One of the great demystifications of the last several generations has taken place with food and cooking.  It’s ongoing—as if it has become a cult of sorts.  Personally, I feel it started with international airline travel, as well as WWII veterans being exposed to foreign food.
 
Today’s generation is wondering what, in fact, “cooking” is? Once they realize it is a fairly simple process of chemistry, it becomes clear and therefore, no longer the subject of “secret recipes”, et al.

On the other hand, a great challenge ahead of our society is to demystify foreign cultures.  For example, one would think that Europeans are very interested in food; that it is a central part of their life, and that they dwell on it even more than we do here in America.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  Europeans are not the least bit obsessed with food, per se, as we are.  For example, the French hardly give it a second thought and, similarly, the Italians take food for granted.  Paradoxically, they “eat to live”, while it is the Americans who are the prime example of a culture who “lives to eat”.

Another example of demystification is the average immigrant from Mexico.  To illustrate, I once observed what we often call Mexican workers or “laborers”, at a job site on a farm, where we occasionally bring in crews on short notice for fast or unexpected projects.

They were gardening near a barn that had a small addition perpendicular to it.  As usual, they were quietly and diligently working.  Suddenly a rabbit appeared, as it turned out, in the proverbial “wrong place and wrong time”.  Instantly the three young men (they couldn’t have been more than 19 years old) set a triangular formation and slowly moved in on their prey.  They hardly said a word and within a few seconds the rabbit had literally flown in to one of the Mexican’s hands, like a line drive to a shortstop.  I was so astounded I don’t remember exactly how the rest of the scene finished up. There was much happy laughter, and the rabbit was killed probably by having its neck broken, bagged and put in their old car.  Homemade tortillas and rabbit stew! 

Try to find a couple of US teenagers even remotely capable of doing such a thing.

Mexicans are primarily of Native American descent.  They have about as much to do with Spain as a Navajo or Apache has to do with England.  While most people would acknowledge this consciously, they don’t really know it.  Also, they are ignorant of the fact that the average immigrant worker from Mexico is extraordinarily productive due to a strong work ethic that runs deep in their culture.  Also, they grew up in towns and villages mainly in the northern half of Mexico which roughly corresponds to our Deep South, as if the two areas were mirror images bisected at the base by the US/Mexico  border.  A “farm” to them is what we would call a large garden.  Therefore, they understand seeds, plants, shrubs, trees, soil and water to the extent or in the way that US kids understand computers and video games—maybe better.

This demystification process applies broadly and deeply to the public image of the original site of Heronswood Nursery, now our Heronswood Northwest Research Garden.  Most people—in fact virtually everyone—thinks that the Kingston, Washington, garden is a sort of elaborate construction of multi-faceted spaces intertwined and dove-tailed together to create an almost Alice In Wonderland effect, or three-dimensional Arabesque.

These fey images are only partly true and pertain to only one or two sections of the entire estate.  And, while it is certainly a beautiful garden, there is a deeper—and quite simpler—meaning beneath the much-celebrated “mystery” of the original Heronswood Garden.

In fact, what happened was a couple of people bought a long rectangular piece of land, 90% of it under a canopy of tall Douglas Firs, cleared out the underbrush and trucked in large amounts of manure, compost, and other organic matter to create an extraordinarily deep humus soil.  They did this periodically so that it would naturally layer above the typical—and ideal for gardening—sandy soil that is found throughout the shoreline areas of the Pacific northwest.

In other words, they created a staging area, with particularly excellent drainage, for a large collectors’ shade garden.

The rest of the story is equally simple.  Following a wide-ranging interest in all sorts of different plants, they made a few trips around the world every couple of years for a decade or so, and then just plopped the plants in the ground.  That is really all it is, as a garden.

However, one of the guys was an architect who created an interesting series of small and variable geometric structures such as circular terraces, quadrangles, and a long curving oriental pergola, finally building a small house at the back end of the property, paneled with local hardwoods.

Twenty years later the nearly perfect conditions of the eastern side of the Olympic Peninsula have helped to create a horticultural paradise of about 6,000 taxa (genera and species) represented by a total of nearly 10,000 plants in an area little more than 6 acres.

So, like the diamond that starts out as a lump of coal, there is really nothing mysterious, secretive or difficult to understand about the original Heronswood garden.  Its only complex spaces result from a network of narrow trails that weave through the splendid plant collection in the 4 acre core garden, called “The Big Bang”.

Finally, the other key to the “secret” of the garden is that it is highly successional in nature.  If you walk through it one month, it is one garden; another month, it is a different garden.  Of course, this temporal diversity becomes wider over the three main seasonal periods, resulting in about “8-10 gardens” on one property.

Therefore, give yourself 10 or 15 years, collect—or buy from the locals—plants from various countries that have a climate similar to yours.  But, most important, choose a site that has good drainage and build a deep base of soil by just hauling it in, as the original owners did.  If you are in the shade, you’ll need a different set of plants than if you are in the sun, but the idea is the same. 

It is no mystery.

Mycorrhizae, the associations between plant roots and fungi, is one of those universes. When the ancestors of vascular plants first emerged from primordial seas, ancient fungi helped facilitate this transition. Today, almost all terrestrial plants participate in these associations. These associations are “mutualistic” or “symbioses” because in most cases, there is reciprocal dependence of both plants and fungi that results in gain and loss. For the gardener, there may be value in cultivating mycorrhizae.

There are several accepted types of mycorrhizae. The highly specialized orchid mycorrhizae make possible orchid seed germination and “feed” the young plant; the 16,000 or so orchid species are strictly dependant (obligately symbiotic) on these fungi in nature. Most of these orchid fungi are unidentified and seem to limit the distribution of orchids. Ericaceous plants such as cranberry, blueberry, azalea, and rhododendron form a fungal association that allows them to thrive in infertile, acidic soils; as a result of these associations, plants in this family survive in the subarctic, at treeline on mountains, and in the relatively harsh environment of the chaparral. One odd group of plants has no chlorophyll and cannot photosynthesize and transform solar energy into fixed carbon (sugars). Their survival is by means of an association with a fungus that acts as a bridge between the nonphotosynthesizing plant and another (photosynthesizing) plant that provides both the fungal symbiont and the dependant plant life-sustaining sugars.

The two most common mycorrhizal types that we know most about are endomycorrhizae and  ectomycorrhizae, so called because of the physical characteristics of plant fungal colonization. They are quite distinct groups of fungi.

Although several different types of mycorrhizae can be found in a single habitat, some generalization can be made about mycorrhizal type and habitat. Endomycorrhizal associations tend to be found in habitats such as the prairies of the U.S. Midwest that are characterized by great plant species richness; this group dominates also tropical, deserts, and understory plants. Nutrient use in these habitats is high and phosphorus particularly may limit plant growth. The fungi colonizing these plants grow intracellularly (hence “endo-”) to form what under a microscope appear as tiny tree-like structures called “arbuscules”. The fungal hyphae (“roots”) extend into the surrounding soil to capture nutrients, minerals, and water. The fungus in essence increases the surface area of the plant root and amplifies the plant’s ability to absorb nutrients and water.

The boreal forests of the northern hemisphere are composed of nearly monospecific stands of firs, pines, spruces, hemlocks, and larches. In this sort of habitat, the plant–fungus associations are mostly ectomycorrhizal. Fungi grow between root tip cortical cells and form a dense mat that covers the root tip and extend into the soil where inorganic nutrients (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) and water are absorbed and translocated to the host plant. The mushrooms and puffballs seen in forests are the fruiting bodies of these fungi.

There are as many as 5000 species of these ectomycorrhizal fungi. In the relatively plant-species poor habitats where they are found, they are often obligately dependant on a specific host plant. In contrast, endomycorrhizal fungi that grow in habitats with great plant diversity, tend to have broad host ranges, meaning that they can colonize many different kinds of plants, sometimes simultaneously, and they are able to survive independently of a host plant. About 80% of all mycorrhizal associations are endomycorrhizal. There are only 150 known species in this group; it belongs to a single fungal order, Glomales.
 
In nature, these fungal associations provide plants a competitive edge and are probably essential to the survival of most plants, but a well-fertilized and watered garden may be more or less free of mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizal associations are a two-way street. The fungus facilitates plant absorption of nutrients and water, but in return, the plant translocates sugars and, under drought, water to its fungal partner. What’s translocated to the fungus may be as much as 30% of the plant’s net fixed carbon. In a well-managed garden, the partnership may not be worth the cost to the plant.

There are other benefits to the plant and the gardener, though. Mycorrhizal fungi improve soil physical structure and composition. Individual hypha is only about 0.0002 inches in diameter but can extend across several acres. While hyphae may account for only a few percent of the total soil mass, there can be several miles of hyphae in a single ounce of soil. Hyphae increase soil porosity, which promotes air and water conductivity within soil. Fungi also enrich soil by converting plant sugars into fungal storage carbohydrates that are deposited in soil.

Mycorrhizal fungi interact with other soil organisms, including pathogens, and may reduce the incidence and severity of root diseases. In the ectomycorrhizal associations, the fungal mat covering root tips may act as a mechanical barrier to root pathogens. But these fungi may also produce antibiotic compounds that inhibit root pathogens, compete effectively with pathogens for the same limited resources, and induce in the plant a generalized defense response.

Legume plants (peas, beans, lupine) fix atmospheric nitrogen when colonized by rhizobia bacteria. The interaction between mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia seems to promote the colonization of legumes by both fungus and bacterium, resulting in greater plant nitrogen and phosphorus content when present in combination than when either is alone used to inoculate the legume.

The concept of the sustainable garden is in the news. Sustainable gardens can take many forms and might be organic or might focus on planting local, native plants only. But whatever, improving plant growth, reducing or eliminating fertilizer and water additions, and suppressing root pathogens by cultivating mycorrhizal fungi is in accordance with this idea.
 
Mycorrhizae clearly have many potential advantages for gardeners, but the unwelcome news is that experimental work with mycorrhizal fungal inoculation is equivocal. While there has been certain promise in forestry and agriculture, in general, results are often unpredictable or unsustainable. There are a number of products available, but to my knowledge their efficacy is unproven.

Currently, the best advice for cultivating garden mycorrhizae may be to follow a few cultural guidelines. Flooded soil, chemical fertilizers, liming, systemic fungicides, and fallow fields suppress soil fungal flora. Some cultural practices promote and help to maintain mycorrhizal fungi. Crop rotation, mulching and minimal soil disturbance (minimum tillage), and use of cover crops are among these. For an overwintering garden, mulching is an excellent practice. Shredded hardwood or conifer bark make great mulches, are readily available in most parts of the country, and will support fungal growth.

For some years I’ve considered northern Arizona my home away from home.  Vacations in Yavapai County, then drive over to Jerome to enjoy the rockabilly bands at The Spirit Room, then up to southern Utah to stare at the stunning mountains, mesas and plateaus.  You haven’t lived until you’ve seen southern Utah.

One day recently, while leafing through a geology book, I discovered that, of course, I’d been spending all my time hiking across what was, not so long ago, the floors of enormous lakes and oceans.

What a strange planet:  I slog for days across a desert that was once the bottom of the sea.  It never ceases to amaze me.

Now, while I like exotic vacations as much as the next person, I have become bored with the desert.  Too much of a good thing, perhaps.  A bit weird, abstract and severe after awhile.

Also, more and more gardening is happening in the towns and villages across northern Arizona.  For reasons that are plain, I do not want to see gardens while I am on vacation.  In fact, I do not want to see plants. 

So I turned my trip planning attention to the recently fashionable tours to Antarctica (”Why it’s global warming, darling.  Polar caps and stuff.”).  I considered gazing upon icebergs and vast stretches of ice and snow from my deckchair like many other middle-aged horticulturist and nurseryman have done at some point.  You might even meet Ozzy Osbourne on those types of tours.  Then I thought, “I’m just not that aesthetically oriented.”  Tonal variations of white don’t “do it for me”, as the kids say.  Icebergs don’t work my stuff. Plus, much of it sounded like winter in Manitoba. 

Extreme cold and wind.  There is a haunting scene of Oliver Reed dying from existential boredom on a field of icy snow in “Women In Love”—an awful flick and a depressing book.  Melted away forever my appreciation of snowy fields. 

So, my next vacation should consist of snorkeling on reefs and exploring marine life in general.  And a bit of reggae life, specifically.

Like most children, the ocean terrified me.  Unlike most children, it continued to do so for a long time.  I was not a child who was typically “filled with wonder”.  It wasn’t until I was 21 that I was brave enough to swim out into the ocean, and do some snorkeling.  After I saw a shark only about 10 feet away, nearly a mile from the beach, I called it quits for good.  Never swam so fast in my life, like a powerboat.

But, nowadays, I care less about danger or injury.  Let them come.  I’ve grown less cagey.    My new interests are in vacations that involve “eyes” of all kinds—fauna, “insecta” and especially “fisha”.  They pull me to the shore and into the waves.  I love the feel of stones under my feet.

As you may know from an earlier blog, I’m a fan of SETI research and the announcement of GL 581c gave me goosebumps.  The reason for the excitement is that all sorts of life—animal and plant—can thrive in the most hostile conditions imaginable and do so, right here on earth.

For example, the Archaea are life forms so old they date back almost four billion years.  They include tiny, single-celled organisms that live in the vents of undersea volcanos and underground hot springs.  Some are used to treat sewage and chemical spills.  Others eat metals, for instance—and not as do geeks in carnival sideshows.  Metal ions, rocks, gases and chemicals such as ammonia are their nutrients.  Imagine what they’d be like if they were large.

It gets better when you consider how long Archea have been on earth.  If 3 ½ billion years is about a third of the universe’s existence, as currently measured, then there is little question that similar life forms exist throughout it.

This is likely because many Archea and similar creatures—like the marine life in pitch-black darkness—live at great depths.  Therefore, they would have little to no direct dependence on a sun.  Obviously, they can adapt.  Archea have been discovered by geologists in mines as well as during oil drills.  Since they have no calcium or other bone-like structures, they leave no hard fossils.  Instead, they leave “chemical fossils”, evidence of massive ancient colonies picked up through chemical analysis of deep rock core samples.

But let us return to vacation planning. Contemporary descendents of Archea are often found in plankton.  Therefore, I shall probably be gazing over the railing down into the water on the whale-watching boats this winter looking for the great mammals of the ocean.  And then, later that night, I shall be craning my head up and peering deep into the night sky.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, some silent movie actors made the transition to the “talkies”, and other great silent era stars had unpleasant voices and disappeared.

So, too, some super-deep sea creatures either had the genetic set up to evolve or did not, and the latter vanished from pre-history, or fought their way back down to the deeper submarine ecosystems from where they arose.  Good luck to them.  As I say, many probably didn’t make it.

It’s speculative—but fanciful—to think about the evolution of terrestrial eyes.  As in marine life, the eyes were used to hunt, avoid being hunted and select mates.  Colors were certainly invented by sea creatures in truly wondrous arrays within a range of  qualities of visible light that we do not see on land. Such dispersal and diffusion! The outlandish luminosity of coral life has to be seen to be believed.

Stuck in a hotel room recently, I couldn’t avoid the weird looking HD television.  On it was a great cable show by the Discovery Channel called “planet earth”.  I recommend it.  It’s as close as I’ve seen to a faithful representation of aquatic color, but still not the same. 

It mystifies me that a similar floral and foliar color based documentary hasn’t been done.  Must be all the swimming around that gets the “eyeballs”, as TV industry people describe their ratings.  The swimming sea creatures are so sexy, so beautifully poetic. Maybe if insects danced more often, they could catch the attention of nature documentary makers.  The cameramen should use more slow motion and stop-gap action.  Or perhaps the reason is that people dislike bugs.  Personally, I love them.

Continuing the blog’s meditation theme, I was looked at by my eye doctor, so to speak.  He described the “cup” at the back of my right eye as being more like a “collar” that “holds” strands or “branches” that radiate forward toward the lens—a bit like actual branches of a plant toward the sky—and then pass electrochemical signals (or whatever) through the “collar” back into the brain.  These, his very words, are the same that arborists use.  I was half-expecting him to say “dovetailing” at some point.

Which is “light” in the eye and tree metaphor?  Which end the “roots”?  I leave that to the poets.  However, my doctor’s descriptions were remarkably like those of a tree, though, of course, on its side.  Especially the “collar” part, which is exactly what a trunk is—an extended sort of tubular collar.  Thus, our eyeballs are like horizontal trees.

Many fish have vertical eyes, such as the bottom fish like skates and so forth.  And they definitely look like leaf debris down there on the murky ocean floor, as they gaze skyward.

Speaking of murkiness, I wish to add another thought.  I speculate that one of the contributors to our ultra-sophisticated eyes—and those of our distant ancestors—was the desire for shade.  The very early prehistoric sun must have been horrible, merciless—a bit like the entire world was Death Valley—a horrible place! The ability to spot a patch of shade made the difference between life and death. 

Finally, a friend reminded me recently that Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, about which so many of us aging baby boomers talked endlessly (at least the goriest parts) in college dormitories, was concerned mainly with plants and trees.  I had forgotten all that.  It is, he said, the point of the title.  Another new bit of botanical insight.

I had never looked at it that way.

Writing the Heronswood catalogue three years ago, I included phrases and sayings that “floated” amidst the copy and photography, as the designers say.  One of them was “Colors of the garden are the first inventions of light”.  I rather liked it, as these things go.  However, while I might have been poetic and provocative, I think now that I was wrong.

I’ve tried to piece together the history of color over the last few weeks, now that the poignant months of diminished daylight are here, and I have a bit of free time.  The last Open at Kingston was October 4th and the last at Fordhook on September 25th and 26th.

Fall colors are completely gratuitous, in my opinion.  The celebrated foliage colors—and impressive ones they are—serve no purpose to the trees.  They may mark time for birds or perhaps signal nut season for squirrels, but I’m not sure.  So, I wonder, how did the intentional, purposeful colors of flowers—so key to the plants’ survival—come about?  What, indeed, invented them?  Not the flowers, I mean, but the actual colors.  Color itself?

First, I understand that light is energy, and that, therefore, all “color” is within light.  It is light itself, so to speak.  Concrete enough, I suppose, if you are a physicist.  But let’s leave waves versus photons aside for the moment.

Consider the creation of the earth’s present atmosphere—the one we inhabit and use.  It’s mostly nitrogen and then oxygen and then an obvious, or visible, amount of water vapor, plus small amounts of various other gases.  Our atmosphere, as I mentioned in my last blog, was influenced heavily by the rise of the terrestrial plants, perhaps more than any single class of beings.  So much oxygen was produced so rapidly that we are still feeding off it and likely will be for millions more years.  Plants mothered the earth, as we know it, and certainly, in the next turn, gave birth to us.  We would not have evolved without them.

So how did plants invent their colors, so to speak?  When one looks at a rainbow or any glass-like spectrum, one sees the main “colors” of visible light.  But, like in a thought experiment, what would visible radiation “look like” to plants?

The reason I ask is because flowers co-evolved  with the tiny creatures that first pollinated them.  Pollen was probably an evolved form of spores, which is why it is not nearly as visually interesting as petals and colored petaloid parts such as tepals and bracts—flowers, in a word.

So, the first “eyes”—besides those of the sea creatures—belonged to these early insects that used them mainly to hunt, escape and mate—as you’d expect—and the flowers represented a major innovation in the ecology between plants and the insects they hosted, protected and—on the other hand—repelled when necessary.  Insect eyes probably preceded flower color.  But I don’t know; the fossil record should confirm this.

Did “colors” as we see them and enjoy them in the garden, woods and meadows, arise from the plants as an evolutionary step?  If so, then, they—the plants—invented color as we know it.  A simplistic thought, but profound and a bit provocative.

I asked a few colleagues last week if they knew why the sky was blue.  I did not know how terrible it is to ask someone this question—a “Scientific Era Taboo”.  But I was just hoping someone was going to answer it.  One friend finally came through. Various gas molecules, which make up most of the atmosphere, reflects visible light, at the wavelength “stopping”, if you will, at what we call blue.  Blue represents a level of energy that comprises visible radiation, a degree of its strength, or frequency of wave length.  This subtle quality gives “blue” its character.  (Why blue is such a psychologically complex color I do not know.  Perhaps because we evolved beneath it.)  But that is—literally—how we are able to see it, and probably how most similarly composed lenses and brains “see” it as well.

Inherently, living organisms are a lot more alike than is normally supposed.  So, a bee probably sees blue more or less as the color we see—probably less than a raccoon would in comparison to us, but you see my point.  Which is why it is that I believe that flowers invented terrestrial color.

So, let’s review.  Color was, or is, in light.  Light contains all colors, as potentialities.  Flowers—of all land-based creation—took up where light left off, in the general scheme of things.

Or put it this way:  plants “created” the atmosphere. The basic, coarse colors become visible only by passing through that atmosphere, which functions as a sort of spherical spectrum. The multitude of colors that we experience were created by tonal variations picked up by the primitive eyeballs of the day.  In time, our eyes became sharper in response.  So plants, indirectly, enabled us to see color.  Perhaps plants, by creating so much of the atmosphere, gave us our ability to see as well as we do.

Finally, it is interesting to note that one of the greatest debates among evolutionary biologists is how eyes came into being.  It’s almost like the debate about humans as “the symbol-makers”.  Eye-sight itself could be seen, so to speak, as the first language.

See what I mean?

While not quite as simple as that, it’s true that plants created land, as in “land, ho!” or “this is good earth—our crops will grow here”, etc.  The brown and black stuff plants grow in?

In fact, most of the land that isn’t rock was formed by millions of years of plant life—especially their evolving root systems.

Over millennia, plants actually gathered soil beneath them—they created it.  Grew it.  Soil doesn’t grow plants; plants grow soil.  I mean, duh.

It was a bit weird to hear this over cocktails.  A spectacular, biblical type of insight—through the alcohol haze I discern . . . a green rock.

Grace Romero and Bill Rein, our “crackerjack” research team, in the immortal words of The New York Times’ Anne Raver, added more insights the following day.  Bill said that water used to flood characteristically across the land and only “braid” through early plants.  Then, some 400 million years ago, forests emerged—plants bound together in a common yet competitive struggle toward sunlight—and caused water to “meander” and thus become rivers.  Roots wove together as well as to substrate so firmly that they “dominated” the earth and, in effect, created soil to serve their existence.

The great mega tree of this period, a precursor to today’s giant flowering forest trees, is called “Archeopteris”.  It was non-flowering—a sort of giant proto pine with fern-like leaves and mega-spores.  It covered most of the planet’s land mass and provided it with its first large and effective shaded environment—a huge step in botanical history.

I was aware of the formation of oxygen—and our atmosphere—by plant life but, brother, I felt stupid when I learned this other, simple “rock to earth” sequence.  More correctly, the rock was covered by plants, and then by earth.

More or less.

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.

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

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.

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.