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Leaflet A MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY PUBLICATION

FEBRUARY 2024

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 4 5 6 10 11 12 18

24 28 32

From the President's Desk James Hearsum Workshops 2024 Classes Botanical Art Courses New Member Benefit: Boston Magazine New England Fall Flower Show Amateur Competitions Schedule In First Person: Tom Ranney Du Pont Gardens of the Brandywine Valley Reviewed by Carter Wilkie Mealybugs By Catherine Cooper From the Stacks By Maureen T. O'Brien Something Old, Something New By John Lee

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 SOWING SEEDS It is that time of year again, when in the darkest months, we start our first seeds in the greenhouse. The temperature in our propagation greenhouse is cranked up and the flats start to fill. First, it is a sea of brown soil, but slowly the first shoots emerge, transforming the brown monotone into a vibrant green. We are at exactly that joyful point when the very first shoots emerge.

There is something profoundly independent about being a grower from seed. In a world where everything is part of a global system, with its many interdependencies and just-in-time prerequisites, planting and growing from seed seems an anachronism. Yet at the same time, it appeals to something fundamental within many of us. The knowledge that the soil can provide sustenance to the person who applies themselves to do the work is comforting. It reminds us that we are connected to the earth—something we might often overlook in our daily lives.

As the greenhouse fills with color this February, and we see the promise emerging little by little of what will come to fruition through the rest of the year, we are encouraged and enthused, knowing that the winter will not last and spring is coming. As we sow our earliest seeds, this is also the time for connection with others and preparing for the season to come. We have a vast array of horticultural classes, courses and events over the next few months, including our hugely popular foundational courses. Make sure you sign up now to add some light until spring is fully upon us. James Hearsum President & Executive Director

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W O R K S H O P S *THREE SPOTS LEFT*

Winter Garden Design Three-Session Hybrid Workshop February 15, 16 and 22 10am-2pm

Learn how to use drifts, masses, and individual plants to create garden layouts. Discover how to use shrubs and trees scaled to the home landscape. You’ll discover the role the Winter Garden plays throughout the seasons. And, how to create a garden color palette that will apply to later seasons.

Spring Ikebana 8-Week Workshop Tuesdays, April 9 - May 28 6-8pm

Learn the art of Japanese flower arranging from Joanne Caccavale, Riji, Sogetsu School. In this eight-week course, you will be taught the basic curriculum and receive a certificate from Tokyo upon completion of course books.

Principles of Native Gardening Certificate Course Wednesdays, February 28 - March 20 6:30-8:30pm

Learn the principles of native gardening and how to choose the best native plants for your region and landscape conditions. Whether you have a yard, a rooftop, a terrace or simply participate in a community garden – you can become a skilled native gardener and improve the environment around you.

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ALL

CLASSES

FEBRUARY 7 Guided Winter Garden Tours 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM FEBRUARY 10 Guided Winter Garden Tours 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM FEBRUARY 15 Winter Garden Design, Three Session Workshop 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM FEBRUARY 24 Dazzling Plants and Design Tips for Seeing Your Way Out of the Shade 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM FEBRUARY 28 Principles of Native Gardening, Certificate Course 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM MARCH 5 Creating a Succession of Bloom in the Native Garden 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Virtual MARCH 9 Time-saving, Mighty-Mite Shrubs that Outshine Perennials 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM 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 Virtual MARCH 22 Improve Your Watercolor Skills, Six-Session Course 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM MARCH 26 Achieving Luminosity with Color Pencils 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM MARCH 29 New and Lesser-Known Celebrity Plants for 2024 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM APRIL 9 Eight Week Spring Ikebana Course 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM 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 MHS Leaflet | 5

Spring & Summer

Botanical Art Classes

Color Mixing for Artists Susan T. Fisher teaches you how to mix the colors you want, not the ones you end up with through trial and error. Learn an easy system for combining colors consistently to achieve the broadest possible spectrum for any “wet” medium including watercolor, gouache, oils, acrylics, etc. Suitable for artists at all levels. Color mixing watercolor sheets provided. 24 BAC 113 Monday – Friday, March 11 – 15, 2024 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. EDT Online via Zoom MHS Members $350 / Non-Members $425 Botanical Sketchbook: Tulip Mania Join instructor Tara Connaughton to celebrate the early blooms of the season, focusing on the abundance of tulips growing in the MHS gardens. Through observation, sketching, and practicing key color mixing and painting techniques, we will capture these beautiful bulbs in our botanical sketchbooks. Suitable for all experience levels. 24 BAC 030S April 23 & 26, 202 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. In-person, Garden at Elm Bank MHS Members $140 / Non-Members $175 6 | February 2024

Botanical Beachcombing: Signs of Spring In early spring, as the snow begins to melt away, the days begin to get longer. Along the edges of the beach and in the habitat that surrounds it, buds are beginning to swell, fresh shoots are emerging, and the birds are chirping. There is an energy in the air and an excitement for warmer days ahead and the promise of spring. With Sarah Roche as your guide, record the changing seasons as you botanically beachcomb, drawing the treasures and detritus that wash up along the shoreline and the evidence of last year’s flora that hints at the possibilities of this new season. Suitable for intermediate or advanced artists who have completed at least one “Techniques” class, or equivalent. 24 BAC 065 March 18, 20 & 22, 2024 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Online via Zoom MHS Members $225 / Non-Members $275

Spring Ephemeral Wildflowers In Situ Capture the beauty of New England ephemeral plants in their naive habitat in this 3-day class with Betsy Rogers-Knox. These special plants bloom early, before the leaf canopy shades their habitat. Starting with line drawings and a quick tonal, we’ll compose a small habitat composition using live subjects native to the area. With step-by-step instruction and demonstrations, we’ll incorporate many watercolor techniques including wet-onwet, dry brush and everything in between!! May be taken at the Foundations-level (150) or Techniques-level (250), with appropriate completion requirements for each. Suitable for artists who have completed at least two Foundations of Botanical Drawing & Painting classes or equivalent. 24 BAC 150/250 Tues. - Thurs., April 30; May 1, 2, 2024 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. In person, Garden at Elm Bank MHS Members $350 / Non-Members $425

Studio Focus: Spring Flowering Trees One of the prettiest sights of the gardening year is the show provided by spring. In the Garden at Elm Bank, at this time of year, there is plenty to draw and paint throughout, but the stars of the show are the Spring Flowering Trees. The dogwoods, viburnums and magnolias will be flowering as well as many other species. In this four-week class with Sarah Roche, celebrate the beauty of the spring as we take advantage of the garden’s splendor. We will record what we see through sketches and watercolor studies and create detailed studies of the trees’ transient flowers and emerging foliage. Note: This course may be taken at the Foundationslevel (104) or Techniques-level (204), with appropriate completion requirements for each. Suitable for students who have taken at least one Foundations of Botanical Drawing and Painting class, or equivalent. 4 Tuesdays: May 7, 14, 21, 28, 2024 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. In person, Garden at Elm Bank MHS Members $250 / Non-Members $300

Capturing Seasonal Color: Spring Herbs In this class with Tara Connaughton, we will capture the soft greens and colors of the season through studies of deliciously scented spring herbs. Focus will be on observational drawing and mixing accurate color to render the nuances of our chosen plant subjects. Students should have completed at least one Foundations of Botanical Drawing and Painting class, or equivalent. 24 BAC 062 | 3 Thursdays: May 9, 16, 23, 2024 |10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. | Hybrid class MHS Members $185 / Non-Members $225 MHS Leaflet | 7

Introduction to Botanical Art: Foundations in a Week If you have an interest in plants and a yearning to record what you see on paper, then this class is for you. All experience levels welcome. Explore the world of botanical art over four days in this course designed especially for you—the beginner. Sarah Roche guides your experience through structured exercises, projects and demonstrations, exposing you to the basic techniques and methods of botanical drawing and watercolor painting. This class is our introduction series for botanical art beginners. There will be a break for lunch on the longer days, please bring lunch/beverage. 24 BAC 101A 4 days: June 3-5: 9:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. & June 6: 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. In person, Garden at Elm Bank MHS Members $315 / Non-Members $365

Beautiful Butterflies in Watercolor Butterflies are a welcome visitor to our gardens in the summer months and play a crucial role in the pollination of many plants. A newly installed butterfly house in May will be home to Butterflies in Bloom, an immersive exhibit with tropical butterflies and the nectar plants that sustain them. Join Tara Connaughton as we observe, draw, and paint the unique colors and patterns of these beautiful, winged insects as they begin to grace the blossoms in the butterfly house. Prerequisite: For artists who have completed at least one Foundations of Botanical Drawing and Painting class, or equivalent. 24 BAC 140 June 10, 13, 17, 2024 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Hybrid class MHS Members $185 / Non-Members $225 8 | February 2024

Watercolors and the Graphite Pencil Values do the work and color gets the credit. This double-media method with Susan T. Fisher is a great way to explore the benefits of both graphite pencils and watercolor paints. Graphite is perfect for developing a full range of values without the worry of watercolor application as a single media. Also, the addition of watercolor with graphite can create a variety of interesting opportunities to achieve a unique botanical piece. Participants will practice value application to subjects and add watercolors for a richer effect. The two mediums together will help clarify what can be confusing about the use of watercolor alone and expand the creative expression of mixed media in botanical work. Demonstrations and discussion time will focus on the importance of creating believable values at the start. Suitable for artists who have completed at least two Foundations of Botanical Drawing & Painting classes. 24 BAC 149 Tues. & Wed., June 11 - 12; Tues. - Thurs., June 18 - 20, 2024 | 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Virtual, via Zoom MHS Members $350 / Non-Members $425

Pollinators and Summer Flowers In this short three session class, led by Lead Instructor Sarah Roche, we will take advantage of the butterfly house, and the wide range of flowers in the Garden around it. Working on a series of studies, we will investigate the relationships between the many different species of insect and the flowers that they pollinate that we find in the Garden. We will record their beauty in graphite, ink and watercolor. Suitable for artists of all abilities. 24 BAC 035 3 Tuesdays: June 25; July 2, 9, 2024 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. In person, Garden at Elm Bank MHS Members $210 / Non-Members $260

Drawing in the Garden: Sunflowers in Color Pencils Get out into the garden and draw amongst the flowers with Carol Ann Morley. This summer there is a special garden exhibit of Sunflowers to the Garden at Elm Bank. Capture the beauty of Sunflowers with quick sketches, study the details of the flower’s structure through observation and add color notes of their vibrant colors. In the classroom have fun creating a color pencil palette to work from and discover what combinations work best for portraying greens and the tricky color yellow. 24 BAC 042 2 days: Wed. & Thurs., August 7 & 8, 2024 9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. In person, Garden at Elm Bank MHS Members $225 / Non-Members $325

Portraying Sunflowers in Color Pencils The beauty of Sunflowers have long captivated artists. The desire to portray their image is well documented, Now it is your time. Carol Ann Morley will lead you on an exploration of the Sunflower’s fascination with an indepth study of its beauty and shape. Begin with loose sketches to express the lovely shapes and flow of form and then study anatomical details. We will pause to explore the ever fascinating structure of the Sunflower's head and its Fibonacci geometry. Through demonstrations your instructor will show you how to problem solve the anatomical details and those difficult petals and leaves that are foreshortened. Following graphite sketches and studies your color pencils will bring to life your Sunflower with the radiance of color. Prerequisite: Suitible for artists who have taken at least two Foundations of Botanical Drawing and Painting classes, or equivalent. 24 BAC 143 3 days: Mon., Tues., & Wed., August 12 – 14 9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. In person, Garden at Elm Bank MHS Members $315 / Non-Members $365

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NEW MEMBER BENEFIT:

Complimentary Subscription to Boston Magazine and Boston Home! 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)*.

*Once the complimentary subscription period is up, Boston Magazine will solicit you directly for renewal.

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Heritage and Hope at the Garden at Elm Bank, Wellesley, MA

Amateur Competitions Schedule & Information Amateur Horticulture Junior Horticulture Floral Design Botanical Arts Miniature Gardens Photography

JUST RELEASED!

THE SCHEDULE OF THE 2024 NEW ENGLAND FALL FLOWER SHOW IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING! CLICK HERE TO READ MHS Leaflet | 11

In First Person Tom Ranney

At North Carolina State University, Tom Ranney has invested more than three decades researching, developing, testing, and introducing dozens of new landscape plant cultivars well suited for gardens and landscapes throughout the USA. A significant number of his plant introductions are familiar to many of us at our garden centers (and in our gardens) as being among the most appropriate choices for this region. Here’s Tom’s story in his own words. I have a unique position. I’m a professor of horticultural science at NCSU and am stationed off-campus at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center near Asheville, NC. I have the good fortune of leading a research program (The Mountain Crop Improvement Lab) that touches on many aspects of plant science, but largely revolves around crop improvement with a focus on nursery and specialty crops. I have a good gig, I work for a major university, but get to work and live in the mountains of WNC with a fantastic team of coworkers. Thus far, we have introduced 79 new cultivars of landscape plants, published several hundred scientific papers, and mentored dozens of undergraduate and graduate students.

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On a grand scale, being at a landgrant university, our mission includes Research, Teaching, and Outreach, so we

are engaged in all of that. Our staff and students conduct applied research (and publish research articles) in the field of plant science that is then applied to the development of new and improved crops, technologies, and sustainable production practices. We provide students with advanced training, education, and degrees to prepare them for careers in horticulture. We partner with industry to develop new products and competitive advantages. Combined, these engagements foster a healthy environment, careers, and economic development. In short, growing a greener and more prosperous world. On a more granular scale, when it comes to plant breeding, we want to develop new crops with “meaningful uniqueness”. We are often trying to solve problems, like disease or insect issues, or invasiveness. But there are lots of other opportunities to enhance “commercial potential”. That could mean novel, but valuable, commercial traits, like fragrance, improved cold or heat tolerance, unique flower traits, dwarf forms, easier propagation, etc. When thinking about what projects to work on, we often consider this Venn diagram:

Our sweet spot is the intersection of all three of the elements.

I came into horticulture through the back door. My undergraduate degree is in wildlife management. I couldn’t get a job in that field at the time, but I was good at climbing trees with a rope and saddle, so I went to work as an arborist. After a period of hard labor and volunteering at the Holden Arboretum, I decided to head back to graduate school to become an urban forester but got sidetracked and found a niche doing plant science research and eventually got my PhD from Cornell.

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Curiosity, enhanced by a passion for horticulture and innovation, is my primary personal motivator. Plant breeding is fascinating to me because it combines innovation and plant science, making it doubly interesting. And on top of that we can share all this with students. I like that we are solving real world problems. Plant breeding is a “translational” field, enabling us to couple the newest developments in science (e.g., gene editing) with crop improvement, ultimately creating products of value.

My Myers-Briggs personality assessment pegged me as an “INTJ” (introverted, intuitive, thinking, and judging personality), if you are familiar with that – the classic introverted scientist. I’m a bit of a science nerd, but also a generalist/integrator, a serial entrepreneur (my wife and I have started 3 companies outside of horticulture; the commercialization aspect appeals to me), and plant geek gardener. To paraphrase Mike Dirr, “to be a good plant breeder, you have to be a good 14 | February 2024

gardener”, i.e., be intimately familiar with plants and recognize the need and potential for improvement. My limitations are numerous, but I was born with a bad memory and it’s not getting any better. I think it forces me to think in terms of process, relationships, and strategy (big picture vs. fine details) and to write everything down.

Plant breeding is a lot more than slinging pollen around. It really requires a broad understanding of genetics, plant biology, entomology, pathology, physiology, horticulture, and an extensive familiarity with plant materials (germplasm). And it takes patience. Many of our projects have been ongoing for 20-30 years, and every step is a learning process often filled with more disappointment than “eureka” moments. Lots of “Well that didn’t work, what can we try next”? The Thomas Edison “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” quote often comes to mind. Every once in a while, our persistence pays off.

I have had lots of great mentors and role models over the years. I find horticulture to be a great community that is more collaborative than competitive. Our networks span industry, public gardens, academia and fellow gardeners - they are all critical to what we do. I feel like I can go anywhere in the world and either have or can make horticultural connections with kindred spirits. Making positive impacts on the world is the definition of success I apply to my career and our program. We love introducing great new plants that enhance the environment and beautify the world. We love contributing to foundational science and discovery. We love supporting a great industry and community. But what makes me most proud is the success of our staff and students. Our research staff are exceptionally capable, creative, and dedicated, so I do my best to get out of their way. Our students have become leaders in industry, academia, extension, and public horticulture. Recognizing how well we’re progressing toward achieving success is chiefly incremental, chipping away a day at a time. To aptly use horticultural lingo, we “seed” advances toward our goals in

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every new generation of plants and students. Over time, we measure the extent of our successes by being recognized for impactful research, successful students, and exceptional new plant introductions. Here are some examples of our crop endeavors and thoughts on the future:

Smooth Hydrangea. This is part of our native plant breeding program. Smooth Hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens) has always been the redheaded stepchild to bigleaf hydrangea (H. macrophylla). Except for 'Annabelle’, a mophead form found in the wild, there was not much to work with. The folks at Spring Meadow Nursery challenged us to try. After all, H. arborescens is incredibly adaptable, cold hardy, blooms on new wood, and is native, without many of the problems associated with H. macrophylla. It took some time, but by combining subtle variations in form and color from native populations, we were ultimately shocked at the diversity in forms, disease resistance, reblooming, and flower color that resulted. The best of these plants became part of the Invincibelle® and Incrediball® hydrangea series. And as a side note, sales of Invincibelle® Spirit I & II have raised over $1 million for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation! Developing Noninvasive Nursery Crops. The development of seedless nursery crops is not a very sexy endeavor, but it addresses an important problem. There are some landscape plants that are simply weedier than we would like them to be, yet the plants may have great utility, provide ecosystem services, are popular with consumers, and are economically important. So, why not fix the problem at the same time as making other improvements? We have tackled this with several genera including Miscanthus (e.g., Bandwidth and High Frequency™), Ligustrum japonicum (Kindly™), Berberis (Sunjoy® Todo® and Sunjoy® Mini Maroon™), Pyrus (Pyrus ×triploida ‘NCPX2’ Chastity®), and Spiraea japonica ('NCSX1' Double Play® Candy Corn® & Double Play Doozie®). In general, the fertility of these plants is reduced by 98% or more. In some cases, we have never been able to produce a viable seedling from these plants. When I was doing more work on stress physiology, JC Raulston once told me that “stress tolerance doesn’t sell”, making the point that plants need to be both desirable garden plants and reliable performers. I think

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the same holds for non-invasive plants. Nobody goes into a garden center and asks for a non-native, non-invasive plant. So, all these noninvasive introductions have unique and improved commercial features in addition to having low fertility.

The Future of Plant Breeding. We live in exciting times, what I call the “Golden Age of Plant Breeding”. Never have we had access to such diverse germplasm (our raw material), the fundamental knowledge and understanding of plants science, and groundbreaking new tools. We are in the age of genomics, particularly relating to gene editing technologies. Plant breeding has always been about moving around genes and traits, but in the past we could only do it in an extremely crude fashion. We might be able to intentionally combine two or more different gene/traits, but tens of thousands of other traits simultaneously recombined at random, going along for the ride! The ultimate rolling of the dice and why plant breeding is often called a numbers game or what I call the serendipity factor. The application of gene editing, sometimes called precision breeding, is a game changer where we can manipulate just one gene at a time and not disrupt the apple cart. Imagine taking any elite, modern rose cultivar and making it resistant to rose rosette virus without reshuffling the entire genetic deck with disastrous consequences. Or taking any invasive plant and making it seedless by simply turning off a molecular switch. Application of these technologies is within our reach if we invest and are strategic. These advances requires integrated teams that span plant breeding, genomics, bioinformatics, biotechnology, and transformation systems which is starting to happen. The future is bright. If you want to converse with me directly about any of what I’ve outlined here, please contact me at tom_ranney@ncsu.edu. Find out more about our recent plant introductions at: https://mcilab.cals.ncsu.edu/2023new-intro-handouts/

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. This 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 works with the interviewee to transform their conversation with interviewees into a personal story from the interviewee’s first-person perspective.

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By Larry Lederman and Marta McDowell Phaidon Press, 2023 | 240 pages | $60

REVIEWED BY CARTER WILKIE One hundred years ago, in 1924, the Arnold Arboretum’s first director, Charles Sprague Sargent, praised one family, the du Ponts, for making the vicinity of Wilmington, Delaware, “one of the chief centers of horticulture in the United States.” A hundred years later, the du Pont family gardens of the Brandywine Valley remain a mecca that attracts more than a million visitors each year. Within a 10 mile radius from Wilmington, one can visit multiple world class gardens in one trip – large estates, monuments to the Country Place Era in American garden history, vast naturalistic garden settings and a center for native plant research that is especially relevant today. 18 | February 2024

A new book, Du Pont Gardens of the Brandywine Valley, packages five of these gardens into one visual buffet, showing how the resources the du Ponts dedicated to their landscapes made the Brandywine Valley a must-see destination for garden lovers and students of horticulture. Featuring the eye candy photography of Larry Lederman and a breezy narrative by garden historian Marta McDowell, the book will inspire New England readers to hop aboard Amtrak for the five hour ride to Wilmington. It will also satisfy armchair gardeners who lack the mobility to make the trip.

Of the five gardens featured in the book, Longwood Gardens, just over the Delaware border in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, is the most visited, with its Italianate and French neoclassical fountains, light shows, and fireworks that elicit audible “oohs” and “ahhs” from large crowds at all seasons of the year. Its creator, Pierre S. du Pont, was inspired by the spectacle and sense of wonder he experienced, at age six, when he attended the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. His grand conservatories of hothouse plants continue to wow his posthumous guests, especially when decorated for Yuletide, as does a garden amphitheater that hosts evening concerts and Shakespeare plays performed in a veritable Forest of Arden.

Longwood

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Nemours

Closer to Wilmington, Pierre’s cousin Alfred I. du Pont spent a large fortune to build Nemours. The estate has the largest French formal gardens in America, modeled after Marie Antionette’s chateau Petit Trainon at Versailles. Pierre and Alfred were both MIT educated engineers with the know-how and wealth capable of installing fountains fit for a Sun King. With the collaboration of a third cousin, they orchestrated the takeover of the family’s gunpowder business that had provided the family’s fortune for a century, transforming E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company into a chemicals conglomerate, with a large investment in General Motors. It is no coincidence that each of the grand gardens in this book was owned by a chief executive of the company with the largess to pull it off.

To protect their estates from taxes, these du Pont garden creators endowed each with trusts and administrators to maintain them for public benefit. As distinct entities, they are governed separately. This new book brings them together into one extended family story. The patriarch of the dynasty, Pierre Samuel du Pont, brought his family to America to escape the terror that followed the French Revolution. He was an economist, a member of the landed gentry that believed land was the root of all wealth, and his plan was to establish a large agricultural enterprise in the new world. But one of his sons, who had studied chemistry under Antoine Lavoisier in France, spotted a more lucrative opportunity. Nemours

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Éleuthère Irénée du Pont founded the gunpowder company near Wilmington on the banks of the Brandywine River in 1801. There, at what he named Eleutherian Mills, he laid out a French parterre, with fruit orchards and potager to feed his newly settled immigrant family. He imported trees from France and instilled in his children and grandchildren his interest in agriculture and animal husbandry and the family’s love for horticulture and arboriculture that endured for generations.

A member of the family’s fourth generation in America, Louise du Pont Crowninshield, a summer resident of Marblehead, Massachusetts, preserved her great-grandfather’s homestead for posterity in the early 20th century, after its powder works were closed following the end of the First World War. There, she created Hagley Museum, which shares the du Pont family’s contributions to the American industrial revolution. Crowninshield also helped to found the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1949. In the late 1960s, following her death, the estate’s early 19th century gardens were recreated from original plans and family records.

Hagley

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Winterthur

Of all the estates that have earned northern Delaware the sobriquet “chateau country,” Louise’s childhood home, Winterthur, is the most naturalistic. Her brother, Henry Francis “Harry” du Pont studied horticulture at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum in Boston, inherited the estate from their father, and dedicated seven decades of his life of 88 years to Winterhur’s development as its head gardener. Inspired by the writings of William Robinson, Frederick Law Olmsted’s design of the Arnold Arboretum, and Getrude Jekyll’s instructions on color, Harry eschewed his family’s French garden legacy to branch out in a naturalistic direction. Today, his Winterthur Museum and Gardens is home to nearly a thousand acres of rolling meadows, forests, and one of the finest woodland gardens in the world. His March Bank springs to color in late winter with ephemerals that he planted by the tens of thousands, followed by the April blooms of his Quince Walk, and then the slow motion fireworks display of his crowning achievement, his eight acre Azalea Woods, which achieves peak bloom in May. H. F. du Pont was the family’s genius of garden design, a man the Garden Club of America in 1956 designated as perhaps “the best gardener this country has ever produced” up until that time.

For decades, the board and management of Winterthur didn’t understand the importance of the gardens that H. F. du Pont had created. His antique collection of 90,000 objects housed in his mansion museum with its 175 rooms was run by professional curators with expertise in the material arts but lacking professional training in horticulture. Two decades after Harry’s death in 1969, his naturalistic gardens had become overgrown and required intervention to reclaim his design intent. Today, for the first time in the institution’s history, Winterthur Museum and Garden’s 277 member staff is led by a horticulturist, Chris Strand, who was given the top job in 2021, after a career that included a five year stint at the Arnold Arboretum in the 1990s. As naturalistic gardens grow more popular, and as interest in antiques ebbs like an

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Mt. Cuba

outgoing tide, visitors to Winterthur in the years ahead may come more for its gardens than to admire its collection of American decorative arts.

The fifth garden in the book, and the youngest among the five, is Mt. Cuba, begun by Lammot du Pont Copeland and his wife, Pamela, in 1935. Inspired by the environmental movement in the 1960s, they hired landscape architect Seth Kelsey to develop woodland gardens distinguished by native plants, ponds and woodland paths. Then in the 1980s, they hired Richard Lighty as Mt. Cuba’s first Director of Horticulture and created the Mt. Cuba Center, dedicated to research of the native flora of the Mid Atlantic Piedmont. Mt. Cuba opened to the public in 2001 and today draws visitors, researchers and students in horticulture. It extends the impact that Longwood and Winterthur have made in introducing cultivars to the commercial trade and placing graduates of its educational programs at garden institutions in other states. Unlike the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, who left traces in scattered parts of the country, the du Ponts built their collective legacy in one place, tucked comfortably among the gentle rolling hills of one of the most beautiful settings of the east. What makes their landscape unique in America is not just its scale — the product of vast wealth and space — but also time. Few landscapes in the new world are the work of multiple generations of a single family unified by a shared love of horticulture and arboriculture. When you consider all of this and the enormous current influence on gardening nationwide of Doug Tallamy, of the University of Delaware, and his fellow author and Longwood veteran Rick Darke, you realize how Sargent’s description of the vicinity of Wilmington, Delaware as “one of the chief centers of horticulture in the United States” is just as true one hundred years later.

Carter Wilkie’s article on Winterthur in the May 2020 issue of Arnoldia received the top award for magazine garden writing from GardenComm in 2021.

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MEALYBUGS By Catherine Cooper

Illustration by Marianne Orlando

Chances are if you grow houseplants at some point in time you could well have discovered one or more of your plants have been infected by sap-sucking mealybugs. These white, waxy coated insects, a sort of soft scale insect, can be particularly difficult to eradicate, especially if they are not detected early on. Houseplants are usually attacked by one of two species: citrus mealybug (Planococcus citri) and longtailed mealybug (Pseudococcus longispinus) although there are 275 species known throughout continental United States. While mealybugs are generalists there are houseplants that are more susceptible to them. These include citrus trees, cacti, gardenia, coleus, dracaena, ficus, hoya and hibiscus. In addition 24 | February 2024

there are certain plants from which mealybugs are difficult to remove due to the hiding places these plants afford, prime examples being sago palm and bulbs such as amaryllis and clivia. Outdoors the impact of mealybugs is much reduced by climate and predators, but indoors the climate is always amenable and predators are usually absent. While mealybugs are not fast movers, and only the males are capable of flight they compensate for these disadvantages by being able to reproduce rapidly and prolifically when conditions are right. Female mealybugs can lay up to 600 eggs in their lifetime of approximately 6 weeks; longtailed mealybugs are an exception as they bear live young. The eggs can hatch within 6-14 days and the

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nymphs will go through several developmental stages (instars) before maturing. Outdoors nymphs are able to overwinter as second stage instars, so cold weather does not obliterate all of them. Adult males are small white flies, do not feed and only live for a couple of days. However, mealybugs also have the ability to reproduce asexually so using sticky traps to catch the males will not necessarily break the reproductive cycle. They are also masters of disguise, although this only works until the infestation is so great that they are seen covering more exposed areas of the plants. They prefer the underside of leaves, leaf axils and any part of the plant structure in which they can hide. Hence they will lurk in the tips of bulbs and under their scales, and where sago palm is concerned they also hide in the spiky bulbous trunk of the plant. And if you have ever found them on cacti it can be particularly difficult to deal with them. There can be other signs of their presence before they themselves are visible. These include sooty mold, a black fungal disease that flourishes on the sugary excreta of the mealybugs along with insects such as ants or wasps that also look to feed on the honeydew (makes excreta sound much nicer, doesn’t it!). In addition females

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will lay their eggs not only on plants, but will also tuck them away on hard surfaces, such as the crevices of benches, under the rim of plastic plant pots and also on the interior and base of cache pots with the intention that these spots might result in proliferation at some future date. All this adds to the frustration of dealing with these determined insects, but still led to one question. How do mealybugs get onto plants if they have not been in contact with infested plants?

This thought arose because one year I put my healthy orchid cacti outside only to discover a month or so later that a couple of them had a few mealybugs on them. While treatment fortunately wasn’t difficult I was still puzzled as to how this had happened until I did some research. It turns out that mealybugs can be spread in several ways beyond their natural ability to crawl from one plant to another. Firstly the early instars are small and light and can travel on the wind, giving them the ability to travel further than their legs can naturally carry them. In addition they will also take advantage of any passing animals as a means of transportation. This means we could be the inadvertent introducer of pests to our houseplants, and is also a salient reminder as to why

regular sanitization of pruning tools is important. Secondly, the wind is not the only thing to help in mealybug dispersal. Ants also play a role. Just as they will do with other honeydew producing insects, such as aphids, they will “farm” mealybugs in order to ensure a regular supply of honeydew. Not only will they protect the mealybugs from predators, but they will also carry them to other plants in order to create new colonies. So if you see ants crawling over your plants look to see what pests they might be protecting. In the fall honeydew will also attract wasps. So yes, I have a grudging respect for such a resilient and resourceful insect, but I would rather they were somewhere other than on my plants. As for getting rid of them there are several ways. Firstly isolate the affected plant so as not to enable the spread of mealybugs. If they are few in number and easily accessible I will squash them, I’m not squeamish. This has the benefit of being certain that any eggs or young that might be harbored under the female mealybug are

also destroyed. If a plant is robust enough it is possible to hose them off, although this will not get rid of all of them and further treatment will be needed. An old toothbrush or better yet a small, flat tipped paintbrush are good for teasing them out of crevices. Spraying with various insecticides can require persistence as these need to thoroughly cover and penetrate the mealybug’s protective coating in order to be effective. Sprays range from insecticidal soap, to neem oil and synthetic insecticides. Using rubbing alcohol is another method. For small outbreaks a soaked cotton swab dabbed onto them works. For more serious cases it is possible to spray the plants with the alcohol, but always test beforehand that the plant can tolerate this. And as a last resort systemic insecticides can be used, but just bear in mind that these take up to a couple of weeks to become effective, and sometimes the best thing to do is just get rid of the plant and start afresh. Still, as the saying goes forewarned is forearmed, but I hope you never need to put all of this information into practice!

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 in Chelmsford. When not at Weston Nurseries, she can often be found in her flower beds or tending to an ever-increasing collection of houseplants. 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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Libraries are more than just a storage place for books, they are treasure troves filled with creativity and knowledge. And that knowledge can be empowering. R.L. Hemlock

While storage of books is an important function of the Society’s Library, it also stores Archives, art, records, ephemera and other artifacts. Where and how those objects are physically stored is important to their preservation and access.

Feature: Library's Storage and Care of its Collections The Library’s collections are stored at Elm Bank, at a secure off-site climate-controlled facility and/or digitally. Where the object is stored depends on what it is, its condition, its value and the necessity for immediate access. Records of the Collections are paper and/or digital. Storing assets off-site is expensive and access is necessarily limited. Therefore, it is reserved for the most fragile and expensive items that are infrequently accessed. Examples include rare books, botanical prints, historic seed catalogs and glass plate negatives. Access to these items requires planning and may involve fees to cover the cost of transportation, reproduction, retrieval and return.

The way the object is stored is essential. The decision on what is appropriate depends on the climate of the space, the physical condition of the object, its value and attributes. Proper storage and housing will reduce or eliminate or delay deterioration from age or climatic conditions. This includes location, e.g., on shelves, either upright or flat. Some objects need physical wrappers, referred to as housing. These include archival boxes, cabinets and folders. 28 | February 2024

Access to specific collections at Elm Bank is best done by making an appointment. Of course, we encourage drop-in visitors to come to the Library and browse our shelves whenever the Library is open. Members may borrow contemporary books. Here are some examples of the containers (housing) that the Library uses to protect its assets:

◁ These adjustable archival book boxes protect rare and fragile books in our Collections.

△ Archival document cases protect historical and important documents. The documents are first placed in archival folders.

◁ Heavy glass plates are fragile and need extra care. The plate is wrapped in a four-flap folder, then inserted into a foam lined barrier board box with barrier board dividers.

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▷ Wood crates with integrated pallets protect heavy sculpture. The sculpture is wrapped with padding inside the crate.

◁ Telescope boxes are used to protect large art works. The art is first wrapped in Tyvek and then in padding materials.

▷ Banker Boxes are used to store business records and less important papers.

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MHS Book Club

The next meeting of the Book Club is on Tuesday, February 20th at 1:30 pm. in the Putnam Building. The club will be discussing Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa Sevigny. All are welcome to attend.

This is the schedule for the Club’s upcoming book discussions: » March 19: The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson » April 16: Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration by Laura J. Martin » May 14: The Orchard: A Memoir by Adele Crockett Robertson » June 18: Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart » July: No Meeting » August 20: TBD » September 17: American Eden by Victoria Johnson

Help Grow our Collections Thank you to Maureen Horn for her in-kind contribution to the Library. Consider making a donation to the Library’s Collections from the Society’s Amazon Smile Wishlist. It is just a click away! Come Visit During the winter months, the Library is open by appointment. Please email Library & Archives Manager Maureen O’Brien for an appointment if you want to schedule a visit.

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SOMETHING OLD, By John Lee 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.

efore Bert and Brenda’s homestead had become the end of their road, there had been another secondary road that broke off just past their barn and continued on toward what was then known as Chateauguay. All that remained of the old Gramwell place was the cellar hole of a very small homestead and the skeletal remains of the sills of a barn just big enough for a horse and a loft for some thrown hay. The rest of the farmstead was now overgrown to scrub, hardback and low-caliper hardwoods pimpling the hillsides. No one seemed to have much memory of Gramwell - had there been a Mrs. or was it just him and the horse, the only form of locomotion that he could scarcely afford? The road had long been thrown up and had now become a snow-machine track. In the day, there had also been the Buckman

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SOMETHING NEW. place and maybe one or two other farmsteads dotting the old road - now just cellar holes and no living memory of the occupants. But the Gramwell place was different - storied, a local legend.

Certainly, post-Reconstruction rurality was harsh on most Yankee farmsteads. Outside the Connecticut valley, the soils were often unforgivingly bony and better suited to goats than the one or two cows most small land-holders could afford. Mr. Gramwell apparently could afford neither. He worked summers to keep a small garden and make enough hay to feed himself and the horse and buy a new union suit which he donned at Thanksgiving and threw away the following Easter (having never been changed it Cellar hole, photo by Ed Harrow because, more often than not, the line from the spring house usually froze solid mid-January). Come winter, it was said that Mr. Gramwell could fell, buck, split and load onto his pung one cord of wood to be delivered the next day to the village six miles away. He and the horse would set out early in the morning, make the delivery and the horse brought him home the same evening worn to a frazzle, if a little under the weather. They would repeat this Herculean feat for weeks on end throughout the winter months. MHS Leaflet | 33

This story was apocryphal up and down the road despite the fact that no one actually had any recollection of Mr. Gramwell’s life or time. But Bert made periodic pilgrimages to the cellar holes not just to memorialize tougher times, but to remember his vows to himself and Brenda that they never live so desperately as Mr. Gramwell did. His life had not been just ‘hard’, it had been soul-crushing. If Bert and Brenda’s life was spare by their neighbor’s standards, Mr. Gramwell’s was recondite. If Bert’s neighbors thought his garden implements were antique, Mr. Gramwell’s were antediluvian.

This past summer with his nephew Forest in tow and the ravages of incipient decrepitude at the doorstep, Bert’s visit to the Gramwell cellar hole had spurred thoughts of how he might make life in the gardens a little less arduous. Brenda had been after him for years to not be such a stick-in-the-mud about keeping the worn-out working. For years they had skipped the tool porn at the back of so many seed catalogues. But this past summer Forest’s untimely questions about why Bert’s hoes were on the verge of becoming useless and, despite his high school machine shop expertise, the rototiller was still a bone-wearying thunder bunny. Bert had begun to think that if he was going to continue to sustain their way of life, perhaps he needed to consider making life a little easier because he could. Mr. Gramwell could not and had therefore worked himself into an early grave due purely to a lack of opportunity. Bert could not bear the thought of becoming dependent upon his beloved. So, in ways that Thoreau could not have envisioned, his advice to ‘simplify’ kept poking at his conscience. Small tools and local gardener’s meetings were coming up at the armory a couple of towns over. Brenda thought a day in the’ big city’ (such as it was) might be fun and wouldn’t he like to have a look-see at what was new for small tools? Brenda claimed that she might be interested in what might be considered new in the home ec department (if only to further entice Bert!). This year the area garden clubs had come together to see what’s new. Did what was advertised in the back of some of the fancier catalogues really work or were the really just puffery for the young and snazzy to lean on and pass the day? Bert begrudgingly agreed to go despite the fact that, by his reckoning, he already had a barn full of small tools even if, like his trousers, most them were a bit worn at the knees and bore the scars of timeless cultivating and timely repairs. At first, he turned up his nose at early hints of new-fangledness (i.e overwrought and gussied-up tropes). But much to his surprise, he quickly came to realize that he was looking at a couple of eye-popping efficiencies that would save him time and Ben-Gay. Bert was already using compact beds to save space and reduce tilling time, but he could not take his eyes off a three- or 34 | February 2024

Cellar hole, photo by Ed Harrow

four-row walk-behind (or beside!) dibbling device with adjustable spacing for the dibblers in-row. He, himself, had tried over the years to jury-rig a multidibbling contraption but it had always failed in short order. Here he found himself staring what looked like inspiration in the face. But he ground his hands into his pockets and kept going. The rest of the morning Bert looked at microtillers, weed-burners and a host of other ‘tools’ and gadgets which, though artful, did not seem as useful in a non-specialized garden. He found himself haunted by the ghost of Mr. Gramwell who could barely feed himself and his horse, the impulse to dress up his labors in sheep’s clothing and still keep an ear to Thoreau’s advice to ‘simplify, simplify, simplify’. At the end of the day when he had caught up with Brenda, he had bought two new specialized hand tools for close-cultivation and resolved to hire his nephew Forest who was just about to finish high school in a few months and would need a job. Brenda had found a new house-dress or two and turned up her nose at a fancy bread machine that she really didn’t think they needed. She preferred kneading for own bread on a winter’s evening as the old wood stove made itself ready to double her dough overnight to be finished and baked in the morning.

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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The Garden at Elm Bank Open April 1-November 26 Classes, Programs Year-round www.masshort.org

Massachusetts Horticultural Society 900 Washington St Wellesley, MA 617.933.4900