Pixies in Tulips

I'm not sure how it happened. I was searching for information about gardening books and came across a reference to a book by Mrs. Alice T. A. Quackenbush.

In the book's introduction, Helen Morgantheu Fox writes, "Mrs. Quackenbush has not taken the conventional attitude of dwelling upon the color scheme and cultivation of a garden.  Her deep love and interest in flowers has led her to find out about their "personal relations" and all the flower gossip."

Personal relations amongst the flowers? Flower gossip?

Welcome to "All in a Garden Fair" by Alice T. A. Quackenbush (A. T. De La Mare Company, Inc., 1925)

When I received my copy in the mail today, I flipped it open and thought how nice it was that the giver of the book had written a little inscription on the inside cover.  I love to get old gardening books with little personal hints about the people who first owned and read them.

Then a few minutes later it occurred to me.  Alice T. A. Quackenbush wrote that note and signed the book.  "For the lady who is just as good a friend as she is a secretary - and that's going over!"

What a nice surprise.

In the forward, Alice wrote,

"This tiny book about plant names and their significance does not presume to be scientific. It is merely a suggestion offered by one garden lover to another, that there is more in the garden than a first glance reveals; further, that botanical names are not so formidable as some of us may have thought; and further still, that the most satisfactory place to learn them is in the garden.

If it be the means of reminding a few amateur gardeners of the pixies which cradle in their Tulips, or of sending them to the dictionary for a better understanding of the names of the flowers they grow, it will have served its purpose."

Alice T. A. Quackenbush

Cold Spring-on-Hudson, N.Y.
July, 1925.

I know nothing of Alice, her secretary, or Helen, who wrote the introduction.  That doesn't matter to me. I hold in my hand an old gardening book and there is information in it about "pixies which cradle in their Tulips".

When I hold these books, and read phrases like that, I'm glad for winter, happy that it gives me time out of the garden to go down these rabbit holes to learn and explore and get lost in another gardening world.

I'll leave a little trail of flower petals and hope to find my way back in a few days.

I survived January

January. Where for wert thou, January?

Where were your blowing winds and frigidly cold temperatures?

Where was your snow, your ice, your sleet?

What was that all about, January? Sunny days, moderate temperatures, even thunderstorms?

January.  You hardly made us suffer. You made us nervous with your mild and meek ways.

Now we fear, you, February.

We fear February because we are conditioned for winter. For snowed-in days, for bone-rattling cold, for ice, snow, sleet and cabin fever. If January didn't deliver winter, surely February will.

Welcome, anyway, February.  You are one month closer to spring. Please be kind to us. Do not make us suffer for the sake of January.  Please. Do not.  But please give us a little more winter so we can appreciate spring when it arrives.

An extra day of winter, you say, February? Thank you.  One extra day of winter will be quite enough and will give me more time for my "to do" list.

To do in February:

Inventory seeds on hand and then buy more seeds than any one gardener could ever plant.

Clean up the sunroom and remove any evidence of indoor plants that died when I forgot to water them.  (Just one, I think, no need for panic.)  I won't clean too much though - it makes the garden fairies wintering over in there nervous.

Line up someone to come and remove that suckering excuse for a large viburnum in The Shrubbery and maybe have them remove the other one that seems not to have survived two dry summers.  I need a clean planting palette and "remove large shrubs" is no longer on my list of fun gardening tasks to do. Instead, I've added to my list of fun gardening tasks "watch someone remove large shrubs while I dream about what to plant there instead".

Contact garden designer for assistance with The Shrubbery which isn't quite the garden area I want it to be yet.  I must also thank her again for leaving me that book, The Garden that I Love.

Prepare a little presentation on "Grow Vegetables - No Excuses".   There really is no excuse to not grow a few vegetables, if you are any kind of gardener at all.  One would think that it is part of every gardener's DNA to grow vegetables, but apparently it is not. 

Finally, if February turns out to be meek and mild like January, weed the vegetable garden. (Now that's funny. I am conditioned by years, decades, of Midwest gardening to not even think about doing something in the garden in February, even if we have some nice days.  Though, I could be convinced to watch someone remove some large, suckering shrubs.)

Gardening Friends Will Gather

"Over and above fostering equanimity, the cultivation of a garden promotes the tenderer graces and extends the sweet charities of life."

In other words, gardeners are generally, calm, nice, and giving people.

The first fling was in 2008 in Austin, Texas

"I need no introduction to a person who has a garden; and be his or her rank what it may, I go, opening the gate, whether a huge iron or a humble wicket, with a proud confidence, certain to find a man and a brother, or a woman and a sister."

Gardeners automatically have a lot in common and can just start talking about gardening and plants, wherever they gather.

The second fling was in Chicago in 2009.

"Love of gardening creates a safe freemasonry among those who cherish it."

This common love of gardening is a bond, even amongst strangers.

For the third fling, we gathered in Buffalo, NY.

"I stand on no ceremony, tender no excuse or apology, proffer no introduction, but say at once, 'What magnificent honeysuckle!' or 'Where do you get those splendid tuberous begonias?' and lo! we are friends at once."

Friendships have been made quickly at each fling, over one plant or another.

The last fling was in Seattle, Washington

"I have made many a life-long friend by a bold intrusion and instant conference over a Paeony or a Michaelmas Daisy I had not seen before."

At every fling, gardeners find kindred spirits and leave looking forward to meeting them again at the next fling.

The next garden bloggers' fling will be in May in Asheville, North Carolina. Do you have a garden blog? Are you coming?

(All quotes are from a passage in The Garden that I Love by Alfred Austin, 1894. It's amazing how the types of friendships that gardeners have amongst each other haven't really changed in over 100 years.)

How to Space Plants in a Garden

I wonder a bit how it is that until last Friday, the 20th, I had never heard of Alfred Austin or his book, The Garden that I Love.  How did my garden designer decide on that book to leave for me?  I've enjoyed it immensely. It's the kind of book you can pick up and read cover to cover and along the way, fall in love with gardening all over again.

Plus, there is some useful information on how to garden, buried in the story.  Useful information like how to space out the plants in a garden.

In his own words...

"A garden is not a collection of curios. It is for the most vigorous, the most lovely, and the most fragrant flowers that room should be found; and many these demand for the full display of their charms that the atmosphere should be seen all round them, and that they should not be too much elbowed by their neighbours. It is, perhaps, a little incautious to say this for it may be pressed into the defense of those terrible villa borders where every plant is a specimen, is duly staked, and tied and trained and they all stand at stated and goodly intervals from each other. I pray you avoid it. But if you run into the opposite extreme and crowd certain herbaceous plants overmuch, you curtail their growth and their grace and incur the risk of losing them altogether." (The Garden that I Love, Alfred Austin, 1894)

In my words, space plants not too close, but not too far apart.

If you crowd all the plants together, you are likely to lose a plant or two that just can't compete with a closely planted, vigorously growing neighbor.  But if you space them out too far then it isn't really a garden, where plants play off one another and sometimes support one another, it's just a row of plants. 

I can think of no better advice on how to space plants in a garden.