Tinker, tailor... and a sailor

Lush tobacco plants by the old Rettig tobacco factory at Luostarinmäki (which translates to 'Cloister Hill") museum in Turku, an old Finnish-Swedish university town where I spent my school years.

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As much as I love visiting castles and manor houses and their gardens, I find the history of ordinary, common people often more touching. Luostarinmäki in Turku (or Åbo in Swedish), offers a most fascinating glimpse to the homes and lives of the craftsmen and other professionals that lived in what was the capital of Finland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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These 18 blocks of houses, streets and courtyards are the only wooden buildings that were saved in the Great Fire of Turku in 1827. They were a living neighborhood until 1940 (I never miss to point out to my girls the house where my friend's grandfather was born and raised), when some far-sighted townspeople understood to preserve them to the future generations as an open air museum.

* The orange daylily, Hemerocallis fulva, is a hardy perennial often found in old gardens. I think its slender stems and long strappy leaves are more striking than many of the new cultivars...
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The people who lived at Luostarinmäki were proud craftsmen and professional townspeople with their own homes and workshops: tinkers, tailors..., and while there were no soldiers, there was a sailor, whose touching little house was filled with blow-fish and seashells that he had brought from the seven seas.

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Observing the meagerness of life here is always gripping, especially when thinking that the inhabitants were not by any means the poorest of the society. The houses are small, the rooms tiny and the amenities few, but there is a silent, dignified beauty in everything. Tools and things are well-worn and carry marks of a hard life, but they were made to last in the hands of their users, and to be mended, not to be thrown out.

*One of the narrow, quiet streets at Luostarinmäki, earlier full of life and sounds from humans and animals alike... Picture from Wikipedia Commons.

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From a gardener's point of view there is not much to be seen, as most of the plants there were grown for their economical value like the lush tobacco plants above. An occasional bower of lilacs, a long-lived cluster of orange daylilies or other seemingly self-sown old-time perennials are some of the few ornamentals that bring colour into the tiny courtyards. Many roofs are covered with birch-bark and grassy, flowering turf, which shows that vegetative roofs aren't something invented by our generation.

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In a way, it would be lovely to see more old-time plants and perennials at Luostarinmäki, but then, the museum would loose some of its authenticity, as ornamental gardening was clearly out of reach for the people who lived there. Instead, strolling through the narrow, grassy streets and small courtyards was a sobering lesson in times when "less is more" was not a choice, but a reality of life.

For the benefit of body and soul: Sagalund in Kimito

Small wooden carts in the gardens of Sagalund.
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While in Turku, or Åbo in Swedish, in the southwestern coast of Finland, my parents took us to the charming outdoor museum of Sagalund in Kimito, founded in 1900 by teacher Nils Oskar Jansson. Jansson was a devoted admirer of the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné, and believed strongly that gardening had an inspirational, uplifting effect on the young souls he was entrusted with.

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First of May gardening tool inspection at Vreta Folkskola, Sagalund, in 1906.

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Every spring, his students were instructed to bring tools from home to the school: a wooden trowel, a small rake, a basket and a little cart for transporting soil, mulch and manure, and for hauling away waste to the compost. Each year on the first day of May, all students stood in row while the tools they had brought were inspected. The students were also encouraged to take home bulbs, seedlings and plants in their small carts.

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Nils Oskar Jansson wrote to his students in the early 1910s:

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"The purpose of gardening is to benefit both the body and the soul. (...) The needs of the soul should be nourished by making the nearest grounds of the home as flourishing, blooming and attractive as possible. This is achieved by growing all kinds of fruit trees, shelter belts of green trees and well-tended hedges, and by saving and pruning what nature itself has planted in the place."

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I especially liked his thoughts about the connection between gardening and the characteristics of a soul:

"What is planted and grown bears witness to the home owners disposition; idleness and negligence do not thrive in gardens, and coarseness and wickedness do not like flowers."

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Next week, the school year starts again here in Seattle. I wonder if we are doing as good job as Nils Oskar in nourishing the young bodies and souls of our children...

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A cuppa in the garden: Cafe Koloni at Olle Nyman's atelier

Sitting in the shade of the old linden trees by Olle Nyman's atelier at Cafe Koloni in Saltsjö-Duvnäs.

I've always been a cafe person. I love sipping from a cup of steaming tea or coffee and observing passers-by, alternatively resting my eyes on something soothing and beautiful, like a stunning view or a flower-filled garden. Not many places can combine both, but Cafe Koloni is one of them, and that's why I keep going back there when in Stockholm.

*A gathering of houses; above, the cafe at the left and the house where Olle Nyman lived on the right. Below, the studio to the left, and Olle's atelier to the right.

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Situated in Saltsjö-Duvnäs some 8 kilometers from the city, Cafe Koloni is tucked away in a white-washed wing in a gathering of houses, an atelier and a studio that used to belong to the Swedish artist Olle Nyman. You can choose to sit either inside the building or in the adjoining herb garden, or further away in the old fruit orchard. If you choose your seat carefully, you can watch sailing boats glide by on the adjoining inlet of Duvnäsviken.

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Entrance to the veranda at Olle's house.

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Despite it has lost some of its initial "hidden gem" atmosphere, Koloni still is one of those rare places where you can sit surrounded by the graceful patina of the 18th and 19th century buildings, listening to the whisper of the old lindens. After your coffee, you can check out the annual exhibition in the studio; it always has a connection to either Olle Nyman or Saltsjö-Duvnäs, and even the name Koloni refers to Olle Nyman's time when he together with his artist friends filled the place with a buzz of creative activity. A place well worth a little day trip, especially for those with artistic ambitions... whether they are gardeners or not.

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On the balcony, an undated painting by Olle Nyman. It shows a couple on one of the buildings at the Koloni towards the inlet of Duvnäsviken; one of my favorite paintings of his in all its simplicity...

Ulf Nordfjell at Millesgården

Ulf Nordfjell's vegetative spheres built with pratia plants at the main terrace of Millesgården at Lidingö near Stockholm.

Since last year, Ulf Nordfjell, a Swedish landscape architect maybe most know for winning the "Best in Show" award at Chelsea in 2009, has been invited for a long-time collaboration with the the gardens at Millesgården, home and atelier of the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles and his Austrian wife Olga who lived there during the first half of the 20th century.

Flowerbed inspired by Josef Frank's fabric called Aralia; detail with a Ricinus plant.

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During this second year into Ulf's work with Millesgården, he co-operated with two colleagues to build an exhibition called "Between Sky and Sea", to create interest and breathe some new life to the almost century-old gardens there. Initially, I wondered how Ulf's Nordic, poetically modern style would go together with the quite pompous, Mediterranean influenced style of the gardens, but he had combined both quite elegantly, building huge spheres covered with delicate little blue star creepers, and filling the flower borders with delectable flower combinations.
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"Fuchsias are the most feminine of plants" according to Ulf. He placed them in classic terracotta pots at Olga's terrace.

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Mediterranean notes were provided by rows of laurels, olives, fuchsias and lemons planted in classic terracotta pots on the terraces, and they seemed to thrive and complement their monumental but historically sensitive surroundings quite naturally. It still felt like Ulf's work at Millesgården was in its early stages, and I am curious to see how it develops over the coming years.

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Lemons in terracotta pots in front of one of the ateliers.

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Millesgården is situated on Lidingö, an island just outside Stockholm city center. Carl Milles, who had initially studied cabinet making and carpentry before leaving for Paris and studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, became a hugely successful sculptor with numerous commissions both in Sweden and internationally. Between 1931 and 1950, Carl was professor at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA, and delivered at the same time several public and private commissions at both sides of the Atlantic. Millesgården is a monument for his life's work where everything is on a grand scale, from the buildings incorporating Carl's ateliers to the stone terraces and replicas of his sculptures.

Bredablick revisited

The entrance flower bed as seen from the house towards the drive way. The round stone on the left is a pebble from the nearby beach.

No, I'm absolutely not comparing my house and garden to Brideshead in any way... nor was Bredablick, my garden, after our two years of absence in such a horribly gloomy condition as Brideshead was when Charles Ryder unexpectedly returned there as head of his brigade.

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Lower part of the same flower bed as above...

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When arriving in Sweden, I first felt quite uneasy to see my garden and house called Bredablick, "the wide view", named so after the lot of land where they are situated. Having had such an intimate relationship with my garden - cutting back, clearing, weeding, mulching, planting, always with soil under my fingernails - I was full of anguish to see how much had survived a break of two years and three summers. Of course, I've had someone to do the basic maintenance, but as anyone who has ever gardened knows, a garden must be loved, not just maintained.

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And still another view of the same area, with an old apple tree in the front.

To my great relief, many plants had survived, even if there were casualties: my shady flower border was almost gone, with only some ferns and a couple of Lilium martagons and Astrantias persisting in front of the huge, old lilac hedge. I chose them not only because of their lovely looks, but also because they are supposed to be highly tolerant towards both shade and neglegt, but I guess they too have their limits. In my entrance flowerbeds some plants had thrived and some not. Sadly, the hollies (Ilex meserveae 'Blue Prince') that I had planted in a bout of "hardiness zone optimism" had shed almost all of their leaves, so I had to cut them back to a height of only one feet. I hope that they grow back before we return (which should be in about two years time...), but until then, what was supposed to be a a dark, glossy green fond behind the perennials in these highly visible entrance flowerbeds, consists now only of a bunch of meager sticks with a couple leaves sprouting from them.

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The front lawn, where I usually grow islands of daisies and other meadow flowers...The large buxus was planted in the 1930s and the small babies by me for a couple of years ago.

Otherwise the Hostas were thriving and should have been divided, an impossible task given the hot, dry weather while we were in Sweden. Many of the peonies had grown fatter, and all lady's mantles, Alchemillas, were having a ball, spreading happily into all flowerbeds and self-seeding all over the gravel drive together with the Geraniums. I was hoping to have time to transplant even some of them to better positions, but our days in Sweden disappeared quicker than it took the glistening sprinkles of water from our garden hoses to be absorbed by the needy, parched soil...

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Bredablick, part of the "wide view"... Limestone paving and a lavender hedge to the left.

And there I was, happily toiling in my garden again, not noticing as time flew past. I was secretly feeling a bit ashamed of that I don't feel like this in my garden in Seattle, despite all its abundance and possibilities... And then, in Robert Pogue Harrison's thought-provoking book Gardens - An Essay on the Human Condition I found a passage that describes what I hadn't been able to formulate:

A garden that comes into being through one's own labor and tending efforts is very different from the fantastical gardens where things preexist spontaneously, offering themselves gratuitously for enjoyment. (...)
Unlike earthly paradises, human-made gardens that are bought into and
maintained in being by cultivation retain a signature of the human agency to which they owe their existence.

Deck for outdoor dining behind the house.

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Somewhere between the lines above, there might be the reason for my inability (at least not yet)to get attached to my Seattle garden: it was designed and planted by someone else, and despite all my pottering around, I have not really been creating anything of my "own". Maybe, creating and taking care of a garden is what is needed for being able to truly appreciate and enjoy it and its beauty. At Bredablick, I started with an overgrown, weed filled jungle and worked hard to leave my mark and make it into a garden. Despite my absence and the fact that it still is very much a work in progress (or isn't a garden always just that...), I feel that it still carries "a signature of my human agency"... and maybe that is why I continue to love it so much.

The sun coming up behind the nearby islands, all wrapped in early morning mist.

PS - thank you, Farmor for all help with getting the garden at Bredablick back in shape.

Quote of the day

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Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

- Henry James -

...and now, off to Scandinavia. We'll be spending four lazy weeks with the families, sitting in the shade and inhaling the ripening green scents of high summer, occasionally plunging into the brackish water of the Baltic sea... I'll be back late August.

... and slender, native Columbia lilies

A fully open Columbia lily, with golden, gracefully curved petals spotted with dark mahogany freckles.

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Lilies are out not only in the gardens of Pacific Northwest, but they are also blooming wild on the mountainous, rocky slopes of the area. Tired from the 4th of July celebrations, we took our girls for an easy hike to the top of the Little Si just outside the Seattle metropolitan area. On the way up, we ate our lunch surrounded by peckish squirrels making eager calling noises for others to join the expected feast.

Mount Si hiding in the fleecy coulds, as seen from the top of Little Si.

Between the cliffs, the slopes were filled with slender lilies bearing their golden flowers with curved petals like glowing little lanterns. They were small, barely two feet high (0.5m), and most of them had only managed to produce one or two flowers at the top of their meager stems on the stony soil. Delicate and elegant, they looked almost out of place on the barren hillsides, like young ladies dressed to kill but nowhere to go...

*A newly opened bud; the tips of the petals are starting to curve upwards.

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Back home, I identified the flowers as Columbia lilies, Lilium columbianum, that grow on elevated hills from northern California to British Columbia. Their flowers resemble in appearance the "Turk's cap lilies" like Lilium martagon, L. henryi and L. tenuifolium, and they even share the typical whorl of leaves that grows circularly from the nodes of the stem.

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Despite all the other, lush vegetation we saw during the hike - ferns, salmonberries, giant redwoods - it was these glowing, fragile lilies that made the deepest impression on me. Maybe it was the crawl through the thicket to catch the photos, but afterwards I felt like a modern day plant explorer hunting for new treasures, despite actually having been only a couple of steps from a popular hiking track...

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Giant Himalayan lilies

The Giant Himalayan lily, Cardiocrinum giganteum, in full bloom beside a velvety Hydrangea aspera at the Bloedel Reserve gardens. I'm sorry for the poor photo quality; it was difficult to catch the lily in the bright sunlight...

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A real photographer never takes pictures in full sun, I read somewhere; he or she only works on over-cast days, during the tentative light of the early morning, or in the warm, soft glow of the evening. But I rather accept the less than ideal conditions than leave things undocumented... Like on last Saturday, when my dear, non-gardening friend Tina was on a brief visit from Berkeley. I just had to show her the Bloedel Reserve, one of the greatest gardens in North America, and despite the relentless high noon sun, I tried to catch a picture of the Giant Himalayan lily, Cardiocrinum giganteum, that was in full bloom, towering almost 10 feet above the soft, humus-scented ground of the gardens.

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I first met these huge, regal lilies in Marian's garden last year, and have been fascinated by them ever since. Originating from the lush and fertile mountains of the Yunnan province in China, they were discovered (to the eyes of the Western gardeners...) by Scottish plant explorer Robert Fortune in mid-19th century. Giant Himalayan lilies can be cultivated at least in Danish gardens, but I had never seen as far up as in Stockholm; I would be very interested to know if anyone there has grown them. They are quite expensive to buy as bulbs, but as they do not like transplanting, they are safer to grow from seed. Their journey from seed to a flowering plant takes five to seven years, so they are definitely not something for gardeners expecting instant effects; therefore, they remained a collector's plant even in climates well-suited for cultivating them.

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A tuft of leathery, glossy leaves of young Himalayan lilies, not yet ready to flower.

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During the first five to seven years, the lilies only make large tufts of glossy, leathery leaves. Then, when the bulb is mature, a tall shoot emerges from the centre carrying narrow, jade-green flower buds. In the middle of summer, the buds start to open one after another, from the bottom of the raceme and upwards, revealing the large, white bell-shaped flowers with a touch of burgundy in the throat. The flowers emit a heady fragrance during the night-time; only one lily plant is enough to scent a whole garden. After two weeks the Giant Himalayan lilies finish their flowering and if left in place, the dry, soaring stems will fill the air with sparkling, translucent seed. Exhausted by their magnificent performance, the mother bulbs die after flowering, leaving their offspring in the soil, ready to start the long cycle of life again.

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Browsing through some gardening literature, I found some quite eccentric advice on how to plant Giant Himalayan lilies. Miss Gertrud Jekyll, for instance, advised on digging a hole of one cubic yard, filling it with compost and manure, and tossing in a rabbit before planting the bulbs. Major George Sheriff, a Scottish plant hunter and botanist who visited the Himalayas, went further and recommended digging a far larger hole, as according to him only a dead yak will do being a native to the same area as the Cardiocrinums.

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I guess the rabbit would be the most realistic option for a home gardener like me, and even then I would be quite concerned about the local dogs getting wild about my gardening methods... But given how long time it takes for the lilies to flower, I won't be growing them any time soon as I don't know how long I will be tending my present garden; it would be too sad to leave them before they flowered. So I guess I just have to be content with admiring them at a distance.

Happy 2nd anniversary...

The golden, silky petals of a double Icelandic poppy, Papaver nudicaule, almost ready to be carried away by the wind.

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After a couple of hectic weeks of driving my girls to their summer camps and then having our house full of friends, I almost missed the second anniversary of my blog. I was trying to remember the reason for starting it, but could not come up with nothing more exotic than a pinch of loneliness caused by moving into a new country, and maybe a dash of curiosity about getting something out there... It felt a bit like I was sending my own tiny messenger satellite out to the boundless space of connected gardeners and other like-minded souls and waiting if there would be any signals back.

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The name of my blog, The Intercontinental Gardener, was something of a joke from the beginning, referring to the relatively nomadic gardening life I've led so far (both Nomad and Nomadic Gardener were in use those days, even if they both now have disappeared from the blogging universe). At times, I've felt tempted to change it to something more relaxed... I mean, some days I've definitely felt more like "Garden Punk" or "Heavy Petal" than the proper "Intercontinental Gardener". But somehow the name stuck, and now it would feel strange to see anything else on the top of the page.

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Looks like this guy is sticking its tongue out...
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During these two years, I've connected with many talented, writing garden people. Karen (Greenwalks) was one of my earliest commenting visitors. Being a natural connector, she organized Seattle area bloggers to meet at irregular intervals, which is how I came to know Daniel (Daniel Mount Gardens), Jean (Jean Bradbury) and many others here. In the early days, Tina (the Garden Design Chronicle) from New Zealand was living in Melbourne, and her beautiful blog felt like a wonderful greeting from the town where I had spent four wonderful years. Nilla (then the Reluctant Gardener, now Utanpunkt), won my heart with her insightful writing and exquisite photos, and not surprisingly, she is now working on a collection of novels. I can't wait to get to read them in print. Alice Joyce's amazingly energetic travel blog Bay Area Tendrils gave ideas for gardens to be visited on my trips to California. Ruben (Rubens Rabatter) always manages to make me glad with his sympathetic posts, and James Golden's (View from Federal Twist) quite philosophic posts about his wonderfully sensitive, naturalistic garden are a constant inspiration, that I will keep in mind when I start working with my own garden in Sweden again.

*A dark maroon, speckled and nameless lily from Marian's garden.

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Of many visitors I will never know more than the country and city address they leave on the tracker of my blog. Many of them land on my blog by searching for "Fergus Garret", "Villa Mairea" or "Daniel Hinkley, Windcliff" (all three top key words for finding this blog - amazingly, the word "stumpery" also get many hits...). Some come from faraway, exotic places that I sometimes search myself to see where they are. Some come from places that I have a personal connection to. For example, I would love to know who visited from Iittala, a small town in Finland where both my mother and the famous Savoy vase by Alvar Aalto come from. Or, who visited from the tiny, dusty village of Birregurra in the rainless countryside of Victoria. It felt like a distant, eucalyptus-scented greeting from an unknown friend. While living in Australia, we often stopped at this sleepy village on our way from Melbourne to Apollo Bay, bought a cup of coffee from the old ladies at the local coffee shop and let the girls have romp at the playground before entering the last, winding miles that lead to the beaches of the Great Ocean Road. The improbable name of Birregurra brought vivid memories back, and I would dearly have wanted to ask how things were back there, and if the drought had loosened its grip.

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So what now, after two years and 126 posts? I'm not sure. I sometimes ask myself if I should be blogging at all, as it can be extremely time consuming. But at the same time, it feels like keeping a living log about my thoughts of all things related to gardens and gardening. I love the spontaneity and directness of posting my little writings; it is so completely different from the long and laborious process of getting something out in print. So I guess I will just keep writing, one post at a time, and see where this blogging life is going to take me.

Delicious thugs

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As a sad outcome of the recent housing bubble, there are a couple of empty, unfinished houses in my neighborhood, waiting for the good times (and builders) to return in some distant future. I find it fascinating to see how fast the lush, abundant nature of the Pacific Northwest has claimed the land back, and filled it with such a rampant tangle of blackberries that they make the roses covering Sleeping Beauty's castle seem lethargic.

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In my innocence, I thought that these vigorous plants were native - they surely look like they are having a ball here - until I found them on the list of noxious weeds in this state. Only the tiny, trailing dewberry, Rubus ursinus, is native to the Pacific Northwest. The thugs in my pictures are Himalayan blackberries, one of the two non-native species of blackberries that were introduced here by two unsuspecting Europeans, eager to find new berry varieties to grow in the fertile soil of the Northwest.

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Dr. Laurea was the first to try his luck with blackberries, and imported the evergreen blackberry, R. laciniatus, from Hawaii some time in the 1850s. Some thirty years later, horticulturalist Luther Burbank acquired a package of seeds of the Himalayan blackberry, R. procerus, from an seed exchange in India. The seeds proved to be more than the success Burbank had hoped on. Proud of his novelty, Burbank wrote in his catalogue that "the Himalayas would produce buckets of berries on wines that could grow 100-200 feet in only one season." Obviously, he didn't think this would be any kind of a risk, and definitely did not foresee having just introduced one of the area's most notorious weeds ever, capable of covering countless acres of land with impenetrable, thorny thickets.

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I guess that in the horticultural hall of fame, these guys score only a bit above the Englishman who imported rabbits to Australia, even if it has said in their defence that those days nobody quite knew about the huge risks of importing new species to new continents. And at least they were trying to grow something edible, instead of just wanting to introduce the ancient sport of fox hunting to their newly established society...

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Anyway, being an eager scavenger of all things edible, I'm already looking forward to the blackberry season ahead. It seems to become a good one: the wines are full of flowers and tiny, green berry babies. Almost no-one bothers to pick them in my neighborhood, which means that all the more are left to me and a couple of old ladies of Asian heritage, all of us probably the only ones eccentric (or greedy?) enough to do this. In two months time, we'll all be standing amongst the thorny wines again, picking the sweet, juicy berries with our sticky fingertips stained dark purple.
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