Leaflet A MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY PUBLICATION
DECEMBER 2023
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 4 5 6 8 14 15 16 20 26
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From the President's Desk James Hearsum Winter MHS Classes 'Tis the Season! Elaine Lawrence 15th Annual Festival of Trees In First Person: Paul Sellew New Member Benefit: Boston Magazine Snow Village Illustration By Marianne Orlando A British Celebration By Catherine Cooper From the Stacks By Maureen T. O'Brien It was a few nights before Christmas when... By John Lee Be a Better Gardener: Winterberry By Thomas Christopher Illustrations by Marianne Orlando
CONTACT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Wayne Mezitt
waynem@westonnurseries.com
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MANAGING EDITOR Meghan Connolly
mconnolly@masshort.org
FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK I do trust you have had a wonderful Thanksgiving this past week. Many will have spent it with family and friends, while for a few it may have been a time of loneliness and isolation. Whatever your circumstance, I hope you have been able to find a moment of thankfulness. Whether we have much or little, each of us has something in our lives for which to be thankful, regardless of circumstance. We are in the mission of helping people transform their lives through horticulture – it starts wherever you find yourself. In particular, this holiday season, the company of fellow volunteers through the Festival of Trees is of great value to us, but to some, a great support too through a difficult time. Join us! We are all extremely thankful for you this year! With your support, the historic Olmsted Bros designed Asian Garden is revealing its hidden beauty; Weezie’s Garden for Children will be going through a design review and sustainable succession plant; and we continue to upgrade our greenhouse facilities ensuring year-round plant production. All of this has been made possible because of your support.
Our progress becomes further visible in the Garden next season as we: • Move MHS’s successful spring Tulip Mania to our lower field, and expand by adding sunflowers in the summer and dahlias in the fall • Plant a large, captivating labyrinth in the Garden • Introduce a state-of-the-art composting system to fill our garden beds with rich organic materials • Create a butterfly house to showcase tropical butterflies and the nectar plants that sustain them While celebrating Garden achievements, we're also broadening our outreach programs, including successful hands-on older adult programming and an expanded Plantmobile program. As we celebrate this holiday season, please consider a further gift - it will directly impact the expansion of these outreach programs that are transformational in people’s lives. And please bring your family, friends and neighbors to our expanded holiday Festival of Trees. A significant expansion of outdoor lighting showcases more of our grand old trees and the historic landscape design. For the first time we have also launched a spectacular luminary labyrinth, over 2000ft of meditative meandering in an ethereal lighting installation. It truly is a spectacular addition. We look forward to seeing you. James Hearsum President & Executive Director
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FESTIVAL OF TREES MHS Leaflet | 3
WINTER
CLASSES
DECEMBER 9 Floral Design; Stunning Holiday Arrangement 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
FEBRUARY 3 Guided Winter Garden Tours 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
DECEMBER 13 Holiday Wreath Workshop 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM DECEMBER 14 Natural Holiday Arrangements Workshop 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM JANUARY 5 Graphite Studies: Form, Pattern, and Texture 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM JANUARY 8 Drawing the Wonders of Natural Forms in Graphite 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM JANUARY 25 Guided Winter Garden Tours 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM JANUARY 29 Foundations of Botanical Drawing & Painting 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM Virtual OR Hybrid JANUARY 30 Techniques of Botanical Drawing and Painting 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM Hybrid, Virtual & In-Person FEBRUARY 3 Shadow Play: The Drama of a Botanical Still Life on Vellum 9:30 AM - 12:30 PM 4 | December 2023
FEBRUARY 7 Guided Winter Garden Tours 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST MARCH 5 Creating a Succession of Bloom in the Native Garden 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM EST Virtual MARCH 11 Color Mixing for Artists 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM MARCH 12 Planting The Year-Round Pollinator Garden 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM EDT Virtual MARCH 26 Achieving Luminosity with Color Pencils 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM EDT APRIL 16 The Edible/Ornamental Garden 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM Virtual MAY 14 Herb Liberation 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM Virtual
VIEW FULL CALENDAR
'Tis the Season! The Garden is bustling with people enjoying our annual Festival of Trees. Visitors are strolling through our beautifully lit Garden, stopping by Snow Village, viewing our 70+ holiday trees and of course, roasting marshmallows for s’mores. Although the Festival of Trees is our largest fundraiser of the year, your participation as a member continues to be the heart and soul of MHS. As members this year, many of you attended classes, donated to our new state-of-the-art compost system and/or Annual Fund, volunteered your time in the Garden or at events, and visited the Garden. Your active involvement and belief in our mission - to make the world a better place through horticulture - have been invaluable. Thank you!
Unlike previous years when we closed on November 1, we extended our Garden season to allow guests to enjoy the latefall beauty the Garden has to offer. This extension, coupled with new initiatives and enhancements like our first Tulip Festival, the restoration of Weezie’s Garden for Children’s pollinator garden, the creation of a captivating maze, and so much more continues to enrich our guests Garden experience!
We could not possibly have done all of this without your support. As the calendar year comes to a close, please consider making a donation to MHS. You can give online, send a check (payable to Massachusetts Horticultural Society), or give me a call at 617-9334945. Wishing you a wonderful holiday season!
Elaine Lawrence Director of Development
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Open through December 29, 2023 We can't wait to see your family photos!
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Your Membership ID is needed to grant access to member pricing. You can find your ID number on your membership card. If you can't locate your ID number, please contact our membership department at membership@masshort.org. PURCHASE TICKETS HERE
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In First Person Paul Sellew
Successfully demonstrating the potential for robust local agriculture in Massachusetts and this region, Paul Sellew has pioneered seven separate, independent businesses over his four-decade career. He is unwavering in his vision that local agricultural production is not only possible, but essential for the future wellbeing of our society and our region. And living up to his claim that he “likes building sustainable companies”, he’s continuing his pursuit in proving the sustainability of agriculture in MA. Here’s Paul’s story in his own words. I’m the CEO of Little Leaf Farms, a hydroponic lettuce producing operation in Devens, MA which I founded in 2015. Our current mission is to demonstrate specific ways to successfully revitalize MA agriculture by recognizing and satisfying consumer needs and utilizing advanced greenhouse technologies now available. This is what I’ve termed “back to the future”: developing high technology greenhouse operations on the perimeter of urban markets which we call peri-urban agriculture. This returns these regions to their historical roots of feeding the adjacent cities, rebuilds our agricultural sector as a food production hub that meets consumer needs and makes our region more resilient.
I grew up in CT in a typical middle-class family where my father Peter Sellew commuted daily to his accounting job in NYC, spending weekends with us and gardening around our home. In the 1970’s he left this traditional career to pursue his personal passion for agriculture by starting a tree farm, growing nursery stock in Washington, CT. In 1977 my dad bought a 70-acre property in Lebanon CT and started Prides Corner Farm, which began growing tomatoes hydroponically and then transitioned to a container nursery operation growing ornamental plants. His intent was to demonstrate that by intelligently utilizing modern technology, agriculture can be a successful endeavor in this region. While growing-up my siblings and I worked at the nursery. Motivated by these years at the nursery, I studied horticulture at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and played Varsity Basketball. Upon my graduation in 1980, I went on to play professional 8 | December 2023
basketball in Argentina, Italy & Belgium. It was during these years that I realized how insular Americans could be, by not seeing the value of techniques and accomplishments originating from people in other countries. In my view, the conditions are currently suitable for local agriculture to stage a comeback in New England and other regions. Starting with America’s first settlers, local agriculture was fundamental to meeting
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Inside the Little Leaf Farms greenhouse
the requirements of the local population. Thousands of small family farms throughout the country produced the food and other products needed by nearby families. As our population increased, specialization became the norm, and local agriculture was squeezed out by larger, more efficient farms farther afield. By the mid-20th century, social and technological advancements enabled big agricultural conglomerates, often in different time zones removed from the ultimate consumer, to dominate the supply chain.
Upon my return to CT in 1983, I learned about an abundance of organic waste at a local large scale mushroom farm near our home. I recognized this as an opportunity to recycle a leftover, undesirable product into a valuable commodity with market value, and it became my first foray into an agriculture-industry venture. In Lebanon, CT there were large
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scale egg laying farms with an abundance of chicken manure. I researched composting processes and learned about Japanese in-vessel composting technologies, a practice that was required due to their concentrated population centers. Based upon this information and further research, I formed Earthgro, a commercial composting business that applied aerobic composting principles. This was my first endeavor, and I soon learned how to scale-up the process to satisfy local needs. As this business progressed, I founded two more composting companies and pioneered the development of the most widely used in-vessel composting technology being used today.
I’ve always been motivated by a desire to optimize the results of whatever activity I undertake, and agriculture seemed to offer significant opportunities for improvement. Starting in the 1980’s as previously described I started with in-vessel composting, then gravitated to greenhouse tomato production, and most recently to controlled environment leaf-lettuce production. I must note that along the way I’ve also experienced setbacks (tilapia aquaculture and an anaerobic digestion methane recapture enterprise) but regardless, all have transformed my thinking into learning opportunities. Most importantly, each experience helped me develop a worldwide network of experts. Observing how families are becoming more concerned about the
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source, safety, and taste of their food, it became clear to me that we need to transform local food production. Thus, my focus changed from composting to food production. In 2005 I started a Company named Backyard Farms, where we built and operated a 42-acre hydroponic greenhouse operation growing tomatoes. We applied a basic principle that allowing tomatoes to ripen more fully before shipping produced a superior product not currently available with the tomatoes that are shipping into New England from the west coast, Canada, and Mexico. As that became a successful endeavor, I had the insight to explore further opportunities, soon recognizing that fresh lettuce seemed to be the “low hanging fruit”, and it was an ideal crop for being produced year-round.
Food production in greenhouses has been practiced for years in Northern Europe notably the Nordic region in Finland as well as Holland and Belgium. Their technology was instrumental in kick-starting our greenhouse lettuce production operation. Most food crops worldwide are traditionally grown in fields; greenhouse growing, including vertical farming, is called “controlled environmental agriculture”, much different than outdoor production. Greenhouse production is 30 times more productive than field growing, and with current technology, uses far fewer inputs and eliminates the need for use of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.
Like my experience with in-vessel composting, we quickly learned from a lot of mistakes and learned how to perfect the techniques. In 2015 I formed Little Leaf Farms and began producing crops in a climatecontrolled 2.5-acre greenhouse in Devens, MA. We doubled in size to 5 acres in 2018, soon doubling once more to 10 acres in 2020, now supplying 25% of all greenhouse-grown looseleaf lettuce sold in MA. In 2023, with the success of our Devens operation, we opened a similar greenhouse facility in McAdoo, PA, covering a total of 20 acres near Philadelphia, Scranton & Harrisburg, in our efforts to accomplish our motto “local lettuce locals love” across eastern North America. I envision having 100 acres of leafy greens under glass production by 2026. This is what I call our “back to the future” idea which emulates what food production in MA used to be, and how we envision returning to our agricultural roots. It’s gratifying to see how rapidly we are
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progressing and able to successfully compete against field-grown leaf lettuce that is currently being shipped 3,000 miles from the West Coast. This progress is largely due to our ability to effectively utilize newly available technologies.
As tracked by the Farm Tech Society, the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) sector now accounts for 4% of the USA’s leaf-lettuce crop. Little Leaf Farms’ sales currently account for fully half of that production nationally, 25% of the entire category (including west coast field grown product) in New England which now qualifies Little Leaf as the single largest CEA producer of this crop worldwide! With so many recent technological advances, I believe we now have an opportunity to apply numerous new techniques & principles to bringing back local agricultural production. The insights that I garnered from my basketball days overseas has helped influence my awareness that Americans may not have all the answers and heightened my interest in exploring possibilities further afield.
Some optimistic projections envision that local agriculture will be capable of providing 50% of our regional food needs by 2050. While I consider that an encouraging possibility, many changes must still occur before it can become a reality. Currently, New England produces only 10% of the food that we eat. Based upon the successes and knowledge learned from my businesses, I am confident that we are accelerating the likelihood of this prospect. Expanding local agriculture offers great promise for contributing significantly to an overall healthier planet and quality of life for us all. I’m always open to receiving thoughts, ideas, and suggestions; please contact me by email: paul.sellew@littleleaffarms.com. For ‘In First Person,’ Leaflet Editor-in-Chief Wayne Mezitt interviews people in horticulture and adjacent fields by asking a standard set of questions about their work. The column offers an opportunity for people in these fields to share their passions with readers; what motivates them, and how they define and measure success. Based on the idea that we’re often reluctant to talk openly about ourselves because of the potential for miscommunication or misinterpretation, Wayne transforms his conversation with interviewees into a personal story from the interviewee’s first-person perspective.
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New Member Benefit: Complimentary Subscription to Boston Magazine! We've partnered with Boston Magazine and Boston Home to offer MHS Members a free subscription to their magazines. Boston Magazine is a monthly issue, and the complimentary subscription is valid for one year (12 issues)*. Boston Home is a quarterly issue, and the complimentary subscription is valid for three years (12 issues)*. Sign Up for Boston Magazine
*Once the complimentary subscription period is up, Boston Magazine will solicit you directly for renewal.
Snow Village Snow Village is a display of a miniature town set in the shadow of a mountain. Model trains expand beyond and travel through scenes from various locations and eras, including Victorian England, the North Pole, and landmarks like Fenway Park and MHS’s very own Italianate Garden. The entire display was donated to MHS by Bill and Ellen Meagher in 2014. Before donating the collection, Bill would set up his winter scene in a two-story barn and invited his neighbors to come see his collection of tiny buildings and HO and O scale trains. Now housed at the Garden at Elm Bank, Snow Village is redesigned every year. Bill begins to shape each year’s display in August, arranging thousands of pieces and carving and constructing mountains and stone walls. Snow Village welcomes thousands of visitors every year in support of MHS’s mission, education programs, and the care and maintenance of the Garden at Elm Bank.
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Marianne Orlando is a landscape architect turned freelance illustrator who loves plants, and does commissioned drawings of homes, pets and people. You can see samples of her work at www.marianneorlando.com.
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A BRITISH CELEBRATION
By Catherine Cooper 16 | December 2023
December is a month that holds particular affection for me, as it is the month in which I (along with many others) celebrate Christmas. Like many Brits I am nominally Christian, but where Christmas is concerned we readily accept certain religious aspects of the holiday (the nativity, Christmas carols) even if many of us do not consider ourselves practicing Christians. The religious holiday is wrapped up in family gettogethers - after all we have no Thanksgiving celebration - and this is probably the strongest emotion associated with the time of year: gratitude and thanks for family, and hopefully a general goodwill to all. However, the festive celebrations hark back to older times, and embedded in these traditions are those that originate in pagan times. While we no longer have ceremonies to mark the shortest day, imbued with the wish to ensure the return of longer days and an abundant harvest the following year, some of the decorations and customs still echo those ancient beliefs when the need to ward off evil spirits and invoke the return of spring was considered vital. In Britain, the tradition of a Christmas tree properly came into being with Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert, and here in the US it was German settlers who were to popularize the tradition. Lit trees had become a Christmas custom in Germanic countries thanks to Martin Luther who was struck one winter evening by the beauty of seeing stars twinkling through evergreen firs and used them to illustrate the majesty of God. He used candles to represent the stars and this was the beginning of Christmas trees as we know them. While greenery had featured in winter holiday celebrations for centuries, the tradition of a Christmas tree gained popularity with Martin Luther’s introduction.
A Christmas tree is always part of my family’s Christmas tradition. It has been a real tree, Norway spruce in my early years, until artificial trees became more realistic and we gave up on showers of desiccated needles that impaled the carpet and were reluctant to leave their new found home. We would decorate these trees with strings of lights, tinsel, ornaments and occasionally angel hair, those tinsel-like, foot long silver strands that were difficult to attractively arrange and even more difficult to remove. These days angel hair no longer features, nor does tinsel as we have so many ornaments there is no room for garland in any form. This is due to the fact that we tend to collect
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ornaments that are souvenirs of places we have visited, as well as those that were bought for our children when small. To look at the decorations on our tree is to tell our family story. We also add foilwrapped chocolate decorations for good measure which are slowly consumed along with all the other holiday excesses over the period the tree is up. Our tree now goes up shortly after Thanksgiving (concession to pressure from my children) rather than no more than two weeks before Christmas (my childhood experience), but definitely comes down, along with all other holiday decorations by Twelfth Night: a superstition to prevent bad luck I have inherited from my mother. Traditional holiday greenery includes holly, ivy and mistletoe. The plants have pagan significance in that they remain green when most of the world appears dead
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and like many families we would decorate our homes without giving any particular thought as to why other than it added to the festive feel. While we never bothered with ivy, my mother, who grew various ornamental European hollies would cut a number of berried branches in early November and keep them in a bucket of water in our garage in order to prevent the berries from being consumed by eager wood pigeons before we needed them in December. My mother was somewhat superstitious, not as much as her own mother, but enough that a house without some living greenery from outside would be inviting bad luck for the coming year. We didn’t associate holly with Christ’s crown of thorns and the berries with His blood, nor ivy with the Virgin Mary which is the Christian adoption of their significance, but unbeknownst to the youthful me we were harking
back to more ancient values.
Mistletoe has somewhat different associations. It was a sacred plant of the Celtic druids, considered to have healing powers and to be holy as it grew in trees and was therefore nearer to heaven. It also featured in Norse mythology where shaped into an arrow it was to be the cause of the god Baldur’s death as it was the one plant his mother had overlooked in her quest to ensure that no living thing would harm her son. Although she was thwarted in her attempt to have Baldur returned to the world of the living, she did succeed in getting mistletoe to agree to never harm anyone in future. From then
on if people met under mistletoe they would greet each other peaceably or even kiss. And from this the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe would evolve with the Victorians taking it to new heights by expanding the tradition so that ladies could not refuse to give a kiss if caught standing under mistletoe. For every kiss given, a berry would be removed from the sprig of mistletoe and kissing opportunities would be over once no berries remained. Real mistletoe is no longer a popular holiday decoration, partly due to it being a slow-growing plant and here in the US is found only in southern states like Tennessee and Arkansas where in certain places it covers the trees. These are plants I most associate with Christmas, and while they are typical of where I grew up, all around the world Christmas is marked by a variety of local plants, some of which like poinsettia we have embraced here. Even if Christmas is not celebrated by everyone, to have some greenery indoors in the dead of winter certainly lifts the spirits - thank goodness for houseplants! ◁ Mistletoe growing in Little Rock, AK
Born in England, Catherine learned to garden from her parents and from that developed a passion for plants. Catherine is in charge of the greenhouse at Weston Nurseries Chelmsford. When not at Weston Nurseries, she can often be found in her flower beds or tending to an ever-increasing collection of houseplants.
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The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.
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May Sarton (1912-1995) Gardens are ephemeral. They are subject to changes from natural growth, disease, predators, aging, ownership changes, neglect, new uses and finances. Often change in a garden is welcome or necessary, however, there are some gardens or features that ought to be preserved for their art, history or cultural associations.
Last month’s “From the Stacks” related the history of Elm Bank, site of the Society’s headquarters since 2001. In 1996, the Society entered a 99-year lease with the Commonwealth for 36 acres of Elm Bank that included the manor, outbuildings and the former location of its ornamental gardens. The landscape at that time was woefully neglected. Before its official move in 2001, the Society restored one of the Olmsted jewels on the property—the Italianate Garden. Featured Collection: Elm Bank — The Italianate Garden The Italianate Garden was originally called the Formal Garden and was designed by Carrere and Hasting in 1908 for Alice and Willliam Baltzell. Its border included part of the 19th century ¾ mile arborvitae hedge that ran from the manor through the grounds during the Cheney era. In 1914, the Baltzells hired Percival Gallagher (1874- 1934) of the Olmsted Bros. firm to design a Water Garden, now known as the Asian Garden, and later to redesign the Italianate Garden.
In 1926, Gallagher designed a new path and planting plan for the Italianate Garden. It featured a symmetrical flower and clipped shrub parterre in the Italian style on axis with the Manor House. The garden was bordered with a high arborvitae hedge on its sides and backed at the end by a mixed screen of evergreen and deciduous trees. An Italian marble baptismal font and Spanish 20 | December 2023
wrought iron gates, antiques collected by the Baltzells on their travels, were major features of the new garden.
During the Stigmatine era, the garden was well maintained; the fountain, however, found its way onto the tennis courts. Under the Commonwealth’s control, only the footprint of the garden and a few overgrown plants remained: it had lost its clearly defined beds and the plantings and other details had disappeared.
To accomplish the restoration of the Italianate Garden, the Society hired landscape architect Marion Pressley who is an expert in historic landscape preservation. Using information from original Olmsted plans and documents, the restoration reflects Gallagher’s 1926 design. By 2000, the garden beds were redefined and replanted. Today, the Italianate Garden, the jewel of the Baltzell Landscape, reflects its history. It is a colorful garden, planted with specimen evergreens, a beech hedge, as well as weeping larches and Camperdown elms. The Italian baptismal font is restored to working order and graces the central pool.
View toward the manor from the formal Garden in 1908, shortly after the manor was completed. Note the fountain was not installed. Image from the Society’s Journal of the New England Garden History Society, Vol. 8, Fall 2000, p. 27. Courtesy of the Natick Historical Society.
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1941-1971
c. 1996
Italianate Garden, c. 1996. Many of the character defining features of the gardens are missing or in poor condition. The hedge, Italian baptismal font and other important features are missing, as well as the defined paths.
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c. 1996
Italianate Garden undergoing reconstruction. 1999. Inappropriate vegetation was stripped and the original Olmsted design for the paths and beds are redefined. Society’s Collections.
2023
The Italianate Garden in October 2023 in autumn splendor. The fall colors of the plants reflect the trim and bricks of the Manor.
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Answer to last month’s challenge: Location of features at the Garden at Elm Bank today.
Image: Aerial Shot of "Elm Bank" The W. H. Baltzell Estate, Wellesley, MA (JOB #6058). Olmsted Archives, National Parks Service. Society’s Archives. (undated, likely 1930s)
1. Barn 2. Bressingham Garden 3. Charles River 4. Daylily Garden 5. Education Building 6. Goddess Garden 7. Herb Garden 8. Hunnewell Building 9. Italianate Garden 10. Jim Crockett Memorial Garden 11. Manor House 24 | December 2023
12. Maple Grove 13. Meadow 14. Noanett Native Plant Garden 15. Olmsted Asian Garden 16. Putnam Building 17. Reservation Road 18. Rhododendron Garden 19. Seed to Table Vegetable Garden 20. Tentipi (seasonal) 21. Trial Garden
MHS Book Club
The next meeting of the Book Club is on Tuesday, January 16th at 1:30 pm. in the Education Building. The club will be discussing Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. All are welcome to attend.
This is the schedule for the Club’s upcoming book discussions: » February 20, 2024: Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa Sevigny » March 19, 2024: The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson » April 16, 2024: Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration by Laura J. Martin » May 14, 2023: The Orchard: A Memoir by Adele Crockett Robertson
Help Grow our Collections
Thank you to Sarah Cummer, Barbara Scolnick, Diane Bullock and Jan and John Adams for their generous contributions to the Library.
Come Visit
Library Volunteers are again sponsoring a tree "Read, Grow, Enjoy!" at the Society's 2023 Festival of Trees that is constructed of new and gently used book donations! You can try your luck to win the tree by taking a chance at the raffle! The Library is open on Thursdays from 10 am to 1 pm, by appointment and when the lights are on. During Festival of Trees, the Library will have additional limited opening hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Members have borrowing privileges. Please email Library & Archives Manager Maureen O’Brien for an appointment if you want to schedule a visit. Check out the “Little Free Library” in front of the Education Building. You will find magazines, pamphlets and duplicate copies of books from the Library, all free! Inside the Library, we have some special books for sale.
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It was a few nights before Christmas when throughout the land Holiday spirits were rising and we don’t have much of a plan. We’ve started to worry and think about those Whose stockings need stuffing before our sweet repose. So into the closets, under the beds - we know we’ve got stuff. But is any giftable and will there be enough? It’ll soon be too late so we’d better hurry There’s no time to waste when hunting for gurry To fill all the stockings for kith or for kin. If we don’t have enough, the fix will be in! We cannot re-gift, that’s perfectly clear; That never goes down well at this time of year. So, what have we hidden that they do not know? Is there anything useful; does anyone sew? In that case, there’s a basket with needles and thread; Or maybe a nice set of sheets for the bed. Maybe its bath salts or some other notion Like make-up, or lip balm or a lovely love potion. Anyway, its really important at this time of the year To hold close to your friends and loved ones so dear. Mustn’t forget Santa if he should appear With his sack full of gifts and prancing reindeer. Might he just save your bacon; he’s been shopping around Perusing the bookstores, and writing down The titles to titillate in that new flannel gown. It might be too late to rely on old Santa and his jolly elves, We’d best be scouring our own back pantry shelves Scaring up condiments or culinary hardware – There must be something out there we can spare!? If so, we may need to go without until we can replace Because if stockings aren’t full, we’re sure to lose face Because a stocking half full is really just sad; If we can’t fill them, we deserve to feel By John Lee
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John shares stories of Bert and Brenda and their gardening wisdom. These chronicles feature recipes, tried-and-true gardening practices, and seasonal struggles and successes. Bert and Brenda were first introduced in the March 2022 issue of Leaflet.
Despite Bert’s normally taciturn nature, the cold days and long nights often left him ruminating on what might have been - ‘what if’ questions about life and living and occasionally lingering questions about how his life might have been different. What if he’d not met Brenda lo, these many decades past? What if they could have had children of their own? What might life have been like? The upshot of these mental meanderings was mostly that any other scenario that he could imagine was, without a doubt in his mind, much less pleasurable than his current circumstances. In fact, they wanted for nothing, were still remarkably selfsufficient and envied no-one. Really, he would ask himself, could there be a better life than the one I am living? ‘I am grateful for more than I probably deserve’ he would opine to Brenda as they pushed back from the dinner table after simple but delicious dinner. They were safe in their home, well fed and in reasonably good health for their ages. They did not squabble and seemed to be held in good esteem by their neighbors up and down the road. Now that Forest and SB had returned to their starkly humble home, what bore down on Bert (less so, Brenda) this year was how cataclysmically life-confounding an ill-informed error of judgement could be. While both Bert and his sister (Forest and SB’s mother) ‘came from nothing’, he recognized the tragedy of her sorry circumstance while seeming to recognize the probity of his own. Bert came to realize that despite a lack of religiosity, his home was nothing short of a sanctuary while that of his sister was, in fact, the polar opposite and that bringing Forest and SB to live with them this past summer was not simply a sacrifice (neither of them had a clue about kids having not had any), it may have been Forest and SB’s saving grace. He and Brenda had been
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able to show the kids that there was a difference between what often passed for ‘poor’ and poverty-stricken. By most of their neighbors’ standards, Bert and Brenda were hardly well-off even though they seemed to want for nothing. They were functionally independent. His sister’s life, on the other hand, was just plain dysfunctional. She was not just down on her luck as some might have claimed. She lived under a lowering cloud of her own misfortune. But she was a trouble to no one and thus got no help when she most needed some. Bert and Brenda had slowly come to recognize this glaring insufficiency in her life and so had agreed to shepherd Forest and SB for the summer to give her some space to raise the younger children. Maybe, just maybe, Forest and SB had gotten a glimpse of a life perhaps defined more by opportunity rather than the apparent lack thereof. Anyways, the more Bert chased these circular thoughts around in his head, the less he understood about the vagaries of life or any thoughts about determinism and the more he wished he could conjure up more silly drivel to take his mind off consequential thoughts.
Brenda, conversely, would not allow herself to indulge in the whys and wherefores of other folks’ difficulties. Come this time of year, she was grateful for whatever blessings had been bestowed upon their house. Suffice it to say, they were both alive and well with much to look forward to. Their lives were hardly hard-scrabble and she found them both comfortable in their own skins at the end of yet another year together. Maybe what had once passed for teamwork had now grown into a more profound appreciation of one another. They had become two peas in a pod - what some might have called a mutual adoration society. “Aren’t we the lucky ones”, she mused as she set a rosemary/citrus olive oil cake on their seasonal table. 28 | December 2023
Rosemary Citrus Olive Oil Cake
Cake: 3 large, fresh eggs 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp baking powder ½ tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 1 cup olive oil
Glaze: 1 Tbsp orange juice 1 Tbsp lemon juice ½ cup powdered sugar As much fresh rosemary as needed
Beat the eggs with the sugar until foamy (~2 minutes) then drizzle in the olive oil and continue to beat to incorporate. Mix together the dry ingredients and fold them into them into wet stirring to combine. Pour the mixture into a well-greased 9” cake pan and bake for 35-40 minutes in a 350 degree oven. To make the glaze: Combine the juices and powdered sugar until sugar is dissolved. When the cake has cooled, cover the surface with the glaze and arrange the rosemary sprigs as artfully as possible. If Brenda had an orange or lemon to zest, she would add 1 ½ teaspoonfuls of each to the batter. John Lee is the recently retired manager of MHS Gold Medal winner Allandale Farm, Cognoscenti contributor and president of MA Society for Promoting Agriculture. He sits on the Governor's Food Policy Council and UMASS Board of Public Overseers and is a longtime op-ed contributor to Edible Boston and other publications.
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Be A Better Gardener: Winterberry By Thomas Christpher
Garden pundits speak of “the four-season garden,” promoting the need to plant for wintertime color. The most abundant color source of this season in my corner of New England, however, plants itself. It’s the winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata). Native to wetlands and moist soils throughout the eastern half of the United States, the winterberry is something of an anomaly among hollies in that it isn’t evergreen. Instead, its dark green, elliptical leaves turn yellow in the fall and drop from the twigs, which only enhances the display of its innumerable colorful berries, which can turn the shrubs into a blaze of scarlet. The wild-type winterberries commonly form large, rangy shrubs that may reach a height of ten to twelve feet, with a similar spread. In the wild, winterberry commonly spreads by suckers, forming large thickets. I’ve not heard of similar aggressive tendencies when the winterberry is planted in the garden, where it flourishes in slightly acidic, organic-rich, medium-tomoist soils in full sun to partial shade.
Wild-type winterberries claim a considerable space and are best suited for the background of the garden, maybe at a woodland edge, but plant breeders have developed a number of more compact strains that also bear unusually 30 | December 2023
heavy crops of fruit. These are a favorite food for a variety of birds such as wood thrushes, cedar waxwings, and catbirds that fuel up with these fruits before and during their migration south. Because winterberry fruits persist on the bushes’ branches well into winter, they are also a mainstay for robins, and other birds who overwinter in our region.
If you want your winterberries to bear fruit, you must plant both male and female specimens (one male can pollinate up to five females). In addition, you must make sure that the strains of males and females you select are ones that bloom at the same time. ‘Red Sprite,’ for example, a female winterberry cultivar that makes a mounded shrub only three to five feet high, is early blooming and should be planted with a similarly early blooming male such as ‘Jim Dandy’ (five feet tall with a slightly wider spread). ‘Winter Red,’ an upright female that grows to a height of six to nine feet, is later blooming and should be matched with a late-blooming male such as ‘Southern Gentleman' (six to nine feet wide and tall). Gardeners who crave variety will find it in the female varieties: ‘Winter Gold,’ which grows to a height and width of five to eight feet and bears yellow berries, or ‘Aurantiaca,’ (five feet tall and wide), which bears orange fruit. Again, it is essential to match these females with the appropriate male: ‘Winter Gold’ is compatible with ‘Southern Gentleman’ whereas ‘Aurantiaca’ is better pollinated by ‘Jim Dandy’. This list of winterberry cultivars is just a taste of what is available, and new varieties of winterberries are continually being introduced into the nursery trade, expanding the number of alternatives. The flowers of these shrubs, which are borne in late spring are small and white and do not make much of a show. Winterberries may be planted in spring or fall. They are ideal for any low-lying or damp spots in your garden. When planted in drier soils, these plants need regular irrigation during dry spells. If you find it necessary to prune your winterberries, you should do so in early spring before the new growth appears, as the flowers are borne on the new growth and to wait and cut this back ensures a smaller crop of berries.
Be-a-Better-Gardener is a community service of Berkshire Botanical Garden, located in Stockbridge, MA. Its mission, to provide knowledge of gardening and the environment through a diverse range of classes and programs, informs and inspires thousands of students and visitors each year. Thomas Christopher is a volunteer at Berkshire Botanical Garden and is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including Nature into Art and The Gardens of Wave Hill (Timber Press, 2019). He is the 2021 Garden Club of America's National Medalist for Literature, a distinction reserved to recognize those who have left a profound and lasting impact on issues that are most important to the GCA. Christopher’s companion broadcast to this column, Growing Greener, streams on WESUFM.org, Pacifica Radio and NPR and is available at berkshirebotanical.org/growinggreener.
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Wishing you Happy Holidays, from all of us at Massachusetts Horticultural Society!
The Garden at Elm Bank Open April 1-November 22 Classes, Programs Year-round www.masshort.org
Massachusetts Horticultural Society 900 Washington St Wellesley, MA 617.933.4900