Bartram's Garden, redux

Back in 1980, I spent a chilly spring working on an archaeological excavation at the home of John Bartram (1699-1777), the father of American botany. After prior summers laboring on militarily precise excavations of medieval bishop's palaces, late Roman cemeteries, and Iron Age villages in England and the Netherlands, to suddenly be mucking around somewhere in southwest Philadelphia in search of a few greenhouse foundation trenches and sherds of glass and flowerpots seemed quite a step down. The Bartram's Garden excavation was woefully ill-equiped: no field notebooks, inadequate hand tools, and a total lack of heavy machinery. And how ridiculous we must have looked when, lined up like dancers doing the Hustle in silence, we stamped down the back-filled site at the excavation's close.

At that time, I knew nothing about John Bartram--and, in yet another failing of this silly project, which was part of a university class, there was minimal information provided about the property owner, why he was important, and how the excavation contextualized his personal history and that of the American landscape.

In the years following, I'd hear references to John Bartram: how he collected seeds and plants from the southern colonies, how the many species that he sent to Europe became part of our common plant vocabulary, or how his Latinized name was incorporated into various plants' Linnaean nomenclature. But not until this spring, armed with a greater interest in all things horticultural, did I return to Bartram's Garden.

The place had been totally rejuvenated since my dreary days there.  A new information center, knowledgable guides and gardeners, and a renovated garden added up to a terrific afternoon. 



Well-tended and clearly-marked stands of plants, like this false indigo (Baptista australis), sparked me to consider experimentation in my own garden. Upright blue-flowering plants always deserve attention.

 

In another area, carnivorous plants were enclosed in this most appropriate cage constructed from thorny branches. What a whimsically menancing display! Bartram is credited with naming and introducing cultivation of the Venus fly trap (Dionaea muscipula).

The information center sold the best souvenirs: seedlings from the garden. In homage to Bartram's plant dissemenation ventures, a great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) and a sprig of intensely celery-flavored lovage were transported back to my Massachusetts garden.

Above the door of his greenhouse--perhaps that very same greenhouse that we so unsuccessfully sought to find in our excavation--Bartram carved a quote from Alexander Pope: "Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, but looks through Nature up to Nature's God."

Traveling the High Line

I took advantage of an early Sunday morning during last weekend's trip to Manhattan to explore the High Line. I'd read a lot about this smart, sensitive, and refreshingly whimsical re-visioning of the urban landscape.  Originally built in Lower Manhattan during the 1930's as an elevated railway, the High Line tracks were laid through the center of buildings in order to collect goods without affecting street traffic.  Since it was decommissioned in 1980, the derelict railway has been in eyesore. Starting in 1999, a group of inspired activists initiated a move to re-use this urban space.  Much work later, in June 2009, Section I (Gansevoort Street to 20th Street) opened to the public.

Because of its elevation, long urban vistas unroll from all angles.  A cross-town canyon stretches beyond a screen of Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum "Gateway"),  purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea "Vintage Wine"), and broadleaf ironwood (Vernonia glauca).

The quintessential New York skyline of a rooftop water tank on a block-built modernist building is softened by foreground grasses.

Rather than trying to force the High Line into the ill-fitting form of a romantic garden or a greensward park, the designers played with its abandoned urban history:  they incorporated lots of native plants, like this familiar wasteland tree (oh, what is its name?) and Ohio goldenrod (Solidago ohioensis), and included species that had been growing on the tracks.

The plant selections are in tonal harmony with the reds, greys, and browns of the built environment.  Here, layers of grasses, silvery coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea "Jade"), and pale pink American boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) echo the stone facade behind.

  
The seed heads of  many flowering plants, like these drumstick alliums, remained intact, giving just the right mix of color and texture.

How great that the park attendant I asked could give me the Latin names of the plants I asked about!  But there were so many varieties I was interested in.  Next time, I'll bring a copy of that month's plant list with me!

A couple of days after my visit, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded to the High Line founders the 2010 Jane Jacobs Medals. Congratulation to the most deserving recipients whose work "creates new ways of seeing and understanding New York City, challenges traditional assumptions, and creatively uses the urban environment to make New York City a place of hope and expectation."  And forward to the future!

Digital dilly-dallying

Of course, working in a museum, I love old photographs. Lantern slides, glass plate negatives, gelatin silver prints: they're all good; and when the subject is gardens, even better.

The Archives of American Gardens at the Smithsonian Institution contains 80,000 images documenting contemporary and historic gardens. The core collection is 3,000 glass lantern slides from the 1920's and 1930's. Bliss! On a winter's evening, how pleasant to wander through the searchable database and stop to smell the virtual flowers. Best of all, you can direct your path by searching for gardens in particular places and times.



On my first trip to this database some years ago, I found several images of the Chevy Chase, Maryland, garden of renown rosarian, Whitman Cross. From the marginalia for this photograph, the rambler so happily sprawling over the stone wall on a sunny afternoon in late May, 1930, appears to be "Dr. W. van Fleet." When I showed these photographs to my mother, she told me that Mr. Cross, who lived just around the corner from her, had 2,000 roses growing in his half-acre suburban yard. Among them was the dark red rambler, "Chevy Chase," and I've wondered since if the deep crimson rose that my mother trellised by our back door was an homage to her childhood neighbor.