Gardening At Our Old House
by James Cummings
I became addicted to the art of gardening in 1977 when I purchased the
home of Albert Johnson from his estate. He and his wife had run a gardening
business for many years from this property. They had a small homemade
greenhouse and gardens full of perennials. They also kept a house full
of African Violets which they sold to people from many parts of the world.
Mr. Johnson had died at age 98 and the gardens had been well kept. Today there are still some flowers coming up which I do not know the name of. I hope to put pictures of these up on this site in the summer and finally find out what they are. I have, by disease and attrition lost a few of the perennials which were here when I moved in, but I have saved the majority of them. The garden, as gardens and gardeners do, has metamorphosed over the years and continues to do so.
This view from the second floor back window was taken in 1924. What appears to be a stone wall is actually a mill dam.
The name of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson's garden was Fair View Gardens. For years I couldn't quite understand the name. Perhaps, I thought, this was an old Yankee manner of saying the view from here was only fair, bur fair enough for anybody that wasn't too fussy. Then their daughter sent me some pictures of the place from the 1930's when there was major flooding with the hurricane of 1938.
There had not been the trees in the back of the house that there are today and you could see way down the brook past the sand ridges that the brook had carved its way through over the centuries to where the brook emptied into a pond which had once been a channel of the Merrimack River- fair view indeed.
Mr. and Mrs. Johnson left the legacy of their gardening in the form of old varieties of perennial flowers, shrubs, trees and backyard fruits. Here is a picture of the tag that came with the blackberry canes that they ordered. These berries still produce abundantly every year.
The order date from this tag is 1932. I still eat the berries and make jelly and jam.
Two old pear trees produce a bounteous crop every
other year. An old variety of rhubarb pokes its head out of the soil every
April. An apple tree grew out of a clump of old lilacs and I am pruning it
back and will use some organic method of dealing with the pests. I do not
know what variety it is, but it matures in late August. The fruit is
yellow, soft and sweet. They would not be winter keepers, so when I get the
disease and pest problem figured out, they will become applesauce in the
freezer. There are elderberries, and barberries growing and although they
are both edible, I have not done anything with them.
Tucked away under the back cellar stairs were several bottles of homemade
elderberry wine, left here by Mr. & Mrs. Johnson. I can't say that I cared for
it. There are Butternut trees growing all down the hill to the brook. The
squirrels beat me to most of the nuts.
Gardening is a folk art and sometimes aspires to fine art, or at least some of its practitioners do. I have stuck with the folk art concept. It is quite a bit easier to live up to.
I sometimes buy plants from the more elite shops and buy seeds from the du jour seed catalogs. Sometimes I find some great stuff at Walmart. Gardeners being a sharing bunch, I've had quite a bit of green stuff given to me.
Some flower beds are laid out in a formal way and some just grow as they will, cottage style. My current vegetable garden gets its design from Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening method, slightly modified by me. The fruits and vines take a bit of pruning once a year and then fend for themselves. The garden gives me food to eat, and flowers to smell; and attracts the birds and bugs that sing and chirp and buzz. The area gives me an outdoor photo studio where I study form and color and texture. The garden also gives us art materials to make wreaths and flower poundings and sun prints.
© Copyright 2001. James Cummings, Quilter's Muse Publications, Concord, NH.