Tag Archives: Salem Garden Club

July 16, 2024

Salem Garden Stroll 2024

By daseger

So sorry I’ve been MIA for the last couple of weeks; this summer is turning out to be one of the busiest I’ve had in years! Everything snuck up on me: I’ve been teaching a summer grad class, working at the Phillips House, preparing a robust schedule of presentations, researching Salem’s “revolutionary summer” AND Renaissance saffron, and prepping my garden for the Salem Garden Club’s biennial “Stroll,” which happened just this past weekend. I thought this was going to be a calm, “off” summer as I am not working on a book, but that has not been the case. I think I’m all caught up and in control now, but we shall see. I have some interesting topics that I want to explore here over the next few weeks, but this week I am featuring the Garden Stroll, which was one of the best garden tours I’ve seen in years. The Salem Garden Club has a venerable history dating back to 1928 and they have made numerous contributions to Salem’s horticultural history, among them the publication of the most wonderful little pamphlet, Old Salem Gardens, which (I swear) is seldom out of my sight at home. If you encounter a copy online or in person, snatch it up: believe me, you won’t be disappointed. The club always features a Christmas market during Historic Salem’s Christmas in Salem house tour, and they contribute to the city’s beautification initiatives as well. Years ago, when my house was on the Christmas in Salem tour, I was fortunate to have the Club as designated decorators and I remember fondly coming downstairs the morning of the tour to see ladies artfully arranging their creations, as well as ironing my tablecloths! It was nice to hear them setting up for the stroll this past weekend as well, as their headquarters were right next door at Hamilton Hall. I think we were all a bit anxious as it was raining Saturday morning (and very humid later on), but from my perspective, everything went off very well.

Salem Garden Club present and past.

The gardens were all located within the McIntire Historic District, Salem’s oldest, on Federal and Chestnut Streets and off streets of the latter. The range was incredible in terms of size and style, but all featured great structure, and very interesting plants! I have LUNGWORT ENVY, as pulmonaria are my favorite plants and my feeble varieties paled in comparison to two much more robust examples I spotted on Chestnut and Hamilton streets (usually they are better; they really let me down this year—must check my soil). There was great architecture, and all sorts of special little details: I was immediately reminded of a quote by Mary Harrod Northend about Salem’s urban gardens, “where every inch of space has been made to serve a decorative purpose.” (The Mentor, 1914).

Gardens on Federal and Hamilton Streets and an additional lovely lungwort on Chestnut.

The neighborhood insitutions were featured too, including the Peabody Essex Museum’s famous Ropes Garden (with PEM head gardener Robin Pydynkowski on-site to answer questions), the Pickering House (also with present gardeners), and the Salem Athenaeum, and lemonade was served at the Phillips House. The great thing about urban gardens like those of Salem is you can generally check out lots of backyards once you get “out back” so a tour such as this is a treat for both architectural and horticultural buffs (plus outbuildings!) I was just thrilled to see the garden of the house built for Hugh Wilson, the Scottish gardener of the adjacent Hoffman garden on Chestnut Street, which was truly famous in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was so unexpectedly large, I think because it was the site of one of the Hoffman greenhouses. (But I also developed pond envy). Just a great Salem day!

PEM Gardener Robyn Pydynkowski in the spotlight at the Ropes Mansion; Hamilton and Chestnut Street Gardens.

And at the end of the day it was nice to come back to our garden, now free of people and with Trinity liberated (Tuck was still cowering inside) to have a g&t. Cheers to the Salem Garden Club!

2 Comments | tags: Garden Tours, Gardens, Local Events, Salem Garden Club, Salem Gardens, Salem is more than "witches"! | posted in Culture

June 10, 2024

Salem Gardens, June 2024

By daseger

Let’s take a break from history and observe and enjoy the world around us, shall we? I’ve been asking my Salem friends and aquaintences about their gardens, and everyone is very happy: blooms abound! Shrubs and perennials are bigger and better than ever—the latter seem to be positively uncontainable. I’m enjoying my garden too, but am also a bit anxious as it is on the Salem Garden Stroll in mid-July and I know that this month’s blooms will not last: maybe I should cut back now to encourage regrowth? When I first started working on the garden years ago, I strove for cascading color and interesting greenery for texture, but still, July is tough. Here we are in the second week of June:

It’s a bit messy as the tulip tree next door just let loose, but that is easily remedied. I snuck in my lady slippers at the end here, but their peak is a few weeks back. Looking at these pictures, I realize I still have phlox and bee balm and meadowsweet coming, and daylillies too. There are several varieties of mallow yet to bloom, and the catmint and honeysuckle will just keep going. I popped my lady slippers in here too, but this last picture is from a few weeks back.

I took a walk around Salem on Saturday morning looking for flowers, and stopped in at the Ropes Mansion and Derby House gardens: the first is the property of the Peabody Essex Museum, and the latter is part of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. These are really the only “public” gardens in Salem, as their gates are always open. Quite a contrast: the Derby garden has the overgrown “colonial” look I strive for in my own garden, whereas the Ropes is quite formal. Peonies and roses were reigning in both at this particular time.

And while I have you here, looking for this garden gate below……..I’m giving a short talk on Chestnut Street gardens on the morning of the Stroll, July 13, at Hamilton Hall. I’ve got lots of old pictures, including some of gardens and garden structures that no longer exist, but I can’t identify this wonderful gate, which I pretty sure also no longer exists. I think it’s the gate to John Robinson’s (who designed the Ropes Garden) amazing garden on Summer Street, which is now a parking lot, but I’m not sure, so if it looks familiar, let me know. I also wanted to present a past and present view of the garden at the Peabody Essex Museum’s Andrew Safford House: this past weekend and June of 1941, with members of the Salem Garden Club in costume.

5 Comments | tags: ephemera, gardening, Gardens, Local Events, Roses, Salem Garden Club, Salem Gardens, Summer | posted in Salem

June 25, 2017

Scorched Earth/A Lost Salem Garden

By daseger

Since I went in deep for the centennial anniversary of Great Salem Fire of 1914 a few years ago I have this date imprinted in my mind: I woke up this morning and my first thought was oh no. So much was lost that day—houses, factories, civic buildings, churches–as the fire devoured several wards of Salem. The recovery effort, which seems remarkably swift and efficient to me, focused primarily and rightfully on rebuilding, but there was an implicit concern for the loss of landscape as well, and so parks were planned and trees replanted. There was one notable Lafayette Street landscape that was lost on forever on that day, however: the garden of George B. Chase. There was no effort to reconstitute this creation; instead the large lot became the site of the new Saltonstall School, which rose from the ashes of the fire pretty quickly. The Chase Garden was indeed fleeting, but fortunately we have two great sources to remember it by: the wonderful 1947 guide book Old Salem Gardens, published by the Salem Garden Club, and several photographs in the American Garden Club’s Archives of American Gardens at the Smithsonian.

Chase Old Salem Gardens

Chase Old Salem Gardens 2

Chase Garden collage Just one of my many copies of the invaluable Old Salem Gardens (1947) with the Chase garden entry; the location of the Chase garden on the 1874 and 1891 Salem Atlases.

The Salem Garden Club ladies who produced Old Salem Gardens, chief among them Club President Mable Pollock, took great care to include historical information and personal reminiscences whenever possible, greatly enhancing the research value of their compilation: this is no little pamphlet! We hear all about the Chase Garden from the “discussive and chatty” Miss Chase, who grew up on the property, as her memories are transcribed onto the page. She tells us about the beds of ostrich ferns and rhododendrons in the immediate proximity of her family house, above which swayed purple beech and weeping birch trees, and a “large bed containing 72 plants of Azalea mollis bought from Lewis Van Houtte of Belgium”. In the spring there was white narcissus poeticus, followed by red salvia. Laburnum and althaea screened the large vegetable garden, which included salsify, rhubarb, asparagus, peas, beans, carrots, summer squash, tomatoes, onions and corn: the seed of the latter [came from] a cousin, Benjamin Fabens, and was called “Darling’s Early”. It was most satisfactory in every way, for the ears were not too long, and they had deep kernels and a small cob; the husk was quite red, as were the blades….it was the sweetest corn ever eaten at that time. Continuing along towards Salem Harbor along a box-bordered path, we “see” fruit trees and more exotic trees and shrubs, including a very notable varieties of magnolia and viburnum which particularly impressed repeat visitors from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Near the back of the garden were beds of roses, and a cutting garden of annuals and perennials, encircled by yet another row of shrubs and trees, including the oldest growth on the property, a locust grove, which nature had planted. All swept away on one day: June 25, 1914.

Chase Garden

Chase Garden AAG 1904 Smithsonian

Chase Garden After

Chase Garden After 2 Views of the front and back of the Chase Garden (including Mr. Chase himself on the bench), 1904, Archives of American Gardens, Smithsonian Institution; Ten years later on Lafayette Street: postcard views of the Fire’s immediate aftermath from the (commemorative???) Views of Salem after the Great Fire of June 25, 1914 brochure issued by the New England Stationery Company.