Among the many pleasures of our early years as school teachers were the vacations – summer of course, and February, and best of all, Christmas. Just as the days grew achingly short, the cold intense and the snows deep, we were sprung from stuffy classrooms, free to play in the snow, huddle by the fire, or best of all, go someplace else. Colleagues would travel to really warm places, Florida, the Islands, or Mexico. Read More | Comments

It is not really surprising that Georg Josef Kamel (1661-1706) never saw even a dried herbarium specimen of a camellia.  A Moravian apothecary, in our eyes Kamel  more than doubled the value of his calling as a Jesuit missionary by cataloging  the medicinal plants of the Philippines, where he began to botanize  in his late 20’s.  How many souls he may have saved for the Roman Catholic Church has not been recorded, at least on Earth.  But his brilliant botanical discoveries, sent to his English correspondent John Ray, were published by Ray in 1704, and constitute the first systematic study of the rich flora of the Phiippines.  They Read More | Comments

At North Hill, from earliest September to late in April, the most watched and watched over part of the whole garden is actually indoors, in a small quarter of the lower greenhouse.  On its bench live our collection of cyclamen, which includes many of the nineteen or so species in the genus.  Cyclamen grow outside too, in the open ground, but sadly, only one species is truly hardy in Vermont, the ivy-leaved cyclamen, C. hederifolium.  Though all the others relish a cool winter when they are in active growth, they need protection both from the Arctic cold that sweeps over Vermont in winter, and also protection from its lush, wet summers.  That is because all cyclamen are native to the Mediterranean basin – southern Europe, Asia Minor and northern Africa – and so,  like all denizens of that world, they want a wet, mild winter balanced by a dry, baking summer.  Fortunately, plants that crave a summer dormancy are among the easiest tender plants for the northern gardener to grow, since, during the most active part of the year, they can be stood outdoors a dry place or left in pots in the then emptied greenhouse.  Ours remain just where they have lived out most of their long lives, in their section of the front bench in the lower greenhouse.  There they sleep out the summer from late June until September, with no foliage, very little water, and internal temperatures that may reach 100 degrees on a hot summer day.  Except that the Aegean is not close by, that greenhouse is as near to Greece in the summer as any place in Vermont might be.  Or Corsica, or Libya, or Lebanon or Turkey.  The comparison is even reinforced by an old potted grape vine, ‘Datier de Leban,’ which is trained up into the eves and casts a light transparent shade over the bench. Read More | Comments