The remains of an old nursery

The mossy, old boiler house, slowly sinking into the water-logged ground...

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This morning, an article about the historic Winters House in Bellevue being on the way for light rail construction caught my eyes in The Seattle Times. I drive regularly past the building, but being a rather ugly, Spanish Mission style house from the 1920s, it has never really roused my interest. Behind the house, the Winters had a nursery that grew and sold azaleas, daffodils and irises from the 1920s to the 1940s. After that, a rhododendron nursery operated for years in the same location. A brief note that the remains of a sinking old boiler house still stand behind the house woke immediately up the "ruin romantic" in me and I just had to brave the miserable weather and venture out to take a look.

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The mouth of the rusty old boiler stands gaping above a mirror of water. Heat from it was led through pipelines to seven hothouses where azaleas were propagated.

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The mossy remains of a hothouse are barely visible under the rhododendrons gone wild.

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With water dripping down my neck and my camera carefully bundled under my raincoat, I trailed along the boardwalk built on the boggy terrain, admiring one of the most impressing, accidental rhododendron parks I've seen. The moss-covered, gnarled trunks stood up from the water-logged soil, mingling together with ferns and great horsetail plants and sending up desperately beautiful trusses of bright flowers in all shades of whites, pinks and maroons. Beneath the glossy leaves, remains of the seven hothouses could still be seen, their broken roof lines slowly rotting away and sinking into the soaked ground. In one corner, between tangled rhododendron trunks, giant leaves and slender white flowers of the umbrella tree, Magnolia tripetala, tried to make their way towards the light.

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A boardwalk leads through the area, as the soil is covered with water most of the year. Hundreds of old rhododendrons fill the ground, fighting for place amongst the ever increasing native vegetation.

Pink and red rhododendrons growing through a carpet of horsetail.

As the Seattle Times reported, the Winters House is now under threat of ending under the new light-rail to be built through the area, and of course, the construction would alter the parkland behind it too. Somehow, despite this closer inspection, I couldn't quite warm to the house itself, but I loved the overgrown, forsaken old rhododendrons patiently growing through the watery marshlands, like giant old ladies who still were putting up the show even if all the money was gone a long time ago. Completely realistic about the barren economic climate of today, I understand it would require a miracle to raise the funds and build a tunnel just to save an abandoned, old nursery, but it still would be lovely if someone would come with a miracle wand and make it happen...

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The Seattle Times: National register house in Bellevue lies within path of light rail.

More information and old pictures of the place is found on: History of the Winters House.

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Varied about variegated leaves

Helleborus argutifolius 'Pacific Frost'

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It is a pity I didn't take photos of this variegated Corsican Helleborus, Helleborus argutifolius 'Pacific Frost' a bit earlier in the season, when its ghostly pale shoots emerged from the soil. After a while, the leaves turned into a spotted jumble of lime and cream, and the flowers opened equally spotted, only a couple of shades lighter in color. Now, the strong, glossy leaves form an excellent contrast to the softer spring time perennials around it, and their waxy tone picks up the whites of the flowering Corydalis and Omphaloides effectively.
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Russell Page discusses plant combinations with variegated leaves in his book The Education of a Gardener (this book from 1962 is my perennial favorite, one of the most wonderful books about garden making ever published...). In a garden he planted for the Duke of Windsor, he used the variegated Acer negundo and underplanted it with Eleagnus pungens aureo-variegata, Elymus arenarius, Eulalia zebrina (now Miscanthus), variegated hostas and the variegated form of Iris pallida dalmatica; all plants with spotty and stripy, variegated leaves.
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He writes that the planting made him think "even in grey weather that a patch of sunshine had been caught and held in that shadowy corner", which is a wonderful description, even if the combination sounds a bit too visually restless to me. I prefer using variegated plants against a backdrop of plain, preferably dark green or even purple leaves; for example, the pale, spotted 'Pacific Frost' Helleborus above would probably look wonderful against a bed of black mondo grass, too.

Until quite lately, I've had a bit ambivalent relationship with variegated plants. I've always liked the stripy ones, like Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light' and many hostas. They always look elegant, like they would have been touched by a thin brush adding strokes of light on their leaves. But variegated leaves that are spotted have always made me look a second time to check if they really are meant to be like that, or just affected by some kind of a nasty bug or a virus. Coming from the harsh, Nordic climate, I naturally prefer strong, healthy plants; variegated plants, having less chlorophyll producing tissue, tend always to be weaker than their plain green relatives. But I guess I now have an excellent opportunity to rethink my likes and dislikes: while living in the temperate, horticultural Eden of the Pacific Northwest, I can for the first time fully revel in the possibilities of using variegated plants without any concerns about their hardiness.

A portal of monkey puzzles

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Walking past the stately, century-old houses that fill the residential area of Capitol Hill in Seattle, these magnificent two monkey puzzle trees, Araucaria araucana, caught my eyes and I had to add this snapshot of them to my photo collection of period gardens in Seattle. Probably planted as small saplings soon after the large Arts & Crafts style house was built in 1909, their umbellate canopies now join gracefully together, forming a decorative even if quite prickly portal in front of the main entrance.
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Monkey puzzles were one of the it-trees of the Victorian era, after they first had been discovered in Chile in the end of the 18th century. First in 1844 enough of viable seeds were obtained by plant collector William Lobb, who had been to South America to collect plants for the firm of Veitch.

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Monkey puzzles are very hardy and long-lived; some specimens in the Chilean forests are well over thousand years old. They are also one of the oldest living species of plants, dating back to the days of the dinosaurs; their scaly, prickly needles seem to me very well suited to that era, and I think they always look a bit alien in residential gardens.

* A Tudor Revival style house in Seattle, with a young monkey puzzle tree on the front lawn. Period photo by Seattle photographer Asahel Curtis, early 20th century.

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During the second half of the 19th century, monkey puzzles became very trendy and many were planted on the grounds of Britain's great estates. As so many other garden trends from Europe, this one also followed the newcomers to the Seattle area. Planting monkey puzzles, Chilean conifers popular in English gardens, must have given their owners more status than using any of the handsome native conifers readily available in the area (which in turn were very much sought after in Europe - I guess the grass is always greener...).

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Many photos of residential houses in Seattle taken in the late 19th and early 20th century show monkey puzzles proudly planted as solitaire specimens to adorn the front lawns of the houses. Some of them have survived and thrived in the temperate climate of Seattle, and are now, a century later, huge trees that have since long outgrown their allocated spaces.
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Having two of them, like these magnificent ones flanking the main entrance of the house above, must still be extremely unusual, and I was thrilled to find such fine, living examples of garden history. Admittedly, they are now far too large and dwarf the house with their huge trunks, and they probably cast a deep shade and drop their extremely prickly needles everywhere. But I still hope that all inconveniences can be overlooked, and that the present and coming owners of this house see the historical value and charm of their huge monkey puzzles. Given that they often live for over thousand years, they can still delight several generations to come...
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PS - the history of the name "monkey puzzle tree" is just as silly as the name itself: in the mid-1850s, some Englishmen who saw the tree for the first time, commented that climbing the tree would puzzle a monkey. Amazingly, the stupid name stuck, even if there are no monkeys neither in England nor in Chile where the tree comes from...

The gardening life of a man called Pearl

There's always gonna be obstacles.

The thing is, you don't let those

obstacles determine where you go.

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-Pearl Fryar-

Yesterday evening, as I struggled in the snail-paced rush-hour traffic to the other side of the town, I quietly wondered if the lecture I was heading to really would be worth the tedious effort. It was, every minute of it. Pearl Fryar, the 70-year old self-taught master of artful topiary, spoke about his life and garden, and as he spoke, he proved to be just as much of a philosopher as a gardener.

Pearl Fryar's garden, photo by Erica Glasener.

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Coming from a poor family, Pearl told how he seldom was able follow on the school field trips, as he could not afford the 25 cents needed for the transport. But he never let those circumstances hinder himself from trying hard to get what he wanted, ending up with a good job and house with a garden for his own family. In 1984, he began to work with his 3 acre garden trying to win the local "Yard of the Month" competition of his hometown, Bishopville, South Carolina.

A topiary sculpture by Pearl Fryar, from Tales of the Microbial Laboratory.
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Pearl knew nothing at all about gardening when he started, so he didn't have any limitations or expectations about what would be or not be possible. He rescued some half dying plants from the local nursery, and off he went, arguably creating some of the most incredible topiary in the world, with wildly sculptural, almost extraterrestrial forms reminding of both Dr. Seuss and Salvador Dali, combined. As Pearl described his work, it "flew from him naturally", and he just felt where the forms of the plants would go. He talked about his love to seeing other peoples gardens as they always are an expression of the creativity flowing from the person gardening in them. I would have loved to ask him what his garden tells about him with its laboriously cut and shaped forms, but being paralyzingly shy for asking questions in front of crowds, I unfortunately don't have an answer.

Topiary sculpture, photo by Erica Glasener.

Since starting his garden, Pearl has become something of a celebrity, and several newspapers and gardening magazines have pictured his work. Also, a documentary "A man named Pearl" was done for two years ago, telling Pearl's story from the early days as a sharecropper's son to the celebrated cultural icon of his hometown that he is today. The Garden Conservancy has now included Pearl's garden into its protected gardens, working on preserving the garden to the future generations; an amazing journey for a man who just wanted to win the local "Yard of the year" competition.

At the end of his presentation Pearl told that he gardens with a purpose: he sees his garden not only as an artwork, but as a tool to learn the unprivileged young kids of today about his life's philosophy of never giving up. As he said, "you have to think and and positive, 'cause negative thinking has never led to positive results." If he could beat the odds of a poor childhood, anybody can; "If people see you trying hard to achieve something, sooner or later some of them are bound to try to help you." And couldn't agree more with him, leaving the lecture feeling warmly and deeply touched by Pearl and his wonderfully eccentric topiary garden that is a living testament to his philosophy in life.

Pearl Fryar's Topiary Garden, official website.
A visit to Pearl Fryar's garden, a blog post by Tales of the Microbial Laboratory, with excellent pictures.

The first picture is from a postcard given out by Pearl at the lecture.

The month of the Moutan

White tree peonies, their golden anthers shimmering against the milky white petals flecked with rosy pink.
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On my early morning walks, I've been admiring the unfurling blooms of tree peonies opening up in many gardens in my neighborhood. I love their fleeting beauty; their fragile, golden anthers and their huge, silky petals gently fluttering in the breeze, reminding of how many of the precious things in life are only momentary, passing.

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Originating from the mountains of China and Tibet, tree peonies have been loved and cultivated by the Chinese for at least 1,500 years. In the Chinese calendar, each month is represented by a flower. The fourth month, beginning in early May, is the month of the Moutan, the tree peony. Tree peonies are often called an imperial flower, and it is not only because of their magnificent blooms. Already during the Sui dynasty (589-618), Emperor Yang Ti placed the plant under imperial protection, and many select varieties were selling for up to a hundred ounces of gold per plant. Since the tree peony was called 'the King of Flowers', it was a natural favorite of the emperors, who planted thousands of Moutans in their imperial gardens.

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In Chinese art, tree peonies represent spring, and the scholars of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) attributed it the qualities of prosperity, vitality, opulence, and the active male principle of the universe. Already during the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Moutan was celebrate in poetry, song and painting, and there is an abundant literature describing the many varieties in detail. Also the Japanese loved the beauty of the tree peonies, which they call the Botan, arranging 'peony-gazing' celebrations when they where in full bloom. An excellent idea to take after, and since I unfortunately don't have any Moutans in my garden, I'm open for invitations...

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The deep green foliage is quiet and reposeful,

The petals are clad in various shades of red;

The pistil droops with melancholy -

Wondering if spring knows her intimate thoughts.

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Wang Wei, AD 699-731, translated by A. Waley.

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Thank you to my mother-in-law, MaryLou, for kindly sending me the article "Moutan" by Peter Smithers, in Arts of Asia, vol 14, 1984. If you are interested in reading more about Moutans, I recommend Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall's lovely book "Peonies, the imperial flower" (1999) which is extremely well-researched and -written and has beautiful photos and illustrations. All photos in this post were taken by me and show Moutans flowering for the moment in my neighborhood.