by Joe Eck
Xanthorrhoea quadrangulata is native to the southern parts of Australia, and though largely unknown by western gardeners and scarce even in the collections of arboreta in Zones 9 to 10, where it is hardy, it still has a very long history in its relationship with humanity, for to the Aborigine peoples of Australia, who knew it longest and best, it was of great economic value. The thick, resinous yellow gum that gathered around the stout trunks of very old specimens could be collected, melted, and formed into balls for later use as a strong adhesive to fix arrows to shafts, or sharp pebbles to spears. Two of its chaffy dried flower stems (impressive things that can reach six feet in height) could be rubbed together to make fire. Its sharp seed cases could be used as knives or as tools to dig into decaying wood for nourishing grubs and insects. Further, it was miraculous, since it survived grass fires to sprout anew. Its gaunt, child-high stems standing on fire-blackened plains caused the Aborigines to give it the name black boy. That popular name has clung, particularly in England, though most people now prefer grass palm, which offers another sort of description.
As with so many useful plants, utility has meant potential extinction. You will not find many plants listed under “X” in popular plant dictionaries, and you will not usually find Xanthorrhoea. That is because the Australian government has listed the plant as a rare and endangered species under the provisions of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), thereby preventing the export of plants and even, with Xanthorrhoea, the harvesting of seed. In any case, seed is fairly rare, occurring on plants that are generally twenty years old or older, though for a plant that can easily live six hundred years that is mere infancy.
We were luckier than we knew, then, to scoop up that wisp of a seedling from our chance visit to the arboretum. A plant had flowered there the year before and set seed, though only three were viable. We curse ourselves for not having bought them all, but then we must stop to wonder what we might have done with three plants five feet tall and as wide, each in a clay pot almost the size of a bushel basket. From that perspective, one plant is certainly plenty, especially when each spring it must be muscled out of the small greenhouse off our kitchen to its summer quarters outdoors, and then each autumn muscled back in to spend the winter, during which, perversely, it grows. It seems never to have realized that the wan light of a snowy Vermont winter isn’t quite the same as an Australian spring. We suppose if we ever turned off the heat, which keeps the greenhouse at a winter temperature of around 55 degrees, it might find out soon enough.
As that greenhouse is only twelve feet wide, with a field-stone path down the middle and large camellias planted on each side, our Xanthorrhoea is a bit crowded. Or rather we are, for it seems to expand happily from year to year. If it were a brittle plant we would have a problem, but its four-foot-long grassy leaves—of which there must be a thousand radiating out from the central trunk—are as flexible as threads of metal, and in fact it is great fun to brush your hand over the whole symmetrical mass, which then trembles and quivers like a metallic toy from the 1950s. Only once did any outside activity damage the plant, and that was when two canaries flying loose in the greenhouse discovered the charm of snapping off its leaves for pure mischief. The canaries went. The Xanthorrhoea has stayed.
Like most gardeners we are generous with plants, knowing that if you give something away and then lose it, you can possibly get it back. Praise something in our garden and if we have enough of it, a start of it is yours. But though our Xanthorrhoea is much admired by visitors to the garden, it is painful to say that plants are very scarce and that ours is not likely to produce any progeny we can share. There are nurseries that specialize in Australian plants, and they occasionally promise X. quadrangulata. But they don’t seem to come through with seeds or young plants. So we cannot offer any hope to those who want a plant like ours, and that is discouraging to us.
Though not always. For whenever Dan Hinkley, founder of Heronswood and a great plant explorer, stands before our pet and says, “I wish I had that,” though we love him dearly, we confess that it gives us some sort of pleasure to say, “Well, Dan, you probably never will . . .” None of us is perfect, after all. And perhaps we might exercise a posthumous generosity and leave it to him in one of our wills.
THE FUTURE
SOONER OR LATER, anyone who cultivates a garden will become concerned for its future. That much is a certainty, though we are unsure of the amount of time required to cause this concern, this tug at the heart. Probably one glorious month at the shore would be enough, where the opening of each scarlet geranium flower is closely observed. Or it could be years—in our case, thirty years—though when half that time had passed, we knew that we had come to love this land, and further, that we had made changes on it that would last for any foreseeable future. We had become “attached to it,” and that familiar expression had all the force of its original meaning, of which we would need no thesaurus for synonyms: Glued? Welded? Grafted? Bonded? Stuck? What we knew then, and know with greater force as each year passes, is that we will never live anywhere else but here. Even the lure of a second home—were we that rich—could not tempt us to divide our time. For if we were somewhere else, how could we walk through the garden here to observe even the smallest changes, the first improbable blooms of Crocus sativus in October, the adonis and aconites burning yellow through a crust of snow in April, the soft fall of the snow itself, all winter long?
“Foreseeable future” is a comfortable phrase, though any reflective person knows that it is as hollow as a worm-eaten acorn. We move through our days with the comfort of familiarity, waking at the same time each morning and almost always the same way, padding down to punch the button on the coffee pot, to greet the cats and let them test the quality of the day at the open door, to call in the dogs who have spent a hard night of vigilant barking and are ready for a good breakfast and a daylong nap. We assess our day’s chores, writing and correspondence and business things, all housework, all prefa-tory to going out into the garden, which on almost any calendar day requires something from us. Roses might need to be laid down and covered first with Remay and then with boughs, or uncovered and tied in, the Remay folded neatly and the boughs taken to the burn pile. The perennial garden might need composting, a task that should have been done in October, but usually waits until April. Perennials should be divided just when they first show green, and we always have need of more hostas. Rows have to be thrown up in the vegetable garden to receive the drying benefits of hot spring sun, and then the first crops have to be put in, peas and broad beans, which need the longest, coolest spring we can give them, lettuces and other salad greens, which do not, but which are nicest eaten early. Daffodils must be divided and replanted when the last flowers have withered, and by then, here, it is early summer, and a steady rhythm of summer chores begins, of harvesting and staking, deadheading, succession sowing, summer pruning, and the endless watering of pots stood all about the garden, glorious with the choicest annuals and tender plants, and with the sculptural forms of agaves and standard box and bay.
If the management of any garden does not fall into a rhythm of comfortable routines, there will not be a garden at all but only an embarrassment and a reproach. We treasure the routines of our garden, all based on its seasonal demands, to which we pay close attention, not only to assure its health and beauty but to give pattern to our days. It may be that any deep love one has—for a friend, a child, a dog, even a simple canary in a cage—is treasured essentially because it does that. We have come to feel that an ordered movement through days and months and years is essential to happiness, or to our happiness at least, for we do not pontificate. Of all the many joyful obligations of our existence, the garden here has been the most sustaining just in part because it is the most rhythmic, through winter, spring, summer, and fall. It actually has taught us to love every day of our life. One cannot ask more of love for a garden than that.
But of course one might. One could ask that it all go on f
orever, that it last, as the Countess in Strauss’s sublime opera Capriccio sings, “funfmalhunderttausend Jahre.” There are some fine June mornings when one might wish for this, when all the roses are blooming and the year is new, and the garden’s future holds infinite possibility. Such an impulse is usually the product of the moment—only a fool would ask that of any garden. The vagaries of each season are an essential part of the gardener’s experience, and the failure and decline of many a lusty specimen or fragile perennial that had done so well, and perhaps for years, teaches much. Gardens by their very nature are fragile beings that live in the two dimensions of time and care. For their very survival they are dependent on weather, on soil conditions, on predators that come silently in the night, on the neglect or inattention of their owners, and even on the very transitoriness of the lives of their owners, for none of us lives forever or particularly wants to. And there, precisely, is the question posed by any intensely experienced life in a garden, however long or short it might have been: What is to happen next? Oh, not next spring or next autumn, for so far as we know, we are able to plan for that. But eventually. In the long run.
There is a scheme in America that attempts to preserve gardens “forever,” largely those gardens built by wealthy people or with some special historical significance. The Garden Conservancy is modeled on the British National Trust, which has preserved a large number of gardens in the British Isles, to the advantage and pleasure of gardeners throughout the world. But ours is a simple house, which we built largely to tuck into the garden that surrounds it. The garden is best described as a domestic garden, maybe perhaps even a cottage garden, though that designation has been freighted with meanings of casualness we would not recognize here. Still, we can leave no endowment behind. And we cannot imagine the parking. So, perhaps, the garden dies with us.
We are not without precedent, for we know that the great garden designer Beatrix Farrand stood on her porch and watched her garden being bulldozed into the ground before her death. And Linc Foster, our good friend, whose beautiful garden, Millstream, had become a destination for rock and alpine gardeners throughout the world, wrote to us when he was near death, “The garden was young when I was young, and old when I am old, and it will die when I die.” Actually, we do not find that thought uncomfortable in the least.
When we were both in our twenties, on a lovely spring morning we decided to fly a kite. We bought a kit, with balsam ribs and tissue paper and string, and we spent the whole morning assembling it. It was a very fine kite, crimson red and deep blue, and we put it together pretty well, given the fact that we had no particular expertise in construction of anything except chicken cages, at which we had done what we thought was a good job. The Public Garden across from which we lived had no free space for running up a kite, so we crossed Charles Street, and launched our kite by running up the hill of Boston Common. It went up splendidly, and soon it became a speck in the sky. But the allowance of string in the kit was meager, and so one of us ran back down Charles Street to buy another spool. When we tried to tie one end to another, the wind was strong and the kite slipped free. We watched as long as it was visible, and when we could no longer see it, we went home.
This event occurred at the very beginning of our gardening life and our life together. It seems to be a paradigm of our experience here. And we ask anyone who should visit in years to come to remember that gardens always depend on the constant care and the vigilance of their creators. After that, they are shadows. Or a speck in the sky, as our kite became.
Index
Abeliophyllum distichum, 96, 99
Aborigines, 304–305
achimenes, 262
acidanthera, 257–58
Aconitum, 309; A. episcopale, 179
addiction, of gardeners, 70
adonis, 309
Agapanthus, 9–13, 104; A. africanus, 10; Headbourne hybrids of, 12–13; over-wintering of, 12–13
agaves, 36, 52, 310
airport security, gardeners and, 102–103
Alcea: A. ficifolia, 54; A. pallida, 54; A. rosea, 52–53, 54, 57
alder-leaved mountain ash, 246–49
Allegheny spurge, 158
Allen C. Haskell & Son, 39
Allium porrum, 236
amarcrinum, 263–64
Amaryllidaceae, 166
Amaryllis belladonna, 263–64
American Horticultural Society A–Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, 266
American Magnolia Society, 153
American Primrose Society, 195, 200
American Rock Garden Society, 106, 235
A. M. Leonard, 101, 171
Andlau, Comtesse d’, 164–65, 166, 167
annuals, 14–21, 80; biennials bred as, 52; definitions of, 15; flowering period of, 53–54
apple trees, 96
apricot, Japanese, 208–11
arborvitae, 22–27, 113, 122
armerias, 225
Arnold Arboretum, 204, 247, 252
artichokes, 16, 28–33, 281; as ornamental, 32–33; sauces for, 31; wine and, 31
artificiality, in gardens, 34–35, 37
Arundinaria viridistriata, 217–18
ash trees, 111, 248, 253, 291
Asklepios, 107
asparagus, 170
Asteraceae, 31–32
asters, 170
aubrietas, 225
“August slump,” 17
Australia, Aborigines of, 304–305
autumn, 71–72, 111
azaleas, 4, 69, 268–69; Satsuki, 268–69
Babylonians, 189, 190
bamboos, 52, 216–18; overwintering of, 114, 116; poles as pea supports, 171–72
banana trees, 34–37; diffusion of, 190; overwintering of, 35
barba di frate, 279
Barbarea vulgaris, 52–53
barberry, 46–50; medicinal uses of, 48; poor reputation of, 47
bark mulch, 162
battening, of hedges, 122
“Bavarian Gentians” (Lawrence), 105–106, 109
bay leaves, fresh, 42, 45
bay trees, 38–45, 69, 191, 310; ideal shape of, 40–41; overwintering of, 42, 43–44; pots for, 41; pruning of, 42–43
Beacon Street, authors’ apartment on, 3–5
beans, 16, 309
beeches, 111, 121, 248, 253, 272, 291
begonias, tuberous, 262
Begonia sutherlandii, 14, 15, 21
Berberis: B. julianae, 49; B. ×stenophylla, 49; B. thunbergii, 49; B. vulgaris, 46–50; B. wilsoniae, 49
biennials, 51–58, 80; definition of, 51–52; flowering period of, 54; planning and, 53–54; transplanting, 57–58
birches, 248, 253
bitter melon, 7
Blake, William, 229
bloodroot, 182
Bluebeard, 17
blueberries, 170; highbush, 98–99, 121
bog, at North Hill, 107–108, 114, 154, 221, 293
bonsai, 42, 70, 210
borders, 17, 18, 32, 55
Borghese marbles, 177
Bourbon, Isle de (Réunion Island), 231
Bowden-Cornish, Athelstan, 166
Bowles, E. A., 74
boxwoods, 23, 44, 59–63, 69, 136, 151, 228, 310; cuttings of, 60; English, 59–63, 116; as hedges, 122; hybrids of, 61–62; Korean, 61, 63; overwintering of, 60–61, 116
branches, forcing of, 94–99
British National Trust, 311
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 155
Brussels sprouts, 279
bulbs, in mature gardens, 275
bulbs, summer-blooming, 255–64
bunchberry, 160
Burdick, Dave, 93
Burnet, Stub, 89
butterbur, Japanese, 218–19
butterflies, 19
Buxus, 23, 44, 69, 136, 151, 228, 310; B. ×’Glencoe’, 62; B. microphylla var. koreana (B. sinica var. insularis), 61, 63; B. sempervirens, 59–63, 116
cactus, Christmas, 304
caladiums, 262–63
; California poppies, 183–84
calla lilies, 263
Caltha palustris, 197
Camellia, 64–70, 104, 209, 304;
C. japonica, 65; C. sasanqua, 44, 67;C. sinensis var. sinensis, 67, 70; Higo, 67, 270; medicinal and cosmetic uses of, 65; overwintering, 66–70, 95, 136
Campanula: C. medium, 52; C. poscharskyana, 224–25
canaries, 306
cannas, 259, 263
Canterbury bells, 52
Capriccio (Strauss), 310
Carduus, 32
carrots, 279, 280
Catherine’s wheels, 17
cattleya orchids, 4
ceanothus, 67
cedar waxwings, 134
celeriac, 281
celery, 279, 281
Chaenoemeles, 206
Charlemagne, 235–36
Charles IX, King of France, 147
Chatto, Andrew, x
Chatto, Beth, x, 47
cherries, 96; Cornelian, 204–205; ‘Hally Jolivette’, 202–207; Higan, 204; Yoshino, 204
Chevre de Venus, 17
Chicago Botanic Garden, 62
chickens, 4–6, 7, 39
Chinese lantern lilies, 263
chinodoxas, 138
Chino’s, 279
Christina, Queen of Sweden, 177
Christmas cactus, 304
Christmas holly, 114, 135–36
Christmas rose, 126–27, 128
CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), 305
Clarke, Eleanor, 24
clary sage, 52
cleistogamy, 285
clematis, 179
Clematis terniflora, 26
Cleopatra, 10
cliff green, 160–61
cogeners, 158
Colchicum, 71–75, 109, 170, 275;