Hanging with a Mass of Rockers

I’m just back from speaking to a couple of North American Rock Garden Society Chapters in Massachusetts, an area I hadn’t visited in over two decades. My journey began at the Berkshire Botanic Gardens in Stockbridge, a venue I last spoke at in 1999. Over 50 folks showed up on a cold, drizzly day, as we talked about some of my favorite rock garden plants. The meeting was followed by a rare plant auction that included well over 100 different plants. It was great to see so many long-time plant friends, as well as meeting some folks in person that I’d only known previously from on-line correspondence.

It was great to see my friend, Pierre Bennerup, who I roomed with on my 1996 expedition to China. Pierre, a nonagenarian, is the retired founder of the now defunct Sunny Border Nursery, and founding member of the Perennial Plant Association. On the left is Elisabeth Zander, Chair of the Berkshire NARGS chapter, and webmaster for the North American Rock Garden Society.

It was great to finally meet Dr. Michael Marcotrigiano in person, after corresponding for decades via email. Michael is the retired director of the Smith College Botanical Garden at UMass, and Elaine Chittenden, also retired, worked with Michael as Manager of Living Collections. Michael has a new book on the science of variegated plants, due out next year. His most famous plant introduction is Amorphophallus konjac ‘Shattered Glass’.

Paul Held, who I’d also never met, is best known for his tireless promotion of Primula sieboldii. At 87 years young, Paul still maintains a collection of over 500 cultivars, which is a far cry from our 34 cultivars.

After the talk, I was off on a multi-day series of garden visits. The first was Elisabeth and Rod Zander’s rock garden in nearby Goshen Connecticut, which was truly amazing. Everywhere you looked, a tiny treasure was growing among the carefully placed rocks.

Elisabeth’s husband, Rod, is a semi-retired professional craftsman, who installed much of the amazing garden stonework. He still travels the country, building custom masonry, low input, wood heaters. After sitting next to the one in their home on this cold day, I was duly impressed.

That evening, I was so fortunate to join the group of friends, below, for an amazing intimate dinner at the home of horticultural media guru, Margaret Roach. The group consisted of Margaret Roach ( Retired EVP Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia/NY Times garden columnist/Away to Garden Founder), Marco Polo Stufano (Retired Garden Director at Wave Hill Garden/Veitch Medal recipient), Dr. Kim Tripp (former Director NY Botanical Garden), and Drew Schuyler (a Marco Stufano protege, and Assistant Head Gardener at Untermyer Garden). While I had the pleasure of seeing Margaret and Marco a year earlier, I had not seen Kim in almost two decades. After serving as Assistant Director at the JC Raulston Arboretum, she headed home to New York, where she served as Director of NYBG in the mid 2000s. After her stint there, she detoured into the world of Osteopathic medicine, retuning to school to add a medical degree to her plant physiology PhD. She currently practices medicine in NY, but still has a passion for horticulture. Drew, who I met for the first time, is one of the leaders in the incredible restoration of the previously abandoned Untermyer Estate in Yonkers, NY.

As we removed our shoes upon entering her home, we were startled that Kim, Margaret, and I, were all sporting the same brand of socks, in an obviously patriotic red, white, and blue color assortment.

It was also great to finally visit Margaret’s home garden, which serves as the inspiration for her writing, and homebase for her amazing Away to Garden broadcasts. After spending much of her working career in the NYC bustle, Margaret now lives a much quieter, calmer life in the NY mountains.

My next stop was the amazing rock garden of Ann Spiegel. Also in the mountainous region of NY, Ann’s garden has one of the most amazing natural backdrops you could ask for. Ann visited JLBG a couple of years ago, so it was great to see her amazing garden in person. Ann is an amazing octogenarian, with the energy I can only hope for if I last that long. Although Ann and her family have lived on the property since the 1960s, she didn’t start serious gardening until 1978, after raising her four children.

Upon seeing the natural rock formations in her garden, it’s hard to say anything, but, Wow! Not one to be content with the status quo, Ann actually dug down between the rocks to expose more of the rock face, as she created walkways and steps between the plantings.

Scattered throughout the garden were a series of incredible troughs, sourced from around the world.

The small number of the winter-flowering Eranthis hyemalis that Anne had planted years earlier have now spread down the bank, now forming a 100′ wide colony.

From there, it was off for my first visit to Stonecrop Gardens, the former home and garden of Garden Conservancy founder, Frank and Anne Cabot in Cold Spring, NY. Although I had heard Frank and his Garden Manager, Caroline Burgess, both speak in NC decades earlier, I had never managed to make it to visit. Although Frank passed away in 2011, Anne, now in her mid 90s, still occasionally visits the garden for board meetings. Frank and Anne built their home, below in 1958 on the property.

In the mid 1980s, with the idea of turning their home into a public garden, they brought over a young Kew Gardens student, Caroline Burgess, as an intern. At that point, Caroline had already worked for famed English garden designer, Rosemary Verey at Barnsley House. After her internship, and then finishing her studies at Kew, Caroline returned to Stonecrop to help Frank develop the garden, which went public in 1992, with Caroline at the helm, where she remains today. I was incredibly blessed to have her take time from her busy schedule to show me around the amazing property.

The cold greenhouses were filled with amazing treasures, among which is the primrose collection that I hit at peak bloom.

Also looking stunning in the cold greenhouse was a specimen of the ornamental cabbage relative, Draba longisiliqua.

The moat-ivated conservatory is fascinating, especially in that it was built in a lake bed.

It’s always great to meet new plants, and such was the case with the conservatory grown Buddleia x lewisiana ‘Margaret Pike’, a stunning, winter-flowering, pendulous, 1951 hybrid between Buddleia asiatica and Buddleia madacascariensis.

From Stonecrop, I headed east to John O’Brien’s Nursery. It’s been nearly 20 years since I last visited John, and as you can imagine things have grown much larger.

When I last visited John, hosta were his main crop, but he has pivoted more to unusual woody plants, including an excellent selection of conifers, which are artfully displayed throughout his wonderful display garden. John does not ship, but if you’re looking for something unusual in the region near Granby, Connecticut, O’Brien Nursery is well worth the visit.

The plant at John’s garden, that completely blew me away, was his gigantic patch of the Chinese native, Helleborus thibetanus. Sadly, this is the only hellebores species that has been unsuccessful for us at JLBG.

The next morning, I was off to visit the garden of plantsman Darrell Probst, who’s incredible depth of study, revolutionized both the genus Epimedium and Coreopsis. Darrell also works with Iris, primarily in the section Chinensis, including a new species recently named after him, Iris probstii.

I had not been to Darrell’s new garden since he moved over fifteen years ago. Much of the new garden is still being developed, since he’s spent so much of his time and energy over the last few years breeding Coreopsis, but with the recent progress, I can’t wait for a return trip.

Despite his recent Coreopsis focus, Darrell still has an avid interest in Epimediums, and still maintains a treasure trove of irreplaceable herbarium specimens from his exploits in China, containing countless new, still undescribed species.

He has also been instrumental in bringing into the US several previously uncultivated iris species, such as what is currently known as Iris proantha var. valida, but will soon become a newly published species, different from true Iris proantha. Although it was not in flower quite this early, below is Darrell’s photo of it from his garden last April. This is the first time this iris has been successfully grown in cultivation.

With some time left in the day, we rode up to visit the home garden of Darrell’s ex-wife, Karen Perkins, who took over the operation of Garden Visions Nursery, after their divorce. We enjoyed walking through her still sleeping garden, and perused the mostly abandoned production beds, since she retired last year and closed the nursery. She has found plenty of volunteering to keep her busy in the small town of Phillipstown, where she lives.

The next day, I was fortunate to visit with Ellen Hornig, who many folks will remember from her amazing nursery in Western NY, Seneca Hill Perennials. Since her late husband, Doug passed away after a long battle with dementia, and after then losing both parents, Ellen started a new life and garden outside Boston. Both of Ellen’s parents, If you didn’t have the pleasure of knowing her nursery, perhaps your know about her parents, Donald and Lili Hornig. Both were featured in the 2023 movie, Oppenheimer, since they were both key scientists on the Manhattan project.

As you would expect, Ellen’s garden is filled with treasures from around the world, but the star of my visit was the emerging dark purple foliage of Paeonia caucasica.

From Ellen’s garden, it was off to visit the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill. I’d visited a couple of times before, but it has been almost two decades. Formerly known as Tower Hill Botanic Garden, it was recently rebranded to increase visitor appeal. I was fortunate to be able to walk the gardens with Garden CEO, Grace Elton (formerly of Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden), and Director of Horticulture, Dr. Steven Conaway (formerly of Wave Hill Garden). I would return to the garden a couple of days later to speak to the New England Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society.

As the gardens prepare for peak visitation, we watched the installation of an amazing exhibit of Kinetic sculptures that will be a feature of the garden until fall.

For me, the horticultural star of the garden was the giant, Japanese umbrella pine, Sciadopitys verticillata.

The next stop was the amazing garden of Rosemary Monahan and Stef Cover. In addition to being an amazing plantswoman, Rosemary is manager of the traveling speaker program for the North American Rock Garden Society. Stef, ran the International Magnolia Society seed distribution program for over a decade, which is why the garden is loaded with an amazing collection of nearly mature magnolias. Unfortunately, for me, flowering was a couple of weeks away, but with the evening temperatures in the low 20s F, that was probably a good thing for the magnolias.

I didn’t realize until half way through our visit, that Stef is also the co-author of the 2007 book, Ants of North America, and is responsible for discovering and naming over 50 new US native ant species. Although recently retired, and now a volunteer at Harvard, Stef’s personal contributions to the ant collection include some 275,000 specimens. In his job at Harvard, he worked closely with the late, world renown ecologist, E. O. Wilson, which lead to an hour of amazing stories not only about Wilson, but the parade of celebrities that stopped by for a visit.

The next garden on my visitation list was that of Marty Schafer and Jan Sacks of Joe Pye Weed’s Garden. Jan and Marty are two of the top Siberian Iris breeders in the world. When I last visited several decades earlier, their business was primarily one of cut flowers, but that phase of the business is long gone, focusing now on their work with Siberian iris, and a few other fascinating side projects. Among their many recognitions, they are fifteen time winners of the Morgan-Wood Award from the American Iris Society for the top Siberian iris introduction. I’ve never visited their garden when I didn’t come away with a wealth of new knowledge.

Their deciduous camellia relative, Stewartia pseudocamellia was amazing with it’s beautifully patterned bark.

The other plant that really amazed me on this early season trip were the masses of the woodland perennial, Asian twinleaf, Jeffersonia dubia (Plagiorhegma dubium).

My next stop was the garden of Mark McDonough, who I’d worked with for years, to introduce some of his horticultural creations, but had never met in person. Mark is a retired architect, with a passion for obscure plant breeding projects. His best known creation was Allium ‘Millenium’, which we were pleased to introduce for his in 2000, and has now been sold by the millions, worldwide. One of Mark’s current passions are dwarf woodland iris, so we went through each of this hybrid blocks, although we were there well before their flowering period. We await being able trial these for potential introduction when final selections have been made. Mark is unfortunately battling a diagnosis of Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy (CAA), caused by brain bleeding, and the result is sadly, progressive dementia, starting with short term memory loss. I was fortunate to catch Mark on a good day, but I’m sure he could use all of our prayers as he navigates these health challenges.

My final stop was at the garden of Matt Mattus and Joe Phillip. Matt is retired from Hasbro, and has recently taken on a new gig as Senior Director of Horticulture for the American Hort Society. Matt also writes the blog, Growing with Plants. Matt’s greenhouse and garden are jam-packed with plants, especially during the summer months. The only exception is a corner in the back yard, which houses their assortment of farm animals, including Flanders, the Flemish Giant rabbit.

No sooner than I’d finished my garden tours, the snow gods released 2-5″ inches of fresh white, signaling it was time to head back to NC. I hope you’ve enjoyed the brief tour of the fourteen gardens I visited. While we live for plants, it’s the incredible family of plant people that make them so much more enjoyable.