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The Honorary Medals Dinner is Next Week. You Want to Be There! |
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The deadline for reservations is Tuesday, Sept. 6 by noon.
There are events you read about and say, “I could have been there.” There are long- standing traditions that take place and, afterwards, you think, “I could have been part of that.”
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Lynden Miller
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One such opportunity is just around the corner. Next Thursday, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society will honor superior achievements in horticulture at its Honorary Medals Dinner. This year, ten people will be recognized, led by Lynden B. Miller who receives the George Robert White Medal of Honor for her work as a designer of urban parks.
Ms. Miller will deliver the keynote speech as part of the evening’s events. And she’s just one of a list of notable honorees who will be on hand for the evening.
Lynden Miller is a public garden designer in New York City and director of The Conservatory Garden in Central Park, which she rescued and restored beginning in 1982. Her work includes gardens for The Central Park Zoo, Bryant Park, The New York Botanical Garden, Madison Square Park, and Wagner Park in Battery Park City as well as many smaller projects in all five boroughs and beyond, including waterfront gardens in Red Hook, Brooklyn, improvements to Union Square Park and the 97th Street Park Avenue Mall, renovation of the “Gateway to Harlem” Broadway Mall at 135th Street, Loeb Plaza for Hunter College, and the 67th Street Armory.
Also being honored is Wesley R. Autio, professor of pomology in the Department of Plant, Soil and Insect Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He will receive the Jackson Dawson Award for his body of work in the horticultural sciences.
The recipient of the Thomas Roland Medal will be Richard Jaynes, who will be honored for his work in expanding the use of rare and unusual plants for the home garden. A graduate from Wesleyan University (BA) and Yale (Ph.D.), he worked at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station for 25 years as a plant breeder and horticulturist with specialties in chestnut and mountain laurel resigning in 1984 to start Broken Arrow Nursery in Hamden, Connecticut. Today, Broken Arrow is recognized as one of the premier growers of uncommon plants.
Two Mass Hort volunteers will be recognized for their outstanding contributions. Gold Medals will be given to Carrie Waterman for her work over several decades on behalf of amateur horticulture both at the New England Spring Flower Show and elsewhere; as will volunteer Joyce Bakshi, who for the past two years has organized the Festival of Trees at Elm Bank. Also receiving gold medals will be Theodore Landsmark of Boston Architectural College for his work on behalf of the Landscape Institute; Organic Gardening Magazine for its promotion of ecologically sound practices in gardening and farming; and writer Ellen Ecker Ogden for her articles, essays and talks on organic gardening. 
Tickets are $150 per person to this event. There are also opportunities to either co-host or host a table. You may order individual tickets here. To co-host or host a table, please call our reservation line at 617-933-4995. You must be preregistered to attend the event.. The deadline for reservations is Tuesday, Sept. 6 by noon.
All proceeds from the event will be used to support maintenance and improvement of Mass Hort gardens.
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September Full-Day Perennials Seminar Is Two Weeks Away |
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If you're a serious home gardener (or a Green Industry professional), you'll want to be at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society on Thursday, September 15. That's when Mass Hort and the Perennial Plant Association offer their third annual day-long seminar devoted to all things gardening.
It's a series of talks by six extraordinary speakers - both writers and plantsmen - who will each explore the world of perennial gardening from a different perspective through hour-long presentations. None has ever appeared at Elm Bank before. If you've ever heard a friend raving about 'that gardening symposium at Elm Bank', this is what they were talking about.
 For example, you can hear Dr. Denise Adams speak on 'The Arts and Crafts Garden'. Popular in the first two decades of the 20th Century, those gardens' hallmarks were beauty, efficiency, and simplicity. If those benefits sound like a recipe for success in the second decade of the 21st Century, you're correct. Dr. Adams believes that these gardens have a lot to teach us. She is a horticulturist, garden historian, lecturer, photographer, garden writer, and author of Restoring American Gardens- An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants.
 You will also hear from Dr. Steven Still, professor emeritus at The Ohio State University. Dr. Stills is the author of the widely used textbook Manual of Herbaceous Ornamental Plants. During his 30 years of teaching he toured numerous private and public gardens and nurseries in Europe, and came to understand that Europe has been a unique source for beauty in the American garden. He shares that perspective with us in"Who Does Your Garden? Spanning the Globe With Perennials".
 Every garden ought to be exciting, but can it be so good as to give you goosebumps? Chris Hansen thinks so. He's the owner of Great Garden Plants in Holland, Michigan. Every year he scours the world looking for new, extra-special plants that will stop visitors in their tracks. In an hour, he'll take you on a tour of 100 such perennials with his talk, "Goosebump Perennials for the Garden".
 In the afternoon, Jennifer Benner will speak on New England gardens designed to delight all year round. "Creating the Non-stop Garden" isn't about non-stop work; it's about designing gardens that never sleep. She will highlight plant choices from key plant groups-trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, edibles, bulbs, and vines-and explore other ornamental elements that help achieve year-round interest. She's the co-author of a new book by the same name.
 And then there's container gardening. It's one of the simplest ways of enriching our lives because containers let us experiment with new plants, beautify our gardens, and even provide food for the table. Containers allow us to express our individuality, whether it's a monochromatic statement or something filled with over-the-top tropicals. Irvin Etienne of the Indianapolis Museum of Art will look at some finished designs that lend inspiration. The title of his talk? "Contained Joy".
 But a plant that's terrific in a greenhouse is of no use if it keels over in all-day sun or can't take a New England winter. That's where trial gardens come in. There's one at Elm Bank, but what exactly goes on behind the scenes? "When Pretty Isn't Enough: Comparative Perennial Trials at the Chicago Botanic Garden" shows the rigorous analysis that goes into evaluating perennials at one of the country's most venerable sites. Richard Hawke will talk about that garden's rigorous Plant Evaluation Program. Best of all, he'll share his picks of proven perennials, including new selections and old favorites.
The all-day session is $95 and includes lunch and several garden-walk breaks.
 You may register online or call 614-771-8431 if you have questions.
You may also download the program and mail-in registration form.
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Mass Hort’s Library and North Hill Team Up for a Lecture Series |
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On Tuesday, October 18, the Library of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and North Hill will team up for the first of four planned talks by prominent horticultural authors and writers. The True North Author Series will open with Justin Martin, the author of Genius of Place: The Life Frederick Law Olmsted (reviewed in this issue), a biography of the pioneering landscape architect of Central Park and 50 other green spaces around the United States.
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| Justin Martin |
There will be no charge to attend the event, which will be held in the Hunnewell Carriage House. “Genius of Place is a fitting kickoff for this series,” says Kathy Macdonald, Mass Hort executive director. “Our Italianate Garden was designed by the Olmsted firm and we’ve brought it back to its prime. Visitors will be able to hear the talk on Olmsted and then pair it with an extended walk through one of his projects, and couple that with a visit to our library. That’s an extraordinary opportunity.”
The True North Author Series is also designed to celebrate Mass Hort’s venerable library. With more than 40,000 items spanning three centuries, including numerous rare editions, the collection of books, periodicals and illustrations encapsulates the development of American horticulture. The exquisitely illustrated seed and nursery catalogs alone provide critical historical insight for botanical research.
“It’s more than just a repository,” Kathy says. “Mass Hort’s library is an archive of the science of horticulture, and a showcase for scholarship in the field. Through this program, we hope to expose the library to a new audience.”
Mass Hort and North Hill plan additional talks at approximately three-month intervals in 2012. Speakers and times will be announced in the Leaflet.
Justin Martin, the speaker for the October talk, is a former staff writer at Fortune magazine. His articles have appeared in a variety of publications including Newsweek, Money, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He has previously written two biographies, Greenspan: The Man Behind Money and Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Martin’s bestselling Greenspan biography was chosen as a notable book by the New York Times Book Review. He is a graduate of Rice University and was married in Central Park. He lives in New York City. |
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Garden to Table at the Wellesley Food Pantry |
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| These tomatoes are headed for one of three area food pantries. |
In addition to donating hundreds of pounds of produce from our garden to local food pantries, Mass Hort’s Garden to Gable program is offering suggestions of what to do with summer’s bounty.
During the month of August, Garden to Table volunteers have begun bringing fresh food tastings to the Wellesley Food Pantry. We’re handing out recipe cards, and we’ve prepared and served such garden-friendly dishes as stuffed zucchini, pasta salad with corn and fresh tomatoes, and – most recently -- corn muffins with fresh corn.
The recipes will soon be posted on the web site, and of course we welcome volunteers. |
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The AAS Trial Garden Educates Even As It Pleases |
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When visitors come to Elm Bank, one of the first things they encounter is a flat, rectilinear plot of land filled with colorful flowering plants, but that somehow doesn’t quite look like a garden. The long, rectangular beds seem very formal and are certainly filled with attractive specimens but the overall effect, well, looks a little too scientific, as though the whole thing was designed by an engineer with a protractor rather than by a landscape architect.
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The All-America Trial Garden is still in its late summer glory and ready for your inspection.
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That’s because what they’re looking at is the Elm Bank All-America Selections (AAS) trial garden. Don’t let those banana trees fool you: this garden is about flowering cultivars, principally annuals. It’s the oldest garden at Elm Bank, and it’s thriving, thank you.
The garden came to Elm Bank fourteen years ago. For 35 years it was located in Waltham. Then, in the mid-1990s, the state’s decision to severely curtail its system of county agents and other extension services threw the site’s viability into doubt. In 1997 a new alliance was formed between the Massachusetts Flower Growers and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society to relocate the AAS trial garden to Mass Hort’s new home.
The relocation has proved to be a winning decision. The trial garden is thriving and attracting a steady stream of visitors while producing valuable data for its sponsors. Gardens Curator David Fiske oversees trials and evaluations. Garden Keeper Ted Hayworth and a phalanx of volunteers plant the garden and keep it weed-free through the five-month growing season.
The 2011 garden scheme incorporates 5,000 square feet of planting area for sun and shade annuals. The gardens are easily accessible to the 300 Mass Flower Grower members as well as to the general public, where summer days find the gardens crowded with people making notes on appealing cultivars. Incorporating the trial garden into the larger Elm Bank scheme rather than segregating it makes it all the more valuable.
The Elm Bank site is one of three AAS trial sites in New England (the others are at Albion, Maine and Storrs, Connecticut). In addition, Mass Hort offers performance trials for growers and plant breeders. This year’s gardens hosted more than 5000 plants and 300 varieties.
Trials begin in Mass Hort’s greenhouse as seeds and plugs are evaluated for growth rate and mortality. Observations are made by Mass Hort’s horticultural staff, Massachusetts Master Gardeners, and volunteers. Cold-hardy plants go out as early as the beginning of May, more tender plants may go out as late as May 31. By June 1, everything is in place for the summer and remains that way until frost takes its toll.
At the core of the garden, of course, are the organizations that supply Mass Hort with the cultivars that are displayed each year. Participating companies include Farfard Soil, Syngenta, Ball Companies, J P Bartlett, D S Cole, Terra Nova, James Greenhouses, Grimes, North Creek Nurseries, Bejo Seed, N E Seed, Darwin Perennials and Pleasant View Gardens. Mass Hort is grateful for their continued support of the garden. |
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Short Takes: Mark Your Calendars |
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Getting Married, or Know Someone Who Is? On September 25, Elm Bank will host The Wedding Event, an opportunity to personally meet more than 30 vendors who offer every kind of wedding-related service from photographers and caterers to wedding planners. And, of course, it's an opportunity to see Elm Bank as a perfect place to hold a wedding or reception. It's a huge undertaking, with Mass Hort's Jen Courtney overseeing the proceedings. It's co-hosted by Mass New England Bridal Affair. You can pre-register for the event at this site.
Got a Holiday Tree in Mind? Sure, it's only September, but Mass Hort is soliciting trees for this year's Festival of Trees, which opens November 23. Festival of Trees organizer Joyce Bakshi is looking for both short (two- and three-foot) and tall (six- and seven-foot) trees, which can be decorated in the theme of your choice. Trees must be artificial and pre-lighted. Your tree can celebrate the Red Sox or the joys of winter; it can be all about wine, pets, or birds. There were more than fifty trees last year and this year's goal is 75. When you donate a tree, you get bragging rights, an opportunity to promote your business or cause, and the knowledge that you're supporting the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. And you're also putting smiles on the faces of thousands of visitors!
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Crowds at the Festival of Trees last year.
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If the gardens at Elm Bank look their best ever, it's thanks to the efforts of three groups: the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's grounds staff, a small group of summer interns - and many, many volunteers. From Garden Keepers to Master Gardeners to middle-school students and their moms, a diverse cadre of people have pitched in, and continue to help as the days shorten and summer's frenetic gardening pace relaxes.
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Care and maintenance of the Chef's Garden is done by volunteers.
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After the gardens are tidied up for the winter, our volunteer focus will turn indoors. Mass Hort's big year-end event is the Festival of Trees, running from November 22 to December 10. It will be open daily, requiring a steady supply of volunteers to welcome the public and run this important fundraiser.
As soon as the holidays are over, Mass Hort will be in all-Flower-Show-all-the-time mode as preparations are made for the Boston Flower & Garden Show in March. Volunteers are vital in augmenting the gardening staff; they are equally vital for helping out the indoor staff in the Flower Show prep season.
"Volunteering at Mass Hort, indoors or out, is fun and satisfying in so many ways," says Vivien Bouffard, Mass Hort's volunteer coordinator (and herself, naturally, a volunteer). "We're always looking for new faces and people with new skills. We're inclusive, we have a lot of fun and it's an opportunity to learn. If you'd like to join us, keep an eye on our Volunteer webpage to see the opportunities and job descriptions and tell us how you would like to help."
If you have a special skill or idea that you would like to share, please share that with us also. To start the conversation, contact Vivien, Mass Hort's Volunteer Coordinator.
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Genius of Place (Book Review) |
(Editor's note: the author of 'Genius of Place', Justin Martin, will speak at Elm Bank on October 18. See the article elsewhere in this issue.)
 Genius of Place
by Justin Martin
Da Capo Press, 2011
Reviewed by Maureen Horn, Librarian
Today, say the name 'Fredrick Law Olmsted' and Bostonians immediately think of the Emerald Necklace just as New Yorkers associate the name with Central Park. Olmsted's name is inextricably linked with the pioneering science of landscape architecture, as though the man was born with a vision and talent none before him had ever possessed.
Olmsted's path was anything but straightforward and Justin Martin has delivered a meticulously researched biography that both humanizes and explains the man and the forces that created him. In doing so, Martin also - and without apology - delves into the sociology of an earlier century's privilege granted to those born of a certain class, sex and skin color. For Olmsted was an abject failure many times before he was a success. Each time, society gave him a second chance and we're left to wonder whether a latter-day Olmsted could have succeeded.
Olmsted (1822-1903) came to his vocation late in life. We see him treated harshly as a young sailor on an arduous sea voyage to China, as a leisurely hiker through the gardens of England, and as an unsuccessful farmer on Long Island. We get at a hint of foreshadowing as we follow him during that desperate farming period because in New York he briefly encounters Calvert Vaux and Andrew Jackson Downing, the father of American landscape design.
Luckily for the future of later land management, restlessness overtook him and he grasped the opportunity to travel to the South and publish his observation of its pre-Civil War social conditions. The result was A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1853-1854, which many historians credit with providing the most influential indictment of the evils of slavery. Because of the publicity Olmsted received from his journalism, he was given the completely unconnected job of supervising workers at the area being prepared for a New York public park. When a design competition was announced for Central Park, Olmsted formed a partnership with his casual acquaintance, Calvert Vaux, and they won the opportunity to create Central Park. It was here that he began the practice of using gunpowder among other technologies to utterly change the terrain he was challenged to improve.
Olmsted initially thought of himself as an administrator rather than as an engineer, so it was a short step from supervising thousands of workers at Central Park to administering the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. There were few landscape opportunities in the post-war years so he supervised miners in California. There he encountered Yosemite Falls, which launched him on a crusade to preserve natural wonders. Twenty years later, he was able to relish his success as the movement he led saved Niagara Falls from encroaching commercialism.
Martin gives us many chances to contemplate the sorrows from personal and family tragedies that accompanied many of Olmsted's greatest successes. During one bout with exhaustion, Olmsted was stricken with temporary blindness, a cruel handicap for one with the sharp eyes to see possibilities in a scene that others missed. His fame offered him increasing opportunities to design public park systems and, unlike some designers, Olmsted never imposed a plan upon a site, but looked to the "genius of the place" to bring out the unique beauty of the rocks and hills of the location.
To the great benefit of Massachusetts citizens, he was drawn to live here towards the end of his career and one of his crowning achievements was the transformation of the putrid Fens into the Emerald Necklace of parks, ponds and streams. Martin describes this project with understanding and appreciation for the technical skill and botanical knowledge which Olmsted brought to his great work. He lets the reader visualize each step Olmsted took to alter the sites, so that its visitors were drawn into worlds they had never inhabited before.
After so many tragic deaths, family was always Olmsted's first thought, so he brought his sons, John Charles and Frederick Law, Jr. into his firm, where they concentrated on carrying out many of his private garden commissions. One of those was the Italianate Garden at Elm Bank.
It is satisfying to read about a 19 th century giant who used his talents to a great extent for the betterment of others. Martin has written a page-turner of a biography, which follows the ascendancy of a man who follows one dream after another, leaving a tangible, enduring legacy for a nation. |
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September Horticultural Hints |
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` by Betty Sanders
Lifetime Master Gardener
Raking--Don't ! Research by Cornell Extension Service shows that raking your lawn is totally unnecessary. Just use a mulching mower (almost any gas or electric-powered mower will do) to chop the leaves into small pieces which will compost directly into the soil over the winter. Cornell's research shows that even sixteen (16!) inches of dried leaves can be added to the soil every year.
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Mulching leaves.
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This includes tough oak leaves, which break down very slowly unless they have been chopped up, and pine needles, which are less acidic than oak leaves. If your leaves are deep, you may have to mow twice to chop them all sufficiently small, but it's still a lot less work than raking and much better for the environment than throwing leaves in the trash. By mulching, all the nutrients used to grow the leaves go right back into the soil where they'll be available for the tree roots to take them up for future years.
In the vegetable garden. It's time to start the clean-up while still enjoying the produce. You should be able to harvest tomatoes, squash and green beans well into September. Mid-summer plantings of lettuce, beets, carrots and chard will keep producing even though a light frost. When harvesting winter squash, be certain to leave an inch of stem so it can be stored successfully.
Make your final clean up easier by removing crops as they finish producing. If you had disease problems with tomatoes or squash (or anything else), bag and remove the plants not just from the garden but all the way to your local dump. If you leave diseased plants in place, you're starting next spring with extra trouble brewing in the soil. If you have bare soil when your garden is finished for the season, a planting of annual rye will act as a cover crop, preventing erosion even after it dies back in the winter. The rye will also add organic matter for next summer. Cover crops aren't just for in-ground gardens; they work well in raised beds as well.
Bringing in houseplant and saving annuals. It's time to begin moving houseplants back into the house. One cold night can kill most of the tropicals that we allow to 'summer' outdoors. Moreover, if you move them now from full sun to part sun, the move indoors where light levels are much lower will be that much less traumatic.
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Propogating coleus cuttings.
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If you have annuals you want to save, now is the time to take cuttings and start new plants. Everything from coleus to geraniums can be rooted and be a houseplant for the winter. Take small cuttings, about four inches, from the growing tips of a healthy plant. Remove all except the top two leaves and insert the cutting about one inch into sterile medium such as perlite, vermiculite or coarse sand. You may use a root hormone but it is not necessary to get good results with most annuals. Water the 'soil' until it runs through the container, then cover it with a clean plastic bag, place it in bright light but out of direct sunlight and wait until you see growth begin on the root tips. In four to six weeks, your cutting should have sufficient roots to move to a new pot and you'll have a new houseplant.
Cleaning up Flower Beds. Whether you prefer a fall or spring clean-up, it's important to remove any diseased plant material now. Our wet spring and hot July seemed a perfect recipe for mildew in my own garden. Remember to sharpen your cutting tools before beginning. Dull blades tear plant material and allow insects and disease easy entry. When cutting down a plant with mildew, or any fungal disease, practice good sanitation. Keep a container of bleach with you and dip your shears or pruners in the bleach before each cut. It may sound like extra work, but preventing the spread of disease will save you much more time and effort than it takes to make the quick dip. Get in the habit and you won't accidentally use the 'dirty' pruner to cut an uninfected plant. Disease can travel down stems and winter over in the roots, ready to attack in the spring. Put the diseased plant material in separate containers from the clean, compostable material. Then take the diseased material to your dump or transfer station where it won't become part of next year's garden. Only clean - disease-free and pest-free - plant material belongs in your compost bin.
Lawn reseeding and general maintenance. Those of you who read this column regularly know I am not a fan of large lawns. But if you are going to have one, now is the time to put in the work to make it better next summer. Most weeds that homeowners want out of their lawns are annuals. Any that might pop up while you rehab your lawn now won't be here to bother you in the spring. Reseeding, also known as overseeding adds new grass plants to your existing lawn. The more grass, the less room for weeds. If you are like me and don't enjoy extra work or chemicals, consider adding clover seed, a traditional part of the home lawn. Clover takes nitrogen (the largest part of any lawn fertilizer) from the air and puts it in the ground in a form available to its neighbors, such as your grass. Clover seed is available at farm stores and some nurseries.
Invest in good seed - cheap seed may contain annual grass seed which will die over the winter (not the perennial seed you want), or even weed seeds! Make certain you buy seed appropriate for the area: sunny, shady, play area etc. Remember that no grass will grow well in areas where you get less than four hours of sun a day. You're much better off using your money to buy a shade-tolerant ground cover.
If you haven't aerated your lawn in several years, it may need it. Do the aeration, then seed.
Once you have seeded, you must water daily for a couple of weeks. With the ground saturated right now (thank you, Irene), you should not have difficulty keeping the seed moist enough to germinate.
If you have access to compost, spread the seed and add a thin (1/4 inch) layer of compost over the top. It will disappear quickly while providing a healthy start for your seed.
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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The Super Summer of Chelcie Martin |
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 by Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor
The first time I met Chelcie Martin, she had a slice of pizza in each hand and had taken multiple bites out of each one. It was one of those days when Mass Hort had a full-court press on to get its gardens ready for a weekend event and pizza was the lure of choice for keeping everyone working through a hot afternoon. The look on her face was one of sheer bliss.
I had been hearing about Chelcie for several weeks, not only from Betty but from Mass Hort's staff. She was one of the crop of summer interns, a UMass-Amherst student with an outsize work ethic and a curiosity about all things horticultural. To Chelcie there were no 'menial' tasks and every chore was an opportunity to learn something new.
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Intern Chelcie Martin
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Career-related internships have come of age. When I was in college I worked summers on a garbage truck. It was certainly an education - though not one that I especially wanted to put on a resume to show a prospective employer to demonstrate I was ready to hit the ground running (or at least any employer that I had in mind). For Chelcie, a summer at Mass Hort was a natural fit: her family owns an apple orchard and she is majoring in soil sciences. After a summer working in Mass Hort's gardens, she has added landscape architecture to her area of interest.
Chelcie spent much of her summer helping turn the new vegetable garden from a stack of lumber to a gorgeous series of raised beds producing hundreds of pounds of produce every week. She planted, weeded, watered, weeded and watered some more, and then picked. She worked past her quitting time to meet the pickup schedule of various food cupboards.
As a self-confessed "Ag freak", Chelcie asked questions. She wanted to know about plant varieties and planting techniques. Unusual plants fascinated her. She got mad when she couldn't remember the names of flowers.
It proved to be a two-way education. While the two worked together, Betty would field questions from Chelcie that required either considerable thought or even research. Inevitably, those same questions would be fielded from visitors to the garden, sometimes the same day as Chelcie first asked them.
While she was nominally assigned to the vegetable garden, Chelcie could be found helping wherever an extra hand was needed. It could be in the greenhouses or in another of the display gardens where she dead-headed (took spent flowers off plants) endlessly. Dead-heading was the one part of the summer she says she wouldn't miss.
Last week I asked Chelcie what she had most enjoyed about this summer. She paused for several moments before she answered. "I learned so much. I loved my summer. I love flowers. When I go back to school I'll be able to say I had two near-perfect jobs."
Two jobs? When she wasn't at Elm Bank she was selling flowers in Cambridge. She was also taking care of younger members of her family although that apparently didn't count as a job.
She also got an unexpected earful while doing that work in the garden. "People talk around interns like we're not really here. I heard a lot of real-life conversations."
Does she have any advice for would-be Mass Hort interns? "Make certain you don't have a problem with getting really, really dirty or sweaty." Sage counsel for anyone who gardens all day long.
By the time you read this, Chelcie will be headed back for Amherst and the start of her sophomore year. Mass Hort will have gotten an honest summer's work out of a bright and capable student. Chelcie will have money for books and living expenses, a broadened horticultural horizon, and probably some very interesting conversations to replay in her head.
All in all, it sounds like a pretty good bargain.
Neal Sanders is a frequent contributor to the Leaflet. Neal's most recent mystery, The Accidental Spy, has just been published and you can learn more about it here . That book, plus his first two mysteries, The Garden Club Gang and Murder Imperfect, can be ordered through Amazon.com .
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