Herbs and heirloom plants, a riot of tomatoes and drop-dead gorgeous perennials, bird watching, and the first taste of produce from the new vegetable garden. That's May at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

On Wednesday evening, May 4, come and get terrific ideas about planning and planting your vegetable garden from Betty Sanders. On Saturday, May 7, come to the famed 31^st Annual Herb and Heirloom Plant Sale, held by the New England Unit of the Herb Society. On the 18th, join an early morning bird watch. On May 22, the mother of all plant sales, the Society Row event, is joined by White Flower Farm's presentation of Tomatomania.

The Noanett Garden Club's woodland garden is a terrific place to explore in May.

May is a glorious time to be at Elm Bank. The gardens are quickly bursting out with color and texture. It's an opportunity to explore the specialty sites, such as the Alan Payton Rhododendron Display Garden and the Noanett Garden Club's woodland garden. These two gardens are at their most colorful this month.

It's a month for education. The accompanying article on the 'Wednesday Evening' series tells the full story, but Mass Hort has lined up four terrific talks on subjects of interest to the home gardener, including a special program on container gardening.

The Herb Society sale is a great place to get answers to questions.

It's a month to find great plants for your own garden. On May 7, you can pick and choose from among dozens of specialty sellers of herbs and heirloom plants with more than 3000 plants on sale. How about enticing, hand-planted containers filled with culinary herbs as an unforgettable gift for Mothers Day? They'll be available, as will unusual heirloom sweet and hot peppers.

Sunday, May 22marks the date of the venerable Society Row Plant Sale, which this year is joined by Tomatomania.

'Society Row' refers to the two dozen plant societies that come together for this annual event. You'll find offerings from the Daylily Society and the Rhododendron Society, the Gesneriad Society and the Miniature Plant Society. They're joined by a select group of specialty plant retailers that offer uncommon cultivars. It's a sprawling event that will be even more of a 'don't-miss' day because of the addition of Tomatomania.

Tomatomania, presented by White Flower Farm, will be a first-ever event for Mass Hort. Tomatoes come in a bewildering array of varieties and, presented with such a choice, too many people reach for the variety whose name they recognize without ever considering whether it's the best choice for them. This is an opportunity to get an education in tomatoes from experts, without the obligation to go home with a back seat full of plants. But if you do choose to fill up a wagon, you'll know you're getting plants grown under near-ideal conditions and that the varieties you've selected are ones you'll enjoy.

At play in Weezie's garden in early May.

It's also an opportunity to get growing tips - what fertilizers to use, how best to stake a tomato and what kind of ties provide the best support without damaging the vine. White Flower Farm, which co-sponsors the event, will have tomato experts on hand to answer questions and help select just the right plants for your growing needs.

Society Row is also a day for family fun. There are Master-Gardener-led tours of the various gardens. The Herb Society will offer a program, 'Growing Your Green Thumb' for parents and children (five and up) that combine an introduction to horticulture with play activities.

The Chef's Garden now taking shape at Elm Bank is the first phase of a new program designed to encourage local, healthy foods. It's being built in a era when supermarket shelves too frequently feature produce grown on another continent and home gardening has been made to seem like something only someone with unlimited time can undertake. Yet this is also a time when the demand for 'artisan' foods has never been higher and cooking 'fresh' is in high demand.

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society is uniquely positioned to promote a green industry, demonstrate agricultural sustainability, encourage protection of our natural resources, assist locally grown produce, make nutrition fun, and teach back to the kitchen garden basics. The program that achieves all of these aims is called, 'Garden to Table'.

The garden taking shape behind the Cheney-Baltzell manor house is the most visible part of the project. "This is a teaching garden," says Kathy Macdonald, Mass Hort Executive Director. "It's designed to take the intimidation factor out of home gardening. We can show you how you can take a ten-foot-by-ten-foot space and provide your family with bushels of fresh vegetables. We can also show you that growing Chinese bok-choy or Japanese eggplant is no more difficult than growing zucchini."

The new vegetable garden starts to take form.

But growing food is just one part of the program. The other part is preparing food fresh from the garden. "Mass Hort's aim is to use its resources to show that eating healthy can also mean eating delicious," Kathy says.

The kick-off event for Garden to Table will be Monday, June 6th, 6 to 8 pm at Massachusetts Horticultural Society's Elm Bank location. "Chef John Lawrence of Pepper's Fine Foods will present 'The First Harvest', a three-course tasting menu using the earliest greens," notes Deborah Coleman, Garden to Table Program Director. "Throughout the growing season, Mass Hort will offer food tastings to inspire us all to enjoy fresh food from the garden."

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 online.

"It may have been dormant for quite a while, but the 'horticultural spirit' has once again been awakened in our communities. And gardens are our turf," Kathy says. The Garden to Table program will help define Mass Hort's role in the healthy food movement. The objectives are straightforward: to educate and engage community members in the art and science of horticulture through hands-on learning through a demonstration vegetable garden, instructional lectures, and events. For the public, the message is even simpler: How to start with a seed, and end with a meal.

The crew of YouthBoston Builds.

In early April, two dozen eager teenagers from YouthBuild Boston descended on Elm Bank to start the physical implementation of a project that, over the course of several months has grown from a kernel of an idea to, well, a garden. And the garden, in turn, is just part of a larger concept: Garden to Table.

We all talk about eating healthy. We all want our schools to serve nutritious food rather than processed, packaged goods. We love the idea of growing the food that we will serve our family and ensuring that our children know where their food comes from.

The garden now taking shape just beyond the Cheney-Baltzell mansion is the first step in turning months of planning into reality.

"The garden is being built in two sections," says Massachusetts Horticultural Society trustee Gretel Anspach, who is also a Master Gardener and was part of the team that designed the new space. "The first part is 4,000-square-foot demonstration garden consisting of 23 distinct beds. Each bed is dedicated to a specific cuisine, kind of vegetable, or gardening technique. There's a bed for vegetables of French origin as well as plots for the cuisines of India, the Middle East and Japan. There's a 'long season' bed that will show how the same small garden can grow lettuce in the early spring and butternut squash in the fall."

Building the new vegetable garden.

"There will be a bed that shows first-time gardeners how to get started in a small space and several that demonstrate container vegetable gardening," she says. "One bed will show Native American farming techniques that allow the visitor to see whether they are applicable to gardening in 2011. Two beds are dedicated to edible flowers and other items that aren't usually thought of as vegetable garden material but that are both healthy and tasty foods."

The second section, comprising approximately 2500 square feet, is a garden specifically devoted to supplying fresh vegetables to food pantries for the towns surrounding Elm Bank.

"These beds are part of giving back to the communities of which we're a part," says Mass Hort Executive Director Kathy Macdonald. "We think of the western suburbs as being an affluent area but there are areas of great need all around us. The Wellesley Food Pantry alone serves more than 190 families."

Building raised beds for the new vegetable garden.

The food pantry beds will grow seasonal vegetables with a goal of being to supply food from late April through the end of October. Mass Hort is consulting with food pantries to ensure that what is grown is also what is most needed.

During early May, beds in both parts of the garden will be filled with a rich mixture of soil and compost, then planted for the 2011 growing season. Most items will be grown from seed; those items needing a long growing season like tomatoes will be grown from plant sets.

Over the course of the summer, the garden will supply the produce for Mass Hort's Garden to Table program, a series of outdoor cooking demonstrations designed to showcase how to take advantage of food fresh from the garden.

There are lots of ways to spend Wednesday evenings this spring. American Idol. Survivor: Redemption Island. But there's one way you can have an evening that is guaranteed to be fun, educational and memorable: spend it at Elm Bank.

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society launches the Spring edition of Wednesday Evenings at Elm Bank on May 4 and, for the following eight weeks, there will be talks on subjects of interest to the home gardener by some of the best gardening speakers in the Northeast.

The series kicks off May 4 when Master Gardener and noted gardening lecturer Betty Sanders talks about 'The Great New England Vegetable Garden". Betty will start with the basics - where to put a garden and how to prepare the area for planting - and then take her audience through the process of selecting what to plant and when. It's more than just a tutorial on vegetables; her talk is packed with common-sense tips on ways to garden smarter.

Paul Miskovsky

On May 11, the topic turns to annuals and perennials when landscaper Paul Miskovsky speaks on, "The Best Garden in Boston Can Be the One in Your Back Yard." It's a subject with which Paul has more than a passing familiarity. His own garden graced the cover of the Boston Globe magazine's annual gardening issue last year. His talk will start with a walk through Elm Bank's Bressingham Garden, which Paul helped build.

Laura Eisener takes time to answer questions long after the formal end of her presentation.

A week later, horticulturalist Laura Eisener turns to, 'Native Perennials for Spectacular Borders". Laura is consistently lauded for both her breadth of knowledge about plants and her enthusiasm for sharing that knowledge. On May 18, she'll talk about both new ways to use the tried-and-true natives that we see around us, and she'll introduce us to a wealth of lesser known and newly hybridized natives that are breathtaking, hardy and long-lasting.

On May 25, Betty Sanders returns to demonstrate "Glorious Container Gardens." Containers are the most versatile way to show your gardening creativity. Containers can be those classic terracotta urns, but they can also be 'found objects' from your home. Betty will put together five container gardens, explaining both the basics and the tricks experts use. You'll leave with the confidence to try it on your own.

Sally Muspratt

One of Mass Hort's most popular lecturers, Sally Muspratt, comes to Elm Bank on June 1 to talk about "Gardening in Raised Beds". Sally, a landscape designer with an eye for both the novel and the practical, will show that raised beds - a standard practice for vegetable gardening - is also a great idea for annuals, perennials and even shrubs. Her programs are always lushly illustrated and you'll leave with dozens of great ideas.

June continues with talks by Suzanne Mahler on "Fabulous Flowers and Foliage for the Summer Garden" on June 8. More details about that talk and subsequent ones in the June Leaflet.

All "Wednesday Evenings" talks begin at 7 p.m. and are held in the Education Building at Elm Bank, The exception is Paul Miskovsky's May 11 presentation, which will begin at 6:30 to accommodate a late afternoon walk through the Bressingham Garden.

The cost to Mass Hort members is $10 per talk or $50 for the series of eight. The charge for non-Mass Hort members is $15 per talk. Refreshments and beverages are served at all talks.

The call to young Ray Frost came on the evening of September 22, 1938. A day earlier, what would come to be called the Great Hurricane of 1938 had cut a devastating swath through eastern Massachusetts.

The caller was Ray's father, Harry. The request was simple: "Son, I need your help."

Ray Frost at Elm Bank.

Ray Frost had graduated from high school that year and was working to save money to attend college. He had a job working as a groundskeeper on an estate in Beverly, but the next day he made the journey to Wellesley.

Ray would stay for the next nine months. His job: to help clear the devastation at Elm Bank.

The Hurricane of 1938 is unparalleled in its destructiveness to the region. The Blue Hills Observatory in Milton recorded sustained winds of 121 miles per hour and gusts as high as 186. While the eye of the storm tracked up the Connecticut River, the northeast quadrant of the storm - the most dangerous part of the system - ripped through Boston's western suburbs. Wellesley, Natick, Dover and Sherborn were especially hard hit.

Harry Frost had been hired by Elm Bank's owner, Alice Cheney-Baltzell, six months earlier. Then comprising nearly 200 acres, Harry was drafting a master plan to restore the estate and its gardens to their 1910-1925 glory.

The hurricane changed Harry's priority to one dealing with a single statistic: some 10,000 trees on the estate had been toppled by the storm. Harry had two tasks: to salvage specimen trees where possible but, more critically, to clear the estate of mangled and uprooted trees before they became a fire hazard.

Young Ray worked alongside a team of groundskeepers and lumberjacks to methodically cut and clear those trees than could not be saved. They were taken to a makeshift sawmill set up by the U.S. Government in the center of Dover. Harry Frost worked to save the best of Elm Bank's trees, including many large ones that had been uprooted. The storm had stripped trees of their leaves, so Harry's work included spraying water on surviving trees to keep them from becoming desiccated.

On April 7, Ray Frost came to Elm Bank to tell the story of his year on the estate that, sixty years later, would become the home of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Were it only an oral history, it would be impressive. But on that date, Ray brought something almost unimaginable: a tray of color slides taken in the late autumn of 1938 at Elm Bank.

Videographer Larry Lecain recorded the event for Mass Hort. We are working to put a video of Ray's presentation - he is now in his nineties - available to everyone through our web site. Look soon for link on the home page that will take you to video.

ELM BANK and CHARLES RIVER HIKE - Sunday, May 8

MMGA and Mass Hort members are invited to enjoy a 3 mile moderate walk along the Charles River and through the extensive woodlands, which are adjacent to "The Gardens at Elm Bank". Learn about a part of Elm Bank not often visited by garden lovers. Meet at the Mass Hort parking lot, Lot C, 900 Washington Street, Wellesley. Hiking footgear and drinking water suggested. A DCR sanctioned event, it is led by the Blue Hill Adult Walking Club. It is scheduled to begin at 1:00 PM, Sunday, May 8.

Morning BIRD WATCHING at ELM BANK - Wednesday, May 18

7:00 to10:00 AM, Wednesday, May 18 members and friends of Elm Bank are invited to join Patty O'Neill, a veteran bird walk leader, who will lead a walk through the gardens, along the Charles River and through the 75 woodland acres which are behind the Putnam Greenhouses. Binoculars, proper footwear, bug spray and water are necessities. Active in the South Shore Birding Club, Patti manages several Mass Audubon census tracts, and since retirement as an Attorney, has traveled internationally is support of her hobby. Meet at 7:00 AM Wednesday, May 18 at the Mass Hort Parking lot, 900 Washington Street, Wellesley.

So, how exactly do you plant a tree?

Larry Rohan

We tagged along on a recent 'Saturday Mornings at Elm Bank' session as Weston Nurseries landscaping specialist Larry Rohan planted a magnificent, ten-foot-tall Callery flowering pear at Elm Bank.

It starts with the hole. Larry said. "Dig a saucer, not a teacup. The single most important thing is to get the tree's roots re-established." Thus, the hole's center was no deeper than the tree's root ball, but the shallow 'saucer' was three times as wide. Why? "To give the roots softer dirt to push into," he explained.

Next, both the wire cage and burlap wrapping came off the root ball. "We used to think that the metal cage quickly disintegrated," Larry said. "It doesn't. The roots can get girdled by the cage and wrap around themselves instead of spreading out."

Up to this point, everything Larry said jibed with our knowledge of tree planting. What came next was a surprise: he began gingerly hacking away at the top of the root ball.

"The tree was grown in a field but was balled and burlapped mechanically," Larry explained. "In the process, it's not unusual for the tree's root flare to get buried." The root flare is the point where the above-ground part of the tree ends and the roots begin. It's identifiable by the distinctive broadening.

"The root flare has to be at ground level when the tree is planted," Larry said, finding the flare under six inches of hard-packed dirt. "Bury it, and the tree will suffer and have a shorter life."

The tree, now free of burlap and wire cage, and with its root flare exposed, was set in the hole. Then, another surprise: Larry filled the hole with the same dirt that had been dug out, removing only rocks larger than fist-sized.

What happened to planting in compost, peat moss or heavily enriched soil?

There are things you can't teach in a classroom - like the right way to plant a tree.

"We keep learning," Larry said. "What 30 years of planting trees tells me is, if you plant a tree or shrub in a rich environment, its roots will grow to the edge of the improved area and no further."

Larry then spread a cup of super phosphate (not regular fertilizer) around the half-filled hole. "Super phosphate promotes root growth," he explained.

Several gallons of water were added to the hole to settle the soil and prevent air pockets from forming. Then, more soil was added to the hole, filling it to the root flare. He tamped the soil with his hands to settle it without compacting the soil.

The job looked finished, but Larry had more to do. He put three inches of wood mulch around the tree, making certain the mulch did not touch the trunk of the tree, then constructed a three-foot-wide circular berm made of tightly packed mulch around the tree's base.

"The mulch ring helps keep the water where it's needed and ensures that no one nicks the tree with a grass trimmer," Larry said. "Also, you need to be liberal with the watering for the first growing season. Plants are tough, but transplanting is a shock and the tree lost most of its roots. Ensuring that it has plenty of water is essential."

His final act was to loosely stake the tree from three sides using aluminum cable and pliable rubber tubes where the staking was in contact with the pear tree.

"A homeowner planting his own tree could skip the step but Weston Nurseries stakes the trees it plants to make certain they remain stable while the roots get established," Larry explained. "Next spring the cables should come off. From there on, the tree will be fine."