Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Passalong Plants / Garden Bloggers' Book Club
I was pleased as could be to learn that the April/May selection for the Garden Bloggers' Book Club was a book I already had on my shelf - Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing. I started reading about a year ago and just finished a few days ago. Not that it's thick and tedious to read, not at all. It's the kind of plant encyclopedia I wish there were more of - each entry comes with a story. Why would anybody want to grow this plant? How did the author learn of it? Any reason not to grow it? The kind of conversation you might expect from a friend who's just handed you a division or a seedling. But, most people don't sit down to read an encyclopedia from cover to cover. I'd say this is a great browsing book, especially if you're not a plant snob and if you live in zone 6 or better. Or maybe even if you are a plant snob, because some plants only need a new generation of gardeners to make them fashionable again (like Miz Friedman's Montbretia, p. 56).
Felder Rushing has been a Garden Hero of mine ever since I read a profile in the NY Times. There was a quote from him to the effect that his garden was a Southern Old Lady's Garden - she puts what she wants where she wants it, and if you don't like it, you can go home. But I always assumed that his books were not for me, being focused on the Deep South.
So I was surprised at how many of these plants I have. Four O'Clocks, Sweetshrub, Lily of the Valley, Cosmos, Cleome, Money Plant, Spiderwort, just picking a few out at random. And some I used to have, but no longer - Balsam, Hedychium, Bletilla, Moon Vine, Crinum, Tuberose. Did I choose these because they're old-fashioned or because they're easy to grow (in some places) or because everything old is new again? But I chose them all, and I paid for them all. Didn't acquire a single one via the passalong method. And I'm wracking my brain trying to remember if I've ever had any passalong plants. Well, yes, there have been a few houseplants (spider plant comes to mind). And I'm growing some tomatoes this year from seeds my dad saved a couple of years ago (Kellogg's Breakfast, to be specific). But many years ago (over 30), and not in my garden, but in my parents' and grandparents' yards, there grew some plants that spanned 4 generations (if you count me).
My great-grandmother was a collector of a sort - she saved everything. Several months after she died, the family held an estate sale. As I recall, it took place in a long-ago early summer at the house where she spent most of her adult life. This was in central Ohio, and we lived far away in northern Illinois but we had come out to help. Near her front porch grew a large Japanese honeysuckle. 
Yes, the same one that's now on every Invasive Plant hit list. Well. It was blooming and I had never smelled anything so wonderful in all my young life. I got the bright idea that growing a bit of Grandma Gordon's plant would be a nice remembrance and so I suggested that we take some cuttings and grow them at home. Somebody else got the brighter idea that it would be easier and faster to just dig some up. So we did. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else in northern Illinois had a Japanese honeysuckle. I had certainly never seen one. It grew and grew and my parents whacked it down and it grew back and grew and grew and.......I think they finally pulled it all out one day. Just too much trouble to keep up with it.
Now, of course, I know what a common plant it is (but I still don't know if anybody is purposely growing it in northern Illinois). And here in northern Virginia, I've dutifully ripped it out of the woods behind the house. It keeps coming back. 
Maybe this is why:
The neighbors didn't see any reason to get rid of theirs, and at this time of year, I'm glad they didn't.
I'll try to waft a little fragrance your way....
Thanks, Carol, for graciously hosting the Garden Bloggers' Book Club.
6 Comments:
Thanks for participating again. What a great review and story about your grandmother's honeysuckle. I really enjoyed both.
Reading your review made me realize that practically my entire garden was passed on to me...at least the plants that survive from year to year. This house and garden is 60 years old and there have been at least two, maybe three, gardeners here before me. That certainly took a lot of pressure off me. Unlike the people who move into houses in neighborhoods developed from scratch, my garden came with a lot of history (and plants) built in.
You made me remember how it felt to first read this book, Entangled. With no one to pass the more interesting plants on to me, I also had to buy many of them. It's very cool that you're growing your dad's tomatoes.
But your experience with your beautiful great-grandmother's honeysuckle being an unusual plant in Northern Illinois is unlike mine in the suburbs of Chicago.
Where I grew up there was Hall's Honeysuckle everywhere by the late 1950's. My parents had some, and honeysuckle was one of those names young kids learned along with snowball bush, popcorn tree, tulips, roses, phlox, lilacs and mockorange. My mom still has hers.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Carol: Both the book club and bloom day are great fun - thanks for being inventive!
MSS: I can see a real advantage in moving into a place where the plants have been edited down to those that grow well. Especially if the climate is not familiar. I went through a lot of plants before I accumulated enough survivors to have a decent display. I really think these kinds of plants are the backbone of successful gardens. But it's fun to try new things too - I'm thinking of your iris trials as I write this.
Annie: I really didn't know there was any Japanese honeysuckle in northern Illinois, but I grew up out amongst the corn fields (DeKalb area). "Garden" meant vegetable garden there and then. I remember some remnants of ornamental gardens near some of the older houses in our neighborhood - some ancient lilacs next to one, some Oriental poppies behind the garage of another, but no honeysuckle. And as new people moved in, they destroyed most of the old plantings. I thought it was sad at the time - I always liked the gnarly old lilacs and the bright, bright, bright poppies.
There were popcorn trees, too? I missed a lot, it seems :-)
Entangled, 'Popcorn trees' were the name for catalpas, because of the fluffy white flowers which fell and were thrown by children. I've also heard them called Indian cigars for the pods.
We were edge-of-suburbia prairie, not too far from a big swamp. Duck hunters used to burn the fields before the houses were built, so we had no big trees. The lots were acres and half-acres, and everyone seemed to plant flowering shrubs and trees. Did you get fresh corn from the DeKalb fields? We had to drive a few miles and buy ours from a stand ;-]
Annie
Annie: I can't remember any catalpas nearby where we lived. This was in a small town. When I was very young our street dead-ended in a corn field, but they extended the street and built a couple of churches down there while I was still in grade school. There were older houses on the street which were on large lots when they were built, but our house and several others were built on lots subdivided from the older, bigger lots. It was all quarter-acre lots during my time. One side of the street was lined with elms, but the town gov't cut those all down one day. Our side had maples, so they got to stay.
We always had sweet corn in the garden, or our relatives on the farm would give us some of the surplus from their larger garden. We didn't buy it too often, that I can remember. I'm still a sweet corn snob - I won't buy it fresh in a grocery store.
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