Jun 8, 2022
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The Friday
Newsletter | Daily
Gardener Community
Historical Events
1698 On this day, the English writer,
landowner, gardener, courtier, and diarist, John Evelyn, went to
Deptford to "see how miserably the Czar... left my house after
three months [of] making it his Court."
Keep in mind John's appreciation for the amount of work a
garden requires as I tell you this little story about him.
In 1698, John Evelyn had owned his estate for 40 years. Everyone
who knew it said it was magnificent - both inside and out. It was
decorated to the nines. Of all he had accomplished, John's garden
was his pride and joy.
That year, the Russian Czar, Peter the Great, brought an entourage
of 200 people to England to visit William III. In a gesture of
hospitality, William volunteered John Evelyn's home to host the
Czar and his people during their visit.
John and his wife graciously moved out to give the Czar his
privacy. But it wasn't long before John's servants began sending
urgent messages begging him to return.
And when John returned home, he walked into a nightmare. The whole
estate had been trashed. Priceless paintings had served as
dartboards. His floors were ruined, windows were smashed; even the
garden was destroyed.
The servants told how the 6'8 Czar had played a game with his
friends where they put him in one of John's wheelbarrows and then
raced him through the garden beds, crashing into walls, trees, and
hedges. It must have been a scene akin to the movie Animal
House.
Clearly, the Czar had shown a complete disregard for the sanctity
of John's garden. As gardeners, we can imagine how John must have
felt.
For twenty years, John had nursed along a hedge of holly that had
turned into a glorious living wall. John, who was an expert on
trees, was particularly proud of that hedge, and he wrote,
Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of
the kind than an impregnable hedge of about 480 feet length, 9 feet
high, and 5 feet in diameter
Sadly the hedge was also ruined by the Czar. And even the
hardscapes were no match for the Czar's party, and part of a stone
wall surrounding the garden was toppled over.
John immediately sent word to the king about what had happened, and
arrangements were made straight away to move the Czar to other
lodgings. King William made arrangements to have the Evelyn home
fully restored - the house needed to be gutted and rebuilt from the
floors up.
John Evelyn was 78 years old when this happened to him. I'm sure
there was no amount of restitution that could restore the years of
love he had spent in his garden. He lived for another eight years
before dying in 1706.
Today John is remembered for his detailed diary that he kept for 66
years. As a passionate gardener, many of his entries pertain to
plants, landscaping, and related garden topics. John believed that
gardening was a year-long endeavor and that the experience of
gardening provided immeasurable benefits. John wrote,
The gardener’s work is never at an end, it begins with the year
and continues to the next.
Gardening is a labor full of tranquility and satisfaction;
natural and instructive, and [aids the] most serious contemplation,
experience, health, and longevity.
1714 Death of Sophia of Hanover, the
Electress of Hanover. She died at 83.
Sophia was next in line to become the Queen of England, but she
never got the chance. She was strolling through her magnificent
garden in Hanover, Germany, when she was caught in a rainstorm, and
after she rushed to find shelter, she collapsed and died of heart
failure. Today a sculpture memorial of Electress Sophia stands on
the southern edge of the garden.
In 1714, after Sophia died on June 8th, her cousin, Queen Anne,
died just two months later at the beginning of August. And that is
how Sophia's eldest son was able to claim the British throne as
George I.
Today, both Sophia and her son, George I, are buried in the very
garden she ran out of over three centuries ago. Incidentally,
George I became the last British monarch to be buried outside
Britain.
And while it is unfortunate that Sophia got caught in the rain,
there's no doubt that the beautiful grounds she had installed at
Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover brought her great joy. Sophia once
said,
The garden is my life.
A patron of the arts, Sophia commissioned Herrenhausen Palace and
the surrounding gardens, which remain the greatest treasure in all
of Hanover. As one of the most important historical gardens in
Europe, Herrenhausen Gardens is one of the few baroque gardens
remaining in Europe. And the garden remains true to its original
design and comprises four separate gardens that feature over 60,000
blooming flowers and 1,000 containers.
The baroque garden, also called the big garden, is home to
thirty-two magnificent statues made of sandstone. The sculptures
represent the four continents, the four seasons, the four elements,
and the gods of the ancient world. A statue of Juno standing next
to a swan is particularly stunning. Herrenhausen also encompasses
Georgengarten, a beautiful English-style park, and Berggarten, a
botanic garden featuring orchids and cactus.
In 2020, Ronald Clark, Director of Herrenhausen Gardens in
Hannover, presented Garden Thinking and Garden
Behavior. Garden Thinking was defined as,
Tending a garden in the long term in such a way that it yields
produce in harmony with nature. The eternal cycle of growing,
thriving, and decaying can only work if I take care of the soil and
plants.
And Garden Behavior was described as,
Garden thinking put into action.
Let us start small and look at a private garden. Which plants
do we find there? Are there any at all? Many gardens reflect well
how we deal with our surroundings.
A few decades ago, it was the three R's (Rasen, Rosen,
Rhododendron = lawn, roses, rhododendron), today’s fashion are
gravel gardens.
Again let’s start small and look just past our patio door. Is
gardening really labor?
Of course... a garden takes time, but no generation before us
has had this much leisure time, and caring for a garden is one of
the most meaningful and fulfilling opportunities for leisure
activities.
1908 On this day, a review of the Peterson
Nursery in Chicago offered an update on their annual peony
week.
...About 8,000 [peonies were] cut on June
8.
The next day there was a grand display of all the fine
kinds for which Wm. Peterson is justly famed.
That beautiful variety, Golden Harvest, is well known as
one of the most constant and excellent varieties and an English
firm [bred] Duchess of Somerset, [which is] supposed to be an
improvement on it.
...Trials cost a lot of money and trouble, but... it
eventually pays [as] is evident by the class of orders Mr. Peterson
is now receiving.
Perhaps the finest sight of all the varieties at the time of
our call was... the good old Festiva Maxima, (with its snowy white
flowers with red flecks) consisting of 500 fine five-year-old
plants, every one covered with flowers. For sereral days
[before our visit] about 1,500 flowers per day had been cut from
this lot of plants, but they were still very fine.
Another grand thing from landscape or border point of view is
Gloria. The flowers are pink and very beautiful, but they do not
all come double.
Peonies are a beloved flower. They are the national flower of
China, where they are native and where they are called sho-yu,
which means most beautiful.
There are two main types of peonies: tree peonies and herbaceous
peonies. Tree peonies are deciduous shrubs that can have huge
colorful dinner-plate-sized blossoms. Herbaceous peonies die back
every winter and return every spring. Herbaceous peonies make the
gorgeous cut flowers we all know and love, and the blowsy blooms
come in shades of white, pink, coral, and crimson.
The largest peony cut flower operation is in Holland, which sells
50 million peonies annually. The most popular variety by far is
"Sarah Bernhardt," which accounts for 20 million stems. The ruffly
pink-petaled Sarah Bernhardt peony with emerald
green foliage was bred by the French plant breeder Victor Lemoine.
The Sarah B peony debuted in 1906, and Victor
named the peony in honor of the famous French stage
actress.
And don't forget two crucial herbaceous peony planting tips for
flourishing blossoms: plant them in full sun and plant them high.
If you bury the peony crown too deeply, it will not flower.
Finally, don't forget that those pretty peony petals are edible.
You can impress your guests and children by elevating a humble
salad with peony petals or using crystallized petals to dress up
baked goods like cupcakes or a basic sheet cake.
1947 Birth of Sara Paretsky, American mystery
writer.
In her book Fallout,
Sarah's character Doris imagines heaven as a garden in this
excerpt:
Doris thought life was like a high-speed train where you kept
leaving friends and brothers and lovers at stations along the
route. Maybe when you died, you walked back down the tracks until
you met each of the people you’d lost. You collected them all,
brother Logan, mother, father, Lucinda, and you got to find a quiet
garden where you sat and watched the sun go down, the huge red-gold
Kansas sun sinking behind the waves of wheat, while you sipped a
little bit of a martini that your beloved had mixed for you.
Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation
Take It Outside by Mel Brasier, Garrett Magee, and James
DeSantis
This book came out in 2021, and the subtitle is A Guide to
Designing Beautiful Spaces Just Beyond Your Door.
Mel, Garrett, and James are the hosts of Bravo's Backyard
Envy. They have been called the "plantfluencers" by the
New York Times, and they also own the Manscapers landscaping
company. Their main differentiator is viewing outdoor spaces the
way interior designers evaluate rooms. And in this book, Mel,
Garrett, and James take you step-by-step through their process of
transforming outdoor spaces - no matter the size.
In the introduction, they write,
The three of us came to the landscape business with backgrounds
in design, not degrees in horticulture: Mel and James are
interiors experts, and Garrett trained as a graphic designer.
Together, we decided to pool our talents and take our
collective skill set outside. We learned to transform city
lots into lush hideaways, tiny terraces into chic
outdoor lounges, and suburban yards into
anything-but-cookie-cutter retreats. Along the way, we
realized that no matter the size, location, or budget of any
outdoor location, the makeover process is pretty much the
same.
Rather than be put off by the unpredictability of garden
design, we fell in love with its ever-changing nature. Today
we are constantly inspired by the prospect of working outside,
where every project mirrors the seasons and offers the promise
of transformation and progress. Nothing is stagnant
outside.
Time and again, we're faced with many of the same landscape
design conundrums, but we're always up to the challenge of
solving them. With this book, we're stoked to share our
tried-and-true tricks and solutions with anyone who wants to
design and build their own outdoor oasis.
Whether you are a seasoned or brand-new gardener, a
semiskilled DIYer, or someone who just wants to turn things
over to the pros, we'll help unpack the process for you. Now,
let's take this outside and get started!
This book is 272 pages of planning outdoor spaces worthy of an
episode of Backyard Envy - and the authors are
quick to point out that,
There's no "one size fits all" approach to
landscape design. You don't have to become a
gardening expert (you don't even have to love
flowers!). You just need to understand a few
basic landscaping principles and how to apply them to the
space you're working with. We've streamlined the process into
manageable steps that can work in any area. Feel free
to follow each step or cherry-pick them as
you please-whatever works for you. Remember: the goal is
to experience your home in a different way-from the outside
in.
You can get a copy of Take It Outside by Mel Brasier,
Garrett Magee, and James DeSantis and support the show using the
Amazon link in today's show notes for around $16.
Botanic Spark
2009 On this day, Martha
Stewart's peonies bloomed.
In her book, Entertaining:
A Year of Celebrations (2011), Martha
wrote,
For the last few years, I have had a "peony party," scheduling
the date to coincide with what I thought would be the apex of the
blooming of the hundreds of peony plants.
Unfortunately, global warming has played havoc with such
"schedules" and it is now almost impossible to judge accurately
when a plant is going to bloom.
Two years ago the peonies bloomed on June 8. One year ago, they
bloomed on May 28. This past year they bloomed closer to May 20. I
am now trying to find more varieties with longer blooming periods,
and more with early, midseason, and late-blooming
properties.
Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener
And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.