My grandmother came to visit this week, for the first time in a year.
Oh, she stops by from time to time, but I knew this visit was for a good, long spell: The wide, dramatic swath of grape hyacinths that carpet the slope of my front yard leading up to the door has burst into bloom.
And I know she’s proud to see them. Mom-mom gave the grape hyacinths to me the first autumn that my husband and I were in our house. She and I dug the dormant bulbs together from her back yard, the yard she’d cultivated since the 1930’s. I broke up the clumps and scattered the bulbs in a small, curvy trench, delighted upon their appearance the following spring, and have watched them multiply annually ever since.
I've been sharing plants with friends and family for only a short time in the grand scheme of things, but plan to continue for as long as I can. Friendship gardening is not only about amassing neat specimens. And it’s not just a frugal gardener’s best friend. Friendship gardening has made my house a home and will keep memories alive for years to come.
My older sister, Gloria, guided and gifted me through her five-acre woodland tract outside Amherst, Mass. Sherry from my Junior Women's Club gave me the Salvia "Caradonna" that blooms beneath my birdfeeder. My mother-in-law showed up with a clump of her Black-Eyed Susans one year, and they’ve provided an ever-growing month long blaze of fall color ever since. And Marena, a longtime family friend, gave me a cutting of ivy when we moved in - ivy that actually came from my childhood home, which my parents sold long before I had my own backyard to fill.
Even late in the growing season, my garden will be awash in color: flames of red sedum lining the rear bed of my back yard, a waterfall of white clematis cascading over a fence, and spires of blue monkshood reaching nearly six feet into the sky. And I didn’t buy a single one of them.
Friendship Gardens are about as old as sharing itself, and are created to reflect what friendship is all about: giving, caring, sharing, memories, sentiment and life.
While formal friendship gardens boast Old World origins - very old world, with some traced to ancient Japan - they didn't fully take hold in the New World until the early 20th Century, at the 1934 Chicago World's Fair. The International Friendship Gardens booth proved so popular that the Indiana-based organization has been going strong ever since: By the year 2000, its original single garden design had blossomed into a land plan that includes 25 gardens, ranging from ethnic gardens to an American Prairie garden to children’s gardens, all created with shared plants from around the nation and the world.
I also have a globe thistle, which wasn’t there when we bought the house, but arrived one way or another a few years ago. It is called Miss Willmot’s Ghost, with good reason: The globe thistle could easily be called the original friendship plant, since it had a "habit" of appearing everywhere Ellen Wilmott went. Legend has it that she carried thistle seeds with her wherever she went in jolly Olde England, scattering a few here and a few more there, informally starting friendship gardens along the way.
And that’s another charming aspect of friendship gardening. While formal or planned gardens would include full Latin names or labels for each specimen, home-grown friendship gardens traditionally do not. Plants tend to be called by the giver’s name: Helen’s Hosta, Sherry’s Salvia, Virginia’s Tulips, The Pascack Road House Ivy, Mom-Mom’s Rhubarb. If I ever move from this house, I’ll need to hire an additional truck just to carry plant divisions!
As far as plants go, I've given as good as I've gotten, from cheerful American Shasta Daisies that bloom all summer, to tasty divisions from my perennial herb garden to spice up the lives of friends and family throughout the year.
But some of my most valued specimens came from my grandmother, always the most hale and hearty do-it-yourself member of the family - she'd take any of us on, old or young! I can gaze out my kitchen window onto my backyard peppered with her perennials: a division of white peony that explodes into six-inch blooms in June, a dependable white astilbe that flowers even in the shade, a fall-blooming white clematis with delicate white flowers and a sweet vanilla scent that wafts throughout my garden when other plants are winding down for their long winter's rest.
Upon turning 90 in 2004, I noticed that she started gardening a little less with each passing year. Thinking back, that was the year that I stopped simply dabbling in the garden. The torch had been passed.
Her gift to me will always live on – and not just in my backyard. By the time she was two, my daughter, Annelise, Mom-Mom’s third great-grandchild, was toddling her way so enthusiastically through flowerbeds and our vegetable garden that I knew she would carry on the tradition. It’s a gift that I am proud to pass onto her, as Mom-Mom passed it onto me. We’re already planning to bring a cutting of “The Pascack Road Ivy,” some heirloom tomato seedlings Annelise started and a few eyes of “Mom-Mom’s white peony” to my younger sister’s housewarming party in May. Mom-Mom will always be with Joelle, too.
And I know Mom-Mom will always be with me, as grandmothers have that special way of somehow sitting on your shoulder and speaking to your heart wherever you may be.
Her pink peony blooms earlier than my others. Combined with the last of the tall, pink Elizabeth Arden tulips, “Virginia’s Tulips,” planted for Annelise the year she was born, the two create a lush backdrop and a colorful hint of the summer to come during family barbecues on Memorial Day.
When Annelise and I pick herbs to flavor a summer dinner, she can’t get enough of the fresh oregano, picking, sniffing and tasting cuttings from our thick, hardy bush – originally a small division from Mom-Mom.
For my daughter’s birthday parties in September, I create bouquets of Pee-Gee hydrangea blooms surrounded by tendrils of Mom-Mom’s white clematis.
When I returned from Mom-Mom’s funeral in April of the year she died, she was waiting for me at home: that huge swath of grape hyacinth began to bloom while we were away.
That’s when I cried, really cried, for the first time. A week later, when more had opened and the first mass of flowers were still going strong, that’s when I finally smiled again. Like some plants, relationships, too, can be wild, woolly and long-lived. They can make you laugh, sigh and cry, but they'll always make you marvel at their everlasting qualities. And no matter what the future brings, Mom-Mom will always live on in my own little River Edge garden, just as she does in my heart.
Oh, she stops by from time to time, but I knew this visit was for a good, long spell: The wide, dramatic swath of grape hyacinths that carpet the slope of my front yard leading up to the door has burst into bloom.And I know she’s proud to see them. Mom-mom gave the grape hyacinths to me the first autumn that my husband and I were in our house. She and I dug the dormant bulbs together from her back yard, the yard she’d cultivated since the 1930’s. I broke up the clumps and scattered the bulbs in a small, curvy trench, delighted upon their appearance the following spring, and have watched them multiply annually ever since.
I've been sharing plants with friends and family for only a short time in the grand scheme of things, but plan to continue for as long as I can. Friendship gardening is not only about amassing neat specimens. And it’s not just a frugal gardener’s best friend. Friendship gardening has made my house a home and will keep memories alive for years to come.
My older sister, Gloria, guided and gifted me through her five-acre woodland tract outside Amherst, Mass. Sherry from my Junior Women's Club gave me the Salvia "Caradonna" that blooms beneath my birdfeeder. My mother-in-law showed up with a clump of her Black-Eyed Susans one year, and they’ve provided an ever-growing month long blaze of fall color ever since. And Marena, a longtime family friend, gave me a cutting of ivy when we moved in - ivy that actually came from my childhood home, which my parents sold long before I had my own backyard to fill.
Even late in the growing season, my garden will be awash in color: flames of red sedum lining the rear bed of my back yard, a waterfall of white clematis cascading over a fence, and spires of blue monkshood reaching nearly six feet into the sky. And I didn’t buy a single one of them.
Friendship Gardens are about as old as sharing itself, and are created to reflect what friendship is all about: giving, caring, sharing, memories, sentiment and life.
While formal friendship gardens boast Old World origins - very old world, with some traced to ancient Japan - they didn't fully take hold in the New World until the early 20th Century, at the 1934 Chicago World's Fair. The International Friendship Gardens booth proved so popular that the Indiana-based organization has been going strong ever since: By the year 2000, its original single garden design had blossomed into a land plan that includes 25 gardens, ranging from ethnic gardens to an American Prairie garden to children’s gardens, all created with shared plants from around the nation and the world.I also have a globe thistle, which wasn’t there when we bought the house, but arrived one way or another a few years ago. It is called Miss Willmot’s Ghost, with good reason: The globe thistle could easily be called the original friendship plant, since it had a "habit" of appearing everywhere Ellen Wilmott went. Legend has it that she carried thistle seeds with her wherever she went in jolly Olde England, scattering a few here and a few more there, informally starting friendship gardens along the way.
And that’s another charming aspect of friendship gardening. While formal or planned gardens would include full Latin names or labels for each specimen, home-grown friendship gardens traditionally do not. Plants tend to be called by the giver’s name: Helen’s Hosta, Sherry’s Salvia, Virginia’s Tulips, The Pascack Road House Ivy, Mom-Mom’s Rhubarb. If I ever move from this house, I’ll need to hire an additional truck just to carry plant divisions!
As far as plants go, I've given as good as I've gotten, from cheerful American Shasta Daisies that bloom all summer, to tasty divisions from my perennial herb garden to spice up the lives of friends and family throughout the year.
But some of my most valued specimens came from my grandmother, always the most hale and hearty do-it-yourself member of the family - she'd take any of us on, old or young! I can gaze out my kitchen window onto my backyard peppered with her perennials: a division of white peony that explodes into six-inch blooms in June, a dependable white astilbe that flowers even in the shade, a fall-blooming white clematis with delicate white flowers and a sweet vanilla scent that wafts throughout my garden when other plants are winding down for their long winter's rest.
Upon turning 90 in 2004, I noticed that she started gardening a little less with each passing year. Thinking back, that was the year that I stopped simply dabbling in the garden. The torch had been passed.
Her gift to me will always live on – and not just in my backyard. By the time she was two, my daughter, Annelise, Mom-Mom’s third great-grandchild, was toddling her way so enthusiastically through flowerbeds and our vegetable garden that I knew she would carry on the tradition. It’s a gift that I am proud to pass onto her, as Mom-Mom passed it onto me. We’re already planning to bring a cutting of “The Pascack Road Ivy,” some heirloom tomato seedlings Annelise started and a few eyes of “Mom-Mom’s white peony” to my younger sister’s housewarming party in May. Mom-Mom will always be with Joelle, too.And I know Mom-Mom will always be with me, as grandmothers have that special way of somehow sitting on your shoulder and speaking to your heart wherever you may be.
Her pink peony blooms earlier than my others. Combined with the last of the tall, pink Elizabeth Arden tulips, “Virginia’s Tulips,” planted for Annelise the year she was born, the two create a lush backdrop and a colorful hint of the summer to come during family barbecues on Memorial Day.
When Annelise and I pick herbs to flavor a summer dinner, she can’t get enough of the fresh oregano, picking, sniffing and tasting cuttings from our thick, hardy bush – originally a small division from Mom-Mom.
For my daughter’s birthday parties in September, I create bouquets of Pee-Gee hydrangea blooms surrounded by tendrils of Mom-Mom’s white clematis.
When I returned from Mom-Mom’s funeral in April of the year she died, she was waiting for me at home: that huge swath of grape hyacinth began to bloom while we were away.
That’s when I cried, really cried, for the first time. A week later, when more had opened and the first mass of flowers were still going strong, that’s when I finally smiled again. Like some plants, relationships, too, can be wild, woolly and long-lived. They can make you laugh, sigh and cry, but they'll always make you marvel at their everlasting qualities. And no matter what the future brings, Mom-Mom will always live on in my own little River Edge garden, just as she does in my heart.
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