Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Beautiful at All Seasons
As I read Beautiful at All Seasons by Elizabeth Lawrence - the Garden Bloggers' Book Club selection for April/May - I had to keep reminding myself that these essays appeared weekly for 14 years in a newspaper column. I wonder if the readers of the Charlotte Observer realized how lucky they were to have such charming and learned writing delivered to their doorsteps. This is the third Elizabeth Lawrence book I've read and now I feel I must read them all.
What I admired espcially is the sense that the reader is accompanying Miss Lawrence on her own gardening odyssey. Unlike some garden writers (Henry Mitchell), she doesn't give the impression that she thinks she knows everything - quite the contrary, she seems to be constantly reading, experimenting, attending lectures, and corresponding with gardeners and vendors.
Some of her gardening friends appear frequently in these columns. Mr. Krippendorf, I'd met in reading The Little Bulbs, but I'd always wondered about Caroline Dormon and so was pleased to find "Meet Caroline Dormon" on page 179. "Miss Dormon is the kind of gardener who wants to plant everything that grows, and she corresponds with her kind in England, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia." Sort of like Miss Lawrence. No wonder they got along so well.
I hadn't thought of Elizabeth Lawrence as a humorous garden writer, and she doesn't seem to have a bad word to say about anybody, so I was caught off guard to read her thoughts on what would happen if the public were encouraged to plant crape myrtles as street trees. "I have two objections to their wholesale planting on city streets. One is that the colors most likely to appeal to the general public are the hot rose reds and watermelon pinks. We already have too many of these. The other reason is that few householders are likely to allow crape myrtles to grow into graceful little trees. Most of them are going to grow them as shrubs, butchering them every year so that all winter long they are a bunch of hideous sticks, and in summer a menace to traffic as they block the view of oncoming cars." I wonder if she was thinking of azaleas when she wrote about too many hot rose reds and watermelon pinks. Elsewhere in the book (and I can't find it now) she wrote about a plant as being "one of those that we are constantly removing in order to plant more azaleas". These passages made me smile, but they're not typical. Most of the columns are gentle suggestions about interesting or useful plants and garden features.
But I have one serious disagreement with Miss Lawrence. How on earth could she encourage people to plant Smilax? After having seen Smilax growing over a doorway, she wrote "It seems a pity that these charming and useful native vines are so seldom grown". Useful? I've been clearing impenetrable tangles of at least two species of Smilax from the woods for a while now. I can't hope to eliminate it, but I do hope to tame it. But useful? Hmm, maybe, possibly, to the birds certainly. But humanly useful? Well, I learned in that column that the owner of the doorway Smilax waits to cut it down until there's an occasion to use the trimmings as a decoration. Aha, there's an idea.
Yes, useful. And if you want any, stop by my place and cut all you like.
As when I read The Little Bulbs, I felt I should have been taking notes the whole time. That's not my style of reading, however, and I'll just have to search and reread from time to time. That won't be a chore, believe me.
5 Comments:
I also felt like I should be taking notes and marking some of the many quotable remarks about gardening. For me, it isn't so much the plants she mentions, as what she says about gardening.
Thanks for joining in for the book club.
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
I really enjoyed your thoughtful post about the book. I'm not familiar with Smilax. It isn't hardy where I live.~~Dee
I haven't read this book, so thank you for the quote on Mrs Dorman! I too wondered about her...so many of EL's friends sound like good garden neighbors.
Now that you mention it, I see, too that she was a more serious garden writer. I always appreciated her telling it like it was about plants.
Gosh, how I dislike the mangled Crape myrtles all over the place...I do wish someone would put up a billboard with that quote!
Gail
Thanks for the review, Entangled!
I can see there are many delights ahead! I used Through the Garden Gate in concert with some of Beautiful at All Seasons for my post since I just got the book on Friday.
We have a native Smilax here that's called Catbriar... not lovely to run into when working in the yard, but rumored to feed many species of birds. I've heard of Smilax being used for weddings, but it's spoken of as a delicate small-leaved vine. My smilax is terribly thorny - is yours like that, too?
My hot pink crepe myrtles came pre-mangled, so I have no guilt for chopping them even more!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Carol: EL was certainly a keen observer. I'm glad her writing continues to be published and read. I appreciate the southern focus - after 20+ years of living in Virginia I still think in zone 5 midwestern terms when it comes to plants. There are so many lovely plants grown in the south that I just don't know much about.
Dee: No Smilax? I'll send you some ;-) Maybe it's hardy there and just never got the chance to prove it?
Gail: With every one of the EL books I've read, I've been amazed at the volume of correspondence she kept up with gardening friends. And all before there was email.
It was only a couple of years ago that I first noticed the beautiful multicolored bark on crape myrtles allowed to grow as trees, and now that I've got more space to play with I intend to plant some. They will not be pruned.
Annie: I'm adding all the EL books to my wish list - I think I enjoyed this one the most of the three I've read. The Little Bulbs and Gardening for Love: The Market Bulletins were the other two.
It's the thorns on the Smilax that make me dislike it. Otherwise it really is quite pretty. But those thorns! There are at least two Smilax species I've been chopping down for a year and half now. The more common one is Smilax rotundifolia. That one has fewer but longer and sharper thorns. The other one (or maybe two or three) have very small prickles all along the stems. The prickly ones are mostly thin-stemmed and the new growth is somewhat delicate and wispy-looking. I think I see a blog post about my central Virginia Smilax in the offing.
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