Another Look at Elizabeth Lawrence

I am embarrassed by an entry in my garden journal from two years ago. Sandwiched between some not-so-insightful comments about camellias and fall colors, is my first impression of garden writer, Elizabeth Lawrence:

“…..started reading Through the Garden Gate, (a posthumously edited
collection of Lawrence’s columns from the Charlotte Observer).
She seems to be a bit of a plant snob; I wish she was more into native plants.”

Ugh. I wish I had kept my pen capped. In the following months, I would finish this book and others either written by Lawrence or carefully pulled together from her unfinished manuscripts after her death in 1985. I have come to appreciate one of the most important American garden writers of the 20th century. Lawrence was the first woman to graduate from North Carolina State’s Landscape Architecture program in 1932 and had a close relationship with scores of gardeners and writers from all over the county. What Lawrence published, while some of it is technical, is not pretentious. Her knowledge of native plants was greater and more nuanced than many of her contemporaries. My first impression was simply the result of having judged a book by its first four pages.

To the unfamiliar, a tiny bit of knowledge about Elizabeth Lawrence might encourage a stereotype. She was the daughter of a well-to-do Episcopalian family from the American South who stayed at home to tend garden and family for much of the twentieth century. Central casting might rely on assumptions that she was the product of a time where well-to-do white women stayed at home to enjoy bridge, tea, and genealogy. This would not have fit Elizabeth Lawrence. She attended college in New York City (Barnard), traveled and communicated with people from across the country, often wore pants before they were generally acceptable attire for women, disliked the formal flower arranging and rules of Garden Club events, and preferred being called a “dirt gardener” to a landscape architect. Lawrence especially coveted the knowledge and plants held by everyday country gardeners or “farm women” who advertised their seeds, corms, cuttings, and other plant material in agricultural market bulletins.

My image of Elizabeth Lawrence is clearer having just finished her biography, No One Gardens Alone, by Emily Herring Wilson. Completed in 2004 after more than a decade of research, it is a thorough and kind treatment. Wilson had access to family letters and did careful archival research in several states. The result is an admirable blend of documentary evidence and living memory which casts Lawrence in context without trying to deconstruct her “experience.” It is a needed record and I am thankful that it has put an important figure in American landscape architecture history on enough of a pedestal as to be respected by the student but not so high as to be dismissed by the academic.

Elizabeth Lawrence wrote scientifically and poetically by weaving personal experience, regional flavor, and literary reference into paragraphs of horticultural expertise. A piece about broadleaf evergreens may coalesce into a story with a visit to a familiar nurseryman, advice gleaned from friends’ letters, and a quote from Thoreau. Her prose does more than remind you when to prune or what type of fertilizer to use. It is a leisurely yet informative conversation that you are somehow a part of.

I am grateful for having discovered the lasting impressions of Elizabeth Lawrence. Here’s to Emily H. Wilson for my most recent one.

Trying for a Southern Accent

A ten foot tall thicket of Bottlebrush Buckeye (Aesculus Parviflora) grows inside the Sarah Duke Gardens. This attractive shrub stands near the Millstone Pond in a six acre woodland garden devoted to southeastern native plants. High pines shade a curved gravel walk beside the under-story specimen. The plant, path, and entire property lie within Duke’s middle campus and only a ten minute stroll from my desk at work. Almost two weeks ago, during a Bottlebrush Buckeye site visit on my lunch-break, I was reminded of three reasons why I would recommend this planting choice to anyone with a little patience and room in their garden.

Reason one is that it is a native plant, occurring in forested coastal plains and piedmont areas from South Carolina to Alabama. You can stick one next to some woods in Durham and reasonably expect it to act as if it were born around these parts. Local gardeners should collect all the congratulations such an eco-friendly choice deserves. The more stringent native plant enthusiasts might point out that this is not really a natural occurrence for my clay, since we are north of its real habitat but I like to bend this rule. North Carolina lets the rest of the South mess around with smoked pig dishes without getting too upset—we can share regional delights.

The second reason is in the name. Bottlebrush spikes of creamy flowers, some over 12 inches long, make a wonderful announcement in mid-June. This is a welcome time of flowering for any small tree or medium woodland shrub in the landscape. After a first encounter with one in full bloom, I immediately bought a gallon-sized Aesculus Parviflora of my own. My new purchase from Niche Gardens Nursery near Chapel Hill was not blooming at the time, but it held a promise of flowering candles that would perfectly coincide with my son’s future birthdays. White, bee-attracting, and showy panicles are the hook for many people and likely a good part of the reason why the late founder of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, William Lanier Hunt, referred to it as one of the most beautiful shrubs in the world.

A third reason to try this shrub is a fall leaf which turns the color of a ripe golden delicious apple. I have to confess that I did not learn this from taking autumn notes on my own up-start. Our family’s juvenile Bottlebrush Buckeye is now only 15 inches high and, from a distance, could be confused with a fallen limb. One of its four palmate leaves turned a little yellow before falling off. It has survived the summer drought, but a safe bet is that it will not be featured on any October calendar pages in the next decade.

The Bottlebrush Buckeye cannot be magically transformed from seed to sucker to stand in a season or two. This is the only downside to the shrub’s habit. A relatively thrifty gardener, like me, who settled for one item at the cash register, is confronted with a pitiful stick in winter and slow growth for the first two springs and summers. After talking with a volunteer at the Duke Gardens, I will need to wait about four more years before I can start bragging about the plant from personal experience. This illustrates what greener thumbs already know: you have to have a lot of patience if you want to enjoy the results of a well planned landscape.

One of these days my thicket is going to take off. New roots will form. Spreading offspring will join their parents in a suckering, shading, and thriving gang of Aesculus Parviflora near the west corner of my front yard. My small grove will look nice between the lawn and the road as it rises inside the partial-shade of a pecan tree. It will probably not rival the version at Sarah Duke Gardens, but a check of its progress may draw me home on a lunch break now and again. I am looking forward to it.