THE HORTULUS FARM COLLECTION FALL 2009

I'm going to make this the last blog of the season as I'm about to have my right shoulder repaired (yes: probably a bit of over zealous gardening...) and will be in a sling for a month or so, which will make both gardening and blogging a bit of a trial. However, a pain-free and more mobile future awaits, so I'll certainly be chomping at the gardening bit with renewed vigor come May.



Luckily, the day will soon be upon us when the first frost arrives and the gardens will be put to bed for a bit of R&R. I don't know about where you are, but the leaves are just starting to color up here in PA: especially the dogwoods, which are turning that marvelous deep shade of claret and, today, the sky is exquisitely blue: surely, a perfect fall day to be wrapping this up for the season.



In any event, I thought I would leave you with something to sustain you through the blustery days to come, as we've been working awfully hard at rebuilding our nursery operation over the past spring and summer and have just published our Fall 2009 Catalogue, some of which I thought I would share with you, as well as extending an invitation to come visit us here in Wrightstown over the winter whenever you feel in need of a little R&R yourself.



To me, visiting a cozy, well-stocked greenhouse in the chill of January or February is a surefire cure for what ails you. To be surrounded by tropical greenery and lavish blossom when all the world outside is blanketed in white, to inhale the damp, fragrant, fertile air, drive the chill from your bones for a moment, and come away with a little bit of green to enliven your window sill till spring reappears: what could be more soul-satisfying than that?



We are proud to say we feel our Hortulus Farm Collection is pretty much unique in our neck of the woods, and that we have carved out for ourselves a bit of a proprietary horticultural niche. What we love to grow are unusual trained specimens, like 8 foot solanum and solandra standards, 4 foot tall caged begonias, plumbagos trained on 6 foot balls, single, double, and triple topiaries of hibiscus, liqustrum, lantana, and heliotrope, ivies grown on wonderful frames, giant polypodiun ferns, plus a fantastic assortment of unusual begonias and tropicals. All are guaranteed to add a nice jolt of color and life to your home in the always too long months that lie ahead.



We're only 45 minutes from Philadelphia and under two hours from New York City, and I know Karen, Chris, Colon, and Donna, our stalwarts in the greenhouses, would be thrilled to see you (please call 215.598.0550 for our winter hours). In any event, Renny and I wish you a wonderful winter and hope you'll take us up on our invitation to visit. I will look forward to reconnecting with you come May!

WEED OR WONDER?

This month, as I gleefully harvest from the vegetable and herb gardens, sating myself every lunchtime on thick slabs of tomato sitting open-faced on country bread slicked with mayonnaise, I am compelled to extoll the virtues of two familar denizens of our greenswards whose culinary appeal may have been lost on you until this moment: the dandelion and our common purslane. Scoff if you like, but I advise you to reserve judgement until you've read on a bit...



The dandelion, eons old and the bane of every lawn fanatic’s existence, is most probably original to Asia in our prehistory, although it had naturalized extensively by the time we slithered onto terra firma, and was introduced into North America with grave purpose by our earliest settlers as a fantastic source of nutritious sustenance. A member of the Compositae family, the dandelion’s botanical name derives from the Greek taraxos, “disorder,” and akos, “remedy,” signaling a clear panacea-like reputation, and in Greek mythology, Hecate, goddess of sorcery, famously fed Theseus, hero of Athens, dandelions for an entire month to bulk him up before his hand-to-hand with the Minotaur.



“Dandelion” originates in the Greek leontodon, which permuted into the old French dent de lion, both meaning “lion’s tooth,” in reference to this food plant’s jaggedy-edged leaf form. Folk names for the dandelion truly are dandy, yielding up such other tasty morsels as “blow ball,” for its signature seedhead and “piss-a-bed,” from the French pis-en-lit, for its legendary diuretic qualities. The truth is, this pesky turf nemesis is not only nature’s richest source of cancer-fighting Beta-carotene, but has the highest Vitamin A content of any green thing on the planet, while also containing impressive amounts of Vitamins D, B, and C, iron, magnesium, potassium, zinc, manganese, copper, and phosphorus, as well as taraxacin, terpenoids, choline, and inulin.



All this makes the lowly dandelion about as-good-as-it-gets for you: the sap, leaves, and root extracts all being recommended as diuretics, to aid digestion, stimulate bile production, treat liver disorders, and help prevent cancer and high blood pressure, and the root also being considered a powerful detoxifier, accelerating the removal of adverse elements from the body. Every part of this remarkably nutritious plant is edible (as long as it hasn’t been subject to chemical or pesticidal spraying!): the young leaves exemplary as a salad green, and also lovely sautéed like spinach. The roots peeled, sliced, blanched, then sautéed are excellent, the young buds fried in butter are a piquant treat, but my favorite for its moniker alone is “yard squid”: cut young dandelion rosettes below the ground with enough of the root to keep the leaves intact, wash well, blanch, dry, dip in a thin egg/milk solution, roll in spiced bread crumbs, and fry. You will never curse your lawn again.



A member of the Portulacaceae family, purslane, also known as “Pigweed,” “Little Hogweed,” and “Pusley,” is believed to be antiquely indigenous to India and the Middle East, although, somewhat mystifyingly, there now seems to be conclusive evidence dating its presence in the New World to a moment prior to 1492. Hippocrates, in the fourth-century B.C., Dioscorides in the first-century A.D., and Galen in the second-century, all regarded purslane as an important “cooling” herb for fever, dysentery, stomach ailments, hemorrhoids, and wounds, and Pliny the Elder was so impressed by purslane’s healing properties, he advised that wearing the plant as an amulet would “expel all evil.”



Pliny had his point as we now know purslane contains a whopping six times more vitamin E than spinach, seven times more beta-carotene than carrots, is nicely rich in vitamins A, B, and C, riboflavin, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, and iron, and boasts the potent antioxidants glutathione, alpha-tocopherol, and two types of betalain alkaloid pigments, all offering significant benefits in the treatment of high cholesterol and triglyceride levels, heart disease, and depressed immunity. But, even more importantly, purslane contains more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable, and is one of the very few plants that contains the long-chain omega-3 ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), with recent studies suggesting that Omega- 3s may have a truly important impact on depression, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer's, autism, schizophrenia, ADD, and migraines.



With thick, succulent, rounded, golden yellow leaves far larger than that crawly, red-stemmed thing in your lawn, Golden Purslane is indeed a brilliant garden presence, and its taste is both lemony and freshly astringent. An easy to grow annual with a compact, mounded habit to about 14 inches, sow in a patch and thin to 8 inches. Pickled purslane was traditionally put up in Europe to be served as a winter sallet, so here I will leave you with our own Martha Washington’s 1749 recipe for it: "Gather ye pursland when it… will snap when you break it. boyle it in a kettle of fayre water without any salt, & when it is tender, make a pickle of salt & water, … & when it is cold, make it pretty sharp with vinegar &cover it…."

A BRIEF HISTORY

I have been working on a history of the farm and gardens for the past few months and thought, this month, i would share a bit of it with you. For those of you unfamiliar with Bucks County, we are a place unusually rich in American history, having been settled in the 17th Century by immigrants from Europe even in advance of the arrival of William Penn in 1682. Our little town, Wrightstown, was first incorporated in 1692 and, by 1787, was a flourishing little township of 4 peaceable hamlets, 364 inhabitants, and 58 handsome, stone dwellings.



Ours, situated in a little valley about a mile east of Wrightstown center, was begun by William Warner, one of Wrightstown’s earliest settlers, who purchased the land from William Penn in 1690, but is believed to have immigrated from Blockley in England, where he was a captain in the service of Oliver Cromwell, as early as 1658. William was a member of the first assembly of Pennsylvania, and both the local deputy sheriff and justice of the peace. Although a primitive timber dwelling clearly existed prior to the present stone one, the earliest part of our house, a modest stone cabin: one room up, one down, was completed in 1723.



The second section of the house was built in 1746 by David Daws, the Wrightstown Quaker minister, who purchased 115 acres of William Warner’s tract, including the rudimentary house. This section was approximately twice as big as the earlier one, with a real second floor and attic, wide plank floors, and ammunition drawers under the north and south facing windows. Tragically, David Daws died a brief two years later, thereupon leaving the property to his daughter Elizabeth, who subsequently married John Warner, the boy next door and grandson of William, happily reuniting the parcels and reestablishing the original Warner acreage. By 1770, the recombined property was a substantial holding of 300 acres known locally as “Warnerland”.



In 1793, when the end of the American Revolution had restored peace and prosperity to the region, Isaiah Warner, son of John and Elizabeth, built the third and final section of the house. It is a courtly box of a stone dwelling, joined to the others like the biggest block in a row of three, with impressive cornerstones and a fine paneled parlor stained “original blue” with essence of blueberry. The "Isaiah Warner House" was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.



It was in the 19th Century that the Warners married into the local Thompson family, who had established one of the first, big grain mills on nearby Pidcock Creek in the hamlet of Wycombe. It was then that the road from house to mill was named “Thompson’s Mill Road”. The amalgamated Warner/Thompson clan ran the mill in Wycombe and farmed their property right into the 20th Century, their cleared acreage being given over to dairy herds and corn.



Around 1860, when the prosperity signaling the end of the Civil War again revitalized the region, two immense dairy barns were constructed on the farm, then outbuildings for storing the milk, carriage and equipment sheds, and a corncrib for the storage of winter sustenance for the herds. At the back of the house, across little Fire Creek, a small holding pond was built to keep the big canisters of milk cool in hot weather, as well as a stone icehouse.



And so the family of farmers and millers and devote Quakers of sound fortune prospered until 1918, when the last of the Warners to inhabit the property was forced to sell the historic homestead. By 1933, as the Great Depression tore through the solvency of the district, the fortunes of "Warnerland" hit rock bottom, and the property, by then so derelict it was known locally as “Skunk Hollow”, was sold at sheriff’s sale for $370.91. The former Warner seat continued its slow, poignant decline into disrepair, until 1980, when, by then reduced to a scant 15 acres, we, guided by what was surely blind providence, chanced upon it.



We began the resuscitation of the farm, the initiation of the gardens,and the acquisition of what now constitutes 100 of "Warnerland's" original 300 acres that same year. And the rest, as they say, is history.

ROSES TRIUMPHANT

The brilliant greening of spring has finally drawn to an artful close as June begins and the gardens here at the farm push towards full throttle mid-summer madness. It's a slightly an in-between time, with only a few perennials (salvia, early astilbe, the last of the baptisia) adding sparkle to the borders, and the mock oranges and deutzias picking up the post-azalea slack a bit in the wooded areas. However, on full tilt, magnificent display right now are roses everywhere I turn my head, and it is a few of these I choose to share with you this month.



As much as I admire them, I eye roses with a slightly jaundiced eye as so many of them can be whiney and tempermental if they're not sufficiently coddled and cosseted, and anyone who has weathered the devestations of an onslaught of Japanese beetles will thoroughly understand a certain amount of hesitancy on my part. Yet, that said, there are plenty of rose types that seem to be doing swimmingly here on the farm right now with only a modicum of maintenance or consideration.



Our most magnificent must surely be the white "Bobbie James" rambler, with a multiple trunk the size of a small grove of saplings, that climbs a Boulevard Cypress in the perennial borders. Planted nearly twenty years ago now, it has consumed the cypress, which it uses for all intents as a servicable tuteur. It's been so successful, that we've planted more "Bobbie James" and "Wedding Day" on the other three of the quartet of cypresses puctuating the middle of the borders, and will simply allow them to consume their proprietary trees as well.



Rivaling it at the top of the pine and dogwood allee must surely be the immense pink shrub rose (name forgotten)that inhabits the 18 foot tall urn that is the visual punctuation point there. The whole affair must be twenty-five feet tall on its stone plinth, which is alot of rose. In the nearby lane to the Italian Garden, Fairy Roses dance above stands of Nepeta and commingle with Pink Carpet Rose, and, in the perennial borders, a quartet of Pink Fairy Roses enliven their space, with white shrub roses cascading on the post and rail fences behind them.



On the side of the chicken house, the marvelous old-fashioned hybrid musk "Sally Holmes" spreads her charms above the herb garden, and, in the French Garden, the 1930 heirloom "New Dawn" is scrambling up the rose hoops around the perimeter of the garden, encircling the box-edged parterre beds in a happy blush of color.



Down below the terraces on the south side of the house, a bevy of the incredibly easy care and long-blooming new Pink "Knock Out" roses are strutting there stuff. A tough and hardy shrub type, Pink Knock Outs are blissfully drought and mildew tolerant, blackspot resistant, and will continue blooming right until first frost.



But my favorits must surely be the exquisite David Austin rose "Sweet Juliet", also currently in bloom down below the terraces. An almost peony-like peachy blossom flushed with yellow, it has the most ethereal, sweet, lemony scent imaginable, and I have cut armloads to lavish our rooms right now. Surely, roses can be a trial to culture but, equally surely, they are one of the garden season's most intoxicating triumphs.

A NEW FRUIT BORDER

We have been gardening at Hortulus Farm for 30 years now and, in that time, we have established a total of 22 separate gardens, linked by lawns and paths, on about 30 of our 100 acres. In recent years, however, although we have made a few in roads into expanding some of the gardens, I had, frankly, thought we had reached our limit, both in terms of available square footage and our ability to manage another square inch of cultivated terra firma.



Therefore, I was completely surprised two late summers ago to find myself positively yearning for another garden. I had just finished the second volume in my edible gardening trilogy 75 Remarkable Fruits for Your Garden, and had made the acquaintance of so many fascinating fruit varieties previously unknown to me that I was determined to have them for my own. To wit: an exotic fruit border. A strip of loamy, up-turned soil planted just as one would a decorative border, with the crawly groundcover types at the front, mid-sized plants and shrubs in mid-border, and the tall brutes and viners at the back.



But my problem was: where? What patch of our precincts had the requisite amount of sun, was within a companionable distance to the house, and would provide the correct aesthetic particulars? Mother Nature swept aside the veil of improbability as I rounded the corner of the upper barn one August day and chanced upon a stretch of accomodating post and rail fencing enclosing the western curve of the riding ring. Across it, one could glimpse our three Suffolk sheep (the Mitford sisters) in the adjoining pasture and, in the distance, the tumble of the pool garden fountain in its shimmering disc of water: a view that was, in truth, a bit too naked from that vantage point and crying out for some suitable green screening.



I got out my marking paint and described an undulating bed joined to an old stand of elderberry and peonies at the north end and the upper corner of the barn at the south end. Then I started ordering -- mainly from Raintree Nursery and One Green World, two estimable purveyors of exotic fruits. The main anchors would be several Sea Buckthorns (Hippophae rhammnoides) up against the fenceline, a variegated Cornus mas in place of honor, a Wolfberry (Goji) (Lycium barbarum) on the fenceline, and the deep burgundy elderberry (Sambucus nigra) "Black Beauty" up against the barn.



In mid-border, I planted 3 varieties of Honeyberry (Lonicera caerulea var. edulis), "Blue Sky", Blue Pacific", and "Kamchatka", 2 Goumis (Eleagnus multiflora) "Sweet Scarlet, a "Toyo Nishiki" Quince (Chaenomeles), and 2 types of Gooseberry (Ribes hirtellum), "Jahn's Prarie" and "Captivator". And, finally in the front row, some nice clouds of the Strawberry "Tristar" the Lingonberry "Red Pearl", 8 dwarf Blueberries "Tophat", and the Arctic Rapberries "Beta" and "Sophia".



All specimens were mightily infant upon arrival and, now, in their second full season, are just beginning to gain sufficient stature to give a flavor of their future glory. Most have put on a dainty spring show of flowers and I am hoping for a starter crop of berries from a few of them come mid-summer, each of these offering a bandbox complement of health benefits and taste treats. Come back, however, in a couple of years to get the real picture i hold so firmly in my imagination, when I, harvest basket dangling from the crook of my elbow, will truly reap what I have sown. Ah: the glories of gardening!