense of caution, but I feel that they would have had a luckier outcome up in the hills of Maryland rather than the klieg-lighted fishbowl of the White House. However, kudos to the administration for giving it a try.

The problem, apparently, is they didn’t do a soil test to discover the toxic waste in the sludge in the lawn. Nevertheless we at Burpee were so inspired by the First Lady that we created an exact replica of the White House garden here at Fordhook Farm. We simply used the diagram they provided and as close an approximation of the cultivars as we could guess.

You can see the results in the photos below. Thank goodness, we didn’t have any lead or heavy metals in our soil. We simply used a little bit of granular fertilizer at the beginning of the season.

In order to complete the scene for the press release shown below, I decided to wear white–as in White House–and include my black dog, Nathan, as in “Bo”.

We planted a second sowing of salad greens and brassicas for the fall. These pictures were taken just a couple days ago. Anyone who takes us up on our offer to join us at our Fall Heronswood Open will be able to see the White House Garden for themselves. Since the president’s staff down in D.C. is replacing the soils at the site, the gardens aren’t there anymore. Therefore, what started out as a copy, became the original.

Hope to see you at the Open, September 25 and 26.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

BURPEE VERSION OF WHITE HOUSE GARDEN REAPS BOUNTIFUL HARVEST

President Obama’s decision to plant a garden at the White House has been welcome news to both America’s gardeners and non-gardeners.
Inspired by the First Family’s example, W. Atlee Burpee & Co. decided to plant its own version at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, PA. Fordhook is where the nation’s leading home gardening company trials most of the vegetables it sells by catalogue, at retail stores and on the internet. According to the man responsible, the garden’s results have been outstanding.

“The White House Garden has done a great job of showcasing the advantages of growing your own vegetables,” says George Ball, chairman of Burpee and proprietor of Fordhook Farm. “In creating our Fordhook version of the garden, we chose to make some alterations in what we planted in view of soil conditions and typical weather conditions experienced over a long period of time.”

“While we included some heirloom varieties,” Mr. Ball notes, “We were careful to include hybrids that we felt would produce in greater quantities and superior quality.”

“Gardeners in the Northeast who planted heirloom tomatoes organically this year had a poor harvest–due to the long spell of gray, damp days that resulted in the well-known Tomato Blight of 2009. Most heirlooms had no resistance to this blight. There was little even the most experienced gardener could do to contain it.”

What will happen to the bountiful harvest predicted for Burpee’s White House Garden?

“We have an Autumn Garden Tour which will be open to the public scheduled for September 25 & 26,” says Mr. Ball. He adds, “We are considering a special Presidential Luncheon if President Obama or The First Lady could attend. As fellow gardeners, we will have plenty to talk about.” Plans for the luncheon menu will include a full range of freshly harvested vegetables.

The proverbial naïve optimist brought low by reality, Candide might be the first modern hero.  Certainly, he was the first modern gardener.  In the image popularized by the 18th century French novelist Voltaire—”tending your own garden”—Candide is a metaphor for pursuing, and enduring, one’s own path, perhaps even “minding your own business”, in the best sense of the phrase.

However, it is compelling that Voltaire chose the garden as his example.  He prophesied the concepts of not only the uniqueness of the individual and the modern notions of individuality, but also our infamous cultivation of the self.  Perhaps even the extreme example of the 20th century’s “cult of personality”—an individual separated from the pack or community, just as a garden is cut off from the hustle and bustle of daily life—is an outgrowth of Candide’s famous garden plot.

A bright star in the enlightened galaxy of French literature, Voltaire was popular and influential throughout the world.  The horticultural image he created, probably while working in his own estate garden, contributed to the new spirit of the entrepreneur in the emerging Industrial Revolution.  Our modern definition of the marketplace stems from Candide: a gathering spot for the fruit of one’s labors, as well as those of many other individuals.  After all, Voltaire wrote in the late 1700s, the time of the first modern democratic revolutions. For example, if there is a “marketplace of ideas”, in today’s parlance, then there must be “idea gardens” where they grow.  This concept spurred his pioneering efforts in creating the world’s first encyclopedia—a tree of knowledge, indeed, and an early ancestor of the Internet.

Perhaps it was even Voltaire who most ennobled the common merchant and laid the groundwork, the “soil”, for the growth of the modern businessman—someone pragmatic and, literally, common, yet resolved to making something enduringly good.

No wonder, then, that he chose the gardener as his metaphor.  For example, capitalists engage with the “common market”, or the trading place of those commodities that are comprised mostly of grains, fruits and vegetables.  The buyers and sellers of these goods laid the foundation of Wall Street.

For what is “fruit” but the fruit of the gardener’s labor?  Not only does one “invest” oneself in agriculture and gardening, but the image of the garden resonates in the Parable of the Talents.  Maybe Voltaire was being sly, and actually advocating a lesson of scripture in disguise.  This Biblical episode would seem to be the historic first appearance of the paradigm that created the modern industrial world.

Thus, today’s ordinary citizens “grow” their portfolios, as if each was a unique garden.  Stocks grow or, neglected, catch diseases and die.  With the clumsy tools we have now, investing has become as perilous as getting out of Oz.  As Dorothy said, “We must cross this strange place in order to get to the other side.”  Compared to today’s investors, she had it easy.

Ironic, then, that many experts cite as the greatest risk takers of all to be—not stockbrokers or hedge fund managers—but the American farmer, who risks his crops to both the weather and the commodity markets where the farmers’ “fruits” are betted against each other.  The goal is that society always benefits from the lowest prices.  However, the farmer gains only in the tricky balance between one neighbor’s success and another’s failure.  Think of Las Vegas and you get the idea.

How does the recent explosion of interest in gardening help us redefine our denatured concept of “work”?  Perhaps the homegrown vegetable trend will lead us back to the garden where “labor” possesses its original meaning and purpose.  Home and community gardens can become part of the nation’s new life style, just as the small farm can become a rejuvenated part of the nation’s industry.

Autumn does not have to be the season of despair.  As we labor into fall, we can resolve that our jobs of supplying family and neighbors with fresh, delicious food will never be outsourced.  With a new grove of perennial fruit trees and bushes, and an asparagus, garlic and rhubarb patch—all ideal for planting this season—your garden will grow in size.  Indeed, it may be only the small farm, community and home garden that possess, in large measure, the two greatest ingredients of work:  a tangible bounty and a sense of personal satisfaction. 

And, there’s one unique bonus at this particular company:  You will be the only person who will ever fire yourself.  But I believe, after the first bite, you will have a job for life.