Garden Notes - an occasional column

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May 21, 2003 - It's an Awesome Spring

The Amen! of nature is always a flower.
- Sir Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I love the play of color in a garden. Recently while watering in a new tree, I noticed a wonderful smell. The source was a lilac - its purple flowers shimmering in the last rays of daylight. Walking to the front door, I found myself lingering and gazing at the flowering creeping phlox and noticing for the first time that they are the same beautiful soft purple as the lilac. Purple creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera 'Sherwood Purple') seems to especially glow when paired with the soft almost chartreuse yellow of the emerging hosta planted within it's mass. And the purple is further intensified by contrast of the nearby yellow and green euonymus (its colors softened by the part shade conditions). Adding fragrance and a bit more variety, but not too much, is luminous small white flowers of the variegated daphne (Daphne x burkwoodii 'Carol Mackie') which glowed bright in the twilight. Meanwhile in a nearby bed the show continued with a massed planting (maybe seven) of purple leafed coral bell (Heuchera 'Palace Purple') interspersed with repeating masses (six inches across perhaps) of true blue dwarf hyacinths bulbs. Both are mellowed with the emerging dusty silver- blue hosta (maybe 7 or 9). All these growing under the reddish- leafed crabapple with the dark pink flowers. Yet another combination to savor in the evening light. Unbelievably just a week or two earlier, I was spellbound by pink, yellow, and red tulips seen through the verdigris blue of metal bench, the plantings just described still in winter mode. I notice that soon the very special native wildflower Shooting Star (Dodecatheon) will bloom in this bed. I am awed as these spring gardens unfold.

But, there's more. Continuing the yellow theme the green and gold euonymus (Euonymus f. 'Emerald 'n Gold') repeats across the path, this time combining with the stunning florescent yellow euphorbia (perhaps Euphobia epithymoides), tangerine orange primulas, pure yellow trollius (Trollius 'Lemon Queen'), pastel pansies in pink, purple, yellow, blue, and magnificent orange- yellow tulips streaked with red (is this the kind of "break" that launched the tulip mania that seized Dutch fortunes in seventeen century I wonder?)

I reach for Michael Pollan's book "The Botany of Desire, A Plant's- Eye View of the World" (a great entertaining read I might add). While reading to confirm the dates of the tulip frenzy, my attention is caught by the sentence wherein he postulates what if we as humans are born with a predisposition to be drawn to flowers…instinctively he asks? A theory that some evolutionary psychologists have proposed, but can't prove until genes for human preferences can be identified, is that the human brain " developed under the pressure of natural selection makes us good foragers". Gatherers that recognized flowers as a source of fruit and remembered what and where they were had a better chance of returning to find the fruit first than those who didn't. Pollan goes farther and states "in the time the moment of recognition-much like the quickening one feels whenever an object of desire is spotted in the landscape-would become pleasurable, and the signifying thing a thing of beauty". (Page 68 for your reference) So here I am millennia later noticing the scent and color of flowers and finding the complimentary colors enjoyable, soothing, and beautiful as I'm drawn to look- to really see -to notice and savor the individual flower with its distinctive details because this attention was a survival skill. Perhaps it still is.

As a designer I've become aware that it is flowers that draw us into the garden, color and pattern that beckon us along a path to journey to a place that holds our attention…indeed fascinates us for a few seconds or minutes only to discover within that time we relax, indeed our fascination creates " a mini restorative experience" in the words of authors Rachel and Stephen Kaplan in the essay "The Role of Nature in the Urban Context". And yet I've also observed that if the space doesn't work, if it is vague, then we are unsettled at some level below our conscious awareness so that we might not linger or allow ourselves to be drawn into the garden so that we can enjoy that relaxed state. Coupling this thought with Michael Pollan's earlier make me wonder if this is another evolutionary aspect. The human sense of recognizing place. Frances Mayes speaks to this idea in her book "Under the Tuscan Sun" when she muses over a few lines of Bachelard's " The Poetics of Space" wherein he writes about "the house as a 'tool for analysis' of the human soul". She takes this idea further stating that 'where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave". (Page 86) House and garden, twin aspects, of the same place and thus another measure of the importance of the garden space. I leave you to ponder these ideas as you notice and savor all the magic of this spring in our gardens now.

Action Items for Busy Gardeners

Continue to weed tree seedlings, remove perennials that have seeded into undesired places, pause and enjoy the fragrance of lilacs.