by George Ball

This is the season when we appraise the year passing, and gently outline the year ahead, tracing tentative personal goals and plans. Even as our country inexorably advances towards the dreaded fiscal cliff, it is likewise a period when the press routinely diverts us with articles highlighting our era’s grand acquisitors and their grand acquisitions.

We read about the Russian oligarch whose Manhattan pied-a-terre for his 22-year-old daughter set him back (but not very far back) a cool $88 million. There’s the art collector, financier Leon Black, who plunked down $120 million for Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” We read, too, of the Malaysian tycoon who trolls about in his $4.8 billion yacht. Our proud possessors might well want to toast themselves with an 1811 Chateau d’Yquem, which flew out of the doors of an auction house at the too-good-to-pass-up price of $117,000 a bottle.

The plutocrats and their plums are not without redeeming social value. Their outlandish expenditures qualify them as gaudy efflorescences of supply side economics. With them, the slow drip-drip of trickle-down becomes a roaring waterfall, cascading into the coffers of builders, decorators, craftsmen, artists, and tradespeople. Indeed, if all of America’s very rich were to emulate these stupendous spenders, our descent from the fiscal cliff would surely land us all in a feather bed with a high thread count.

I’m reminded of King Louis XIV of France, whose lavish expenditures on Versailles subsidized thousands of French drapers, tailors, goldsmiths, silversmiths and other artisans. In order to channel fresh water to his palace, he employed 22,000 soldiers and 8,000 workers. Versailles alone employed some 15,000 people. He had at his service a gilded version of the Works Progress Administration. Louis XIV gets too little credit as an exemplar of Keynesian economics.

These musings bring up the whole realm of values—the vast, too-little-charted territory where we measure things at their true worth, and, so doing, hope to uncover our individual and collective meanings. The discussion of values gets little, if any, attention in today’s noisy press. The early 19th C. German philosopher Schopenhauer observed that the French aptly called journalists “day laborers”, a designation that helps explain their remarkably confined perspective. In journalism, first principles come last.

Values take a number of forms. At the more material end of things, there’s economic value: the tangible price for a tangible product or service. We call this kind of value a bargain when we receive more in the exchange than we might customarily hope for or expect. A true bargain is universally held to be a good thing, even by your average billionaire.

Then we come to values with a capital V, the kind you can’t buy: the Values of nurture and safety, emotional attachments, community, truth, beauty, morals and ethics, virtue, knowledge, and wisdom. Oddly enough, these Values seem faded as suitable topics for the mass media.

It was not so in the 19th century, when the steam engines of the Industrial Revolution had long been set in motion, and popular culture and consumerism ascended. These values found fervent and articulate champions in the philosophers Thoreau and Emerson in the States, and Arnold and Ruskin in Great Britain.

In the 21st century, there remains one place where all eternal values come alive—where both transcendent and tangible values intersect: the garden. Here is where you find beauty and truth, as well as flavor and fragrance in a true feast for the soul as well as the senses. Here you breathe freely, move gently, and refresh your body under the dome of heaven.

It is no coincidence that, from the Native American tribes, most notably the Pawnee who reconfigured their gardens according to the movement of the stars and planets they worshipped, to the children of Abraham—Hebrew, Christian and Moslem—whose foundational texts began as agriculture manuals, most religions arose from the principles of plant domestication or, as Thoreau put it, “faith in a seed”. Gardening is not simply the original paradigm of civilization—and, thus, politics—it is the best one. We reap what we sow indeed, especially in the gardens of humanity. And time—with its requirements of planning and patience so contrary to current popular culture—must be respected.

But to get back into lower case value for a moment, here in the garden is where extraordinary savings await you: the last bargain on earth.

Let’s do the math. A couple packets of tomato seed—either the pink and tangy Brandy Boy or the fragrant, sweet and highly adaptable Big Daddy—yields 50 guaranteed seedlings out of 55 seeds total. An average plant produces 35 fruits; multiply by 50. Your tomato patch yields 1,750 fruits, at a retail store price of $1.50 a pound. That would be $2,625 worth of store-bought tomatoes from a couple seed packets costing you about eleven dollars.

Your return on investment? 238 to 1 or 23,800 per cent, plus a deep sense of satisfaction. And your homegrown tomatoes are juicy beauties, bursting with just-picked flavor—everything bland, faux store-bought tomatoes aren’t.

That’s not just a value, but a harvest of Values. The last of the “Big Splendors”.

Russian oligarchs, take note.

by George Ball

I saw a Wall Street Journal article a couple of weeks ago about surprising, nay stunning, modern and contemporary art auction results. Old records were smashed and new ones set. Many were paintings of majestic importance and quality, such as Jackson Pollock’s. Yet others were for art works as trivial as—of all things—metal tulips.

It’s just like “everything else” these days, pardon the cliché. I was discussing it with a friend recently with respect to music. Samuel Barber? Too pretty. Ralph Vaughan Williams? Way too pretty. But modernist and contemporary music? All the rage. Few, if any, musical directors include Barber or Vaughan Williams in symphony repertoires; they are exceptions to the rule. Today, much art lacks traditional craft. People tell me that’s the point, but I still don’t get it. For example, few people learn to sing well. I remember, as a child, we used to sing while walking to and from school. Formal music instruction was mandatory in grade school. Alas, the country was younger then.

Consider pop music: Beyonce, Justin Bieber and Jay Z? I, for one, cannot take them for more than a few seconds. Taylor Swift is often flat. I am half southern so I am sensitive to country music. Swift cannot sing well. But then Sheryl Crow deliberately goes too sharp or flat for effect. Yet it is unpleasant. It is “effect”. Not aptitude, and certainly not training. Music is one of the toughest things to study, particularly classical music. Harmony? Counterpoint? The teachers bang your head against the wall for months on end. This is why one can hear a symphony by Bartok played flawlessly, night after night. God bless orchestras.

It is well-known, but worth repeating, that all the great pop singers of the 50s and 60s were trained in church from early childhood on. You will never hear them go flat.

Vaughan Williams’ “In the Fen Country” is one of the most exquisite pieces of music ever written. Or his songs set to the poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, the Wanderer series I think it’s called, depicting in poignant melody the sad plight and struggle of Scottish people driven off their land. The same goes for most traditional Scottish folk songs. Or consider poetry. Many of the passages in the Bible were developed, crafted and smoothed by translations into some of the most beautiful words in any language. Or Shakespeare. So few of these passages are familiar to most people any longer.

Yet “drip” paintings, as the Wall Street Journal dismissively called them (bit of a put-down of such a giant as Pollock) and the stack of garish metal tulips each go for many millions of dollars. Amazing, literally.

Here is another example of the subjectivity of beauty.

In the late 80s, after my colleagues and I had finally broken ‘Mona Lisa’ anemone, the first anemone identified on the Aalsmeer auction ticker by name, into Holland—the world’s largest and most competitive flower market (a reverse auction: dropping from high to low)—I flew back to Chicago from Amsterdam thoroughly exhausted after celebrating, including a couple of consecutive nights of drinking, which the Dutch did voluminously in those days. (Not so fashionable now.) Through the wine haze, one of the salty dogs of the Dutch flower industry told me, “You think we party? You should go drinking with the fish guys!”

The ‘Mona Lisa’ breakthrough in Holland was a big achievement. No company had done it before, much less an American one. As anyone who knows it will tell you, ‘Mona Lisa’ and its imitators are perhaps the finest cut flowers in the world in terms of sheer all-around beauty: irresistible and impossible to have too many in the home. I have seen people instantly relax in their presence.

The pinnacle of my thanks from the Dutch auction industry was to be invited to the chairman’s elegant corner office in downtown Amsterdam for his personal congratulations over coffee. At that time there were 13 separate flower auctions, working ‘round the clock, every day. So he was an important and impressive fellow. He had a Renaissance bronze next to his picture window that opened onto the roofs of Amsterdam.

Back home at my former company, PanAmerican Seed, we spent the next couple of years reselecting over the winter and building up another stock of “corms”, or bulbs as they might be called, of a truly spectacular crop—fantastically clear colors, very large blooms, long strong stems, over 2 weeks vase life in clear water. The perfect cut flower! Everything was “go”. We went to Japan in 1989. One of the best executives I ever worked with, John Guenther, and I sat down with all the top flower growers and merchants in every major city. (Oddly enough, Japanese industry might be consolidated at the top, but it is highly fragmented on the ground, so to speak.) But each and every one of the flower buyers we met said the same thing: “Too beautiful”.

John and I didn’t understand what was going on at first. We didn’t have very many Japanese trips under our belt, we were in the youthful prime of our business lives, very excited, confident and certain of the value of our product. However, we were not sophisticated about the many ways the Japanese say “no”, without using or even suggesting the word. Besides, a “no” was unimaginable to us.

We were confused for a long time. We went from one city to the next in a nation of millions of enthusiastic flower lovers. The daily lunch or dinner photos of the trip show our smiles—bright at first—gradually falling over the two weeks until we appear as if we are simultaneously grimacing and smiling. In the last, we don’t even try to smile. Amusing set of photos, since there are so many because the Japanese take them all the time. Like a flip book movie of our collapsing smiles.

Toward the final days of the trip, I began to fantasize jumping over the airport fence, running across the tarmac, and flagging down a plane. I got home and was sick in bed for a week.

The Japanese do not like large flowers. We had no idea. When we figured it out on about the last day, we were astounded. They like vase flowers which have a width or diameter that is “just so”. Anything over that is absolutely unacceptable. A European simply—and happily—uses a larger vase. But the Japanese seem to have an almost totalitarian, “government issue” aesthetic, which includes vase and bloom sizes. I was told later that it has to do with Japanese traditions of living in small, compact homes. We missed by several centimeters. The buyers completely ignored everything else that was virtuous and beautiful. “Too beautiful”, they’d repeat over and over. It became an Alice In Wonderland nightmare.

Somehow I think this story is related to the phenomenon of a commercial artist of no particularly great talent—but extraordinarily transgressive and child-like—such as Warhol taking the art world by storm for a half century. Today’s art world is “Japan”. Anything that is “too beautiful” is unacceptable. “Vase sizes” are analogous to parlors and sitting rooms. Thus, 19th C. Beaux-Arts paintings are shunned, despite their breathtaking beauty, psychological depth, and historical importance. Thus, too, no one conducts the work of Ralph Vaughan Williams or Samuel Barber.

Warhol was famous for saying—among other things, such as the 15 minutes of fame—that art is something people do not have to buy. How vacant, to me; how cold and lonely. A pity that such vulgarities are popular, even coveted.

I shall never forget meeting the great—tremendous—painter, Nathan Oliveira at an art event in San Francisco. He said something like none of his paintings should be worth more than $10,000. I understand, somehow. No coincidence that he was a legendary teacher.

If one wishes to see some nice anemones, similar if not better than my (now) old ones, there is a grower named Battenfeld near Rhinebeck, NY. Others took over my operation and, well, the blooms are still great but not quite the same. It was my baby and Scott Trees’ and Simon Crawford’s and Sten Larsson’s as well. Understandable. Now at Burpee I focus on sunflowers, campanula and dahlia and, of course, marigolds and zinnias, which are almost as important to us as tomatoes and sweet corn.

by George Ball

October closes with Halloween, the most misunderstood holiday, due to its roots not in horror but in rain. Just as seed is the first and the last—the seed and the fruit—so too are rains the alpha and omega of the growing season. Only after the dry heat of summer and early fall—unique to Western civilization, including the Mideast—do the rains (or snow) finally fall and prepare the earth for surviving winter and providing seed with the soil from which it can grow in spring.

The demons emerge on Halloween to show us, ironically, their marginal, subordinate status, and their submission to the rule of the natural, agricultural laws we must follow. They taunt us as we proceed at our work, to remind us that we must persist. Halloween is amusement, pure and simple.

Perhaps its peculiar contemporary mode (“trick or treat!”) foreshadows the vulgarization of Christmas, when the children have the tables turned on them; they are scrutinized, measured and subjected to greater or fewer gifts at least in Santa’s traditional form. But, no matter: Halloween exists to mark not only the agricultural calendar in our collective memory but also the return of the rains of autumn and the moisture to the soil.

If you are fascinated by the alpha and the omega that distinguishes the world’s great religions, you need look no further than seed.

While rain contributed to the evolution of plants it lacks the vivid quality of illustrating literally not only “the first and the last”, but also time itself. The seeds of flowering plants seem like the seconds of the earth’s cosmic clock—an endless flowering followed by the ticking and tocking of seeds fruiting, ripening and variously covering the expanse of our planet’s land surface.

Indeed, mankind invented the calendar to organize and regulate seasonal sowing cycles which, in turn, are caused by the earth circling the sun.

If seeds are the seconds, annuals are the minutes, vines are the hours, perennials the days, shrubs the months, and trees the years: a perpetual clock devised by the proverbial invisible watchmaker.

However, seeds—like seconds—are unique. Only brief and ephemeral moments contain the acts that change everything in our lives, from World War I to falling in love. Indeed, seeds remind me of the “alpha and omega” as figuratively expressed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We plant them, as well as eat them. We transform them into bread, the staff of life. Seeds do not take energy—they give it. As tools for survival, seeds are perfect, as long as you store them carefully (water destroys them and mice love them).

Happy Halloween!

by George Ball

The beaks of birds tell their story. Technically, the term is “bill”, short for “mandible”, of which there are two, the upper and lower. Most people call them “beaks,” and birds don’t seem to mind.

A short, blunt, clearly triangular-shaped beak with an obviously sharp point allows finch-like birds to pierce, tear, and pry open the “nuts”—seeds’ thick, tough capsules or hulls—and consume the kernels within. Strong and compact, nut-cracking birds can grow large, especially in the tropics where the fruits and nuts are likewise larger.

Birds’ beaks never stop growing, as they have a lot of work to do. Because of their exceptionally high metabolism, many small birds eat 20% of their body weight daily. Hummingbirds visit as many as 1,000 flowers in a day to dine on nectar in order to maintain their 105° F body temperature. (A thousand flowers seems low somehow.) The heart rate of the Blue-Throated Hummingbird can go as high as 1360 beats per minute.

Birds with longer and wider beaks use them to swallow seeds—shell, hull, chaff, kernel and all. Also, beaks help birds in their other tasks: nest-building, worm- and larvae-picking, and extracting other invertebrate delicacies from trees, mud, sand and soil. Many styles of beaks help birds consume large insects such as beetles, or rodents, as opportunities present themselves.

Other birds, including starlings, have various sorts of “harvester”-style beaks. Starlings simply open their mandibles and fly through low brush and grass, eating insects. As they probe, sally, lunge and glean, starlings are “shooting” their large, open beaks, like the tips of stretched bi-valve throat pouches.

Starlings’ discerning eyes are located just behind their beak’s joints: the left eye perceiving color, the right eye detecting movement, which explains why certain birds tend to look at objects with one eye or the other. As a kid, I hated starlings, which we called “grackles”. They infested our house one summer, dozens of them—aggressive and making a racket with their hideous calls and wheezy songs. I’d use my BB gun to try to shoot them, with no success. My yelling was much more effective, and they eventually moved on.

Birds co-evolved with an extremely varied range of phenomena. The seed-eating birds draw the attention of gardeners and seed growers such as Burpee and its colleague companies around the world. During both the crossing (hybridizing or self-pollinating) and harvesting seasons, most of us remain “on guard”, primarily on the lookout for insects, but keeping an eye out for the more voracious, seed-loving birds. Neolithic man had to endure difficulties with birds in growing and harvesting seed crops, like the vital, all-important grass we know as wheat.

Beginning in the 19 th century, farmers found a way to take advantage of seed-eating birds; pigeons, housed in multistory towers, were used to glean stray seed from pastures after the growing season.

Water is an enormously important bird nutrient. We all know how much birds love bathing. We tend to be less aware of how much water they drink.

I am less familiar with migratory and predatory birds. I wish I had time to be a “birder”. Several hawks and one owl reside in the 60-acre research farm where I live. They hold themselves, literally, aloof and remote. Raptors use their claws rather than their beaks to capture prey. Owls frighten me a bit. Their low, deep hoots have a haunting, almost hypnotic effect. Like menacing villains, owls terrify prey with their eyes, paralyzing them with fear.

Predatory birds can be eerily clever. For instance, ravens will work in pairs as they raid seabird colonies: one bird will distract a nesting adult, allowing the other to grab an exposed egg or chick.

Since childhood I have been a fan of the small, familiar birds of home: finches, nuthatches, thrushes, wrens. Their presence around large homes and gardens is inevitable, since birds coevolved with the plants, shrubs and bushes they inhabit. These birds expand the populations and distribution of plants, helping prevent the inbreeding depression of the plants’ gene pool. They consume the fruit of various species such as winterberry, serviceberry, hawthorn, flowering dogwood, hackberry, honeysuckle, firethorn and mountain ash, to name a few. While digesting them in flight, they scarify the seed with their acidic digestive juices and gizzards, which often have small stones that help break down the seeds.

By the time the birds have flown a sufficient distance to prevent inbreeding of the plants by either wind or insects, they defecate the pre-germinated seed, now conveniently nestled in a nitrogen-rich food pack. Bird droppings—so vexing when they descend on our automobiles—are seed being sown, and evolution being maintained.

Unlike many insects, birds don’t resemble flowers. But in some species their beaks are symbolic indicators of their food seed, and some beaks look like the nuts they consume. In other birds—such as spoonbills, cormorants and pelicans—their beaks suggest both how deep or how shallow in the water their prey live.

Flying great distances, birds harness the wind, especially the great currents at about 10,000 feet and higher. In turn, these winds originate from the movement of the earth which causes the temperature variation that cause vapor, or gas, to move. While all birds like to fly dry, migratory birds like to fly bone-dry—the lighter the better. By flying so high and dry they meet with less resistance, most of which is water vapor.

The journey of most migratory birds is less than a thousand miles, one way. Their destinations are not so far, and there are plenty of dining stops along the way. Some fly south in the fall to find food: late season seeds, berries in mid-South, early season in Deep South, or year ‘round in the sub-tropics, such as Mexico. Other species fly north in early April and May to roost and reproduce. Birds are smart—they know when to leave.

One of the most extraordinary things I’ve observed was the behavior of a three-day-old pigeon. Except for its physical limitations, which weren’t so great considering its formal development, it was ready to grow, if not to go, as in get out of town. I’ve never seen such constant energetic motion—such a pure will to live. Everything was there, except size and a bit of coordination. One or two practice sessions and “game on”. The pigeon’s eyes were especially large for such a tiny, unfolded, wildly animated embryo. Birds live by their eyes.

Here I will step aside and let Mr. Darwin take over. He can carry you much farther than I. On the Origin of Species was inspired to a large extent by his observations, made in the tropics, of the differences and similarities of birds’ heads and beaks. Also, take a look at The Life of Birds by the articulate David Attenborough, the companion volume to his superb BBC nature documentary.

I shall return to this subject soon, since the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams transported me back to sweet memories of birds, particularly the songbirds’ precious calls and songs.

Finally, here’s a partial list of the great seed and berry producing plants that songbirds love and we can offer you for sale. They are sunflower (the taller the better), echinacea, rudbeckia, asters, coreopsis, poppy, marigold, zinnia, cosmos, gooseberry, hibiscus and sedum. There’s still time to plant many of them, or plan to do so in your 2013 garden.

by George Ball

From time to time a blog “seeds” a following blog with a new idea or thought. Last week I touched on ‘La Dolce Vita’, a movie that prominently featured the “paparazzi”, which were new at that time. Media conglomerates mushroomed after World War II across Europe, fueled by new technologies of inexpensive daylight flash bulbs, fast rolling film, and emerging economies protected—or better liberated—by allied occupation forces. But since ancient times, Europe has had a vigorous community news culture.

When I briefly lived in Germany, I noticed everyone in the small city knew everyone else and the media was formal and discreet—public was one thing, private another. This made perfect sense: what’s the point of telling people what they already know? The “familiar” was often just that—large, extended families. Thus, the daily news was mostly regional: southern Germany and then, as available and urgent, national news. The nearby city of Frankfurt had an excellent newspaper. But my German language skills were in their infancy. News in English about the US was non-existent. I came of age at a time when expats in Europe would roam the streets looking for a recent copy of the International Herald Tribune. A “new” copy depended on the one-day rhythm of the wire services. Satellites? What satellites?

Germany was a long way from home, and eventually I gave up caring. A very wealthy friend talked to his mom and dad almost every day. “The President is in hot water.” “So?”, I said to myself.

I became concerned about the Soviets in East Germany, aka the DDR, at that time in the grip of Erich Honecker, a brutally effective puppet dictator with an arsenal of nuclear missiles hidden behind a medieval-looking wall. This fascinated me. Friends and I used to inspect it with cheap tourist binoculars on trips to West Berlin. It was hard to imagine a wall to keep an entire nation imprisoned. I was young and naive. The effect was skin-crawling. German friends told me the “guards” were snipers and professional assassins. It looked weirdly quaint. It was small and lethal—dressed to kill.

“Press” refers to the old gravity-based printing presses, which no longer exist. Nowadays, like a touch of Brownian motion, the ink is run so thinly, quickly and lightly you can hardly see impressions being made on the newsprint. Glossy magazines contain photographs printed electronically in ways I cannot comprehend, much less describe. Weight is so minimized that it’s hardly an issue.

Some think the word “press” refers to the actual pressure of crowds of reporters on an object of newsworthy attention. This seems a logical definition, given the swarming hordes of paparazzi-like media. Journalism (even the word seems hollow today) has ironically come under scrutiny by the media itself—a typical post-modern theme. What is “reality”? “Nothing is new” is becoming “old”, and that shift is “making news”. How many political and celebrity scandals can we stand? A lot, according to the internet. Our fascination with them seems to be born with each generation in a slowly crumbling media world. (Or is it “evolving”?)

Today’s tawdry 24/7, Moloch-like media was not always the norm. Our new transnational corporate domination of the press reflects a European model. The difference is culture and intelligence. Europeans read more, have higher vocabularies and better language skills. Sorry, but these are the facts. They can cope with discernment better than we can. This is unfortunate.

We used to have a superior, freer media to Europe’s. Diverse, too. Our newspapers numbered in the many thousands, not the few hundreds. Today, several major US cities have no daily newspaper—New Orleans being the most notable. Many more have only one: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Atlanta, et al. Others may have two, but they are owned by one company, such as my new hometown of Philadelphia. Still others have a second paper that is so small that it makes little impact on its community. The Boston Herald comes to mind, poor thing. This trend toward homogenized news is a response to television, radio and the online media. Small, local newspapers are disappearing.

It is obvious that the instantaneous “classifieds” making up most of the revenue of the online media and the consequent collapse of newspapers—and especially magazines—are smothering the “old media”. This is tragic for the US, its people, civic institutions, churches and schools. What is next? Books?

Why were thousands of small town and city newspapers—Chicago had 4 major dailies in my childhood, one with 2 editions for morning and evening—so successful? So vital, sensational and fascinating to read? It wasn’t only that you could hold them in your hands, and read the print in reflected light. It was also because the overwhelming majority were owned by locals, and all were run by “naturals”. Newspaper staffs consisted of quick, intelligent, verbal, nosy people who were phenomenally capable of building close personal relationships with two essential groups: the police and fire departments.

Reporters focused like laser beams—and face to face—on the people essential for community health: police and fire, which now includes EMT, since traffic accidents comprise the majority of publicly visible events or, in some cases, tragedies. House and commercial building fires have become so rare that fire departments have shrunk in size, but not in importance. My hometown newspaper was owned by the retired Fire Chief. Firemen know every square foot of their communities. Also, ambulance companies have emerged as secondary news sources.

On the other hand, police forces have greatly expanded and become extremely sophisticated. The invasion by drug dealers and, consequently, home invaders and street thugs, have put the nation’s thousands of local communities on “red alert”. God bless anyone in a uniform.

Relevance to gardening? Imagine if the weatherman reported the conditions several hundred miles away. “Honey, let’s switch the channel and find out what the conditions are in Kazakhstan.”

Gardening is the police and fire departments combined: we need to know the conditions of every square foot of our yard, the pests and predators in both the garden and immediate neighborhood surroundings. Speaking of the weather, we actually have to be amateur meteorologists, at least with respect to the few hundred miles surrounding us.

Garden press? Better reinvent itself quickly. “Don’t just do something, stand there”, seems to be their motto. Ironically, that’s good advice if you are taking time to plan your reinvention. Do a retreat with your editors or bosses. Or at least have a cup of coffee with them. But it might be too late to plan. It seems, to me at least, that the garden media is following no plan, no model, no logic. Try police and firemen as a model. Or graft yourself to the weather department. “Localism” is a good starting point.

Finally, it would be great to see a new phenomenon—swarms of eager photographers and reporters gathering around a new flower or vegetable for 2013, as if it were Anita Ekberg. (Stay tuned.) We could nickname them, “poppyrazzi”.

by George Ball

Now’s the time when the birds feast on berries and seeds. I’ve often puzzled over this rich diet of 100% birdseed. One friend conjectures that it’s probably good for long flights southward. Another friend maintains that birds congregate around feeders and baths more to “socialize” (what diction these days!) than to stock up on reserve jet fuel. “That would be the bears, honey,” she said to us. Still another told me that birds eat far more berries (or “flesh” as we call it here at Burpee) than hard seeds. Since putting out our 2013 catalogue keeps me from the extra work of close, careful bird observations, I cannot report definitively.

I shall say one thing: birds have been singing less in this dry, relatively insect-free year of 2012. I deeply miss their songs. I was reminded of this absence by a very warble of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams on our local classical music station here in the Delaware Valley. Like a deep exhalation during yoga, or a cool wet washcloth to the head after yoga, Vaughan William’s nearly perfect symphonic music brings life back to the dying.

In however diluted a form, today’s “pop” owes whatever musical value it has to the contributions of Ralph Vaughan Williams. There is some originality in, for instance, Miley Cyrus, whose hybrid-like phrasing can be as plaintive and graceful as Patsy Cline one moment and forceful and gutsy as Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey the next. Ralph Vaughan Williams hybridized too—very widely on the levels of the symphonic orchestra and “art song” (vocalist and piano), drawing elements from the diverse gene pool of folk music spread across and throughout every corner of the British Isles. He in turn has left an enormous mother lode of these traditional melodies for others to mine.

One unexpected case is Nino Rota, who borrowed several sublime melodic themes from Vaughan Williams’ “Norfolk Rhapsody #1” for his own surrealistic soundtrack to Federico Fellini’s 1960 movie, “La Dolce Vita”. Rota uses Vaughan Williams’ earthy, simple motifs to contrast with the sterility of cosmopolitan Rome, and particularly the glittery, noisy existence of the protagonist, Marcello, whose hellish life is surrounded by newly built modernist ruins. Vaughan Williams’ poetic themes, reprised here and there by Rota, remind the viewer that alongside the ugliness of life, there is something beautiful and pure, lingering just beyond its dead surface.

There are sheep that get in the way of Marcello’s sports car, and the larger-than-life American movie starlet puts a kitten on her head (shades of the Amazon past) and, later still, she howls like a wolf. Rota’s pastoral melodies function as both lamentations and sirens. “There is something wilder, lovelier and more natural than this”, the music seems to say. Profoundly ironic.

But there is no such irony—none needed—when you encounter Ralph Vaughan Williams for the first time. His music offers luxuriant, pure beauty, similar only to Handel’s. Many complain that he is too “English”, which is like bemoaning Bach or Beethoven for being too “German”. In fact, he is utterly unique, able both to transcend as well as descend, like Orpheus, his sources of inspiration. A few other composers have also tried their hand at hybridizing classical music and traditional folk song: notably Dvorák, Kodály, Stravinsky, Janácek, and Bartók. Striking that they’re all Central Europeans. What sets them apart—like the British too—from modern classical composers is an almost religious devotion to the folkloric music traditions of their homelands.

Vaughan Williams limned a song tradition in the British Isles that is richer than any other. He also used, as all composers did long before his time, natural sounds of the landscape and, in his case, especially around East Anglia. Also called “The Fens”, this happens to be the home of the modern (150 years) British seed industry. It is flat and dotted with swamps. It reminds me of parts of Illinois where I grew up, so I loved travelling there back in the ‘80s on business, visiting the many great seed companies. The vistas are heartwarming to anyone who loves farmland or grew up around it.

I recall sophisticated friends from college who were either Londoners or schoolmates passing through London. They would find out I was in the UK on business and phone me asking what on earth I was doing up there. “Why did you get stuck in Norfolk?” (laughter) and “God, when are you coming down to London?” Of course, London is one of the world’s great cities, but I felt disoriented every time this happened. They were worldly, but unaware of one of the world’s most quietly beautiful areas. Desolate, still and covered with lush crops most of the year. To them it was like outer space. What little the world knows of seeds, birds, estuaries! My secret view was “When are you all coming up to East Anglia?” Besides, I had work to do: new flowers and vegetables to find, seed to harvest and sing about.

by George Ball

Dear Heronswood Customer and “Heronswood Voice” Reader,

Last summer we sold Heronswood Nursery and Gardens to the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. Thus, the first Native American botanical garden in the US began its existence on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington State. Therefore we are donating this, the Heronswood Voice blog, to the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. In order for you to continue to receive this blog, you will need to, please, change your bookmarks and/or favorites function, in order to “re-subscribe” to the new Heronswood Voice.

If you enjoyed the former Heronswood Voice, you might wish to subscribe also to Fordhook Voice. I shall be writing from now on over there. I shall concentrate on the same general subject of gardening and its social and cultural contexts. Nick Rhodehamel will continue to write “guest” articles. Our focus will be Fordhook Farm and the Burpee Company, the former owner of Heronswood. The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe has great plans for the future of the uniquely beautiful Heronswood Gardens. Please subscribe to their new blog.

Thanks very much for reading Heronswood Voice. I hope for nothing but the best for the PGST. Also, I wish you the greatest success in your own garden or community garden and, finally, look forward to future responses over at Fordhook Voice.

Sincerely,

George Ball

P.S. Please note, to update your bookmarks (or favorite places) please go to www.fordhookvoice.com and add the new page as a Bookmark (or favorite place).

by George Ball

Here in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, “Heronswood East” is what, until recently, we called the 4-acre shaded areas of Fordhook Farm devoted to rare perennials, shrubs and ornamental trees. It still consists of a dream-like complex of several gardens containing thousands of rare and experimental hellebores, epimediums, thalictrums, geraniums, sedums, lysimachias, mahonias, begonias, primulas, cardiocrinums, weigelas, impatiens, hydrangeas and hundreds of other genera and species, aka “taxa”.

Also, it continues to be a challenge to find the right place for each specimen we culled from the original Heronswood Garden back in Kingston, Washington, always careful to “thin” the often-crowded beds, without ever removing a population entirely. Despite what a few over-anxious locals back in Washington say, this process is called “dividing” perennials—an essential part of gardening. We culled, thinned and divided—whatever you wish to call it—for several years, and then finished up the work about a year ago. But we kept two seasonal part-time gardeners—Alan Hansen and Suzanne Hissung—on retainers to help us keep the gardens preserved and intact, as the following article from “The Garden Conservancy News” attests:

“A New Future For Heronswood Gardens”

The sale of Heronswood to the local Port Gamble S’Klallam tribe was completed on Thursday, July 22. Over the past twelve years, George Ball and W. Atlee Burpee & Co. have been committed to preserving and maintaining the garden and its extraordinary plant collection. Since 2006, they have generously welcomed thousands of people to the garden through our Open Days program.

The property was put on the market that same year, and since then Burpee has been looking for the right buyer who would and could continue to maintain the garden and keep it open to the public. The S’Klallam tribe plans to do just that. The first opportunity to visit the gardens under this new ownership will be on July 28 as part of our Open Days program. Proceeds will once again benefit our preservation work at the Chase Garden in Orting, Washington.

Bill Noble, the Garden Conservancy’s director of preservation says, “We applaud Burpee for keeping the garden intact and maintaining it for so many years. They have assured that it is placed in the hands of people who value the garden and will manage it as a resource for the public. Heronswood is a wonderful collection of plant materials and an important horticultural destination.”

According to newspaper reports, the new owners are committed to maintaining the garden as an asset to the community. As reported, S’Klallam tribe chairman Jeromy Sullivan said, “We understand how passionate people are about Heronswood and, as a neighbor, we are committed to maintaining this local treasure.”

However, the aesthetic contrast between Fordhook Farm and Heronswood couldn’t be starker. Fordhook is 60 acres, Heronswood 15 acres. Fordhook is mostly full sun, about 80% of the 20-25 acres of display and research garden area which fluctuates every year. Heronswood is essentially a heavy shade display garden, and again about 80%, or 4 of the 5 acres.

Heronswood possesses a “through the looking glass” quality or “down the rabbit hole” effect. A famous garden designer told us she’d never seen a garden even remotely like it before, “and I’ve seen them all”, as she put it. Mysteries jump up or pop out at you from every corner. Most people find it delightful, while some are a bit overwhelmed. But all are charmed.

Heronswood is “folded”, much like the Asian culture that its design references, perhaps unconsciously. The gardens reveal themselves in unique layers with each visit. Ergo, the passionate attachment to it of the locals who can visit several times a year. During its heyday of the late 90s to 2006, Heronswood became a cult, of sorts. If you especially like odd and unusual shade plants adapted to a warm and wet zone 8, you have found the Beulah Land.

Fordhook Farm offers a completely opposite experience. Although we have replicated Heronswood-type research gardens in full shade, they occupy a small fraction of the property. The glory of Fordhook Farm is not only its history—though that was enough to receive its National Register of Historic Places status—but also its openness to the broadly dramatic sky for which the Philadelphia area is famous.

At its center, Fordhook Farm sits astride a ridge. But, in fact, there are three major elevations. A large hillock with a copse surrounding it descends from one corner of a long 60 acre diamond-like rectangle to fan out below in an “upper meadow” of about 15 acres. This middle level is the widest part of the estate and borders the ridge, which is more like a sort of rim or lip from which, facing southeast, the land slopes down, tapering to a ravine about 50 feet below where the property ends in a diamond tip, cut at the point by the local sleepy passenger train line. It appears much larger than its acreage, like a movie screen projects images. It’s full of light and very rhythmic.

There’s a large descending lawn in front of the Main House, which is a French style bastide set on the ridge. To its right or east, you can see a shaded, descending hellebore walk, and a full-sun creek walk nearby. These areas are punctuated by a bridge and a pair of man-made ponds, complete with a colony of frogs. Near the very bottom of the ravine is a collection of shade (both full and partial) as well as sun-loving plants in a series of odd-shaped beds at the edge of the woods near the railroad tracks.

Behind the Main House/Carriage House/Burpee Hall triangulation, which includes an 80 seat conference center, spread out the historic fields and meadows where the Burpee flower and vegetable “firsts” were either discovered, developed or collected by our founder, beginning in 1888, when he moved his research here from his small, crowded test plot in Philadelphia, where he began his research in 1876 as a young man. Later, his sons worked at Fordhook for the majority of the 20th century. We have experimented at Fordhook for the last 22 years.

Among the many innovative cultivars that helped make “Burpee” a household name are ‘Iceberg’ lettuce (the first crisphead lettuce, thus the first year ‘round salad green), ‘Golden Bantam’ (the first yellow sweet corn), ‘Fordhook’ (the first bush lima bean—meaning no more 12 foot staked plants with ladders up the sides), the first “stringless” string bean, the first ‘burpless’ cucumber. . . in short, the first—and even second and third—generation of American vegetables—varieties that could survive our often tropical late spring, summer and early fall climates throughout much of the continental U.S. All were bred or discovered at Fordhook.

Next to these famous test plots is a four story Seed House—one of about a dozen of these unique and distinctive structures left in the world and a major attraction for our Open Day guests. To the north is a large full-sun perennial demonstration and Japanese sculpture garden, and to the west is a chessboard, or ‘The Last Year at Marienbad’ movie, meadow where I have placed most of our monumental Steve Tobin sculptures, spanning 20 years of this world-famous artist’s career, as well as a collection of rare and unusual conifers deliberately set apart from one another, just like in the aforementioned surrealistic movie.

And that’s only about half of Fordhook Farm. Rambling across the 30 other acres, you can find several large (1-2 acre) full-sun scientific test plots with row-by-row vegetable, annual flower and full sun perennial candidates in what we call “root camp” and “Catholic school for plants”. These are blind test plots. If an experimental line doesn’t make it there, it is rejected, no matter who created it.

In addition to these sections, you will find a small poignant shade garden devoted to my mother, Vivian Elledge Ball, and designed by Dan Hinkley in 2001, the year after she passed away.

On the opposite side of the estate, near the visitor entrance, are several more Steve Tobin sculptures, some magnificent beeches and a large (1 acre) vegetable display garden called The Kitchen Garden, serving as a “beta” site for the “alphas” that survived “root camp”.

Then, you will find you are close to where you might have started. Behind the vegetable garden is the entrance to the “Hellebore walk”, where we research and show off our collection of thousands of these seductive creatures in almost all shades of colors.

Yet, the main quality of Fordhook is its magical “stepped out of time” feeling. It isn’t a forced or contrived effect; it was there when I arrived. I had nothing to do with it. I walked the perimeter and was smitten by it. The ancient Chinese would have called Fordhook, “place where the ladders of heaven descend”.

Spend any amount of time here and you never forget it. But it is for a different reason you return to Heronswood, now relocated officially to Kingston, Washington. Fordhook is extremely “open”—there is nothing “folded” about it. It is more like a massive set of pearl necklaces you see on older women in Italy. The “grandmas” wash them—thick strands of pearls still around their neck—in the Mediterranean, when they go wading with their families. By contrast, Heronswood is an intricate, bejeweled brooch, the last thing a woman puts on before she goes out for the evening—her finest piece.

Fordhook Farm will be on display soon. Coming up just next week—Friday, August 24 and Saturday the 25th—the gardens will be open. We’ll be selling rare plants of berries and exotic ornamental perennials at bargain prices, giving lectures on the many new blueberries we have coming out now, conducting guided tours, and offering tomato tastings from our extensive collection of 137 years of breeding these sensational vegetables (berries, in fact). Plus, of course, you can just float around the large and lovely estate.

by George Ball

Your Honor, I’d like to make a few preliminary remarks to provide context and perspective on the case before the court. As a third generation seedsman, I have agreed to pro bono representation of perhaps the most hated and maligned vegetable of all time.

Like walking on our legs from one destination to another, at one time eating cabbage was the common way adults received their nutrition, putting one leaf in front of the other, so to speak. And, like a daily walk, the cabbages kept us young. However, so-called “head cabbage” is but one member of the enormous—and hugely important—family known as the Brassicas.

But it is “Broccoli”, the family’s most controversial member, that is on trial today. Yet I shall prove that my client is the vegetable that can do no less than save humankind. I shall demonstrate Broccoli to be the most succulent, tasty and life-enhancing of all vegetables, from the base of its handsome stalk to the crown of its flowery head. Can you eat Pea’s stringy vine, Corn’s cob, Bean’s coarse stalk, or Melon’s spiny leaf?

Only Broccoli allows you to eat the entire plant: asparagus-like stalks, savory green leaves and delicately sweet, nutty flavored heads of clustered flower buds. My client represents nothing less than the pinnacle of vegetable sophistication.

Broccoli is desirable for not only its taste, but also its extraordinary promotion and protection of human health. No plant possesses more antioxidants, vitamins, beneficial enzyme-stimulating compounds, and metabolism-enhancing fiber, than my client.

Broccoli is richly endowed, by both natural law and thousands of years of continuous human selection, with vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, C and K. For instance, a cup of cooked broccoli provides more vitamin C than an orange. This same cup supplies over 10% of the daily requirements of calcium, chromium, magnesium, iron, potassium and zinc. Add metabolizing and enzyme-boosting agents such as folic acid and calcium pectate, and cancer-fighting antioxidants such as beta carotene, carotene and sulphoraphane, particularly in the dark green florets, and you see that eating broccoli nips diseases in the buds.

Also, it is well known that my client possesses healthful fiber. But it is hardly known that Broccoli contains substantial amounts of cell-building protein and eye-protecting lutein. In short, your Honor, my client is as close to perfection as a vegetable can be. For people not to eat Broccoli is a crime.

Therefore, why is savory, succulent and creamy-textured Broccoli on trial? For being too healthy? Too tasty? Too easy to grow in all 50 states? No: my client is accused of being “too bitter”. Not true!

I offer two defenses: this apotheosis of subtle flavors and powerfully healthful properties needs to be grown to peak stage—before the flower buds fully open—transported quickly from farms and home gardens to the kitchen, and then steamed, par-boiled, sautéed or stir-fried. Thereby, I can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that my client possesses the most sublime vegetable flavor available to the human palate.

Second, Broccoli has been capriciously defamed by powerful figures in the world of politics, the media and even the legal profession, for well over a generation. It was 1990, 22 years ago, that our nation’s president declared that he hated my client, resulting in three decades of disparaging remarks by influential figures in all walks of life from nighttime talk shows to the Supreme Court.

President George H.W. Bush’s opinion was an unfortunate result of the commercial production of Broccoli: picked unripe—thus deficient of both flavors and healthful compounds—and shipped thousands of miles to sit a week on produce counters. Customers either try them and taste the bitterness without the balancing sugars, or pass them by, frowning, having been swayed by negative publicity.

Finally, it is the children of America who will suffer if you do not find my client as delicious as the ubiquitous Spinach, the fashionably red, yellow and chocolate-brown Bell Pepper, or the deservedly chic Arugula, et al. Perception is reality, alas. Yet America’s blindness to Broccoli’s truly delicious and superior nutritive value is denying our children both an educated palate and a tremendous health boost. From toddlerhood on, our nation’s young are brainwashed to regard my client with suspicion and negative a priori judgment.

Therefore, I ask the court to dismiss this case and invite you, the rest of the court, and plaintiff, The People, to lunch in my garden. Justice will be served—steamed and drizzled with melted butter and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Thank you, your Honor.

by George Ball

The 4^th of July is the sparkliest, most jubilant and expansive of all our holidays, secular or religious—a celebration shared by families, neighbors, communities and the entire nation. On earth, there are picnics in parks and gardens; in the heavens, flower-like fireworks. Perched between them, spangled on a million blankets are gaggles of contented Americans of all ages, all of them young, like their country. Happiness is in the barbecue-scented air.

Happiness is inscribed in the Declaration of Independence. It’s right there, in Jefferson’s hallowed preamble: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

One of the most influential statements in modern history, this declaration within the Declaration conjoins nobility of thought, peerless eloquence and clarity. It represents the first time in history, as Christopher Hitchens points out, that the concept of human rights provided the basis for a republic. It was likewise unprecedented that the “Pursuit of Happiness” should be established as a people’s god given right. This exceptional phrase is the wellspring of American exceptionalism.

The “Pursuit of Happiness” is essential to the American Experiment as Life and Liberty and deserves our scrupulous parsing. Today, as we celebrate our nation’s 236^th birthday, is as good a time as any to pursue the Pursuit of Happiness.

An earlier draft of the Declaration read “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Property,” a tripartite desiderata inspired by philosopher John Locke. There was a practical aspect to the alteration. As Benjamin Franklin observed, if property were established as an inalienable right, levying taxes on private property to support the work of the government might prove undoable. The “Pursuit of Happiness” represents a right both more sublime and substantial than mere property, though property is surely part of it.

“Pursuit” has two meanings: the first connoting something like a chase, suggesting we are endowed with the right to chase after happiness as Captain Ahab did Moby Dick. The secondary meaning of pursuit implies occupation or calling: as if Americans’ god given daily task is happiness. Americans certainly are industrious. We approach our work with an enthusiasm—and, yes, happiness—that are altogether exceptional.

Jefferson used the word “happiness” in its 18^th century context, to mean wealth, prosperity, health—what we call “well being.”  One of the two English dictionaries in Jefferson’s library, Samuel Johnson’s “Dictionary of the English Language” (1775) supplies three definitions for happiness: 1. Felicity; state in which the desires are satisfied; 2. Good luck; good fortune; 3. Fortuitous elegance; readiness.

Once we put the various implications of happiness together, we see Jefferson meant “chance” and “opportunity,” but chose a nuanced word; fragrant with poetry, sparkling with cadence and deeply resonant.  A master gardener and horticulturalist, Jefferson gathered all of these old and new forms and presented them to us like a composite flower—the universal symbol of happiness and opportunity.

Thomas Jefferson, it just so happened, died on the fourth of July, 1826—John Adams, it also happened, died the same day. Jefferson’s last words were, “Is it the Fourth?” To which we can happily reply, “Yes, it is, Mr. President, and thank you.”

This article appeared in The Lincoln Journal Star on July 3, 2012.