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Chapel Hill Garden Club Newsletter January — February 2019 C LIPPINGS
Chapel Hill Garden Club Newsletter January — February 2019
CLIPPINGS
3 REFLECTIONS Notes from the Editor and President
5 JANUARY — FEBRUARY CALENDAR Photography & iPhone workshops!
6 CLUB EVENTS Crevice Gardening; Gardening with Foundation Plants
8 CLUB NEWS Floral design creations
9 PLANET BOTANIC The Wildest Flowers of the Year; Herb Appeal; Life Lessons in the Garden
15 GO OUTSIDE Susie Moffat’s winter visit to the Raulston.
DEPARTMENTS
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Yaupon - The Aegis. Botanical illustration by Preston Montague.
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COVER IMAGE ‘NATURE’ Alphabet — native NC plants Botanical Illustrations by Preston Montague AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE ON PRESTONMONTAGUE.COM
TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE PHOTO ‘Yaupon - The Aegis’ Botanical Illustration by Preston Montague AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE ON ETSY.COM
ReflectionsEditor’s Note
THIS ISSUE January-February is a contemplative time of year, so in that vein, I included an article (“Life Lessons in the Garden,” p. 13.) my friend Alice Leeds wrote about what her Vermont garden has taught her. You’ll recognize the plants she mentions, and I think you’ll relate to the evolution of her thoughts about her garden. We never stop learning about our gardens, eh?
Don’t miss the info on Photography and iPhone Workshops on page 5. Enjoy the slide show of The New York Times Style Magazine’s best flowers of 2018 on page 9. (By the way, The New York Times Style Magazine is now called “T”. ) On page 15, check out Susie Moffat’s images of winter flowering plants at the Raulston and then treat yourself to a winter walk in the arboretum.
THE COVER IMAGE When I realized that, among other things, our February speaker, Preston Montague, is an illustrator of botanical images, I checked out his work.
Gorgeous! I couldn’t resist using some of his botanical letters for the Cover image and the Table of Contents page image instead of my usual practice of selecting a plant that is doing something interesting (flowering or fruiting) during the months of the issue.
These illustrations are part of his Codex Carolinianum series. In this collection, Preston chose native North Carolina plants that have been traditionally used for food or medicine.
Preston does sell these images as cards or prints, so you can have them for yourselves!
THANK YOU Preston Montague, for the use of your botanical illustrations, Alice Leeds for your article, Susie Moffat for your blog piece and Daphne McLeod for your evocative photos.
～ Barbara
3January — February 2019
Barbara Clare gazing on to Lake Champlain from Vermont. Photo by Alice Leeds.
From Our President
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Reflections
4January — February 2019
Jane Lamm
This month it was easy to choose the topic for my “Reflections.” It has been two years since the Nominating Committee asked me to be President of the Chapel Hill Garden Club. My first reaction was, “I am 70, been there, done that, it is time for younger people to take over.” But my next and best thought was: “I have been on the Executive Board and Tour Committee with these members and I have seen how talented, smart and creative they are. Boy, do they have tenacity.” So I changed my mind and accepted the challenge. With this wonderful crew, I knew being President would be lots of fun.
This is one of the best decisions I have ever made. Being President of the CHGC is a lot of work, but I have gotten so much more out of it than I have given. The best part is getting to know and work with so many fabulous people. I have made friends for life, and they are fun!
The Nominating Committee is starting to meet and will soon be asking members to serve on the Board for 2019-20. If you are lucky enough to be asked, please say YES! You will be glad you did. Don’t worry if it is a job you have never done before. You will receive a notebook filled with info on how to do the job and a great team working with you.
～ Jane
L: This gorgeous watercolor is by our talented club member, Daphne McLeod.Photo by Daphne McLeod.
Member Survey
Every two years we do a Member Survey to see from y’all how we
can improve the club. We did one in 2017, so we will be doing one
this year. Please fill it out so we can learn how best to serve
everyone’s needs.
CLIPPINGS 5January — February 2019
Events Calendar
TUESDAY
5
Club Meeting. 10 am — noon Crevice Gardening
Board of Directors Meeting. 10 am NCBG
January
February
TUESDAY
29
TUESDAY
26 Club Meeting. 10 am — noon Gardening with Foundation Plants
PHOTOGRAPHY AND iPHONE WORKSHOPS
Please note that one workshop has limited space, so those who have already responded get first choice. Sign up at a General Meeting or email Jane Lamm: [email protected]
iPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY. Thursday, February 21, 10am, NCBG, Reeves Auditorium. Presented by Dennis Szerszen, who teaches Lightroom and iPhotography at Olli. We are VERY LUCKY to have Dennis leading this session.
FLOWER AND GARDEN PHOTO COMPOSITION TIPS. Tuesday, March 19, 10am, NCBG classroom. Presented by Kathy Swendiman. This workshop will benefit those who takes photos with either a camera or any phone. Space limited to 25 members.
CLIPPINGS 6January — February 2019
Crevice Gardening Tuesday, January 29
10 am — noon North Carolina Botanical Garden
Reeves Auditorium
Featuring Jeremy Schmidt
Club Events
Jeremy A. Schmidt is the Research and Grounds Supervisor at Plant Delights Nursery at Juniper Level Botanic Garden.
Jeremy has built countless beautiful rock features designed for crevice planting. His unique perspective has led him to diverge from traditional means of landscaping and gardening, developing a more efficient and ergonomic application of hand tools, as well as an approach to residential garden planning and design based on healthy, “mostly” organic soil and ease of maintenance.
Jeremy earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Landscape Horticulture from Southern Illinois University/Carbondale in 2005. From 2005 — 2006, he gained curatorial and research experience at Longwood Gardens in PA. He started his own landscape design and gardening business in 1998 called Hortco. For more than two decades, Jeremy has closely studied and cultivated thousands of native and non-native plant taxa and has participated in or led botanizing trips to the Southeast US focusing on Trillium.
CLIPPINGS 7January — February 2019
Gardening with Foundation Plants
Tuesday, February 26 10 am — noon
North Carolina Botanical Garden Reeves Auditorium
Featuring Preston Montague
Club Events
Making landscape design decisions can be a frustrating challenge. Preston will show us planting strategies developed from various residential and commercial projects to help demystify the process of deciding “which plant, where, and how many?”
Preston Montague has a Master of Landscape degree from NC State University. An artist, educator, and landscape designer, Preston developed a passion for the natural world while growing up in the rural foothills of Virginia. Preston uses botanical illustration as a medium to teach drawing and observation skills in an effort to encourage environmental awareness and natural science literacy.
Club NewsCLIPPINGS 8
January — February 2019
L: Pam Dempsey’s Hogarth Curve Design. R: Kim Outing proudly displaying her Crescent Design. Photos by Betsy Nininger.
Floral Design Workshop Creations
In Workshop Two we created the Hogarth Curve design (featured in left photo). In this design, the artist creates an S Curve and strives to maintain that curve as the flowers are added. A tricky task, but it is possible and the results can be beautiful and elegant. The use of one color or tints and tones of one hue serve to help stay true to that S shape. The S can be sharp or relaxed — dictated by the type of plant material available along with the designer’s intentions.
The beginners in Workshop One had a wonderful session where they tried their hand at constructing the Crescent Design (featured in right photo). First they studied the two Principles of Design, Dominance and Contrast. They then went on to designing the Crescent. The trick is to create a half circle shape and then to skillfully add the flowers in such a manner as to not interfere with that shape all the while making sure that each flower enhances and advances the half circle. Everyone did beautiful arrangements and learned a lot along the way. Oh, and they also had fun!
Both of these arrangements were created by new members!
By Betsy Nininger
Planet BotanicCLIPPINGS 9
January— February 2019
The Wildest, Most Whimsical Flowers of the Year
Photograph by Marius W. Hansen. Styled by Sylvain Cabouat. Retouching: Studio RM. Photographer’s assistant: Gabriele
Renna. Set Assistant: Aymeric Arnould
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/t-magazine/best-flowers.html
For Slide Show, click here:
December 21, 2018
From common weeds like the wild dandelion and the formerly despised anthurium — also known as “penis on a platter,” as Deborah Needleman wrote in her story about the resurgence of ’80s floral arrangements — many previously unfashionable flowers came back into vogue this year. Accordingly, the pages of T [“T” is The New York Times Style Magazine] were filled with unexpected arrangements, including clouds of Queen Anne’s lace, swathes of Japanese knotweed and vases of rainbow-colored baby’s breath, pastel-dyed orchids and flamboyant birds of paradise.
Click through the Slide Show above from T (The New York Times Style Magazine) to see their choices for some of the best flowers in 2018.
Planet Botanic
CLIPPINGS 10January — February 2019
By Ligaya Mishan
November 21, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/t-magazine/herbs-cooking-food-flowers.html
The Comforting Appeal of Herbs
From left: an explosion of fennel seed heads, bronze fennel fronds, giant fennel, Italian and milk parsley, allium, garlic chives, mizuna, black swallowtail chrysalides and caterpillars, a swallowtail butterfly — plus your standard garden snail. Both arrangements in this story were created by the floral artist Joshua Werber. Photograph by Sharon Core. Styled by Joshua Berber
ONCE, HERBS were weapons. Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians recorded, in cuneiform, lifesaving prescriptions of myrtle and thyme. The oldest surviving text of Chinese herbal pharmacology, extolling the benefits of ginseng, camphor and cannabis, was set down in the first century A.D. Around the same time, the
Greek physician Dioscorides documented the properties of herbs he encountered as a surgeon with Nero’s imperial Roman army; Western doctors consulted his compendium, “De Materia Medica,” for the next 1,500 years. In Renaissance England, chamomile, hyssop, pennyroyal and tansy were strewn on floors to ward off the plague; men and women wielded prophylactic posies of flowers and herbs like swords.
But with the triumphs of science and technology in the 19th century, herbs receded in significance. “These ancestral leaves, these immemorial attendants of man, these servants of his magic and healers of his pain,” as the American naturalist Henry Beston described them in 1935, became workhorses, steadfast and drained of alchemy. They came to be defined by that most prosaic of qualities: usefulness. Even in the kitchen, they were underlings, essential but largely confined to a supporting role. Any prettiness they possessed was incidental to their practical purpose and noted only in passing, en route to the boiling pot.
As the modern world has lost its luster, however, herbs are coming into ascendance once more, reasserting their curative powers and claiming a beauty of their own. A private herb garden has become a status symbol, as chefs flaunt seasonings that have fallen out of favor or are hard to find, like salad burnet, its bite as cleansing as a cucumber’s, or sculpit, which evokes a bashful tarragon. This goes beyond the now mainstream farm-to-table movement, which has roots in the counterculture of the 1960s, to what the Spanish chef Rodrigo de la Calle christened gastrobotánica: the restoration of forgotten plants to the realm of cooking. The British horticulturalist Jekka McVicar, who grows more than 650 varieties of herbs on her farm in South Gloucestershire, England, has been approached by British chefs seeking sweet woodruff, beloved in Germany as an infuser of Jell-O and beer, and baldmoney from the Scottish highlands, its flavor a sidestep from cumin. Farm.One, an underground hydroponic facility in downtown Manhattan, supplies avant-garde restaurants and pizzerias with rarities such as tiny, bright pluto basil and akatade, a Japanese water pepper that imparts a faintly anesthetic heat.
Even more standard herbs are having a heyday. The Israeli-born chef Yotam Ottolenghi, of Nopi and the Ottolenghi delis in London, deep-fries sage to intensify its flavor, then sprinkles it on dishes for a staccato of crunch — or turns whole leaves of basil and chervil into tempura, to be dipped in vinegar. At Cicatriz in Mexico City, the American-born Scarlett Lindeman steeps fresh bay leaves — “slick and oily,” she says, unlike brittle, dried leaves that don’t “taste or smell like anything” — in a beef braise called estofado and heaps plates with a mezcla madre, a “mother mix” of cilantro, mint, parsley and basil, meant to be worked into each dish.
FLORISTS have started coming to McVicar’s farm, too, seeking inspiration. Now the likes of feathery bronze fennel, once eaten by Roman warriors before heading into battle; dill with its whispery fronds; pink, fuzzy-hearted, flu-fighting echinacea; and wild garlic, whose white-hooded flowers call to mind novice nuns, come entwined with conventional blossoms or command entire bouquets. The effect is often nostalgic, a paean to some lost pastoral idyll, but also intensely of the moment.
“We’re in turbulent times,” McVicar says. She sees the embrace of herbs as a yearning for connection with not simply the natural world but our analog past: “We want to remember who we are, where we’re from, how to be gentle with ourselves.”
Planet Botanic
CLIPPINGS 11January — February 2019
HERBS CONT.
Herbs are botanically delineated as among those plants that bloom and then die down to the ground, with only roots to attest to their persistence. (Rosemary and sage are among the notable exceptions.) They have a kinship to wildflowers, which have proliferated in floral designs in recent years, in keeping with a turn toward foraging and unstructured, almost anarchic arrangements. But unlike wildflowers, whose allure is their existence outside of human conscription, herbs have always had a relationship with mankind, from before we even recognized ourselves as mankind: feeding, protecting and arguably improving us.
Parents come to McVicar’s herb farm in search of bouquets to ease their children’s asthma. For Mother’s Day, Terri Chandler and Katie Smyth of Worm in London tuck lavender and rosemary into bouquets and deliver them with cheesecloth and string, to give the herbs a second life as a bath soak.
To Ellie Jauncey and Anna Day of the Flower Appreciation Society in London, herbs are the equals of flowers and ought to be treated as such. Their arrangements, mostly of locally grown plants, are built to ramble, inspired by the spirit of the great British country gardens at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent and Great Dixter in East Sussex. “I see no point in segregating plants of differing habit or habits,” wrote Christopher Lloyd, the gardening writer and master of Great Dixter until his death in 2006. “They can all help one another.” It’s an ethos shared by Amanda Luu and Ivanka Matsuba of Studio Mondine in San Francisco: What grows together, goes together. They like to mix chives with roses, a pairing commonly found in gardens. The alliums’ pungency repels aphids and larger threats (compounds in the leaves offer a kind of herd immunity against black spot, a fungal infection and botanical equivalent of the plague). Herbs are good for pollination, too: Bees are drawn to flowering herbs more than to flowers themselves, with the herbs’ healing powers suffusing the nectar.
Part of the appeal of herbs is how quotidian they are, which makes them startling out of context. Luu and Matsuba transform yarrow, with its densely packed white corymbs, or dried oregano — stems faded to a faint taupe while the tips still give off a purple pulse — into near abstractions of color and silhouette. For the New York-based florist Lewis Miller, texture is the draw: “It makes you want to touch and pinch the leaves,” he says, which in turn releases their aromatic oils.
With that steadying scent comes recognition — we know these plants — and a sense of continuing. These ideas are central to the work of the married florist-farmers Mandy and Steve O’Shea, of 3PorchFarm and MoonflowerDesign near Athens, Ga., who grow and harvest their own herbs and flowers using solar power and biofuel, rooting each bouquet in season and place. Of late, Mandy has found that couples will request herbs in their wedding arrangements because they cook together. “They’ll be reminded of their celebration every time they chop those herbs in the kitchen,” she says.
But do herbs last as long as flowers? “I don’t think it matters,” McVicar says. Endurance can be artifice; if something is fleeting, at least it’s real. Should you want your bouquet to eke out another day, however, McVicar suggests a dash of fizzy lemon soda in the water. It’s an old-fashioned remedy that those who till gardens have known for years, and it works.
Planet BotanicCLIPPINGS 12
January — February 2019
HERBS CONT.
Planet BotanicCLIPPINGS 13
January — February 2019
When we moved to Bristol, Vermont twenty-four years ago, I had never lived in a small town. The 19th century homes on our block are close set, divided by driveways leading to former horse barns, but the land behind them stretches back spaciously.
I felt overwhelmed by the huge spruce hovering so close to our back porch it obscured this view. I suggested cutting it down.
“You don’t move into a neighborhood and start cutting down trees,” my husband warned.
That was the first of many lessons learned in our garden. We resolved the issue by trimming the lower limbs of the spruce to reveal a framed view of our yard. Landscaping involves problem solving and compromise.
I began a love affair with trees and our huge spruce in particular. The previous owner told me it was blessed by Native healers who sensed its wisdom. This spruce watches over our home and provides me with solace in times of challenge. When I need healing, I stand beneath its limbs and listen to its ancient silence.
That first spring, we surveyed the existing beds and plants and got to work transforming our half-acre plot. We extended the vegetable garden, relocated the peonies to a sunnier location and removed several box elders crowding a hidden oak and elm. It was now apparent this backyard project would take time. When I expressed frustration with such a lengthy process, my gardener friend responded diplomatically. “I don’t mind waiting,” she said.
One June afternoon after a decade of planting, replanting and rearranging a variety of perennials, shrubs, trees and beds, I surveyed the results. Strolling through our long, narrow plot, I quietly celebrated all of it—the billowing willow and nine-bark shrubs masking our driveway from the back porch, the shady grove beside our new greenhouse, the lush peonies lining our vegetable garden,
By Alice Leeds
Life Lessons in the Garden
Paeonia japonica ‘Pluto’ growing under a Japanese maple. Photo from https://www.fromhousetohome.com/garden/bushes-to-
plant-under-trees/5/
the well-mulched cutting bed of flowers in a sunny open area. The street view of our house was framed by a Japanese maple off the front porch balanced by a hearty old hydrangea. All the elements harmonized. I breathed a sigh of satisfaction.
I was primed for another life lesson from the garden, the hardest one yet. That winter, an ice storm took down our lofty willow shrub, exposing our gravel drive and parked cars. The illusion of Eden was gone. It would take another five years to grow a new willow back to the former level of bounty. A year later, our delicate Japanese maple did not survive a rough winter, soon followed by the old hydrangea’s slow death. I had to face it: nothing living lasts forever, and we have no choice but to adapt to unwelcome change.
There were also fortuitous changes. The miniature hollyhock we potted at the top of our drive dropped seeds each year, creating a growing swath of pink-flowered stalks in front of our barn without any effort on our part. The oak and elm flourished when competition with the box elders was eliminated, offering us their elegant postures. The old beauty bush blossomed in pink wonder once the hydrangea no longer hid it from full view. Life offers unexpected gifts.
My husband, an avid and skilled gardener, learned these lessons long ago. He tells me there is always surprise and mystery in the growing process. And to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the work ahead, he follows the example of Scott Nearing, who took twenty years to dig a pond on his property, one bucket load of rocks and dirt at a time. My husband likewise sets small daily goals. Today he will replant the garlic bed and thin the carrots. I do my best to avoid fixating on the perfect garden. Sometimes we need to just focus on harvesting the tomatoes.
Planet BotanicCLIPPINGS 14
January — February 2019
LIFE LESSONS CONT.
Peony border at Penhurst Place in Kent, England. Photo by Antony
Chammond, flickriver.com
There is much more to learn here, and none of it can be rushed. Along the way, I will continue digging, weeding, planting and pondering in our garden and finding earthy pleasure there.
Go Outside
CLIPPINGS 15January — February 2019
Above: Entrance at the J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Raleigh, NC.
Though Susie took these photos in 2012, the plants are still there - check out their winter display.
On the last day of 2012 my husband and I visited one of our favorite gardens and a local treasure, the ten-acre JC Raulston Arboretum in nearby Raleigh.
Founded in 1976 by the late J. C. Raulston, Ph.D., the garden is part of the Department of Horticultural Science at NC State University. As described on its website “the Arboretum is primarily a working research and teaching garden that focuses on the evaluation, selection and display of plant material gathered from around the world. Plants especially adapted to Piedmont North Carolina conditions are identified in an effort to find better plants for southern landscapes.”
One benefit of walking through this arboretum is that plants are usually well-labeled.
J. C. Raulston Arboretum Photos and Text by Susie Moffat
pbmgarden.blog
Go Outside
CLIPPINGS 16January — February 2019
RAULSTON CONT.
Winter blossoms at the Raulston. Above L: Edgeworthia papyrifera (ex. Eco Yaku). Center: Camelllia japonica ‘Professor Charles S Sargent’. Above R: Prunus mume ‘Trumpet’. Bottom L: Iris unguicularis. ‘Winter Iris’. Bottom R: Prunus mume ‘Bonita’.
Initially the garden seemed more stark than I had expected, yet there were many interesting discoveries as we strolled along. Among the many blooming plants we encountered were Edgeworthia, many different kinds of Camellia and Japanese Flowering Apricot, Quince, Snow drops and Hellebores. A special delight was the Iris unguicularis (winter flowering iris) tucked underneath a shrub.
Executive Officers
PRESIDENT Jane [email protected]
FIRST VICE PRESIDENT Darlene Pomroy
SECOND VICE PRESIDENT
Maggie Conger SECOND VICE PRESIDENT Connie Perotti
SECOND VICE PRESIDENT Chris Williamson
RECORDING SECRETARY Mary Arnold CORRESPONDING SECRETARY Bonnie Olbrich
TREASURER Joan O’Brien PARLIAMENTARIAN Anne Montgomery
DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVE Debbie DiSabatino
Committee Chairs
ARCHIVES/HISTORIAN
Amanda Watlington
AWARDS Becky Mitchell COMMUNITY SERVICE
Sarah Kingan
FIELD TRIPS
Melissa Mahaney
FLORAL DESIGN
Betsy Nininger
HORTICULTURE Chris Williamson HOSPITALITY
GENERAL MEETINGS: Susan DeBartolo HOLIDAY TEA: Jane Lamm SPRING PICNIC: Daphne Little
MEMBERSHIP
Debbie West
NEWSLETTER
Barbara Clare
NOMINATING COMMITTEE
Mary Arnold
PHOTOGRAPHY
Daphne McLeod
SOCIAL MEDIA
FACEBOOK: Daphne McLeod INSTAGRAM: Bev Carr TWITTER: Ethan Trimmer WEBSITE: Louise Law
TECHNOLOGY
Amanda Watlington
YEARBOOK Susie Moffat
YOUNG ADULTS
Chris Williamson
YOUTH Amy Strunk
2020 TOUR CHAIR
Gill Roberts
The Chapel Hill Garden Club PO Box 10054 Chapel Hill, NC 27515
CLIPPINGS
2018 Holiday Tea at Maggie Conger’s beautiful home. L: Bring on the tea! Susan Hausmann and Melissa Mahaney. Center: Hostess with the Mostest, Maggie Conger. R: Super Greeter, Lynn Lang. Photos by Daphne McLeod.
