MHS Leaflet, June 2024

A MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY PUBLICATION

JUNE 2024

FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK

Welcome to Summer! The theme of this edition is Enjoy - the busy spring is merging into a summer of garden pleasure. We have so much that is new and beautiful at the Garden at Elm Bank, so come and visit us. Until then, this is what I was enjoying recently at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show – horticultural innovation at its finest and an inspiration for us.

James Hearsum President & Executive Director

Cover: Labyrinth in bloom with Allium 'Purple Sensation' at the Garden at Elm Bank

Enjoying Horticulture at MHS

Elaine Lawrence, Director of Development

As the Director of Development at MHS, I have the opportunity to see the transformative power of horticulture every day. Whether it’s a group of school children planting seeds for the first time, seasoned gardeners admiring our new plantings, families enjoying their time together, or individuals finding solace in the quiet beauty, the impact is clear.

Guests often share how a simple stroll through our Garden provides a sanctuary from the daily grind and lifts their spirits. You only need to walk through the Garden to experience that joy as you explore and discover.

One of our newest additions, a labyrinth, has quickly become a favorite. With over 2,000 feet of path winding to the center, the labyrinth invites guests to use this space to slow down and embark on a tranquil journey. Currently, Allium bulbs are in full bloom, and by summer, ornamental grasses will further enhance its beauty. In our fast-paced world, this walk provides a much-needed refuge to reconnect with ourselves and nature (or, if you’re a child, to follow a fun path!).

As our mission extends beyond the visual beauty of our Garden, all our educational programs are designed to inspire a love for horticulture and a sense of wonder in the natural world. Our children's programs and senior adult workshops remind us that the pleasure of learning never stops. These programs build a sense of community and show how gardening brings enjoyment to all ages.

Our goal is to make horticulture accessible to everyone. Our outreach programs including our Plantmobile and senior programming strive to grow our horticulture community. By doing so, we hope to plant the seeds of progress in even the most unexpected places!

Your support makes it all happen and is crucial in sustaining and expanding these initiatives. Your donations allow us to maintain our Garden, develop new educational programs, and reach more people in our community.

As MHS continues to grow and thrive, I invite you to join us in celebrating the profound enjoyment that horticulture brings. Together, as a community, we’ll spread the love of horticulture and the positive changes it can make.

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

UPCOMING CLASSES

© Tara Connaughton

Botanical Sketchbook: June's Garden Treasures

June 10, 13, & 17 10am–2pm Hybrid

Floral Design; Tropical Fantasy

Saturday, June 22 10 - 11:30am

Kokedama Workshop

Wednesday, July 17 10-11:30am

© Susan T. Fisher

Watercolors and the Graphite Pencil

June 11 - 12 & 18 - 20 10am–1pm Virtual

Guided Herb Garden Tour

Wednesday June 26

Saturday June 29

9-10:30am

The Art of Planting Design Workshop

July 17, 24, 31 10am-2pm

Pollination Ecology and Landscape Design

Monday, June 17 6:30-8:30pm Virtual

Eco Printing on Paper

Wednesday, July 10 9am-4pm

Drawing in the Garden: Sunflowers in Color Pencils

August 7 & 8 9:30am–3:30pm

YOUTH & FAMILY

LITTLE SPROUTS!

A GARDEN CLASS FOR CHILDREN AGED 3-5 AND THEIR CAREGIVERS

Little Sprouts is a monthly class designed to foster a love and sense of wonder for the outside world in your child. Each month, we will explore a seasonal theme through a 5-senses garden walk, story-time, a hands-on craft or activity, and a take home kit.

JUNE: BIRDS | JULY: POLLINATORS

AUGUST: SUNFLOWERS | SEPTEMBER: VEGETABLES

OCTOBER: LEAVES | NOVEMBER: WINTER HIKE

REGISTER FOR JUNE TO MAKE BIRD HOUSES! Garden Tales

at 11am Education Station Saturdays from 10am-12pm

Featured Speakers:

Learn everything you need to know about trends in gardening, horticulture, and landscape design at the Perennial Plant Symposium!

Thursday, August 22 from 9am-3:30pm 4 Speakers | 4 Topics Tour Opportunity Breakfast & Lunch Included

CEU credits available through APLD

General Admission: $149 MHS Members: $109

MAHJONGG

CROCKETT GARDEN BISTRO TABLES | WEDNESDAYS AT 12PM

INCLUDED WITH GARDEN ADMISSION

Tuesday, June 18th at 1:30 pm

Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart

In First Person

Highlights of My Career with Plants

Richard A. Jaynes

I have always had an interest in plants. As youngsters, we lived on a dead-end street in Chatham, New Jersey. Neighbors would throw out their tired potted plants at the end of the street and I would rescue a few and try to bring them back to life. We always had a vegetable garden and I helped pick out seed packets, plant, weed and harvest.

In high school my best friend and I had the most boring summer job in the world at a local nursery hoeing weeds around yews (prior to chemical herbicides) for 45 hours a week. On rainy days we learned to play golf on the local golf course when no one was there to collect greens fees. Summers, the last two years in high school, were spent as a farm worker at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) where I became acquainted with their corn and chestnut breeding projects. The next two summers were spent in northern Minnesota working for the U.S. Forest Service on spruce budworm research: two great summers living in log cabins, no electricity, cooking our own meals and on weekends canoeing in the outback.

My college degree was from a liberal arts school, Wesleyan University. If I realized where I was going to end up (horticulture) I likely would have gone to a school teaching applied plant sciences. However, my strength in English writing from high school was not great and I credit Wesleyan for enhancing my skills in composition and other areas. The two summers after my junior and senior years at college were spent as an assistant in the Genetics Department of the CAES. There I learned to make controlled crosses of corn and, more notably, chestnut trees. The latter crosses were often done 30-feet high from the top of a fourlegged ladder with a center shoot (Figure 1). 18 feet high from the top of a 15-foot-high three-legged ladder. I loved it.

Towards the end of the second summer the department head, Donald Jones, suggested I could have an assistantship and do my graduate

research at the Experiment Station if I was accepted to Yale University graduate school. I ended up in the Botany Department at Yale. I took courses in the Botany and Forestry departments and did my research at CAES. Sometimes people didn’t know where I was, including myself. My thesis work was on the genetics and cytology of Castanea.

Upon graduation I was fortunate to be offered a full-time position in the Genetics Department of CAES to continue the work on chestnut but also to choose another genus for breeding. Corn breeding had

▷ Richard A. Jaynes

△ Kalmia latifolia 'Keepsake'

been a long tradition in the genetics department but my interest tended towards less popular areas that were less intensely studied such as chestnut. I looked at Pieris, Ilex, azaleas, Rhododendrons and laurel (Kalmia). Considerable research and breeding had been done on hollies and rhododendron and variation in Pieris was limited. The genus Kalmia only had seven species and no breeding research had been reported. Mountain laurel was the state flower of Connecticut and the nursery industry was a major component of the agricultural industry. So, the laurel genus seemed an obvious choice. I began by acquiring seed and plants of all the species, looking especially for geographic variants and other aberrant variations. It turned out there was much more variation than anyone had realized, especially in mountain laurel.

I wrote many letters to nurserymen, arboreta, etc. looking for material. One notable reply came from a botanist in Alabama. He in effect replied, “Young man you are wasting your time; all the mountain laurels are the same.” Fortunately, that was not true. Indeed, little-leaf laurels, plants with maroon rings in the flowers, and even petaled laurel had been described in the literature in the late 1800’s. Subtle floral pigmentation variations are apparent in most local populations of mountain laurel.

My initial breeding efforts were crosses among the species to maximize the gene pool with the goal of developing new cultivars. It was disappointing. Most interspecific crosses resulted in no seed or seed that produced chlorotic, weak plants.

Combining the best traits among species looked like a dead end. But the variation within species, especially mountain laurel, became obvious and that’s where I focused my breeding efforts.

Some nurserymen, and especially the Mezitts at Weston Nursery, were growing seedlings from seed selected from plants with rich pink, red budded or banded (maroon)

Kalmia latifolia 'Keepsake' habit in flower

flowers. The offspring were variable but significantly different than wild-type plants. In those early years (1960’s) I would trek up to Hopkinton in the flowering season, spend hours in the laurel fields and select three plants to bring back to make controlled crosses. The Mezitts offered to give me the plants, but as a state employee I couldn’t accept the gifts but neither did I think the State would want to pay full price, so we compromised with the State paying about one-quarter the retail price!

From some of these crosses we learned that red bud crossed with red bud yielded almost 100% red-bud flowering plants. Hence, for the first time we had a way to mass produce true breeding red-budded plants from seed. Of course, controlled crosses are a laborious way to mass produce seed. And I need to point out that mountain laurel does not root well from cuttings, so replicating plants that way was not practical. Because mountain laurel preferentially outcrosses, we found we could mass produce the seed we wanted by enclosing the desired parent plants in an insect proof cage before the flowers opened. A bumble bee was introduced when the flowers opened and the bee pollinated the flowers and “voila”, we had lots of seed from bee controlled crosses. However, because mountain laurel grows slowly from seed, most nurserymen are not inclined to grow laurel that way. Here I was beginning to produce unique, gorgeous plants but it looked like they would end up as museum pieces in botanic gardens. Fortunately, tissue culture of rhododendron and mountain laurel became practical in the early 1970’s, allowing new selections to be reproduced relatively quickly.

As indicated, little research on Kalmia, compared to rhododendrons, had been done. This allowed me to research and publish papers on interspecific crosses, chromosome counts, selfing and outcrossing, vegetative propagation and even seed germination. A surprising find was that K. hirsuta seed responded to heat and humidity treatments to enhance germination: 100% humidity at 176 degrees F for 12 minutes was very effective. This rare requirement for germination, we speculated, was a response to ground fires where the species is native in southeastern U.S.

As a grad student I had done chromosome counts on chestnut species. It was no joy, and then I had Kalmia species to do. I quickly realized that cytology was not for me. Preparing the slides and looking through the microscope was never fun. I figured an average of at least one migraine for each successful chromosome count. Well, getting a successful count was joyful.

From the results of controlled crosses, often involving at least two generations, I was fortunate to determine the inheritance of several flower and foliage traits—many under single gene control. This is so different than in rhododendrons where the inheritance is much more complex, i.e. involving multiple genes per trait.

Like a lot of plant breeders, I have named more cultivars than I should have (40!) and it would be nice to be able to change the name of a few of the earlier releases. It is a challenge to come up with a name that will perhaps be descriptive and sell the plant in the garden center. ‘Freckles’ is a good example with its scattered pigment spots in the corolla. ‘Sarah’, named after my wife, is likely the most notable cultivar I have released. The flowers are red in bud and open a rich pink. No one has yet produced a solid deep red flowered mountain laurel.

By the early 1980’s, with a lot of inheritance information, I was in a position to breed for even more unique cultivars. I had summarized much of my research on Kalmia in a book published in 1975 and updated in 1988 and 1997 (Kalmia, Mountain Laurel and Related Species). But by 1980 the Experiment Station strongly suggested that I replace my focus on Kalmia and pick another plant genus to work on. I considered Magnolia and Ribes (currants and gooseberries). Both groups would have required an investment of many years. I realized I was vested for retirement with 25 years of service in early 1984 (still too young to start collecting). So, leaving and expanding our retail Christmas tree

Kalmia latifolia 'Little Linda'

business and starting a nursery seemed more productive and exciting. The Christmas trees had begun in 1947 when I was eleven. Of course, in those early years my dad did most of the work. I’ve been involved in growing trees for over 78 years, and we now have 25 acres of choose and cut trees.

I have always regretted not having spent at least one summer working at a nursery like Weston Nursery to at least learn the names of plants in the nursery trade. Although trained in botany and genetics, I always tended toward the applied and practical aspects of plants. I consider myself a horticulturist despite never taking a horticultural course. Broken Arrow Nursery started off specializing in mountain laurel, but we kept adding more kinds of woody trees and shrubs so that now we have as diverse a selection as any retail nursery in New England.

Obviously, any of my success as a scientist, nurseryman or writer has depended on numerous folks. Colleagues at the Experiment Station were top notch and always willing to help whether it was editing, ideas or hard cooperative work. It has always been a joy to work alongside people who were tops in their field. When I’ve been in a position to hire summer assistants, technicians or nursery employees, enthusiasm, dedication and smarts were often more important than experience. My wife has been by my side all the way and our three children have all done well and been very supportive.

It gives me great satisfaction to know that many of the laurel cultivars sold at garden centers are a result of my breeding efforts. In this article I’ve tried to indicate a few of the “discoveries” that excited me along the way and kept me busy while waiting the 4-5 years for the next generation of seedlings to flower.

Dick graduated from Wesleyan University in 1957 and Yale University in 1961. After working as a plant breeder at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station for over 25 years, he started Broken Arrow Nursery in 1984; in addition, he has been growing Christmas trees for over 75 years. He lives in Hamden at the nursery and can be reached at sallyjaynes@ snet.net. He has been honored with the Jackson Dawson Medal for achievement in plant propagation and hybridization, 1975, and Horticultural Club of Boston's Award of Recognition - Scientist, Plant Breeder, Nurseryman and Author, 2023.

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.

I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life!

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Researching oftentimes goes down a rabbit hole, leading to discoveries that have nothing to do with the initial inquiry. That happened recently when researching the background for a donation of an herbarium created in the 1830s-1840s.

Feature: Collections – Herbaria

Mrs. Stuyvesant Ten Broeck Jackson of Portland Maine donated “a Collection of Botanical Specimens collected by ‘Grandmother Thornton.’” This donation is an herbarium, a collection of dried plant specimens. Herbaria have been around for over 500 years. Today they are valuable, nonreplaceable resources for researchers.

The Society maintains a limited collection of herbaria from the mid-19th to early 20th century, primarily compiled by women. Some creators are identified, some are not. Most contain the date, place and name of the plants in Latin and English. Some are accompanied by newspaper clips relating to the plant collected, others by watercolor paintings of the plant. This collection documents women’s ‘citizen science’ at a time when botany was the only scientific endeavor open to women, albeit as an avocation.

The Thornton Collection dates from the mid-1830s to 1840s. It appears that Thornton was well traveled. The specimens cover areas in the

▷ Drawing of "The Willey House Crawford Notch, New Hampshire." W. H. Bartlett. 1940, Wikipedia.

◁ Sample Page from the Thornton Herbarium. MHS Collections. The plants are secured to the page with fine thread. From the top, they are identified as “Lilies of the valley, from the foot of the mountains near the elder Crawfords. July 26, 1843; Bluebells from the Notch “E'en the slight harebell raised its head, Elastic from her airy tread” Scott. July 28, 1843; Flowers from the Summit of Mount Clinton, July 28, 1843.

Midwest and South as well as New England. This herbarium appears to have been akin to a travel diary for Thornton. She often included anecdotes, comments and quotations along with the specimen. She recorded the date, location and English plant name of the specimen.

It was one of Thornton’s anecdotes that sent this researcher down the “rabbit hole.” On one of her specimen sheets, Thornton labeled the specimen “Hop from the sand of the Avalanche that buried the Willey Family. July 27, 1843.” This notation refers to the tragedy at Crawford Notch, New Hampshire on August 28, 1826. After a dry summer, a horrendous storm passed through, with high winds and torrential rain followed by flooding and landslides. Seven members of the Willey Family and two other victims died. Poignantly, the house survived intact. The site became a tourist attraction and the tragedy was capitalized on by many, including artist Thomas Cole and author Nathanial Hawthorne. Hawthorne inspired by the Willey tragedy to write a short story titled "The Ambitious Guest” in The New-England Magazine (Hawthorne, June 1835, p. 425).

“China Aster which grew in the cell of a Convict in the Pennsylvania Penitentiary, and was received from his hands (illegible) 1844 Visited Fairmont the same day—"

From the top: “Flowers from the summit of the Jockey Cap Mountain in Fryeburg Mountain July 25, 1843”; “Hop from the sands of the Avalanche that buried the Willey family.”; Flowers from the Silver Cascade at the Notch - July 27, 1843”

From the top: “Flowers from the mouth From the mouth of the Mammoth Cave, Ken. April 3, 1848. “The deep places of the earth are His also;” “Leaves from the Cave Mill Bowling Green Ken. March 31, 1848”; “Hyacinth from a female Slave in Bowling Green Kentucky”.

MHS Book Club

The next meeting of the Book Club is on Tuesday, June 18th at 1:30 pm. in the Crocket Garden. The club will be discussing Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart. All are welcome to attend.

June 18

Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart

August 20

The Surprising Life of Constance Spry: From Social Reformer to Society Florist by Sue Shepard

September 17

American Eden by Victoria Johnson

October 15

Mischievous Creatures by Catherine McNeur

November 19

The Story of Flowers and how they changed the way we live by Noel Kingsbury

COME VISIT!

The Library is open on Thursdays from 9am - 1pm and by appointment. Please email Library & Archives Manager Maureen O’Brien for an appointment if you want to schedule a visit.

PLATINUM

BRONZE

The Laurels: Hardy and Beautiful

By Jennifer Anderson

Anyone remember Laurel and Hardy? Probably my grandparents’ generation. But when I think about the most beautiful of all native shrubs, the duo comes to mind, so I did a search on “Laurel,” thinking an episode might pop up.

Instead, I learned the definition of laurel is, in fact, the plant – although not our native laurels but a European variety in a family called Lauraceae. It also refers to a wreath of leaves the ancients wore on their heads.

Laurels native to New England are in Ericaceae, the Heath family, along with azaleas, blueberries and a few others, including Sourwood, Oxydendrum arboreum. Among other things, they all like slightly acidic soil.

△ Mountain Laurel's frothy blooms

Our Native Laurels

Among the native laurels, we carry Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia) and Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia).

Year-Round Interest

Mountain Laurel is practically synonymous with beauty. Darkpink spots (anthers) ring the inside of the light-pink, cup-like flowers that bloom profusely in late spring through mid-summer. The flowers are five-sided and appear at the tips of the branches, above the glossy, evergreen leaves.

New spring leaves emerge purplish before turning light green and finally dark and leathery through the winter. Mountain Laurel’s thick foliage and gnarled branches also provide year-round appeal.

Mountain Laurel can get up to 15 feet tall, even taller if trained to grow as a single-trunked tree. It grows naturally in dappled shade, in rocky woods or near tree lines, and in sandy soils and pine forests.

Tip #1: Pinching off dead flowers should result in a heartier bloom the following season and also a less-spindly plant.

Tip #2: Mulch around the roots will help retain moisture and mitigate stress from summer heat.

Sheep Laurel

Mountain Laurel

Kalmia angustifolia

Sheep Laurel

△ Sheep Laurel, courtesy of Flickr

▽ Sheep Laurel blooms underneath the new growth

Kalmia angustifolia

Also beautiful, Sheep Laurel has its charm–and the immense benefit of being easier to keep alive.

Its preference is for full sun and moist, acidic soil, although it also grows in sand, on dry banks and in wet sites – particularly those that flood in spring and dry out in summer. In short, it grows in both well drained and poorly drained sites

Sheep Laurel’s flowers look like its cousin’s in miniature and are a vibrant hot pink. They grow just below the newest foliage, so rather than frothy flowers riding on top of the plant they’re nestled among the leaves.

After the flowers come the tiny fruit capsules filled with winged seeds.

Size Matters

Much smaller than Mountain Laurel, Sheep Laurel tops out at 3 feet with a nearly 6-foot width, and it likes to form colonies. The leaves turn a deep reddish purple in winter and, like all laurels, are toxic to farm animals (hence the other common name, Lambkill). It does, however, provide important winter cover and food for birds.

Both laurels have high pollinator values (Mountain Laurel has a slight edge here) and Sheep Laurel also is a larval host to the Northern Blue Butterfly and Columbia Silkmoth.

Fun facts:

#1 Mountain Laurel is the state flower of Pennsylvania and Connecticut, two states where it was once picked nearly to death in the wild.

#2 The wood of Mountain Laurel has been used to make tobacco pipes.

Jennifer Anderson is the owner of Tree Talk Natives, a native tree and plant nursery in Rochester, MA. She loves to talk native plants and can be reached at jennifer@treetalknatives. com. This article was originally published on Tree Talk Natives. All sources are cited here.

△ Northern Blue Butterfly on Monarda ▽ Columbia Silkmoth

Scents June Scents of June

By Catherine Cooper

June is the month where we can feel that summer has truly arrived. May can lull us into a false sense of security, and as midMay last year proved, winter can still give one last reminder that it doesn’t always leave early or with good grace. An explosion of growth and flowers can lift us out of even the deepest of doldrums and I am always happy to welcome summer’s abundance. As Gertrude Jekyll notes gardens in June are full of flowers or fresh shoots promising future delights, yet there is very little that is past its best. Even the spring ephemerals and bulbs have yet to die back and shrink from the intensity of mid-summer heat.

Opposite: Linden flowers in the Denver, CO suburbs

Below: Rugosa Rose with Bee

"What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.”

Gertrude Jekyll

I relish seeing this growth and flowering but particularly that which brings scent. One of the most obvious examples is roses, the epitome of summer, romanticized by many a writer and poet. Despite my love of scented plants, I don’t grow many roses as my yard doesn’t readily suit them, nor am I prepared to constantly try to protect certain varieties from the snacking of deer. Therefore, I have just two types of scented rose. The first, a climber, The Generous Gardener, which despite the difficult conditions of my wind-swept garden still gives me a reasonable number of beautiful pale pink perfumed flowers, each one a rounded cup stuffed full of concentric circles of ruffled petals. These modern “old-fashioned” roses have the added advantage that they are repeat-blooming and it is interesting to note that in recent years many growers have noted their popularity and have cultivated their own varieties, meaning the choices for gardeners are increasing all the time. In addition, many of these new cultivars also require far less cosseting than the true old-fashioned varieties. Despite the fact that my climber would not win any beauty contests, it is still tough; it came through 2022’s combined drought and subsequent deer assault, reduced but still determined and is anchored to the fence around the vegetable garden where it can provide scent.

Rosa rugosa

The only other scented roses I have are beach roses, Rosa rugosa spp. I have both white and magenta and chose them because they are really rugged, fiercely prickly so that deer leave them alone and also provide wonderfully scented flowers. While my magenta rose does seem to remain well-behaved, the white one was vigorous and suckered quite freely, so much so, that I realized I had fallen prey to wrong plant, wrong place. While pruning and digging up the suckers worked for a few years, the time eventually came that I had to concede that it could no longer remain where it was. Fortunately with so many suckers I was able to pot some up during the fall, overwinter them and plant them out the following spring at the edge of my yard, in front of the arborvitae hedge where I hope they will form a barrier to prevent the deer sampling the lower half of the hedge. They are also growing in much less hospitable conditions so I am hoping that once established they will not become too aggressive. Another reason why I wanted to keep my white rugosa rose in some form was that bees really love rugosa flowers and where this rose used to grow was on the edge of a border which allowed easy viewing of the bees busily gathering pollen, while at the same time enjoying the scent. Time will tell if my vision for these plants comes true.

Rosa rugosa

While June brings forth the first wave of abundant color, the plant that I most look forward to is a tree, which for virtually all of the year probably does not attract much attention. Lime, linden or here in the U.S., basswood, is the tree whose flowers I most look forward to in June. It is probably better known in Eastern Europe where since ancient times it has had significance as a place under whose canopy people would gather to discuss matters of communal importance, and where it was believe it was impossible to lie. It is the national tree of the Czech Republic, Latvia and Slovenia. It is also associated with lovers, due to its scented flowers and for this reason has been linked to Aphrodite and over centuries has featured in romantic and courtly poetry. On a

more practical note, linden flower tea has a calming effect and honey made from linden flowers is highly prized. These flowers while prolific are not visually outstanding, consisting as they do of clusters of small whitish-green blooms, but what they lack in appearance they make up for with scent. With the increased humidity that comes at this time of

The Generous Gardener®, English Climbing Rose

year the smell of these sweet flowers can spread for quite a distance, and when up close to a mature tree it is possible to hear it positively humming with the throngs of pollinating bees. It is also used as a shade tree and a few years ago I was thrilled to see that in suburban Denver, CO there were a number of streets lined with lindens, particularly as I was visiting while some of the trees were still in bloom. If there is one thing that I would wish from this tree, it is a longer bloom period. Ten to fourteen days is all that the flowers last, but maybe that is what makes its flowers so enjoyable: their fleeting nature.

So while there is much to enjoy about any season here in Massachusetts, June really does mark the beginning of all that is enjoyable about summer. While I have mentioned just a couple of things I enjoy I know we all have our favorite things, which reminds me - strawberries are ripening and who doesn’t enjoy a fresh, sun-ripened strawberry!

Born in England, Catherine learned to garden from her parents and from that developed a passion for plants. Catherine works assisting customers at the newest Weston Nurseries location in Lincoln. When not at Weston Nurseries, she can often be found in her flower beds or tending to an ever-increasing collection of houseplants.

Rosa rugosa with Bee