by Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor

It is time for me to come clean.

In these essays over the past year, I have shared with you what I hope are some moderately amusing insights into the world of gardening and horticulture. I have written of my brush with Lyme disease and the formulation of the Rule of Three. I have pontificated on the rite of the January Thaw and the rights of the turtles that lay eggs in my garden.

For the past nine months, though, I have been living a double life. And because I will be unmasked in the next few days (and my double life has been hinted at in the press on at least one occasion), I feel you should hear of that transgression directly from me.

I am the chairman of Blooms!

Blooms!, as you know from reading the rest of the Leaflet, comprises six distinct activities at the about-to-open Boston Flower & Garden Show. There are two floral design divisions, an amateur horticulture division, a bevy of plant societies, Ikebana, and a day of lectures. I have the overall responsibility for making certain these things happen on schedule.

I spent 35 years in the corporate world, managing ‘stuff’ (further explanation puts people to sleep), none of which was remotely horticultural. I am blessed, however, with a spouse who has achieved the rare hat trick of being a nationally certified floral design judge, a lifetime master gardener, and an astute observer of the human condition.

Because of her, I am able to parrot certain phrases that allow me to sound as though I know what I am talking about when I am speaking to the heads of the various divisions. It is a skill akin, when in a foreign country, to being able to inquire where is the nearest lavatory in the local language. Unfortunately, just as when I have been in Egypt or Greece, the words spoken in response to my question are unintelligible to my ears. Only the accompanying pointing is useful.

Despite my hopelessness to the task, the 2010 version of Blooms! will be unveiled in all its glory on Wednesday morning. If it is a rousing success, it will be the result of six astonishingly accomplished people. Like me, none of them volunteered for this. They were pushed to the front by their respective organizations or else they stepped up when they saw that help was needed.

If you are in the Blooms! area and see their names on badges, please stop them and congratulate them. In no special order, they are Carrie Waterman and Ellen Todd, the co-chairs of Amateur Horticulture; Art Scarpa, the coordinator of all things having to do with Plant Societies, Maureen Christmas and Joyce Bakshi, the irrepressible heads of, respectively, the Division I and Division II floral design competitions, and Gilbert Moore, who heads the Ikebana International display.

The time these people have given to make Blooms! possible is astonishing. Each has devoted, at minimum, many hundreds of hours over the past nine months to planning and executing their respective group’s exhibits. Over the past few weeks, their work has been non-stop. They, in turn, have each overseen several dozen far-flung volunteers who worked on committees within committees.

Two ‘professionals’ also merit gratitude for going far above and beyond anything in their job descriptions. Clark Bryan is MassHort’s director of facilities. He keeps in his head (and is slowly putting on paper) the enormous inventory of show-related property MassHort has in its basements and a warehouse. Every stick of furniture and every prop you see in the Blooms! area and in the three MassHort parcels was recycled from earlier shows, thanks to Clark’s prodigious talents. The second professional who must be thanked is Paul Miskovsky. Paul is a trustee of MassHort and a virtuoso landscaper, but he is also extraordinarily generous with his resources. If you visit the Big Red Chair while at the show, know that everything around it was supplied by Paul, and that it was Clark who had the inspiration to build an exhibit around the chair.

My job has been, for the most part, to stay out of these capable people’s way. When I have been of help, it has been to coordinate their activities with Carolyn Weston, who talked the Paragon Group into putting on a flower show, and who has choreographed the resulting taste of spring for winter-weary Bostonians. It is clear that Carolyn thrives on this responsibility and it shows in her consummate professionalism.

It is invigorating to be around MassHort these days. It’s more than just seeing the first perennial shoots coming out of the ground in the Elm Bank gardens: it’s recognizing that the organization has come through a long spiritual winter with its mission and drive intact. I hope you’ll come to the flower show this week and share a sense of that re-birth.

Neal Sanders is a frequent contributor to the Leaflet. We encourage you to read his contributions to our In the Gardens Blog where he focuses on interesting cultivars that can found in the Elm Bank gardens. Neal's first novel, Murder Imperfect, has just been published. You can learn more about it here or order it through Amazon.com.

by Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor

The snow had not even completely melted outside my front door a few weeks back when a hellebore defiantly thrust up first one flower, then two. Now, there are several hellebores blooming prolifically. Next to one of those plants, a clutch of tiny tete-a-tete daffodils preen in the afternoon light.

Welcome to early spring in New England, when we get excited about the little things.

Ours is a feast and famine region. From the end of October until the day that first hellebore emerged, there were no flowers to look at outside my window. The world was largely brown: a brown lawn, brown oak leaves and brown tree trunks. Pretty in its own way? Not really. Especially when you see this unchanging landscape day after day.

Two months from now, there will be so much color that even the most jaded among us will be overwhelmed. From late spring through the changing of the leaves is our time to feast on the palette given us by Mother Nature.

Now – the beginning of April – is when we see the first hints of what is to come. There is a bed at the front of my property. It’s called ‘Manhattan’ because its shape is somewhat reminiscent of that island. Driving by, there’s little to attract the eye but, on foot, the site is abuzz with activity. Hundreds of crocus have bloomed purple and the short perennial blue grasses and yellow-striped yuccas have un-flattened themselves and now look more dignified. This bed will be royal purple with hyacinths in a few weeks and, already, the dark green leaves of those perennials are showing their spikes. One the western edge of Manhattan, alliums have sent up shoots to capture sunlight. To the rear of the bed, daffodils are in bloom and, in front of them, the early daylily greens have appeared from nowhere, a pale green fuzz that grows an inch a day.
All this from one bed.

Tete-a-tete's and hellebores

Neal Sanders is a frequent contributor to the Leaflet. We encourage you to read his contributions to our In the Gardens Blog where he focuses on interesting cultivars that can found in the Elm Bank gardens. Neal's first novel, Murder Imperfect, has been published. You can learn more about it here or order it through Amazon.com.

by Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor

I am continually accused by my wife of being too sentimental about plants. I can’t see throwing away a perfectly good clump of Hemerocallis just because it is being displaced by something more eye-catching. As a result, our ‘nursery bed’ overflows with azalea that became scraggly from too little sun, perennials that became overly aggressive and other, ragtag cultivars that outgrew their homes or failed to thrive where originally planted.

My wife has no such tolerance. “Compost it,” is her succinct, all-purpose advice for what to do with too much of anything.

And so we have tug-of-wars over plants. I’m forever pleading for another season for a given forlorn plant to finally establish itself, or to at least find another, more suitable location. Betty turns a gimlet eye to my softheartedness.

Which is why, when I came back from running an errand the other day, I found a stump where the wisteria used to be.

Wisteria is, of course, a vine. But with proper nurturing and staking it can be turned into a tree, or at least a tree-shaped vine. We planted the wisteria circa 2003 and, for six years, it stood in a grassy area.
Well, most of the time it ‘stood’.

The Wisteria in its prime... and in bloom

Neal Sanders is a frequent contributor to the Leaflet. We encourage you to read his contributions to our In the Gardens Blog where he focuses on interesting cultivars that can found in the Elm Bank gardens. Neal's first novel, Murder Imperfect, has been published. You can learn more about it here or order it through Amazon.com.

by Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor

Toxicodendron radicans is an attractive native vine, an important food for birds, and it displays great fall color. Were it not for its oily resin (called urushiol), it would be an ornament in any garden. I am referring, of course, to poison ivy, the most common cause of rashes in America. A month ago, I made the mistake – and I did this willingly – of wading into a large patch of it.

And it was just a week ago today that I finally was able to put out of my mind the thought of self-amputation of my left leg at the knee. For the three weeks before that, I was, to put it delicately, in agony.

Poison ivy is, of course, to be avoided. It’s a simple rule, really: stay away from poison ivy and you will never look like a bug-eyed idiot at a party, resisting the urge to scratch your arms or legs into temporary submission. I leapt into that poison ivy because my wife asked me to clean out some that was encroaching onto some prized plants. After patently ignoring her request for several weeks, I spontaneously did it one hot afternoon. Maybe it was the heat.

If you are heading out to do battle with a major infestation, dress for battle. A long-sleeved shirt, long pants tucked into socks, a hat and gloves. I did not follow this advice. Instead, I wore shorts, shoes, and a tee shirt, with plastic bags wrapped around my hands. In hindsight, I was foolhardy. At the time, I was avoiding being ‘too warm’.

Tools for removing poison ivy include shovels, trowels, hoes, clippers and heavy duty plastic bags. Of this arsenal, I remembered only the plastic trash bags. Experts say that as you remove poison ivy, place it immediately in the bags. Even dead, you can be exposed to the oily resin that causes the rash. Cutting off a vine headed up a tree is only the first step, next you need to remove it from the tree so the dead leaves do not become a future source of contamination. This does not go in the composter. It goes straight to the trash. And never burn poison ivy—if inhaled, the fumes can cause a serious respiratory reaction. I did, at least, bag the stuff and took it straight to the dump.

You can also use an herbicide such as Roundup. We have a bottle of concentrate in our garage. Why didn’t I use it? Stupidity. If you’re not keen to spray herbicides, you can use an old paint brush to simply paint the poison ivy leaves with the Roundup. I have lots of old paint brushes. The thought never crossed my mind.

When you finished pulling out poison ivy, immediately remove the clothes you’ve been wearing and place them in a washer. You should clean yourself thoroughly, washing any exposed areas with cool water and dish or laundry detergent (better than hand soap at removing oil and washing it away). The faster you wash off any contamination, the less likely you are to suffer the rash.

I swear on a stack of seed catalogs that I did every one of those things. Three days later, I saw the first signs of a rash. A day later, the rash ran in multiple bands the length of my leg.

Over-the-counter cortisone and antihistamines are recommended for mild cases of poison ivy. Severe cases may merit a trip to the doctor. I discovered that calamine lotion now goes by the name of ‘anti-itch lotion’ and is no longer pink It works, up to a point. The Wall Street Journal, which fortunately dispenses far better financial information than it does medical advice, suggests that buttermilk and soaking in a bathtub with a dozen teabags can help. I elected not to try either home remedy.

Finally don’t forget to clean the tools you used. Wash them with a household cleaner designed to remove oil so you don’t pick it up the next time you head out to garden. Having not bothered to use tools, I didn’t need this particular piece of advice, but I washed them thoroughly anyway.

You can never be too careful with poison ivy.

Neal Sanders is a frequent contributor to the Leaflet. We encourage you to read his contributions to our In the Gardens Blog where he focuses on interesting cultivars that can found in the Elm Bank gardens. Neal's first novel, Murder Imperfect, has been published. You can learn more about it here or order it through Amazon.com.