Feb 16, 2021
Today we celebrate a botanist of the American West and the
husband of Kate Brandegee.
We'll also learn about the woman who created the legislation for
the New Jersey State Flower, the Violet.
We hear some words about the role of the botanist from one of our
horticultural greats.
We Grow That Garden Library™ with a book about transitioning from a
beloved garden to something new… this story is special.
And then we’ll wrap things up with a touching tribute to a
gardener, a public servant, and a nursery owner.
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Important Events
February 16, 1843
Today is the birthday of the American botanist Townshend Stith
Brandegee.
Townshend was born into one of America’s oldest and prominent
families, and he was the oldest of twelve children. Townshend’s
middle name, Stith, was his mother’s maiden name. Townshend was
descended from three generations of men named Elishama.
Townshend’s great grandfather, Elishama Brandegee I, had fought in
the Revolutionary War. By 1778, Elishama bought a pretty piece of
land in Berlin, Connecticut, known as the mulberry orchard. The
History of Berlin tells a charming story of how Townshend’s great
grandmother, Lucy, made a red silk gown with the silk from her
silkworms. Apparently, she intended to give the dress to Martha
Washington, but somehow she ended up wearing it and keeping it for
herself.
The Brandegee family continued to grow Mulberry (Morus) trees on
the property. In fact, Townshend’s grandfather, Elishama Jr.,
founded the very first silk and cotton-thread company in Berlin. A
successful entrepreneur, Elishama Jr, owned a mercantile store,
which was the largest store between Hartford and New Haven, and
people came from miles around to do their trading. His grandmother,
Lucy, was a teacher and founded a private all-girls seminary, now a
private prep school for girls known as the Emma Willard School.
Townshend's father, Dr. Elishama Brandegee, became the town
physician, and by all reports, he was beloved by all who knew him.
Townshend and his dad shared a love of nature, and as a young boy,
Townshend created his very own fern collection.
Townshend came of age during the Civil War, and somehow he managed
to live through two years of service in the union army. After his
military service, like his father before him, Townshend attended
Yale and graduated from Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School. He
forged his own path as a young civil engineer, and he ended up
working on much-needed railroad surveys in the American West. In
his spare time, both as a student at Yale and as a young engineer,
Townshend botanized, and he even made some discoveries and sent
specimens to Harvard’s Asa Gray.
Townshend’s unique combination of surveying experience and
botanical work proved invaluable as he began creating maps of the
western forests. In fact, it was his love of forests that brought
him to the greatest love of his life: Katherine Layne Curran.
When his father died in 1884, Townshend’s inheritance allowed him
to pursue his interests without any financial worries. And in the
late 1800s, if you were a young botanist with means and interested
in West-coast botany, all roads lead to the California Academy of
Sciences.
In her early forties, Katharine Layne Curran was the curator of the
Academy. She had been married to an alcoholic and then widowed in
her twenties. She’d survived medical school when females were just
breaking into the field of medicine, and she’d given up her career
as a physician when it proved too difficult to set up a practice as
a woman. By the time she met Townshend, the last thing Katharine
had expected to find was love.
And yet, these two middle-aged botanical experts did fall in love -
“Insanely in love” to use Katharine’s words - and to the surprise
of their friends, they married. Kate always referred to Townshend
as “Townie.”
Equally yoked, Townie and Kate’s happy honeymoon was a 500-mile
nature walk - collecting plant specimens from San Diego to San
Francisco.
After their honeymoon, Townie and Kate moved to San Diego, where
they created a herbarium, library, and garden praised as a
botanical paradise.
In 1899, the jeweler Frederick Arthur Walton, who was reported to
have the largest private cactus collection in England, visited Kate
and Townie in San Diego. Frederick shared a review of the
Brandegee’s spectacular garden in his magazine called The
Cactus Journal:
“The garden of Mr. and Mrs. Brandegee… [is] a wild garden, being
situated upon the mesa, or high land overlooking the sea.
Mr. and Mrs. Brandegee are enthusiastic botanists, and have built a
magnificent herbarium, where they spend most of their time.
The wild land round the herbarium is full of interesting plants
that are growing in a state of nature, while being studied and
described in all their various conditions.
Mrs. Brandegee has preserved specimens of all the kinds she can
get. In some cases where the plants are very rare, I asked how she
could so destroy such beauties. She replied that her specimens
would be there to refer to at any time, with all its descriptions
and particulars, whereas if the plant had been left growing, or
sent to some botanical gardens, it would probably have died some
time, and all trace have been lost.”
Townie and Kate continued botanizing - individually and together.
During their lifetime, botanists could travel for free by train,
and the Brandegees used these free passes regularly in their
travels throughout California, Arizona, and Mexico.
On one trip to Mexico, Kate left early, and she managed to survive
a shipwreck. The story goes that Townsend asked about the fate of
the specimens before asking about Kate. Yet, this anecdote
shouldn’t discount their very loving marriage; they were both just
maniacally focused on their botanical work.
In 1906, when an earthquake destroyed the Berkeley herbarium, the
Brandegees single-handedly restored it by donating their entire San
Diego botanical library (including many rare volumes) and herbarium
of over 80,000 plants.
Keeping in mind that Townshend's substantial inheritance had funded
all of their botanical efforts, Townie and Kate requested a modest
stipend of $100 per month in exchange for their life’s work.
Despite years of haggling, Berkeley never agreed to pay the
Brandegees a cent for what was the richest private plant collection
in the United States.
Incredibly, the Brandegees continued to be selfless when it came to
Berkely. They followed their plants and books to campus, where
Townsend and Kate worked the rest of their lives pro bono. And
while Townshend was honored with the title of curator of the
herbarium, Kate was not given a title.
In the early spring of 1920, a 75-year-old Kate was walking at
Berkeley when she fell and broke her shoulder. Three weeks later,
she died. On April 7, 1925, five years later - almost to the day -
Townshend joined Kate on his final journey.
February 16, 1971
On this day, the New Jersey State Flower, the Violet, was
officially adopted by the legislature after a proposal from
Josephine S. Margetts.
In 1967, when Josephine Margetts was elected to the New Jersey
State Assembly in 1967, she became the first woman to represent
Morris County, New Jersey, since 1938.
Politics was in Josephine’s blood. Her grandfather, a Pennsylvania
Supreme Court justice, ran for Governor of Pennsylvania. And
Josephine’s late husband, Walter T. Margetts Jr., served as New
Jersey’s state treasurer.
A nursery and orchard owner, Josephine was environmentally
conscious, and she introduced legislation to protect the land and
waterways of New Jersey - even helping to ban the use of DDT.
Long before Josephine was born, the violet was unofficially
selected as the State Flower of New Jersey. By the late 1960s, New
Jersey was the only state without legislation supporting an
official state flower.
And so, with the urging of local garden clubs, Josephine introduced
legislation in February of 1971 to make the violet official State
Flower of New Jersey.
When it came time for Josephine’s bill to be debated in the
legislature, Josephine’s peer Sen. Joseph J. Maraziti, R-Morris,
read this poem:
“Roses are red,
Violets are blue
If you vote for this bill
Mrs. Margetts will love you.”
Josephine’s legislation was passed 30-1. The sole dissenting vote
was Sen. Frank J. Guarini, D-Hudson. He told the press,
"I'm a marigold man."
Two years later, in 1973, a newspaper called The
Record out of Hackensack New Jersey, shared an Op-Ed
titled, Consider the Lilies of the Field.
“Conventional, chauvinist wisdom would have it that Mrs. Margetts
introduced the bill because she's a woman and women are well, you
know interested in growing things, flowers and plants and trees,
the fruit of the earth. But Mrs. Margetts is not one of your
everyday garden club ladies.
She studied at the Ambler School of Horticulture, she operates a
commercial apple and peach orchard in Pennsylvania, and she has a
holly nursery on the grounds of her home in New Vernon. The house
on the property is rather substantial for a Jersey farmhouse if
memory serves, it has 14 bathrooms, but no matter.”
As Josephine no doubt knew, Violets are spring flowers, and they’ve
been around for a long time. The ancient Greeks enjoyed violets. If
you enjoy floriography ("FLOOR-EE-ah-grah-FEE") or the symbolic
meaning of plants, the heart-shaped leaves offer a clue to their
meaning: affection, love, faith, and dignity. The color of violets
can add another layer of meaning. Blue violets especially symbolize
love and devotion. White violets symbolize purity and yellow
violets symbolize goodness and high esteem.
Unearthed Words
The chief work of the botanist of yesterday was the study and
classification of dried, shriveled up mummy's whose souls had fled.
They thought their classified species were more fixed and
unchangeable than anything in heaven or earth that we can now
imagine. We have learned that they are as plastic in our hands as
clay in the hands of the potter or color on the artist canvas and
can readily be molded into more beautiful forms and colors than any
painter or sculptor can ever hope to bring forth.
— Luther Burbank, Address to the Pacific States Floral Congress,
1901
Grow That Garden Library
Uprooted by Page Dickey
This book came out in 2020 (I bought my copy in November), and the
subtitle is A Gardener Reflects on Beginning
Again.
When Margaret Roach reviewed this book, she wrote,
"An intimate, lesson-filled story of what happens when one of
America’s best-known garden writers transplants herself, rooting
into a deeper partnership with nature than ever before."
If you’ve ever moved away from a beloved garden, or there is a move
in your future, you’ll find Page’s book to be especially appealing.
Uprooted is Page’s story about leaving her beloved iconic garden at
Duck Hill - a landscape she molded and refined for thirty-four
years. Set on 17 acres of rolling fields and woodland, Page’s new
property is in northwestern Connecticut, and it surrounds a
Methodist Church, which is how Page came to call her new space,
Church House.
What does it mean to be a seasoned gardener (at the age of 74) and
to have to start again?
How does a gardener handle the transition from a beloved home to
the excitement of new possibilities?
Uprooted gives us the chance to follow Page through all the major
milestones as she finds her new homeplace. We get to hear about her
search for a new place, how she establishes her new garden spaces,
and her revelations as she learns to evolve as a gardener.
If you’ve ever wondered how on earth you’ll ever leave your garden,
Page will give you hope. And, if you’re thinking about revamping an
old garden space or starting a new garden, you can learn from Page
how to create a garden that will bring you joy.
As an accomplished garden writer, Page’s book is a fabulous read,
and the photography is top-notch. And although the move from Duck
Hill marked a horticultural turning point in her life, Page found
herself excited and reenergized by her brand new space at Church
House.
This book is 244 pages of the evolution of a gardener as she
transitions from Duck Hill to Church House with a lifelong love of
nature, gardens, and landscape possibilities.
You can get a copy of Duck Hill Journal by Page Dickey
and support the show using the Amazon Link in today's Show
Notes for around $18
Today’s Botanic Spark
Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart
In researching Josephine Margetts — the woman who created the bill
for the State Flower of New Jersey (the Violet), I came across her
obituary. When Josephine Margetts died in March of 1989, Fran Wood
wrote a touching tribute to her that was featured in The
Daily Record out of Morristown, New Jersey:
“Snow was falling on the day they remembered Josephine Margetts
last week. It was gathering in little drifts on the trees outside
her back door, collecting on the glossy leaves of some 15 varieties
of holly…
The fresh flakes formed in little peaks on the bird feeders just
inches away from her breakfast table, covered the glass roof of the
greenhouse where lantana, gardenias and scented geraniums had
flowered for more winters than anyone could remember and
accumulated along the fence rails next to the vegetable garden
where she used to raise more produce than her family could eat in a
summer.
If the loving cultivation of these grounds, the perennials, the
flowering shrubs and trees and all those hollies she planted and
nurtured had been Mrs. Margetts' only accomplishment, it would have
been worth remarking on. For gardening was a successful business as
well as a private pleasure for her.
Besides operating a licensed holly nursery on her home grounds, she
and her family turned out some 10,000 bushels of peaches and apples
each year at their Pennsylvania farm.
Like all true gardeners, Mrs. Margetts got tremendous satisfaction
from planting a seed and watching it grow.
She considered herself no less rewarded by those things that grew
on their own accord like the tiny white pine seedling that appeared
in the middle of a flagstone path one spring. She hadn't the heart
to pull it up, she said, and so it grew and grew until it rivaled
the height of the tallest hollies and its expanding girth forced
strollers to detour around it.
Gardening was far from Mrs. Margetts' sole accomplishment, of
course, but her inherent appreciation for the beauty of the land
and the miracles of nature were at the root of her environmental
legacies to New Jersey.
As a state assemblywoman, she sponsored New Jersey's first
"wetlands" legislation, the Wetlands Act of 1970, aimed at
protecting some of our most vulnerable saltwater areas. She also
sponsored the Pesticides Control Act, the Municipal Conservation
Act, the National Lands Trust and the Appalachian Trail Easement
all bills whose goals were the preservation of natural
resources.
The Environmental Quality Act, which she also sponsored, made it a
law for state agencies seeking construction funds to first submit
detailed project studies to the state Department of Environmental
Protection for approval.
She also supported equal opportunity for women long before the word
"feminist" was coined.
But it was the environment, the beauty of nature, that stirred this
farm girl most deeply, and her passion for it didn't lessen even in
her last year or so, when the plants nearest to her were Boston
ferns, a Christmas cactus and pots of ivy, and the closest she got
to the outdoors were the vistas of lawns and gardens and trees seen
through the windows of her room. During those months, she kept a
small library of books within arm's reach among them Gov. Tom
Kean's The
Politics of Inclusion, James Herriot's Dog
Stories, The
Fine Art of Political Wit and several volumes
detailing the laws of New Jersey. And, in their midst, were Cam
Cavanaugh's Saving
the Great Swamp, the Directory of Certified N.J.
Nurseries and Plant Dealers, New
Jersey: A Photographic Journey, by John Cunningham and
Walter Choroszewski and several well-worn (and, no doubt,
well-loved) garden books.
There was something symbolic about the snow that fell as Josephine
Margetts was laid to rest last week. For as it covered the lawns
and shrubs and gardens she knew and loved, it also blanketed every
square inch of the state she knew and loved and whose natural
beauty and precious resources she worked so devotedly to
preserve.”
Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener.
And remember:
"For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."