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There's a Lot to See at Elm Bank This Month |
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It's going to be a great month.
Whether your tastes run to classic cars or Chinese Chippendale, fine food or armchair gardening, there's something - and probably lots of things - for you in June at Elm Bank.
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| The Bressingham Garden |
Of course, there are the gardens. The last section of the Italianate Garden, with its splendid palette of pastel colors in formal rows centering on the graceful fountain, is about to be planted. By the time you read this, the garden will be ready for visitors. The Bressingham and Weezie's gardens have undergone a summer metamorphosis and now explode with color and texture. The daylily garden is showing its first blooms even as the rhododendron garden shares its last. The Herb Garden is sweet with fragrance.
The new vegetable garden is a must-visit. It is designed to appeal to the sense of sight as well as of taste and, over the course of the month, its beds will turn green and then start bulging with produce.
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| Scallops served with micro-salad shoots is one of the dishes highlighted during the 'First Harvest.' |
Do you long for food fresh from the garden? The kick-off event for Garden to Table will be Monday, June 6th, 6 to 8 p.m. Chef John Lawrence of Pepper's Fine Foods will present 'The First Harvest', a three-course tasting menu using the earliest greens. Participation in this inaugural event will be limited to 35. The cost is $45 and reservations may be made by calling 617-933-4995 or ordering online here.
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| Antiques at Elm Bank |
On June 11 and 12, Antiques at Elm Bank* opens amid the gardens; dozens of tents set up by dealers who know their patrons prefer the open air and floral backdrop to the stuffiness of a humid Boston shop. There will be more than a hundred dealers on hand, displaying antiques from the 18th to the mid 20th Century, including Federalist and Victorian furniture, European and Asian ceramics, china, sterling silver, art, estate jewelry, antique toys and much more. Everyone from the casual collector to the experienced investor will be able to find that precious treasure they have been searching for. For more information on the events, click here .
*Special Note: Members receive a $2 per ticket discount (limit 2 tickets) to the 2011 Antique Show. Download the coupon here.
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| Elm Bank Antique Auto Show |
Do you love old cars? Does the sight of a classic Corvette or a car with tail fins make you smile? Then be prepared to do a lot of smiling on Sunday, June 27 because that's the date of the sixth annual Elm Bank Antique Auto Show. Scheduled to run from 9:30am - 3:30pm, the show features hundreds of classic cars, from hot rods and pace cars to lovingly restored autos from the fifties and sixties, when cars were more than just something to get you from point A to point B. There are competitions for 'best of show' in multiple categories. The day features live music (oldies, naturally), food and drink, and a swap meet area where you can browse for memorabilia. In an era when all cars seem to look more and more alike, it's an opportunity to renew your love affair with the automobile - or to introduce a new generation to the thrill of a GTO. Click here for more details.
The month abounds with talks. On June 8, the incomparable Suzanne Mahler comes to 'Wednesday Evenings at Elm Bank' to talk on 'Fabulous Flowers and Foliage for Summer Gardens.'. On June 15, Landscape Designer Sally Muspratt discusses 'Gardening with Raised Beds' (rescheduled from June 1). And, on June 29, Mike Nelson will talk about ecologically sound gardening with 'The Xeric Garden'. All 'Wednesday Evening' talks begin at 7 p.m. and are $10 for Mass Hort members; $15 for non-members. Reservations are not required.
On Monday, June 13 at 6 p.m., Sally Sampson of Chop Chop magazine speaks about preventing childhood obesity and having fun with kids in the kitchen. The cost is $20 for members and $25 for non-members. Register for this event by calling 617-933-4995 or online. |
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| The new vegetable garden, ready to start growing. |
During the past three months, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society has built a remarkable new garden: one devoted entirely to vegetables. Its design encompasses two purposes: a 23-bed 'chef's garden' illustrating a variety of cuisines and growing techniques, and a 20-bed 'pantry garden' intensely planted to provide fresh produce to food pantries in the towns around Elm Bank. We asked Betty Sanders, the 'garden keeper' and one its three designers, to tell us what we can see in the garden this month.
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| The Chef's Garden is intended to provide both visual pleasure and growing ideas. |
The first question people ask about the new garden is, 'why did you wait so long to plant it?' This garden is totally new this year. Once the snow melted we had to remove the structures from the old trial garden. Then the new structures were built by a group from BostonBuilds. Next came acquiring and adding soil and compost. Then the weather turned on us. We've had the cold weather crops in for several weeks and the rest began going in as soon as the soil temperature allowed. Even plants started in greenhouses had to wait for the soil temperature to rise to 65 or 70 degrees. Raised beds help because the soil warms more quickly, but the region received less than a third of the available sunlight in May, and it's hard to warm the soil without sun. We got the last seeds in on June 1.
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| Seedlings grown in Mass Hort greenhouses are transplanted into the Chef's Garden. |
If summer is truly here, we'll see the garden take off quickly. Summer weather means three things to the vegetable gardener-hot weather crops such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash and melons can go in the ground as seedlings or seeds. Seeds placed in the garden once the hot weather begins should be planted more deeply than the same seeds in cooler weather and your spring harvest should be reaching its peak.
Hot weather crops are generally from the tropics. While cooler weather will not kill them, it will almost certainly stunt their growth. A tomato plant placed out in mid-May might never recover from one or two chilly nights. It's only now that seedlings will flourish. A collar-a cut down frozen juice can or three-inch pot minus its bottom-placed around the stem an inch above and an inch or more below the soil line can prevent tender seedling from falling prey to cutworms. Water seedlings as soon as they are planted and do not let them dry out over the next couple of weeks as they establish their roots.
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| Each bed in the Chef's Garden is marked for the vegetable to be grown in it. |
If you come to the garden, you'll likely see many plots covered with white fabric. Summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers can be saved from the worse ravages of squash borers and cucumber beetles by covering them with floating row covers - an inexpensive spun material that is placed over the crop and sealed around the edges with soil. Using hoops to give the vegetables room to grow, the covers can stay on until the plants begin to bloom. Even if bad bugs arrive with the pollinators, plants will be bigger and stronger, and thus able to better resist bugs and still produce a sizeable harvest. Eggplants and peppers also benefit from protection from everything from flea beetles to potato beetles that will reduce the yield when they don't kill the plants outright.
If you are planting seeds, put them in deeper than you would during the spring. The warmer soil and hotter days mean the seedlings will be more susceptible to drying out. Deeper roots help protect the young plants. Plant corn, beets, squash or beets a half inch deeper than indicated on the seed packet. It is even more important when replanting spring crops like lettuce or carrots. Those seeds are normally very close to the surface, making it difficult, if not impossible, to keep them moist until the early roots are established. One dry day and they die. Doubling their planting depth won't slow them down more than a day or two, but it will help increase their survival without having to water twice a day.
All the garden work is worthwhile when it is time to harvest. In June, you can pick peas, lettuce, spinach and Swiss chard, pulling the first young carrots and beets and, if you started the plants early, harvesting broccoli and baby potatoes. By July, the diligent gardener may have added corn, cucumbers, eggplants, onions, peppers, squash and tomatoes to their dinner menu. By July you may need to add more fertilizer to even the best soil. Many plants such as corn, cucumbers and melons are heavy feeders. This doesn't mean dumping on the fertilizer but, rather, scratching a small amount into the top layer of soil a few inches from the main stem. Some gardeners prefer liquid solutions of organic or inorganic fertilizer which works well too, but don't overdo it-too much is worse than not enough.
Keeping up with the harvest means plants will produce longer. Almost every vegetable you grow (winter squash and parsnips excepted) taste better when they are young than old. Further, most vegetables are annuals and once they go to seed, they stop producing. Picking regularly also allows you to display your generosity by sharing your excess with friends and neighbors. When the plants are exhausted, and if they don't have any disease or insect problems, take them to your composter. That way, they will be feeding your garden next season.
The Massachusetts Master Gardener Association is putting together a compost area demonstrating three types of home composting. Not only does composting turns your garden and kitchen debris into black gold, it also completes the natural cycle, giving back to the earth that which came from the earth. |
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Join The National Conversation About Healthy Food |
On Thursday, June 2, the U.S. Department of Agriculture unveiled its new "plate icon", replacing the old food pyramid. The new symbol shows that half the plate should be filled with fruits and vegetables. That's a significant change, even for many gardeners.
At a time when more than one-third of American children and more than two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, Mass Hort has initiated our Garden to Table program --- to help people of all ages and all levels of gardening experience to grow, cook, preserve, and enjoy healthy local food. We're offering opportunities to work and learn in the garden, and lectures, and cooking demonstrations - -- and we hope you'll join us.
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| John Lawrence of Peppers Fine Foods. |
The First Harvest - our first fresh food tasting will be a 3-course cooking demonstration in the Crockett Garden, on Monday, June 6, from 6-8 pm. (If it rains, we'll be in the Carriage House). The event will be led by John Lawrence of Peppers Fine Foods; the cost is $40 for members, and $45 for non-members.
Our second event will be a lecture on Healthy Food for Healthy Kids, on Monday, June 13, from 6-8pm. also in the Crockett Garden. We'll hear from Sally Sampson, founder and president of Chop Chop magazine, a one-year-old local magazine that encourages families to spend time together in the kitchen. Chop Chop is endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The cost is $20 for members and $25 for non-members; you can register
You can register online for either of these events or call 617-933-4995.
Directions to Elm Bank
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Tomatomania Yields a Bumper Crop - for Two Worthy Causes |
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There's no question but that the Society Row plant sale and Tomatomania were huge successes, but Tomatomania, sponsored by White Flower Farm, yielded an unexpected bonus for two very worthy causes.
White Flower Farm shipped more than 75 varieties of tomatoes to the event at Elm Bank, and nearly 7000 plants in total. More than half were sold, making the event, in the words of White Flower Farm President Lorraine Calder, "an unqualified success."
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| Kathy Macdonald with Gaining Ground volunteer, Kayleigh Boyle. |
But what do you do with the unsold plants? Rather than ship them back to Connecticut, Calder donated sufficient tomato plants to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society to fill four, four-foot-by-sixteen-foot beds for the new Food Pantry Garden, and asked Mass Hort Executive Kathy Macdonald to recommend other non-profits where they could donate them.
"Gaining Ground came to mind immediately," Kathy says. "I remembered meeting people from Gaining Ground selling their cookbook at the Concord Bookstore. I was fascinated by their business model; they're a non-profit that grows produce for soup kitchens and food pantries. Last season Gaining Ground distributed 30,000 lbs of organic produce to pantries and directly to those in need with 7,000 hours of volunteer labor on their seven acres of farmland."
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| GainingGround volunteers load tomato plants. |
More recently, Kathy had contacted Pam Goar, Gaining Ground's board president, for advice when Mass Hort was considering creating a food pantry garden at Elm Bank.
The timing of the White Flower Farm donation was remarkable. The day before Gaining Ground heard about the gift, their farmers, Kayleigh and Michelle, had to dig up and burn all of their tomato plants because of a fungal disease.
"It was truly a remarkable turn of events for Gaining Ground and they were most grateful for the donation," Kathy says. "The donation truly saved the day for Gaining Ground." |
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Society Row and Tomatomania Are a Hit |
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Take a beautiful, cool day in late May. Throw in thirteen plant societies with prime plants for sale plus other specialty horticultural vendors (oh, all right, and some that sold ice cream or sausages). Stir in White Flower Farm bringing thousands of gorgeous tomato plants. Now, add several thousand avid plant enthusiasts.
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| Lorraine Calder, White Flower Farm's President, and David Fiske, Mass Hort's Gardens Curator. |
The result was the 2011 edition of the Society Row Plant Sale, augmented by Tomatomania. You had to be there to fully comprehend it.
"Awesome" was the one-word summary from Amy Ferry, an active gardener from Medfield, who came with her husband and two young children. They had never set foot in Elm Bank before, but heard about the event and decided to see what the fuss was about. An hour later, they were still exploring gardens. "I had no idea all this was here," Amy said.
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| Joan Butler of Holliston shows off her purchases. |
Joan Butler, who came from Holliston, bought three specialty maple trees. "I didn't come here planning on buying trees, but these were beautiful," she said. "This place puts you in the mood."
Wanda Macnair of Cambridge is with the Gesneriad Society. "At this time of year people are thinking about perennials, but we thought we'd take a chance and see if people were interested in houseplants," she said. "We were amazed. It was a great show both for talking to people about gesneriads and for selling plants."
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| At Tomatomania Scott Daigre offers planting advice. |
For Tomatomania, White Flower Farm had set up two tents to complement their tables filled with thousands of tomato plants. Under one, tomato expert Scott Daigre was holding forth on the relative merits of determinate and indeterminate plant varieties ('determinates' grow to a certain height; 'indeterminates' keep on growing until they're hit by frost). Every seat was occupied and everyone listened intently.
Elsewhere, visitors explored the gardens, and especially Weezie's children's garden and the Bressingham Garden.
Looking at the crowds in Weezie's, Mass Hort Executive Director Kathy Macdonald beamed. "This is exactly what we hoped for," she said. "People come for the plants; they stay for the gardens." |
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by Maureen Horn, Librarian
Massachusetts Horticultural Society
Grow Fruit by Alan Buckingham (DK Publishing, 2010)
It takes a confident author to title his or her book with a command. The writer had better be very good at the chosen subject. Fortunately, Alan Buckingham is a very, very good horticulturalist. After you finish Grow Fruit, your next stop will likely be at a good nursery.
Buckingham answers the question, "What fruit can I grow?" with a list of nine "must-grow" fruits that are very easy to grow, including apples, blueberries and strawberries. He follows with another list of names that represent fruits that are moderately difficult to grow, such and peaches, citrus, and apricots. As in all DK Publishing books, the illustrations are lush.
The author's chief reason for encouraging you to become a fruit gardener is that, as a novice, you will make the surprising discovery that growing your own fruit will banish limitations of choice, rather than just adding to them. The conventional wisdom is that supermarket shopping allows consumption of more out-of-season fruit, but the reality is that supermarkets can stock only fruit that travels well.
Buckingham is a gardening optimist but he's also a teacher at heart. He urges you to develop a heightened awareness about what is happening outdoors: subtle changes in weather and threats of something about to go wrong, such as an attack by predators. Once your plants are safe, they must be trained. This is especially important for trees, which should be tamed into shapes and lined up with others from the beginning of their lives.
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| Roxbury Russet. |
Tree fruits are given the most space in the book, especially apples. Buckingham uses military metaphors: trees respond best to "central leader training" or the alternative "multi-leader training", in which a diseased leader can be pruned out, and the gardener can still have other leaders to work with. A recurring admonition is to be careful about adaptability to the local terrain. A clue to adaptability can sometimes be found in the name of a cultivar, like 'Roxbury Russet".
A good tactician will stay mobile, ready to move with speed, if necessary. Containers can provide agility in the event of unexpected frost or when you want to move your plants from one microclimate to another. To achieve a measure of mobility with trees, it would be good to work with the newly developed small tree hybrids.
Sometimes, though, the grower wants stability for fruit plants, and the only thing that can offer complete peace of mind is a fortress-like cage, where no predators, such as birds, can gain access to them. When it comes to wildlife, only vigilance can determine what is welcome and what isn't. Birds can be allies when they keep down the insect population, but the reality is that they can turn on you and strip fruit bushes and strawberry beds in just a few hours.
Every campaign requires a well-illustrated manual, as well as a theoretical strategy, so Grow Fruit provides scientific, colored drawings of pruning and training techniques. The knowledge tools are all between its covers. Buy this book, add the manual tools needed, and get planting. |
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 by Betty Sanders
Lifetime Master Gardener
If you haven't started your vegetable garden, it's not too late. But do it this week. You'll want to skip early season plants like peas, but certainly put in tomatoes, squash, green beans, carrots, peppers, melons, onions, and even lettuce (which will do best given a little shade during the afternoon). Be certain to water new seeds and plants well when Mother Nature leaves us dry. Mulching between rows saves moisture and discourages weeds. Keep mulch away from the stems of plants. Remember weeds are your enemy, not just a nuisance. They suck up water and nutrients, steal the sunlight and crowd the plants you want to grow. Pull and hoe while they are young and small. [See the article on summer vegetable garden care in this Leaflet.]
 Rhododendrons are in glorious bloom now. After the flowers fade, snap off the dead florets, saving the plant the energy used in making unnecessary seeds. New leaves on long stems are popping out all over the rhodies now. If the plant is getting too large for the space, or growing in a direction you don't want, now is the time to prune these off. By removing the new growth now, you won't risk taking off next year's flower buds in a later pruning.
 Peonies are in the midst of their annual show. Many peonies bring fragrance to the garden along with large splashes of color. If you didn't install peony rings or cages before the plants grew too large, use bamboo stakes to tie up individual blooms. The large flowers often snap over from their own weight. Remove the dead flowers when the season has passed and you'll have a lovely shrub for the remainder of the summer. And, don't fret over the ants you see on the buds. They are eating the waxy coating that protects the buds, not harming the flowers at all. If you want to bring peonies in the house, either cut them when the bud shows color, but before it opens, or gently place the peony flower in a bucket of water. After several minutes, all of the ants will have 'deserted ship'.
If you have deer in your neighborhood, protect your delicious shrubs and perennials now. The new fawns will browse on everything. There are commercially available sprays that put down vile-smelling concoctions of putrefied eggs and garlic. Those sprays become odorless to us when they dry, but the nasty taste remains to any creature that nibbles on leaves. A monthly spraying of the garden will teach deer and rabbits to stay away from your plants.
It's also time to assemble containers. Annuals, perennials and tropical plants can all go in now that we are past the risk of a late frost. As you plant, experiment with new combinations and unusual cultivars. Small shrubs look great in large containers-and you can grow those not hardy in the ground in New England such as hibiscus or crape myrtle. Use cannas or bananas for big impact. Plant tiny miniature hostas in a small pot that you can put up on a table or wall where they are easily seen. Placing annuals and perennials together in the same container will provide color well into autumn.
If you want to keep garden perennials from getting too leggy and flopping over as the summer goes on, cut them back by one-third to one-half now. Mums, phlox, salvias, asters and even autumn joy sedum all benefit from the trimming. You will get flowers slightly later, but there will be more to enjoy -- plus, you won't have to spend time staking them.
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| Betty Sanders receives National Volunteer Award from the National Garden Club. |
Editor's note: We have a celebrity in our midst. On May 27, Betty Sanders was honored at the annual convention of National Garden Clubs, the parent organization of more than 6200 garden clubs with 200,000 members. Betty was recognized as 'Volunteer of the Year' for the New England region, one of eight people so honored nationally for their work beyond the garden club world. Her monthly 'Horticultural Hints' column for the Leaflet is just one of her activities that benefits Mass Hort.
You can explore more of Betty Sanders’ gardening thoughts at www.BettyonGardening.com. |
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June Is Bustin' Out All Over |
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 by Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor
I'm a huge fan of Fourth of July fireworks. I love the way that they start with a few 'teaser' rockets, then simmer down to an occasional burst that makes the audience appreciate the beauty of an individual, colorful display. Then, there is the 'peppering' of loud, staccato shells with their bright, white flashes. It's all a dance leading up to that grand finale when the Grucci family throws everything they've got into the sky all at once, and all you can do is stand there, slack-jawed in wonder.
I feel that way about my garden this morning. We went away for a few days at the end of May. It has been a cool, damp spring and, while the narcissus made April a showy month, our ornamental plum had flowered on schedule in early May and the forest pansy redbud had put on its best bloom ever, it had been largely a 'green' spring.
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In a small garden, three colors of iris, giant allium, peonies and artemisia vie for attention.
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Sunday morning, though, I walked outside to find that five days of hot weather had pushed everything that could possibly bloom to do so simultaneously. Two dozen rhododendron are weighed down with football-sized clusters of flowers. Three Weigela - a 'Wine and Roses', 'Pink Princess' and 'My Monet' - that have never bloomed in the same month much less the same week are all masses of flowers. An adjoining Deutzia and Potentilla are both snow white with blossoms. Out by the street, a 'Carolina Moonlight' Baptisia is in its full glory and a carpet of bright pink Delosperma threatens to engulf the sidewalk. Even a Scotch Broom that is prone to skipping years has a beautiful, polychrome display.
But it is the perennials that are the real attention grabbers. In just one small garden, white peonies, three colors of Siberian and bearded iris, two of Amsonia, giant lavender Allium, plus geraniums, dianthus and salvia all jostle to be the showiest plant.
In a perennial border, Cerastium, better known by its colloquial name, ground hugging 'Snow-in-Summer' is a mass of white flowers and silver leaves while above it bloom multiple cultivars of Columbine, a Daphne Atlantica, and still more iris, geranium and salvia.
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| Along a perennial border - Snow-in-summer, Daphne, iris. |
This is June in the New England garden. The wonderful part is this isn't the end of it. It isn't even the beginning of the end of it. Like that fireworks concert, the peonies and rhodies will pass, but the giant poppies and meadowrue already have flower heads fully formed and hundreds of astilbe have sent up spikes that will bloom pink and white before month's end.
And those are just the perennials. The exotic annuals in our newly potted-up container gardens are still getting their roots firmly established. Once that feat is accomplished, we'll have a summer's worth of luscious color from that source.
Next month, I'll still seek out a fireworks display to enjoy under what I hope will be a canopy of stars. But this month, I've got one going on in my own garden. To my way of thinking, life doesn't get any better than that.
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 most recent mystery, The Garden Club Gang was published in March. You can learn more about it here. That book, plus his first mystery, Murder Imperfect, can be ordered through Amazon.com. |
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