BOOKreviews

Unearthing The Secret Garden: The Plants and Places That Inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett Author: Marta McDowell Publisher: Timber Press List Price: $25.95 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3tOjHhR Reviewer: Beth Py-Lieberman Celebrating its centennial this year is the classic children’s novel The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The children’s classic, which has never been out of print, still holds a place of distinction among the National Education Association’s Top 100 Books for Children. It has served as inspiration to artists and musicians, with its story retold in film, theater, and even a Japanese anime television series. Those of us who love its story of the dour, neglected 10-year-old Mary Lennox will jump at the chance to dive into Marta McDowell’s painstakingly researched new tome, Unearthing The Secret Garden. McDowell has recovered the lost story of how Burnett came to give this precious novel its enduring heartbeat. Digging into Burnett’s childhood and early life, gathering up details from her notes and letters, and chronicling her life through a rich archive of photographs, McDowell narrates the author’s well-lived life. “As bona fide fairy tales go, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s life isn’t bad. Hers is a riches-to-rags-to-riches story, set in the dark city and the pastoral countryside. There are heroes and villains, love and hate, intrigue and adventure,” writes McDowell. Soon her marriage to Swan Burnett in 1873 brought two sons. Lionel, who died young, and Vivian, who would come to share in her passion for the pleasures of the garden. After her divorce in 1898, she sublet her house in London and took a lease on the spacious mid-18th century manor known as Maytham Hall in Kent. Surrounded by great oaks, horse-chestnuts, and beeches, the novelist took up horticulture as her “new fad.” At Maytham, she hired a head gardener, Bolten, “a nice old thing …who is secretly filled with joy because I am ‘a lady as loves flowers.’” In Bolten, she would find the seeds for crafting the character of Ben Weatherstaff, the gruff old caretaker who befriends Mary Lennox. The home was a place for friends to gather and entertain. “I have artfully arranged things so that instead of seeing my friends in rooms crowded with people I see them in old gardens crowded with roses,” Burnett wrote to one of her editors. Maytham would be just the beginning of Burnett’s spectacular gardening rehabs. McDowell’s tireless researches and delightful prose recount anecdotes and details of Burnett’s efforts to make a life for flowers at her subsequent homes in Long Island and Bermuda, where she spent her winters. Rich in details, lavish with illustrations, including many from the story’s various print versions, this book is a must-have for anyone whose first horticulture passions were triggered by that gateway drug to gardening, otherwise known as The Secret Garden. o

The story of Mary Lennox after her parents’ untimely death includes a journey to the Yorkshire country house known as Misselthwaite Manner, home of her uncle Archibald Craven. There, while left to her own devices, Mary learns of the family’s unfortunate tale of a lost mistress who died young, leaving behind her husband, the brokenhearted Craven, who travels far and wide hoping to assuage his grief. Mary soon meets her ill cousin, Colin, who is prone to dreadful temper tantrums that leave the manor home staff subject to his every whim. The two neglected, spoiled cousins become unlikely friends and Mary, while exploring the grounds, finds a locked door nestled in a stone wall. A chirping Robin leads her to where the key is buried and when the door is opened, the magic begins. A local boy Dickon and the manor’s head gardener Ben Weatherstaff take up the conspiracy to restore the secret garden behind the locked door and to bring Colin in his wheelchair to the rose-covered realm where his health is miraculously restored. When Archibald Craven arrives home from one of his sad journeys, he finds his son flushed and fresh after winning a race with Mary. Happily ever after ensues. For any fellow gardeners, whose green yearnings were birthed at the first reading of what Mary Lennox found when she unlocked the door into the walled secret garden, McDowell offers a treat in the details of Burnett’s latent gardening mastery. Citing The Secret Garden as a “horticultural trigger” or the “gateway drug for gardeners,” McDowell takes the reader on a journey to each of Burnett’s homes in England, Long Island, and Bermuda, where after the age of 50, the novelist turned her focus to gardening with a passion that can only be described as robust. With her considerable wealth and a staff of strong-backed helpers, Burnett, until she died at the age of 74 in 1924, commanded an extraordinary gardening life. Born in 1849 in Manchester, England, Burnett’s early life was one of family poverty, but her love of writing offered a way out; by age 19, she was a published author and her stories would guarantee a life of comfort.

Beth Py-Lieberman is Smithsonian magazine’s senior museums editor. She gardens at home with visiting deer in Silver Spring, MD, and is the volunteer liaison for the Fenton Street Community Garden.

The Woodchip Handbook: A Complete Guide for Farmers, Gardeners and Landscapers Authors: Ben Raskin Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing List Price: $24.95 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3lvbWtw Reviewer: Andrea F. Siegel There’s a lot more of value to say about woodchips than you’d expect, which is something that makes The Woodchip

Handbook: A Complete Guide for Farmers, Gardeners and Landscapers a resource for readers interested, learning more about soil improvement and ecology. Ben Raskin’s book relies on science, studies, and experiences to tell readers that woodchips have multiple beneficial uses, including as part of agroforestry. Raskin is the head of horticulture and agroforestry at the Soil Association in the UK. Most of what’s in this volume is applicable in the USA as well as the UK. Let’s start with this: The woodchipper (you’ll recall the equipment from the movie “Fargo”) didn’t exist until the 1880s. Its invention has made it possible to turn wood into woodchips in less time. Raskin makes a compelling case for the potential of using woodchips in more than the old familiar ways. Backyard gardeners use mulch to suppress weeds, retain moisture, and prevent topsoil from blowing away. And wood has long been used for fuel and creating sustainable paths. Of particular interest to gardeners with small and backyard gardens are discussions of properties of various tree species, composting woodchips, and why not to chip treated wood. For many of us, woodchips can be economical: They’re free from some companies doing tree trimming or removal in communities. Sections related to farming, woodchip uses on estates, and the like may be of less practical value to small-space gardeners, but of special interest to landscapers, farmers, and others with a lot of trees or a lot of property. The book explores modern uses. The author explains them, including for which the type of wood makes a difference, such as the role that salicylic acid in willow chips can have in preventing disease in trees. Among the newer ways are as bedding for livestock; Raskin does go into the differences in trees as he discusses bedding, cautioning that some tree species such as black locust may be poisonous to livestock, while noting that eucalyptus has some antimicrobial benefits. Among woodchip uses described in this book is as a form of nitrogen fertilizer, because they leach out nitrogen when placed on top of soil—particularly useful for large potted plants, which have limited access to soil and its nutrients. Woodchips, Raskin notes, are a viable medium for growing specialty mushrooms and are useful in plant propagation; they can help reduce soil compaction and help improve the soil while storing carbon in it. On the environmental side, wood is a renewable resource, and making good use of tree trimmings makes sense. The author also discusses the potential for locking up carbon long term to keep it out of the atmosphere. o

Andrea Siegel is a master gardener in Maryland.

Taming Fruit: How Orchards Have Transformed the Land, Offered Sanctuary, and Inspired Creativity Author: Bernd Brunner (translation by Lori Lantz) Publisher: Greystone Books List Price: $29.95 Order Link: https://amzn.to/39e2gxI Reviewer: Stacey Evers Much of the time, gardening is an up-close activity, requiring a focus on what’s right in front of you right now: What is that bug, why are my tomato leaves curling, how do I stop the squirrels from committing daily larceny? At certain points in the year, we pull our gaze back so we can plan the next year’s garden and crop rotation, but we don’t routinely consider our place in the sweeping history of plant cultivation or the long lineage of gardeners trailing behind us. German author Bernd Brunner gives us much to think about in Taming Fruit, a 260-page tour of fruit cultivation that extends back tens of thousands of years and travels all over the globe. Along the way, he intertwines history, archeology, botany, human development, horticulture, religion, environmental science, art, and the art of seduction to produce a lively overview of how orchards have been organized and have connected nations and time periods. This is not a tedious or dull journey. Brunner’s vivid imagination re-creates the social and work life surrounding orchards. He brings to life low-status gardeners in ancient Egypt “without even a head covering to protect them from the heat,” the overhaul of the Mesopotamian landscape to harness the Tigris and Euphrates, Pompeii residents weaving wool in the shade of encircling grape vines, and “stressedout members of the Roman elite.” A French book on the history of fruit cultivation inspired Brunner’s research, in particular a description of an archaeological site in northern Jordan estimated to be around 300,000 years old where archaeologists found stone tools and the remains of fruits and nuts. “I was fascinated by how very long ago, someone had gathered the ancient fruits and nuts found at this

site,” he writes. “[E]ven back then in the Lower Paleolithic, our ancient ancestors were picking and processing bounty from the wild.” Starting in this prehistoric era, Brunner steers the reader through ancient Egypt, the Middle East, Greece, and Rome, then to monastery orchards (including the papal gardens of Avignon, where seven popes held court while Italy was in turmoil), Versailles, the walled gardens of northern Europe protecting fruit from cold and wind, North American apple orchards and California citrus groves, and Central American and Amazonian fruit cultivation. One of the 16 chapters is primarily dedicated to the Garden of Eden and its impact on orchard design among 17th-century Christians, who wanted to answer the question of what makes a garden truly a paradise. Other chapter, deep-dive into apples, pears, cherries, and citrus, including a brief exploration of the origins of oranges. No oranges have ever been found in the wild, so there’s much speculation about how this beloved fruit came to be. Although I only read a PDF, the book is beautiful, filled with colorful, mouthwatering art depicting orchards and fruit through the ages. Brunner also has provided a thorough index for quick research and a list of recommended reading to learn more. “It is valuable to imagine what our fruit used to be like and to think about how many hands all the seeds, twigs, and trunks must have passed through and what distances they traveled—geographically and through time,” Brunner concludes. “Those who plant fruit trees do so not just for themselves but as an investment in the future. In this regard, creating an orchard is a forward-looking project that links generations.” o

Stacey Evers is a garden educator and the director of Grow a Row FC, a Northern Virginia community initiative supporting gardeners who grow food for donation.

Note: These book reviews include links to Amazon.com for ordering them. Washington Gardener Magazine may receive a few cents from each order placed after you click on these links. Heritage Roses: A Collection of Essays and Lessons Author: Connie Hilker List Price: $25.00 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3khRLQh Reviewer: Jim Dronenburg Disclaimer: Connie Hilker is a personal friend of the reviewer. This is a slim book, a collection of “essays and lessons” published previously in various rose publications. It is a very good beginner’s reader for the case of growing old—“heritage”—roses, and propagating them so they are not lost. The text—which jumps around from essay to essay, as collections tend to do—is accompanied by magnificent photographs, primarily of old roses, and mostly in the author’s garden collection. Your reviewer was hooked with the essay on “rose rustling,” which is the saving of old roses (and other things) from destruction on abandoned sites, from extinction when found in, say, old cemeteries, from being forgotten and lost to cultivation. You don’t dig up the plant in these cases; just take cuttings. Hilker provides a very clear explanation of how to do it and get them to root. While you can get old rose plants from specialty nurseries, Hilker does point out that these specialty nurseries have been closing over the past decade, and besides, when you see a nice rose neglected by the wayside, how do you know its name? Much better to stop and take cuttings, leaving the original plant. Find out the name, if you can, after you have saved the rose to your garden. You have no idea if your rose-in-the-wilderness will even be there next year. The Heritage Rose Foundation will help with identification, if the rose is known. If not, they will be happy to have found a “new” one. Occasionally, it’s obvious that an old rose may have had a name (being found in multiple locations argues for the rose “being in the trade” at one point), but the original name is now lost. When that happens, a rose is often named for the location where it was found as a working name. Sometimes it proves to be a known rose. Sometimes it doesn’t, and the “working name” sticks. The author also talks about the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA, and other cemeteries. Hollywood was an example of a “garden cemetery,” where you can find remnants of things planted both by the cemetery and relatives of the departed, in a site preserved for over a century. In Hollywood’s case, since 1847 or so… Other such cemeteries exist. One of the essays is about the roses of Walter Van Fleet. These were some of the roses connected with your reviewer’s youth. They were “ramblers”—large, wonderful growers; magnificent display; ferocious thorns; tended to be once-bloomers but also to be indestructible. Yet, some appear to have been totally lost. Hilker enumerates those she has, and those she cannot find. This book is not a list of varieties, or the care of them, nor what their size is. It does not tell you recipes for soil preparation or watering or the like. But your reviewer can’t think of a better starting book to get you hooked on old roses. This book may or may not be something for your personal collection, but march down to your library and ask them to get it. It’s well, well worth the reading. o

Jim Dronenburg is a retired accountant and now gardens full-time in Knoxville, MD.