By Denise Cowiem, Inquirer Columnist
April 11, 2003
Last time we were at our cottage in the countryside of south-central Pennsylvania, winter was still firmly in control, and the garden, scoffing at most of my attempts at seasonal interest, was decidedly dormant.
So, as we headed out there last Friday night, I was eager to see what might have come up over the intervening weeks. It was now spring, after all, and this was the first weekend of April - officially, the first National Garden Month.
Spring was certainly starting to happen in Philadelphia. That same day, I'd gone to visit the Arboretum of the Barnes Foundation in Merion in search of flowers.
For most people, the Barnes Foundation means paintings, and admittedly it's hard to get past all those Renoirs and Picassos, Matisses and Cezannes in the world-famous collection. But the grounds themselves could be considered a work of art, albeit one in need of ongoing restoration. This arboretum, started in 1922 by Albert Barnes and his horticulturally oriented wife, Laura, is home to some old and spectacular trees, including a most unusually shaped Japanese Stewartia.
Several specimens date back to the prized collection of Capt. Joseph Lapsley Wilson, who sold the property to the Barneses on the condition that they take care of his trees.
Last Friday, though, it was the magnolia collection that demanded attention. Henry Butler, who's in charge of marketing and communications for the foundation, had called me about the arboretum's second annual plant sale, set for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow at the Arboretum House, 57 Lapsley Lane. (The grounds themselves are open to the public only by advance ticket sales.)
He also happened to mention that the magnolias were starting to bloom. I immediately wanted to see them, of course, because these magnolias form an impressive grove of mature trees near the front of the property.
But they weren't the only signs of spring. As we trekked around the 12-acre grounds, we saw daffodils poking up through the ground covers and hellebores in full throttle, and Cornus mas, more commonly known as Cornelian cherry dogwood, spreading its fuzzy yellow flowers against the sky.
One of the most charming sights was a carpet of tiny bluebells among the greenery around a long-unused teahouse and goldfish pond tucked away in a corner of a woodland area.
So I was well-primed for a bit of a spring spectacular at our own woodlands in Fulton County, and I wasn't disappointed. As we drove down the driveway about midnight last Friday, the headlights picked out myriad daffodils - the gleaming yellow of hundreds and hundreds of King Alfreds and Carltons in full flower, and even the soft white-and-cream of the Ice Follies, which usually open a bit later than the yellows.
Masses of daffodils in flower never fail to enchant me, even though my "naturalizing" daffodils tend to grow in clumps. This is because, faced with planting hundreds of bulbs over the years in this stony ground, I tended to group five or 10 in every hard-won hole, rather than tossing the bulbs out by the handful and planting them singly where they landed, in the approved manner for naturalizing.
But I don't mind. I love to be able to go out and cut scores of the cheerful flowers - many of which I haul back to Philadelphia in a bucket of water clenched between my feet - without making any noticeable difference in the outdoor display.
On Sunday, I celebrated National Garden Month by spending many back-breaking hours liberating my garden beds from blankets of huge leaves, left over from fall, that were making life difficult for countless new shoots that had decided to get with the official program and grow.
But April is a fickle month. On Monday, of course, it snowed. Henry Butler called from the Barnes. "It's just as well you came out on Friday," he said, "because it's like a winter wonderland here today."
Did my daffodils survive that wet and heavy dose of winter, or were their stems crushed by the weight? I won't know until I go back to the country. But it's spring inside my house in Philadelphia, where two large vases are crammed with daffodils that are still blooming their hearts out.
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This is the first year in which gardening is being celebrated nationally for a month. It grew out of National Garden Week, which the National Garden Bureau and 23 cosponsoring national horticultural organizations worked toward in the 1980s. That became official when President Reagan signed the proclamation on April 18, 1986.
Last year, however, the National Gardening Association (NGA) resolved to extend the celebration to the entire month of April, and a lot of organizations joined the association at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C., on April 2 to launch it.
You could argue that declaring a National Garden Month doesn't mean much, because there are numerous proclamations floating around out there. But it does shine a spotlight on a pastime and an industry that seem to keep growing and growing. That's according to recently released studies, anyway.
At its news conference in Washington last week, the NGA announced that the gardening industry grew by 8 percent in 2002, much more rapidly than the economy as a whole. According to a national survey (conducted by the NGA in cooperation with the Harris Organization for the National Landscape & Nursery Association), the total amount spent on all lawn and garden activities rose to $69 billion last year, up from $64 billion the year before.
Or, to put it in more user-friendly terms, that survey says 85 million Americans "spend more on do-it-yourself gardening projects than they spend on movie tickets and spectator events, like football and baseball, combined." (But keep in mind that "all lawn and garden activities" casts a pretty wide net.)
You can find out more about National Garden Month and related events at www.garden.org.
A national survey of consumer households conducted by the Virginia-based Garden Writers Association (GWA) indicated that most American gardeners were going ahead with their spring gardening plans despite the war in Iraq. The responses, said GWA president Nona Wolfram Koivula, "further support that gardening provides important relief from the pressures of daily events, especially during periods of significant economic and political uncertainty."
But unlike in World War II, when "victory gardens" provided food for families, flowers and other ornamental plants are at the top of the list of what gardeners will be planting this spring.
A research study by Pennsylvania-based Unity Marketing says three demographics distinguish the gardening market, which it sees as continuing to grow: home-owning, middle-aged, and affluent.
And, the study adds, purchases of gardening "hardware," such as furniture, tools, equipment, products, accents, and decorative accessories, are growing faster than purchases of the things I think gardening is all about, which Unity defines as "plants, seeds, shrubs, trees, and other plant material." But, oddly enough, the press release also says that "the real growth driver [in garden-related spending] is the consumers' passion to reconnect with the natural world."
That idea should resonate with most gardeners. What could be more magical than having a nondescript brown bulb turn into a beautiful daffodil?
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300 North Latch's Lane
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