This past weekend I spent an hour or so browsing (digitally) through Eugène Grasset’s La plante et ses applications ornementales (1896) and then stepped outside to see that my lady’s slippers were in full bloom:  no competition, they win hands down. There are nineteen this year: every year I seem to gain one slipper. Other spring plants are enhanced in Grasset’s “applications”, but for the most part I think I prefer nature at this time of year. Yet has things that I don’t have so I think I’ll showcase both, as this was a man that could even make a dandelion look beautiful!

 My trillium are finally in bloom about two weeks behind everyone else’s; the lady slippers!

 The PEM’s Peirce-Nichols garden has a veritable sea of bleeding hearts, but I was too late for the Solomon’s Seal and Columbine so I give you Grasset.

 Irises and Roses from the PEM’s Ropes Garden, and Grasset’s versions.

There are no trees in La plante et ses applicationes ornementales but Salem has one of the most beautiful trees/shrubs in bloom right now: the Fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus), a southern native that can be found in many cemeteries up here, but also notably in front of the grand Wheatland-Phillips house at 30 Chestnut Street. I’ve always thought that this tree suited the exterior embellishment of this house perfectly, but it looks lovely in the Harmony Grove cemetery as well. Even its shadow is beautiful.

 Salem’s Fringe trees and Grasset’s dandelion design.