Kathy Macdonald, President of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Photo by Andy Caulfield

Seeing our many visitors over the past few weeks has been enriching for everyone involved, and reminded me of the wealth of experience and knowledge to be shared by all in the horticultural world - from toddlers in Weezie's Garden to attendees of our Honorary Medals Dinner.

Our Tuesday drop-in garden group tours have been so popular this season that we've extended them to the end of October. We hope to see you at one of these tours, which start at 10 a.m. at the Welcome Garden at the front gate -- or just stop by at your convenience to visit the gardens at your own pace.

We also had the pleasure of a few press visits. Megan McKee of The Boston Globe came out with her photographer to write about our gardens and programs on a day that seemed especially vibrant with color and activity - 20 toddlers were crawling in the sandbox in one corner of Weezie's Garden, while Caterpillar Club drew a crowd in another, and Linx campers explored the plantings. Folks from The Wellesley Townsman visited soon after to report on Garden-to-Table's partnership with the Blue Ginger Restaurant, and interviewed volunteers hard at work in the vegetable garden.

My friend Chedly Belkhodja, a specialty grower and distiller in Tunisia and owner of the largest nursery in North Africa, learned of my position at Mass Hort and made a special effort to make the trip here, meet the staff, and tour the gardens. It was exciting to watch him talk with David Fiske, our Gardens Curator. Both had much to learn from each other and shared the enthusiasm of having descended from families with rich histories in horticulture. Read more about Chedly's visit here.

We now look forward to the 113^th annual Honorary Medals dinner on September 27^th, where we honor people in horticulture. The evening, listening to each speaker and learning of the meeting of minds and rich and diverse backgrounds, continues Mass Hort's legacy of augmenting the knowledge pool by constantly bringing in new voices.

I hope you will join us at the Honorary Medals Dinner on the 27^th!

Warm regards,

Kathy

Every year for more than a century, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society has honored a group of individuals or organizations who have made a special contribution to the world of horticulture. It is a remarkable evening with a keynote address and memorable conversation.

But it isn't an evening just for a select few. Rather, since its inception, Mass Hort has opened the evening to anyone who is willing to support a very good cause. On Thursday, September 27, you're invited to attend the event.

John Trexler, Director Emeritus of the Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston (Photo Courtesy of Worcester Magazine)

Wednesday, September 12 2012, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society has selected Blue Ginger as a premier restaurant partner for its Garden to Table initiative. Staff and volunteers have planted a raised bed garden at Elm Bank with a variety of herbs and Asian greens which will supply a portion of the restaurant’s local produce needs during the harvest season. Blue Ginger will celebrate the program by hosting a cocktail party, with a menu designed around produce from the garden with all proceeds going to Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The party will be held at The Blue Ginger Restaurant, Wellesley, MA

Price - Mass Hort Members- $75, Non members- $85

Reservations may be made by calling 617-933-4943 or ordering online here.

The garden is beginning to show traces of the yellows and browns of fall, but tomatoes, squash, tomatillos, peppers, beans, lettuce, kale, and many other crops are still in full production. Some, like okra, chard and kale, have been producing steadily for months. Squash vine borer and Mexican bean beetle have been our only real setbacks this season. Food pantry folks continue to express gratitude for contributions averaging 200 pounds of produce weekly. This season's yields have already surpassed last year's total of 2,000 pounds, and winter squash is still to come.

Looking toward the winter, the veggie garden crew is anticipating tillage and rotation into cover crops to break up pest and disease scourges, control weeds, keep the soil covered through rough weather, and add much-needed organic matter and fertility to the raised beds.

The Labor Day harvest from the Mass Hort vegetable garden. Shown standing from left to right: Garden Keeper Betty Sanders, Chris Atkins and Guy Williamson. Kneeling left to right: Hilda Williamson, assistant Garden Keeper Susan Hammond, and Mass Hort intern Genevieve Slocum.

Please mark your calendars for all of our upcoming events!

Honorary Medals Dinner on September 27.

For nearly a century, Mass Hort has honored excellence in horticulture with its annual Honorary Medals dinner. This year, the list of honorees is exceptionally distinguished. The dinner is an opportunity to hear some exceptionally learned people speak on interesting topics in a celebratory atmosphere. All proceeds of the event benefit Mass Hort.

Blue Ginger Cocktail Party! Last day to sign up!

We are looking forward to an exciting fall on the program side of Garden-to-Table. The Blue Ginger Restaurant's Cocktail Party, the culmination of a season-long partnership between Mass Hort's program and the restaurant, will take place Wednesday, September 12th at the Blue Ginger in Wellesley, featuring produce from the garden. Friday, September 7th is the last day to sign up, and we hope you will consider joining us! Reservations may be made by calling 617-933-4943.

Cooking with Kale - The Powerful Antioxidant
Wednesday, September 19, 2012, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Gardens at Elm Bank

Kale is rich in fiber and powerful antioxidants, which makes it a must-have for every healthy diet; however, cooking with it can be a challenge. At Cooking with Kale, Sue Schochet, the owner of Healthy Habits Kitchen in Wellesley, you'll learn how to prepare this super food in a variety of tasty ways for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

We'll prepare and sample some of these dishes, and you'll go home with easy recipes to try at home, including a Good Morning Smoothie, Lemony Chickpea and Kale Stir-fry, Kale Chips and much more.

Healthy Habits Kitchen's healthy meal solution creates ready-to-cook meal kits out of local and other high-quality ingredients, giving clients everything needed to cook a healthy meal in under 30 minutes - no grocery shopping, chopping or meal planning.

Price - Mass Hort Members - $35, Non-members - $45
Reservations may be made by calling 617-933-4943.

Author Lecture, Book Discussion and Sale: Ancient Grains for Modern Meals
Wednesday, September 21, 2012, 4:30pm - 5:30pm
Location: Gardens at Elm Bank

Veteran journalist and food writer Maria Speck is the author of Ancient Grains for Modern Meals (Ten Speed Press), her first cookbook. On September 21, at 4:30 pm, in the Elm Bank Education Building, Ms. Speck will lead a discussion about her book, which recently received the coveted Julia Child Award and award in the Health and Special Diet category from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). Maria's book previously also won a Gourmand Award as the US selection, Mediterranean category.

The cookbook contains 100 Mediterranean-inspired whole grain recipes - from amaranth to wheat berries. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post selected Ancient Grains as one of the top cookbooks for 2011, and Cooking Light magazine named it one of the 100 best cookbooks of the past 25 years. Raised in Greece and Germany, Maria has a lifelong passion for the flavors and textures of whole grains. She has contributed to Gourmet, Saveur and Gastronomica.

Price: Mass Hort Members - $12, Non-members - $15
Reservations may be made by calling 617-933-4943.

More Whole Foods Cooking Classes this Fall!

Lisa Caldwell, Healthy Eating Specialist at Whole Foods Market in Wellesley, enjoyed the Whole Foods cooking class partnership with Mass Hort's Garden-to-Table program so much that she will be back this fall for another exciting cooking series! Class themes will include: Squash, Reconstructing Thanksgiving, Gifts from the Kitchen, Eating to Begin a Healthy Lifestyle, and For the Love of Chocolate. Classes will be held at the Whole Foods Wellesley location. Stay tuned to our website for scheduling updates.

Festival of Trees from November 20 through December 15. It's September, so of course it's time to think about decorating trees! We began accepting applications for themed trees on June 1. Our goal this year is to have 80 trees on display. Visit the Festival of Trees website to see how you can donate a tree or gingerbread house, sponsor a tree, or get involved as a volunteer with this wonderful activity.

Now that the weather is cool, it's time to start prepping the garden for winter!

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society has a terrific lineup of speakers in September to educate you and spark ideas for winter action.

Presentations begin at 7 p.m. and go until all questions are answered. The classes are priced at $12 for members and $15 for non-members. You may register in advance or pay at the class.

Here's the lineup for September:

Creative Design with Color and Texture in the Garden
Thursday, September 6, 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
with Warren Leach - Tranquil Lake Nursery

Creating a great garden involves the juxtaposition of many elements. Before you plant, think about color - both foliage and blooms, and in-season and end-of-season - and plant and leaf texture. If you do your homework, you'll have a garden that brings pleasure both to yourself and your visitors.

Warren Leach, co-owner of Tranquil Lake Nursery in Rehoboth, MA, is a landscape horticulturist noted for his distinctive and enduring garden designs.

Planting an Autumn Container Garden
Thursday, September 13 2012, 7:00pm - 8:30pm
with Trish Wesley Umbrell - Natick Organic Community Farm

Saving Your Tender Plants
Thursday, September 20 2012, 7:00pm - 8:30pm
with Carrie Waterman - Noanett Garden Club

Why compost those gorgeous tender plants you have grown all summer? There are ways to save many of these plants without bringing the entire plant indoors. Learn the proper way to store and save Dahlias, Cannas and other tender tubers and bulbs, as well as how to take successful cuttings and winter over many other plants.

Sometimes when two continents collide, a new wealth of knowledge results. Chedly Belkhodja of Tunisia visited with Katherine Macdonald, President of Mass Hort, on August 17th. Chedly was a foreign exchange student in the seventies when he originally visited the United States. He has remained a close friend of his host family and when he learned of Katherine's position at Mass Hort, he planned to visit the Gardens at Elm Bank.

Garden Curator David Fiske (left) talks with Chedly Belkhodja.

by Karen O'Brien
President, New England Unit of The Herb Society of America

The Herb of the Year (TM) for 2012 is Rose. Many have exclaimed to me that they had no idea that the rose was considered an herb. As herbs are generally considered to be a plant useful to humans (culinary, medicinal, industrial, decorative) the rose certainly can lay claim to most of these categories.

Photo Courtesy of Karen Black, President of the New England Herb Society.

Article contributed by the New England Herb Society.

A Country Year will be discussed at the next Msss Hort book club meeting.

After a summer full of reading opportunities, the Mass Hort Library's book group, called "Tales from the Garden", will reassemble on Wednesday morning, September 26, from 10:30 to 12 noon. The group has enthusiastically agreed to discuss Sue Hubbell's A Country Year : Living the Questions, which is sure to please anyone interested in domesticated living things, especially bees, as well as those in the wild.

Ms. Hubbell is a keen observer of the natural world as it makes transitions in and out of the seasons, and she is just as perceptive about the people who inhabit her remote settlement in the Ozarks. She does not just romanticize the simple life which comes with an immersion into nature, but she also thrusts the reader into its rawness.

New members are encouraged to join in. We already have the dates for the coming meetings: Wednesdays, October 24 and November 28, so there's time to make future plans.

Advance registration is not mandatory, but notice is appreciated. Please contact Maureen Horn, Librarian: 617-933-4912; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Ancient Grains for Modern Meals.

Ancient Grains for Modern Meals
by Maria Speck
(Ten Speed Press, 2011)

Note: On Friday, September 21, at 4:00 p.m. in the Elm Bank Education Building, Ms. Speck will give a talk on Ancient Grains for Modern Meals. Everyone is welcome to attend

Reviewed by Maureen Horn
Mass Hort Librarian

Maria Speck has the good fortune to have been born into two cultures. She is Greek on her mother's side, German on her father's. She has the further good luck to have lived in both countries and absorbed both cultures. Ms. Speck grew up with an appreciation for food and its history. We have the great fortune that Ms. Speck is an excellent writer, storyteller, and cook.

Maria Speck

by Betty Sanders
Lifetime Master Gardener

Outdoor gardening

Start your fall planting now. The weather is cooler, the plants are on sale and you know what you fell in love with in other gardens this summer. Because they're free to direct their energy to creating roots rather than leaves; trees, shrubs and perennials all do well when set out in the fall. Be certain to plant properly (here's a good article on the subject). Keep your new plants well-watered until the soil freezes.

It's also a great time to dig up and divide perennials that are getting tired (a dead spot in the middle of irises, a lack of bloom on older plants). Allow fall-blooming perennials to continue to shine, but just about all others will thrive if replanted in fresh soil amended with compost, are watered until the ground freezes (probably early December) and mulched with two or three inches of fresh mulch to keep the ground from thawing out with each warm day in the winter. Hardy plants aren't killed by freezing weather; they succumb when warm days thaw the soil, heaving their roots out of the ground.

If you haven't already, order bulbs or buy them at local nurseries for the best selections. While you can begin planting narcissus (daffodils) now, wait until the soil cools in October before planting most spring bulbs. Don't forget to buy extras for forcing during the winter months.

Lawn care

September is a good time to fertilize or lime your lawn but before you do, have a soil test done if you didn't do one in the spring. Click here to reach the UMass soil test lab, which offers a very low-cost service for homeowners. Only add fertilizer if the test indicates the lawn needs it. Like too much of anything, too much fertilizer will make a sick lawn sicker.

Dig out the soil from under the dead grass.

Do you have bare spots, thin lawn, or too many weeds? Now is the time to deal with these problems. If the dog likes one area too much or if the kids preferred one spot for home plate, dig out the soil under the dead grass to create a hole 6 to 12 inches deep. Replace the depleted dirt with fresh soil amended with compost. Tamp it down, add high quality seed and water once or twice daily for two weeks or until you see grass blades several inches tall.

It's too late to do anything about crabgrass except to limit the number of seeds it leaves behind. The best solution for crabgrass is to physically remove it - by hand if there are only scattered patches, or by digging it up if it covers large areas. Attack broadleaf weeds that winter over such as dandelions and ground ivy now so you will start with a better lawn in the spring. But remember that weed-and-feed products also kill clover which was always a part of a healthy American lawn until broad-leaf herbicides began being marketed in the 1950's. Clover stays green in droughts, adds nitrogen to the soil and is resistant to many insects and disease that wreak havoc on your lawn. Give clover a chance, add it to any grass mixtures you use to overseed your lawn.

Indoor gardening

Inspect houseplants that have summered outdoor for insects and diseases.

Time to begin the process of moving houseplants inside for the winter. Start by re-potting plants using a fresh potting mix. This step will help eliminate insects you might have picked up, particularly if your plants have been sitting on the ground. Examine all houseplants closely for insects or disease, including those who resided on porches or decks. A water spray will remove dust, pollen and many hitchhikers from the plants. If the pests reappear, spray with an organic insecticide or decide whether you can live without that plant rather than risk introducing pests into the house. Stop fertilizing houseplants now-they will naturally grow more slowly in the winter.

Rather than bringing plants directly indoors - an abrupt move that can shock a houseplant - move them first to more protected and shadier areas to prepare them to come inside. All plants should be back indoors before October 1.

You can explore more of Betty Sanders’ gardening thoughts at www.BettyonGardening.com.

by Neal Sanders
Leaflet Contributor

There are those who knit and those who paint. When it comes time to put the world on hold and find an inner peace, you'll find me edging.

Edging is an art. There is a line or a contour either to be created or to be held. On one side of the line is grass, on the other side may be soil or mulch or anything else that is not grass. My goal is to establish and maintain the boundary between the grass and what lies beyond it.

Our garden is a sinuous sweep of shrub and perennial beds that swirl and curve across the property. Grass is simply what separates the various beds. We have less than half the grass on our property than we did a decade ago and, each year, the grass shrinks further as the borders grow.

My driveway edging tool.- Queen Victoria likely approved of it.

My tools are as old as the Stone Age and no more modern than the first decades of the last century. I use a sturdy, flat shovel for most work. I decide where the border should be and the shovel, pushed four inches into the earth, defines the boundary. On my hands and knees I pull out the unwanted grass and separate it from the soil. The grass (and weeds) go into a basket. What is left behind is a cliff of grass-topped soil beyond which no stolon can push. At the bottom of the cliff begins a rise that may be soil or may be mulch and, soon thereafter, the green of an annual, perennial, shrub or tree.

I also edge our long driveway and, for this, I have a remarkable tool that I first saw in use at Hidcote Manor. It is something of which Queen Victoria would have known and approved: a muscle-powered, three-inch-wide toothed wheel that, properly used, creates an inch-wide ravine between pavement and grass. It is to the gas-powered string trimmer what a Vermeer is to painting by numbers.

For me, edging provides that zen experience.

The joy of edging is in the execution. I will go out to edge, start at a point that needs obvious attention, and begin working. An hour later, fifty feet of border will be completed and perfect yet, to me, no time will have passed. I don't listen to music or to baseball while I edge, I just think and concentrate on the task at hand. When I am done, I can look back and see exactly what I have accomplished. Seldom is life so completely satisfying.

It is hardly a decision-free process. To the contrary, borders continually change. Pinus strobus 'Hillside Creeper', true to its name, demands a few extra inches of former lawn every time I edge the bed in which it resides. Two viburnum have nearly doubled in size in the past two years and their berries feed the birds in winter. The grass will give way to their growth and the only question is whether there will be a double curve in the grass or a single one.

There is an adage in the gardening world that goes something like this: if company is coming in six months, replant. If company is coming in six days, mulch. If company is coming in six hours, edge.

There's no company expected today, but nevertheless I will go out and edge. In a world where happiness is achieved by meditation or drugs, buying or consuming, I find satisfaction in creating a clean line which manages to complement nature.

Neal Sanders is a frequent contributor to the Leaflet. Neal's newest mystery, Murder for a Worthy Cause , has just been published. You can learn more about it here . That book, plus his four other mysteries, can be ordered through Amazon.com