Category Archives: BEAUTY

Are Trees Sentient Beings?

by Elsa Johnson

In an interview for Yale Environment 360, German forester Peter Wohlleben answers “Certainly”. And no, he doesn’t look like an Ent. Wohlleben argues that trees are wonderful beings with innate adaptability, intelligence, and the capacity to communicate with, and heal, other trees. How did he come to this Enti-ish belief?

As a forester, he says, he was trained to look at trees as economic commodities (I cannot resist an aside here: to wit — our culture does not value things unless they are commodities), but after joining an agency for a community beech forest in Hummel, Germany, he became disillusioned. He began to see the use of traditional commodity forestry – clear cutting, and chemical use, for example – as putting short term profits ahead of sustainability. Now he manages the forest completely differently. Distressed by these traditional forest management practices, he re-thought his position because he was someone who wanted to protect nature, and he was being asked to destroy it.

Gradually he learned that the individuals of a species actually work together and cooperate with one another. In his book The Secret Life of Trees, Wohlleben writes about how trees are sophisticated organisms that live in families. He uses the term “mother tree” to describe a tree that is at the center of an interconnected web of roots, that can distinguish whether the root it encounters is its own root, the root of another species, or the roots of its own species (this is crudely verified on our local level by our experience with the same species trees in Forest Hill Park succumbing to disease while different species trees close by survive it ). Wohlleben describes how trees pass electrical signals through the bark and into the roots, and from there into the fungi networks in the soil, and thus alert nearby trees to dangers such as insects, or disease. Trees can also learn he says, citing the example of trees that in the year after a drought took up less water in the spring so that more remained available in the soil later in the season.

Sometimes accused of anthropomorphizing trees, Wohlleben says “We humans are emotional animals. We feel things. We don’t just know the world intellectually. So I use words of emotion to connect with people’s experience.” And: “We have been viewing nature like a machine. This is a pity because trees are badly misunderstood.” And: “Nobody thinks about the inner life of trees, the feelings of these wonderful living beings.” And: “Plants process information just as animals do, but for the most part they do this much more slowly. Is life in the slow lane worth less than life on the fast track?”

Wohlleben offers the evidence that trees growing in undisturbed natural forest can beneficially affect climate change by reducing temperatures and helping the soil retain moisture under their vast canopy. Conversely, climate change adversely affects trees less densely planted, as in common practice in tree plantations. The extra CO2 in the air today is making young trees grow about 30%  faster than they did decades ago. The faster growth exhausts trees and makes them less healthy. Trees growing in undisturbed natural forest fare better, says Peter Wohlleben. They grow more closely together, causing humidity to rise, cooling the forest and helping soil retain moisture.

Ah, he loves his trees so much — maybe he is an Ent after all.

If you would like to read more of the interview with Peter Wohlleben, go to YALE ENVIRONMENT 360. The issue is 16 November, 2016. Yale 360 is an online magazine offering opinion, analysis, reporting, and debate on global environmental issues, written by scientists, journalists, environmentalists, academics, and policy makers (etc.). It is published by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The view and opinions expressed are those of the authors and not the school. 

   

  

GardenWalk Cleveland will be back in 2017!

Ann McCulloh, contributing editor

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In the heart of a Cleveland summer, hundreds of people stroll the city’s neighborhoods, invited to soak up the special character of each one, meeting residents and admiring their unique and welcoming gardens. GardenWalk Cleveland, a free, self-guided and volunteer-organized tour has been the vehicle for this special invitation since 2011. 

Last year (2016) Gardenwalk Cleveland took a one-year break, for a bunch of reasons that included an already crowded public event calendar (RNC, a national community gardening conference, to name two) some changes in funding sources, and the need to establish independent non-profit status. In hindsight, the break may have been an especially good idea, given the punishing drought we gardeners suffered all season long!

GardenWalk is back for 2017, and I for one am thrilled. Two neighborhoods have been chosen as definite hosts for the July 8 & 9 tour: Detroit-Shoreway and Collinwood. As many as two more will be added as planning for the event continues. A special focus on gardens that use native plants is planned for next year, too.

GardenWalk 2017 has mounted a crowdfunding campaign to cover the cost of producing maps, updating the website and other expenses associated with putting on the event. Contributions are already underway through November 18th at https://www.ioby.org/project/gardenwalk-cleveland-2017

Inspired by a similar event in Buffalo, New York, GardenWalk Cleveland’s mission is “to build community, beautify neighborhoods, and encourage civic pride.”  As a transplant to Cleveland (pun intended) I have been delighted to discover the neighborhoods of Cleveland (Old Brooklyn Hough, Larchmere, Tremont and more) and meet the truly charming and individual gardeners who live and garden there.

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The two times I put my own garden on the tour I met a steady parade of wonderful fellow gardeners, and had many inspiring conversations. One visitor even came back a day or two later with a gift of special plants from her own garden! You can learn more about GardenWalk, and get involved! at http://www.gardenwalkcleveland.org/

Prayer to the Green Tara

by Elsa Johnson

green tara image

Small rose     rosette    

rosetta of greening  on grey stone

celadon   jade    acid

green    apple   greening

frost fuzzed    felt adorned    

white furred    greening

Rose Of The Seed World     

little sunflower      seed side

down    green side up

aglow on grey stone.   

Not centered  but  placed 

precisely    inside a circle    

paler than the grey stone

on which it lies

signified thus :

Cornucopia of Seed Heaven

Who prays to you

Rosetta of Mice

and in what language?

Who offered you

Sacred Object of Chipmunks

Prayer Wheel of Squirrels

and in what manner?

Harvest of Birds         

who caws you?    Green Lotus

Celadon    jade    acid 

green     apple    greening    

on grey stone —

Who worships you ?

little sunflower     little rose

little green lotus     seed side

down            green side up

Pollinator Pocket Progress

by Elsa Johnson and Catherine Feldman

Last fall Gardenopolis Cleveland decided to offer to help people develop pollinator pockets, starting with soil building via lasagna mulching in the fall, then returning the following spring to plant pollinator attracting flowers. But, of course, before we began, we had to have a sign…so we designed one.Gardenopolis_PollinatorPocket_final_o

When you see this sign around town, look for a nascent pollinator pocket.

Next, we sent our idea out into the ether and in a short time-voila!-we had a handful of takers.

The original idea had been to place our pollinator pockets on tree lawns or front yards for visibility (else why need a sign?) and make them all the same–a formula–but we quickly ran into a hitch–nature doesn’t do formulas. Each site we looked at was different than the one before.

Since our sites were all different–one long, skinny and very shady, several sunny, one on the edge of the woods–we realized that we needed a variety of plants to meet a variety of conditions. Our goal was that each pocket had plants attractive to pollinators across one complete growing season, i.e., spring to fall. Now we needed to consider plants that could handle a broad spectrum of environmental conditions. Surely a job for (drum roll) native plants!

Our selection included milkweed, aster, coneflower, pink turtlehead, agastache, lobelia, geranium, eupatorium, native solomon’s seal, golden road and salvia. This mix tended toward mid-summer to fall bloomers–we found it interesting how so many of our native wildflowers are late season. We used only plants that were designated as unappetizing to deer.

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We usually buy plants in one or two gallon containers but because we needed a variety of plants and needed to keep our costs down we purchased very small plugs from a native plant mail-order nursery.

Checking on our pollinator pockets this fall we found varying results. One that had not been watered was basically gone. But, the rest were growing and doing well–though it will be next year before they mature and fill their purpose.

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If the idea of a pollinator pocket in your garden seems appealing, just let us know. Our goal is a pocket in every garden!

 

FYI

*A lasagna mulch consists of layers of soil building materials-newspaper, manure, compost, green and dried leaves, straw and wood chips or cover crop-that break down over time to increase the organic composition of the soil.

*A pollinator pocket is an area of at least 5’x5′ planted with a range of plants that help sustain bees, bugs, butterflies and birds throughout the year. Ideally, such pockets would exist in every yard so that the pollinators could travel from one to the next fulfilling their needs.

The Peripatetic Gardener Visits Naumkeag

by Lois Rose

By chance, because of my son’s wedding, I was able to visit a unique and memorable garden near Stockbridge, Massachusetts recently. We had part of day “off” from wedding festivities and decided to see this estate which includes a “cottage” designed by Stanford White and built for Joseph Hodges Choate, a well-known attorney, between 1886 and 1887 on the top of a hill overlooking fields and mountains.

The 44-room mansion called to my husband and cousin but for me and my other cousin it was the gardens.  Mabel Choate, the daughter of Joseph, worked with Fletcher Steele for over 30 years to produce them.  They are a “collection” of garden rooms, eclectic and entertaining, spanning most of the space around the house on the hill top.  Unfortunately they had fallen into disrepair over the years.  The Trustees of Naumkeag took over the restoration of the gardens and there is a tremendous amount of new planting and replanting going on. 

The Blue Steps are the most well-known aspect of the rooms, extending from an area near the house down to the lowest part of the gardens.  If you have ever glanced through a book about structures in gardens, then this picture will be familiar. 

The Tree Peony Garden has been completely redone and the peonies are not looking their best after a serious drought this past summer.  Built into the side of the hill on terraces, it must have baked in the heat.  The Chinese Garden is quaint with mostly hardscape at this point.  The Evergreen Garden is impressive and elegant. The Afternoon Garden is against the side of the house and has a great view down to the fields below the house. 

Water features, stonework, paths—all restored or in the process.  New plantings have restored privacy and recreated vistas throughout the gardens.  There is an unexpected grove of pines and older trees five minutes from the house: suddenly you are in the woods, away from anything planned or ordered. 

The house delighted my companions, but I think my cousin Dan and I got the better part of the tour.

Mum’s NOT the Word!

Ann McCulloh, contributing editor

Ahhh autumn! The Equinox is past. Days shorten, nights cool. I imagine most of us infatuated with gardens, ours and others, experience this season with the same poignant mix of celebration, regret and  relief.  Although we are feeling the signals to relinquish, retreat, slow down, there’s such renewed energy in the air too! So many cool-loving annuals like nasturtiums, alyssum,

photo-1-alyssumlettuce, broccoli all leap up, refreshed and re-sprouting after the baking heat of summer. Fall-bearing raspberries

photo-2-red-raspberry are bending under the weight of their fruit. Grapes, nuts, apples swell to ripeness. Tomatoes, squash, eggplants are producing on and on, holding out hopes for the Thanksgiving table.

I’ve never been good at letting go of summer, but the humming bees collecting nectar from winter savory and borage blossoms inspire me to fill my own cupboard for the long cold season.  I’m cutting tarragon, basil, Oregano and thyme to dry. Freezing some tomatoes, and putting winter squash on top of the fridge to cure in the warm air up there. I’m making cuttings of my favorite coleus to winter over, and getting my houseplants ready for their indoor sojourn.

I have to admit that I’m just not very fond of the traditional fall garden décor of pumpkins, gourds, kale and ubiquitous chrysanthemums. Instead, my affection strengthens year after year for the hardy flowers that, just like me, are perennially late to the party.  Just a sampling of what’s coming into bloom now, to cheer the cusp of the season: Japanese anemone (Anemone x hybrida),

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hardy Cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium), Turtlehead (Chelone glabra),

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Toadlily (Trycyrtis hirta), Closed Gentian (Gentiana andrewsii),

photo-5-gentianMonkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii),

photo-6-monkshoodGoldenrod (Solidago spp.),  October Daphne (Sedum sieboldii), Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans), Yellow waxbells (Kirengeshoma palmata), New England asters (Aster noviae-angliae),

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and even some long-blooming roses, like Rosa ‘Iceberg’. These are the guests at my fall fete. It’s a full house! I’m very much in a festival mood, even though thoughts of the after-party cleanup are looming. Not in the mood for stiff, funereal mums!

Planning an Old Growth Forest for the Seventh Generation (Citizen Science in Forest Hill Park)

by Elsa Johnson

My friend Maria Armitage says that whenever her husband Keith goes for a walk in Forest Hill Park, when he comes home, he says: “It’s a jewel.” 

A few years ago the East Cleveland Parks Association (a volunteer board that works with the City of East Cleveland to help maintain the East Cleveland portions of Forest Hill Park; disclosure — I am on this board) began to become concerned about oak tree deaths occurring in two iconic areas of the park. The two areas, designed and named by A.D. Taylor in his 1936 master plan for the park, are The Great Meadow and The Meadow Vista. Both are upland oak savannahs – i.e., unique, lightly forested grasslands where oaks are the dominant species. Such savannahs were historically maintained by fire (set by man, or by wildfires resulting from lightning strikes), or were the result of grazing. In the history of the park since it has been a park, the savannah environments have been maintained through mowing.

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By the time John D. Rockefeller Sr. bought the property in the late mid-century of the 1800’s, these two upland areas were pastures studded with oak trees. This was probably their beginning as oak savannahs. We do not know how old the trees in these pastures were at this time. They may have been scattered remnants of the original forests that were there in 1796 when Moses Cleaveland surveyed the Cuyahoga River site that became the City of Cleveland. Or they may have been young trees, or a mix of both. We do know that Rockefeller added a few specimen trees here when he bought the property 2/3rds of a century later, but those trees were exotic species, not oaks. We also know that the Cleveland Museum of Natural History inventoried some of the largest trees in The Great Meadow and designated some of them ‘Moses Cleaveland Trees’. What this means, in the year 2016, is that the oldest of these trees are over 200 years old, while the youngest of those original savannah trees are a minimum of 150 years old.

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By any standard, old growth forest.

So when the savannahs/meadows began to lose trees – one of the first to go was a huge and spectacular Moses Cleaveland Tree in The Great Meadow, lost in 2011 – ECPA was deeply concerned, and became more so with each passing year, with the loss of additional trees, in what seemed like a ring spreading out from the site of the original losses, with Meadow Vista area suffering many, many, more tree losses than The Great Meadow.

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If any area can be described as the heart of Forest Hill Park it is The Great Meadow.  It is the crossroads through which all paths must pass to get elsewhere, and it is the one place in the park with an unfettered view from the eastern end of the meadow all the way through to the western end of the meadow, a distance of about half a mile. And then, from the west end (where Rockefeller once had his summer home), the view continues out over Cleveland’s east side and on, out over Lake Erie toward invisible Canada, some 50 miles away.

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Since 2011 the park has lost 6 trees in The Great Meadow, most of them in one centralized area. In The Meadow Vista area the park has lost 6 to 7 trees (or more) each year, and more than one area has been affected. In one area so many trees have been lost as to profoundly affect soil hydrology. ECPA watched, worried, and wondered how to get a handle on what was going one, and what did whatever was going on mean for the future of these iconic old growth oak savannahs? It became obvious that there was a necessity to plan for the planting of new trees to ensure oak savannahs for the future. To help answer these questions ECPA established The Great Meadow Task Force which reached out to The Holden Arboretum’s Community Forester, Chad Clink. His recommendation was 1.) test affected trees for pathogens, and 2.) do a thorough inventory using a certified arborist.

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Alas, ECPA is a volunteer organization funded through donations and small grants, and this looked expensive, so the task force cast about and found : The Plant Doctor, Dr. David Roberts, Senior Academic Specialist at Michigan State University, discoverer of the Emerald Ash Borer, and specialist in diseases and pests of oak trees, who volunteered to come down and spend a day looking at trees in The Great Meadow.

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Much planning ensued. What information was necessary?  Was there additional information that would be interesting? — That would help people be interested and want to invest in a Save-A-Tree/Plant-A-Tree program? — That would reforest the meadows and create an old growth forest that would still be there in another 200 years, for the seventh generation? 

The task force began by tagging each tree with a number and locating it on a photographic map. It was decided the walk-through would look at each tagged tree and list its species, general health, and recommendations for its care, and also measure each tree’s circumference (by which one applies a formula to arrive at its diameter), the distance out from the tree of its canopy drip-line, the height of the tree, and an estimate of its age (by Dr. Roberts). By using specific calculations this information can tell one how much carbon each tree is sequestering — the task force thought that would be cool information.

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The walk-through revealed that, of the old trees in the Great Meadow – a total of about 70 trees – many, if not most, are close to or exceed 100 feet in height. The largest tree has a circumference of 15 feet – but many other trees are very nearly as big around. Canopy was the most variable component measured, with trees standing in isolation having larger canopy spreads than trees growing in the proximity of an oak grouping. And Dr. Roberts estimated the various ages age of the trees as around 150 to 200 years old, which fit with their known history. He said that the trees in The Great Meadow are largely in good health, and what a pleasure it was to visit such a collection of healthy old growth trees.

All of this information is in the process of being brought together in a spreadsheet. It will be used to seek funds for the necessary maintenance of these valuable trees in their unique and iconic savannah environment, and also for the planting of new trees so that the oak savannahs of Forest Hill Park remain the inspiration of exclamations like : “It’s a jewel!”

Note: ECPA is hoping to get Dr. Robert back for a return visit to study the diseases and/or pests affecting the trees in The Meadow Vista.

Note : To learn more about ECPA and Forest Hill Park go to ecpaohio.org

How to Measure the Height of a Tree (without climbing it).

You will need a stiff equilateral triangle with a drinking straw taped to one side of it which you will use to look through, and a 100 foot measuring tape. You will need two people. One person will stand at the trunk of the tree holding the zero end of the tape. The other person will walk away from the tree spooling out the tape. When she gets out to what she thinks is the tree’s height, she will stop, take the triangle, and at eye level, line the horizontal bottom of the triangle parallel to the ground and the vertical side of the triangle parallel to the trunk of the tree. Looking through the straw, she will look for the top of the tree. When she can see where the tree leaves touch the sky, she will note the distance on the measuring tape (she may have to move and try this several times). The height of the tree is the distance measured on the tape plus her height at eye level added to it.     This is fun to do.

           

Book Review of “Gardening in a Post-Wild World” by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West

A Book Review by Evelyn Hadden of Garden Rant; reposted by with permission from Evelyn Hadden

Big Ahas from Planting in a Post-Wild World

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Their primary audience may be other designers, but Thomas Rainer and Claudia West’s Planting in a Post-Wild World (Timber Press, 2016) offers many take-aways for regular gardeners too. The book outlines how to design and maintain an ecological landscape, and does so in beautifully clear, fluid language that is easy to read and absorb.

The first few pages had me reaching for my notebook to jot down phrases from the book and ideas it sparked for my own garden. Even better, Rainer and West pointed out gaps in my own way of designing. My biggest aha was their concept of “design layers.”

“The good news is that it is entirely possible to design plantings that look and function more like they do in the wild: more robust, more diverse, and more visually harmonious, with less maintenance. The solution lies in understanding plantings as communities of compatible species that cover the ground in interlocking layers.” — page 17

I was used to thinking in terms of vertical layers of plants that physically occupy different niches; this frankly produces landscapes that are ecologically functional and diverse but not necessarily beautiful to those who don’t understand ecology. What makes them beautiful is their robust health and the life they support; visual impact is strictly a secondary consideration.

But Rainer and West present a powerful set of tools for adding aesthetic oomph while maximizing ecological function. They advise viewing a landscape in terms of four different layers (really, roles) that can be focused on individually while designing, and also while determining ongoing maintenance strategies.

Structural Layer: most powerful year-round key parts of a design. These should be retained through the years, replaced if needed, and kept clearly defined as they form the backbone on which the rest of the design hangs.

Seasonal Layer: waves of color and/or texture provided by each season’s visually dominant “design” plants. These are maintained by treating them en masse, thinning or spreading as necessary.

Groundcover Layer: provides the main diversity of the planting and therefore most of the ecological function. This layer does not contribute noticeably to the aesthetic design, except as a living mulch. Manage it by retaining and augmenting diversity as much as possible to maximize its functionality and the health of all the plants in the landscape.

Gap Fillers: self-sowing plants distributed regularly through the planting and encouraged to set seed. This builds up a seed bank of desirable plants which will ideally sprout to fill any gaps that occur.

I love how the authors separate the main aesthetic contributors (the first two layers) from the main ecological contributors (the last two). That makes it much easier to create a landscape that is strong in both beauty and functionality.

For a gardener unfamiliar with ecology (the science of how nature works), this book is a great primer. Sample insights include:

  • Plants fare better in communities.

    “When plants are paired with compatible species, the aesthetic and functional benefits are multiplied, and plants are overall healthier.” — page 47

  • Rational guidelines for moving past the natives-only debate.

    “… place the emphasis on a plant’s ecological performance, not its country of origin… The combination of adapted exotics and regionally native species can expand the designer’s options and even expand ecological function.” — page 42

  • Work with each unique site.

    “For designers interested in creating communities with a rich sense of place, the first step is simple: accept the environmental constraints of a site. Do not go to great effort and cost to make soil richer, eliminate shade, or provide irrigation. Instead, embrace a more limited palette of plants that will tolerate and thrive in these conditions.” — page 47

  • Rather than creating generic “ideal conditions” (by bringing in soil or amendments), rely on plants to gradually improve a site.

    “Hundreds of thousands of root channels will heal and rebuild even highly disturbed and compacted soils over time, and enrich low-lying soil horizons with organic matter. The more roots, the more quickly a soil is restored. In order to get as many roots in the ground as possible, plant as densely as possible and use a diversity of root morphologies to interact with the soil at different levels.” — page 194

  • Cover the ground with plants.

    “Plant ground covers wherever there is space for them: under trees, shrubs, and taller perennials. Fill all gaps between taller plants… Use them like you would mulch.” — page 180

The authors move from details to big-picture with ease. They advise starting each design with a “vision” patterned after a natural landscape (or archetype) such as woodland or meadow. This concept is dear to my heart, and I would like to see it treated in more detail  beyond the few basic archetypes mentioned in this guide. Some of the most affecting landscapes I’ve encountered were created by designers who were intimately familiar with regional ecosystems in their many variations, and were able to use them as inspiration.

Another important point brought home by the book is that a designed landscape — to stay functional and beautiful — needs thoughtful management as well as ongoing attention to its design. An installation followed by generic maintenance strategies will not preserve aesthetics or ecology. This aha combines that beloved old adage “a garden is never finished” with Abraham Maslow’s astute observation that “if you only have a hammer, it is tempting to treat every problem as a nail.”

“Because communities are dynamic, managing them is a creative process… Designers must be part of a planting’s life as regular and ongoing consultants.” — p. 221

Let us hope the well-defined and highly desirable steps laid out by Rainer and West help to hasten the end of the modern “mow-and-blow” approach to landscape management, in which we routinely cut down, poison, or prune plants without regard for their growth habits or their web of connections, applaud sterility and unpalatability, and kill off the majority while pampering the chosen few. Let us follow Planting in a Post-Wild World into a future where humans respectfully manage landscapes for our comfort, our quality of life, and our very existence, while acknowledging (in our treatment of them) the inherent value of these living communities.

Posted by on July 20, 2016 at 1:27 pm, in the category Books, CRRRI

A Song of Gentle Extirpation (Chasmanthium)

by Elsa Johnson

Some plants that you invite to your garden                                       

can never over-stay ‘welcome’                                                    even

when they overstep                                   Sea oats aren’t like that : 

they spread      take up space      crowd      sprawl like their name

sprawls on a page                      and                            given a year or   

two            they inundate                drown out phlox                 lilies

agastache                   the plants we love                 that beacon

butterflies                    and all kinds of bees                        Our eyes

need spaces          to pause          to rest          to breathe            Air   

that seems to hold nothing                  holds our eyes            which       

land         dry off their wings                                    then fly on again                       

This grass              that works to bind beach dunes                stilling 

sand against the surge                         works wrongly in my garden   

  •   graceful though it be when the soft winds  stir

The Peripatetic Gardener Visits Kingwood Center Garden

by Elsa Johnson

I’ve been visiting Kingwood most of my life – so far back, anyway, that I cannot remember the first time… but when I ask other Clevelanders, including gardeners, if they have been to Kingwood, most of them do not know Kingwood exists, even though it is a relatively easy one and a half hour drive down route 71.

Kingwood is a – sort of – example example of the English Landscape School, the garden style (or estate style) that did away with formalism in the late 18th century, and in its place offered idyllic pastoral landscapes that typically included gently rolling lawns interspersed with specimen trees, re-creations of formal classical architecture (‘follies’) punctuating the ends of long sweeps of lawn, lakes and views, and curving and meandering pathways, all offering and supporting views of idealized nature.  All this was very different from the formal geometrical gardens that had come before.     

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Kingwood, at a slight 47 acres, is this in miniature. To visit Kingwood is to feel you have stepped back in time and place, as if to Jane Austen country.  This could be the estate of someone from the minor nobility or the well-off established gentry – not really quite grand enough to be the estate of landed high aristocrats, but a long, long, long way from the hoi polloi.

It is the brick mansion and other architectural works that establish this tone, set like a gems in their park-like setting, but it is the gardens that flesh out this fantasy. One without the other would not be nearly as wonderful.

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The mansion sits set into a hillside off in the center of the property, but this center feels like the cornerstone, as the southwest quadrant of the estate is mostly woodland and remains outside of one’s awareness. One arrives at the mansion on the lowest level via a rather grand entry courtyard enclosed by high brick walls. To the north of the entry courtyard an opening in the wall steps down to a terrace that in turn looks out over a descending sweep of lawn, bordered by flowers and trees, that terminates some distance away in a fountain. During a recent May visit, this esplanade was decorated by young ladies in pretty prom dresses, looking flower-like themselves, and their somewhat bewildered escorts. 

South of the entry court one enters the house into a ground floor arrival hall; the visitor then proceeds up the stairs to the living levels. From this living level one looks through the rooms (unfortunately one cannot actually go into them) and sees that this level also opens out at ground level, but one level higher, to a serene sweep of lawn and majestic specimen trees, many of them venerable beeches and maples. This relative inaccessibility makes visiting the high side of the estate something of an afterthought for most people, one suspects, but it is the space that most clearly shouts: English Landscape School. One can follow a path around the house to arrive at this space (there are also meandering paths through a little woodland garden west of the house).

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From here one can walk east toward what seems to be an impenetrable wall of high hedges, some ten feet to fifteen feet tall,  of hemlock, and ubiquitous yew. These hedges are well worth seeing in their own right.  How often does one see this scale of hedging executed and maintained so successfully?

These hedges enclose a series of formal, tiered, cascading terraces — ornamented at the very top by my favorite sculpture of the naked god Pan poised to play his pipe, with a playful goat wrapping itself around his knees, reminding us of Pan’s animal nature.

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These terraces terminate some distance away, on down the slope,

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with an alcove set into a tall hedge, holding a sculpture of a lovely maiden – surely a tryst inducing place.

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East of this folly the lawn opens out again and a path meanders through it, anchored here and there by perennial beds. From there one can wander into a conservatory and a retail plant shop. Here Kingwood grows all the annuals it plants in its various formal beds. North of the conservatory lies what was the service entrance to the estate and all the working areas of the estate; here a large u-shaped building once sheltered horses on one side and chickens on the other – one can still see the little doors that were opened so the chickens could run outside.

reburbrished chicken coop

stables converted to meting spaceToday these buildings are used for events (Kingwood is a popular site for weddings) and garden shows.

East of these is the rose garden, which leads on to an herb garden enclosed by a white pine hedge, and then over to the east end of the small lake/pond, where the space between the pond and the stable is being turned into (via a master plan) a terrace and a rain garden, with the water coming off of the roofs of the old stable buildings. These spaces, more intimate in their scale, feel more ‘gardeny’ and less ‘estatey’… and are a nice place to stop and eat that picnic lunch you brought with you, while the peacocks holler in the distance (warning – we’re not kidding about the picnic lunch — Mansfield has little to offer in the way of restaurants).

I like to end my visit to Kingwood in the perennial garden, tucked in the space between the sloping lawn esplanade off the entry court and a drive down from it. There are several huge cypress trees here with interesting knees poking up out of the ground.

cypress knees

The perennials grow among them, swirling together in pleasing, loose, soft masses. Nothing formal about these.

We (co-editors Elsa Johnson and Catherine Feldman) would like to thank the Director of Kingwood Center Gardens, Charles Gleaves, who graciously escorted us on this most recent tour. From him we learned that the City of Mansfield provides Kingwood with leaves in the fall. These, shredded and composted, are then applied to the various beds, both permanent and annual – a practice we have written about in Gardenopolis Cleveland and encourage. After years of such application the result is a deep rich soil in which plants flourish, which is slow to dry out, even in our current drought.   

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If you have planned your time well you might still have time and energy for a quick visit to Louis Bromfield’s Malabar Farm, now a state park. Although more remembered for his fiction and semi-celebrity status, Bromfield also wrote agricultural treatises, and he made Malabar a working farm experimenting in innovative, scientific, sustainable framing practices. Bromfield believed that resource conservation – especially soil and water – was America’s biggest challenge.

We would say it still is. 

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