Tag Archives: Garden

May 17, 2012

The Doctrine of Signatures

By daseger

This week’s blooming plant is the lungwort, or pulmonaria officinalis, a low-lying shade plant with speckled leaves that has always been the best example of the pre-modern theory of the Doctrine of Signatures for me. An ancient theory that was embraced and expanded by several influential Renaissance writers, the doctrine held that the appearance of plants was an indication of their potential curative powers, or “virtues”. Just as God created disease, he also gave man cures, hidden in nature, but marked by clues, or divine signatures. I use the doctrine in class as one example of how closely tied medieval and early modern people were to nature, as clever a manifestation of God’s creation as themselves. Lungwort, with its speckled lung-shaped leaves, was widely believed to contain virtues which could cure diseases of the lung, hence the name.

Lungwort in my garden yesterday, in British Library MS Egerton 747 (Nicolaus of Salerno, Tractatus de herbis , c.1280-1310), and as drawn Elizabeth Blackwell for her Curious Herbal, 1739 and Magdalena Bouchard for Giorgio Bonelli’s, Hortus romanus, vol. 2, Rome, 1774, tab. 27 (Wellcome Library).

Paracelsus, in most ways a Renaissance medical revolutionary, nevertheless embraced the ancient doctrine in his “great” surgery book (Die grosse Wundartznei), published in 1537: “I have oft-times declared, how by outward shapes and qualities of things we may know their inward virtues, which God has put in them for the good of man. So in St. John’s Wort, we may take notice of the form of the leaves and flowers, the porosity of the leaves, the veins [which] signify to us that this herb helps both inward and outward holes or cuts in the skin. The flowers of St. John’s Wort, when they are purified are like blood; which teaches us, that this herb is good for wounds.” St. John’s Wort doesn’t seem as conspicuously “signed” as lungwort to me, but this passages shows you how far Renaissance doctors were prepared to go. Paracelsus does not mention the plant’s medieval virtue (illustrated below): that of demon repellent!

BL MS. Sloane 4016: St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) repelling a demon, Northern Italy, c. 1440.

Later in the sixteenth century, another Renaissance “scientist” (you have to put that word in quotations before Sir Isaac Newton, at the very least) elaborated upon the doctrine in words and images. Giambattista della Porta, who was also a relatively well-known playwright, was very interested in outward appearances, not only of plants but also of animals and humans, and how appearance affected behavior. His Phytognomonica (1588) contains wonderful, literal images of the doctrine, like the one below, of “ocular” plants like the aptly-named eyebright, which was said to improve sight.

Giambattista della Porta, Phytognomonica (1588), and a 1923 updated image from the Wellcome Library, London.

You can go on and on with the doctrine of signatures, so I’m going to end with one last image of a plant in my garden: a maidenhair fern, which was (of course), perceived to be a plausible cure for that most common of ailments: baldness.

5 Comments | tags: Art, books, Garden, horticulture, Renaissance | posted in Culture, History

May 10, 2012

Cicely & Alexander

By daseger

It’s been raining for about a week and everyone I talk to is complaining, but not me: everything is so lush and green. I keep peeking out of my third-floor study window down at the garden below, a blissful escape from grading papers. This is what I see: red, wet bricks and green, wet plants.

What you don’t see from this perspective are the shade borders that lead out to the street. They are lined with two of my favorite stalwart spring plants: Sweet Cicely (myrrhis odorata) and Golden Alexander (zizea aurea). These two plants never fail me, and provide fluffy little long-lasting flowers long before anything else has bloomed. Though Sweet Cicely is an herb with a long European heritage and Golden Alexander is a native wildflower, they actually have much in common: both belong to the same Apiaceae family of flowering plants, which used to be called the Umbelliferae family, for their hollow stems and umbel (umbrella-like) flowers. This is a large group of plants that includes carrots, parsley, fennel, dill and other utilitarian potherb plants. I think that the owners of my house and tenders of my garden from a century or more ago would probably be a little horrified by these lowly plants taking up so much prominent space, but I like them.

The path from street to garden; Sweet Cicely and Golden Alexander close-up.

Both plants are referenced in early modern herbals. Even though my Alexander is an American native, it is related to a European genus called Smyrnium whose seeds were apparently sold by apothecaries’ shops throughout Europe. Nicholas Culpepper, the seventeenth-century physician, astrologer, botanist, and author of The English Physician (1652) and The Complete Herbal (1653), describes Alexander as “an herb of Jupiter, and therefore friendly to nature, for it warms a cold stomach, and opens a stoppage of the liver and spleen; it is good to move women’s courses, to expel the afterbirth, to break wind, to provoke urine and helps the stranguary; and these things the seeds will do likewise. If either of them be boiled in wine, or being bruised and taken in wine, is also effectual against the biting of serpents.” Sweet Cicely, also an herb of Jupiter, has almost exactly the same virtues with the added benefit of being a preservative against the plague (when drunk with wine, of course).

A century after Culpepper, Elizabeth Blackwell included both Cicely and Alexander in her Curious Herbal (1737-39), an ambitious enterprise she took on to pay her husband’s debts and get him out of debtor’s prison (she was successful, but he was later implicated in a treasonous conspiracy and executed). The British Library has digitized King George III’s copy, so everyone can see Elizabeth’s hand-colored engravings drawn from specimens in the Chelsea Physic Garden.

5 Comments | tags: books, Flora and Fauna, Garden | posted in Home

April 25, 2012

Hearts and Jacks

By daseger

It’s spring awakening time in the garden, and two of my particular favorites have popped: Bleeding Heart (dicentra spectabilis) and Jack-in-the-Pulpit (arisaema triphyllum). These two plants, so strident yet so vulnerable, really capture the spirit of the season for me more so than any other development. The fact that their blooms are so short-lived makes them all the more precious.

Really beautiful. Most of the plants in my garden were chosen for their European heritage, but these two have different origins. The Bleeding Heart comes from China, and the Jack-in-the-Pulpit is a native wildflower. Somehow they snuck into my Eurocentric garden, thank goodness. Bleeding Hearts are often referred to as “old-fashioned” flowers but in fact they were not introduced to the west (by intrepid plant hunter Robert Fortune) until the 1840s. I really prefer the white version of Dicentra, but the pink variety seems to be a lot more common, and more inspirational to artists and designers. Given the common name, you can imagine that there have been lots of literal metaphorical representations of the plant over the years, which I will spare you, but also some really lovely illustrations.

Miss Harris, Luna Moth on a Bleeding Heart, watercolor and white gouache over graphite on paper, 19th century (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University); William Hood Fitch illustration for The Natural Order of the Vegetable Kingdom by Daniel Oliver, 1874; “Flying Heart” wallpaper, late 19th-early 20th century (Victoria & Albert Museum, London); Jane Sassaman “Iris & Bleeding Hearts” fabric at amazon.com.

Jack-in-the-Pulpits didn’t have to be hunted down; they were right here in the shady woodlands of North America. They don’t seem to be really appreciated until the mid-nineteenth century, when they were alternatively referred to as “Indian Turnips”. George Goodale’s Wildflowers of America (1886) explains their oratorical name: “the arched roof over the spare, erect body, bears a suggestive resemblance to the old-fashioned ‘sounding-board’ placed over a pulpit to increase the resonance of the speaker’s voice; and from this remote likeness has come one of the common names of the plant–Jack-in-the-Pulpit.” Wildflowers contains 51 colored plates by illustrator Isaac Sprague, including that of Jack-in-the-Pulpit below.

This plant, and particularly its flower, has inspired artists as diverse as Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and Georgia O’Keeffe, who produced a whole series of Jack paintings: she saw a bit more sensuality in the flower than Dr. Goodale did above! Her six canvases, completed in 1930 and later donated to the National Gallery of Art, chart the evolution and essence of the flower: below are numbers 2 and 3, depicting full bloom. More attainable, and permanent, images of Jack-in-the-pulpit can be found on the cotton fabric offered by Etsy seller fabricsandtrimmings.

6 Comments | tags: Art, books, Garden, horticulture | posted in Design, Home

January 9, 2012

In Winter Gardens

By daseger

Winters are great for assessing the “bones” of a garden, especially when you have no snow. That’s certainly the case this year for New England: lots of bones, no winter wonderland. When I compare the glistening photographs from last year with those below, there’s obviously a stark difference, but there is also a certain kind of beauty in the stark brown landscape.

My garden looks pretty dreary except for a few bright spots captured on a 60-degree January day and the boxwood “balls” and germander border, which looks like it’s still alive (but is certainly not). The brightest spot by far is the scarlet cardinal who spends a lot time back there, but I’ve given up trying to capture him on film. The minute I pick up my camera, he flies away.

The Ropes Garden looks very bare, but if you’re not distracted by the flowers and colors you notice other things, like this amazing tree close to the house. I included a postcard from 1910 taken from the same vantage point, so you see the dramatic change, as well as a close-up of the texture of the tree.

A few more images of January gardens around Salem: on Warren, Beckford and Pickering Streets, in my general neighborhood, and across town at the historic herb garden behind the Derby House on Derby Street, on the grounds of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.

Vincent van Gogh found beauty not only in sunflowers and blooming gardens but also in barren ones, as illustrated by his drawing from March, 1884: Winter Garden (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), one of several pen (black iron gall ink, now decayed–and decaying–into a sepia tone) drawings of the bleak landscape of Nuenen he made at that time.

For beautiful photographs of winter gardens–and gardens all year long and in many places–visit one of my favorite landscape (and travel!) blogs from across the Atlantic: terrain.

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, Flora and Fauna, Garden, Home | posted in Home, Salem

November 18, 2011

A Last Spread of Color

By daseger

Just a short post today with some pictures of a pretty house that deserves a showing! I was cleaning up my picture files and noticed that I had not published images of a colorful Victorian house off Lafayette Street, not too far from Salem Harbor and Salem State University. These shots were taken about a month ago–definitely well into fall, but before the late October snowstorm. This is a beautifully maintained property and the colors are perfect for this time of year: a dark orange/persimmon with red accents and greenish taupe trim. It’s a painted lady situated on a sunny corner lot, and the juxtaposition of house, carriage house and garden seems perfectly aligned to me. As you can see, a month ago the colorful garden was still in bloom.

Not so yesterday. The garden has been laid to rest, but the house is still beautiful and bright, and ready for the holidays.

6 Comments | tags: Architecture, Garden | posted in Salem

September 18, 2011

End-of-Summer Gardens

By daseger

I love muted tones in gardens anyway, so late summer gardens are just my thing. Here are some photographs of two very different gardens: my own humble garden and those of Glen Magna Farms in Danvers, the summer home of Salem’s Derby Family. I was in this part of Danvers (originally called Salem Village) yesterday, getting some images for upcoming posts on the Witch Trials (beware: next week is a very important week in the history of the Trials), and so I took a detour to Glen Magna. Though the property came into the Derby family in 1812, the estate as it exists today is largely the vision of Ellen Peabody Endicott, a Derby descendant who significantly expanded and redesigned the house and its gardens after 1892. Her grandson moved Samuel McIntire’s magnificent summer house (1793) from Salem to Danvers in 1901.

My garden: including a close-up of a squirrel (I think it’s the same one) who climbs up and down a dogwood tree all day long knocking off and burying its red berries.

And now for the magnificent Glen Magna: the house, Mrs. Endicott by John Singer Sargent (1901), McIntire’s summer house, and surrounding gardens.

Ellen Peabody Endicott by John Singer Sargent, 1901

Second Floor Interior of Derby Summer House, HABS, Library of Congress, 1960

4 Comments | tags: Architecture, Garden, John Singer Sargent, Library of Congress, Samuel McIntire | posted in History, Houses, Salem

August 10, 2011

Edible Art

By daseger

While up in York for a long weekend I went to the Stonewall Kitchen company store to get some ingredients for a recipe and ran into a huge crowd of people and some absolutely stunning display gardens. The gardens are always beautiful at Stonewall, but this time they were particularly impressive: unusual combinations of colors and textures, perennials and annuals, vegetables and flowers. There were also screen-printed banners, indicating the tie-in between the Stonewall gardens and an ongoing art exhibit at the nearby George Marshall Store Gallery: From the Garden to the Kitchen. Part One of the exhibit was on display earlier in the summer; Part Two is on view now. So here we have another two-part (digital) exhibition: first the gardens, then the gallery.

Lots of Clary Sage, a very under-utilized grey garden plant.

A close-up of one of the banners in the gardens, depicting “Purple Podded Peas”, an archival pigment print in Lynn Karlin’s Pedestal Series. Below, more prints in the series, displayed at the George Marshall Store Gallery, and exterior and interior views of the Gallery.

The George Marshall Store is a Victorian building located on the York River, adjacent to the John Hancock Wharf and Warehouse. Both properties belong to the Museums of Old York, though the Marshall Store functions as an independent art gallery. I vaguely remember it operating as some sort of “ye olde” shop when I was a little girl, and today, the combination of river, old building and modern art makes the gallery a nice afternoon destination. Here are a few of my favorites from the current exhibition, although I definitely could have included many more pieces.

James Aponovich, Trasimeno Artichoke

Tina Ingraham, Rainier Cherries and The Grocer

Carey Armstrong-Ellis, When Vegetables Go Bad

Susan Wahlrab, Unfolding Fiddleheads

Rosalind Fedeli, Nine Bright Persimmons

Stonewall Kitchen Company Store gardens by JNL Inc. Landscaping: jnlinc.com; George Marshall Store Gallery, 140 Lindsay Road, York, Maine 03909. 207.351.1083

6 Comments | tags: Art, Garden, Maine | posted in Design

August 5, 2011

Espalier

By daseger

Given that my garden is bordered by a high brick wall–the backside of Hamilton Hall–someone in its past began training a pair of yews to grow up alongside it espalier-style. I’m grateful that this happened. I’m not a big yew fan, but the espaliered yews soften the edges of the wall and are relatively low-maintenance. We normally trim them once a year, and the rest of the year (all seasons) they look pretty good. Obviously their design is quite informal; a couple of years ago while Hamilton Hall was getting a new roof a cornerstone fell on the top one (narrowly avoiding me, actually), taking out several branches, so they don’t quite match.

Espalier techniques go back several centuries, maybe even to the Romans. I’ve read that they were utilized in the enclosed gardens of the medieval era, which makes perfect sense but is apparently not true. The keeper of the gardens at the Cloisters Museum maintains that espalier was a Renaissance invention (or revival), which makes even more sense given the contemporary quest for the mastery of nature. With espalier, you are literally bending nature to your will, and it is also a perfect combination of aesthetics and practicality. In the Renaissance and after, fruit trees were the primary objects of the technique, but today you see all sorts of trained shrubs, including yews.

Below is an illustration of espalier from a late seventeenth-century Dutch gardening manual in the collection of the New York Public Library, and two photographs of George Washington’s garden at Mt. Vernon; apparently our first president had a preference for “live fences”, and trained trees for walls and borders. Finally, Charlotte Moss‘s “Espalier” china pattern for Pickard.

Leave a comment | tags: Garden, George Washington, Home | posted in History, Home

July 21, 2011

Early Evening in the Ropes Garden

By daseger

I was reserving a post on the garden of the Ropes Mansion, built in 1727, considerably altered (especially the interior) in the nineteenth century, and under the stewardship of the Peabody Essex Museum since the late 1970s, for a bit later in the summer, but when I walked through it the other night I felt that it should be captured NOW. The house and the garden are on upper Essex Street, just a few doors down from the misnamed “Witch House”, and the garden gate is almost always open to the public. The garden was laid out in 1912 by the prominent Salem horticulturalist John Robinson, whose own house and garden were only steps away on Summer Street (now sadly subdivided and hardtop). It is always referred to as a Colonial Revival garden, meaning that it is characterized by the use of “old-fashioned” flowers from the Colonial era (hollyhocks!) bursting forth from defined beds, accessed by axial paths, and all enclosed by at least one (hopefully brick) wall. Indeed, the Ropes Garden has all that and more: 22 garden beds, a nice mix of traditional annuals (for color) and perennials, a wisteria arbor-bench, a pond, lots of gravel paths, and older shrubs and trees, adorned with helpful zinc labels.

A few photographs of the house, today and in the early and mid-twentieth century, to set the scene. I really do think that the Ropes Mansion is one of the most beloved of all the older Salem house museums, because of its accessible Essex Street location, its “haunted” reputation, and the fact that it narrowly escaped serious damage only a couple of years ago when a malfunctioning heat gun started a fire during a paint-removal process. The quick and effective response of the Salem Fire Department earned them a historic preservation award from Historic Salem, Inc. last year.

HABS, Library of Congress

And now for the garden. It was quite renown in the first half of the twentieth century, owing to the popularity of the Colonial Revival and “Grandmothers’ Gardens”, so I’ve included a few hyper-colorful postcards as well as contemporary shots, taken in the early evening. The backdrop of the garden when looking north is a wonderful Federal brick house that has been virtually abandoned for 20 years or so, but is showing signs of life lately.

Leave a comment | tags: Architecture, Garden | posted in History, Salem

July 16, 2011

A Grand Garden Estate in North Salem

By daseger

A century ago, North Salem (still sometimes referred to by its colonial name: Northfields) was a horticultural hotspot, with several large private gardens, the “garden cemetery” Greenlawn, and the remnants of the Manning Orchard in its midst. On Dearborn Street, where Nathaniel Hawthorne’s uncle Robert Manning had established his nursery earlier in the previous century (and where Hawthorne himself briefly lived) there was a grand garden estate that was connected to some of Salem’s most prominent mercantile families: the Dodges, the Bertrams, and the Emmertons.

The house around which this garden estate was created still stands on Dearborn Street but its garden is gone, divided up into house lots in the 1950s and 1960s. A circular street now exists where once paths lead from the house to the North River through a meticulously landscaped garden. According to Bryant Tolles, author of Architecture in Salem, the house’s origins are somewhat shrouded in mystery. Its columns give it a Greek Revival appearance but apparently the date 1790 is scratched on an interior plaster wall. The documented history of the house begins with Pickering Dodge, Jr. in the 1830s: the son of wealthy Salem merchant with a Federal seat on Chestnut Street, he apparently wanted a “country house” (a mile or so down the road) where he could engage in horticultural pursuits. He purchased the pre-existing Dearborn Street house, probably added the columns, and began laying out the garden. Over the next century, the garden was expanded and embellished, probably most dramatically when the estate was in the possession of Jennie Bertram Emmerton, the fabulously wealthy daughter of Salem’s great merchant philanthropist Captain John Bertram and mother of House of Seven Gables Settlement Association Caroline Emmerton, in the 1880s.

In back and on both sides of the house was the lush garden, revealed by the photographs and plans produced for the Works Progress Administration’s Historic American Building Survey around 1940. From what we can see of it, the garden still looks pretty good, but there is an evident sense of neglect about the place, probably best represented by the “leaning” octagonal summerhouse.