heather notes · the flora celtica report ends up with a pessimistic outlook for native plant usage...
TRANSCRIPT
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Spring 2013 Volume 23, Number 2 HEATHER NOTES
In This Issue
Summer Conference pg 1
New Member pg 1
My New Toy pg 2
Reminder pg 3
Officers/Directors Listing pg 3
Declining Use of Heather pg 4
Website Update pg 4
Calendar of Events pg 5
President’s Report pg 5
Spring Visit pg 6
Grace at Easter pg 6
Photo Page pg 7
About Heather Notes pg 8
WELCOME NEW MEMBER
Sarah Moore Mashpee, MA
Northeast Heather Society Summer Heather Conference
Preliminary Plans
~Date~ August 16 thru August 18, 2013
~Conference Central Location~
Waitsfield, Vermont
~Accommodations~
Many chalets and ski resorts in area. Details on Registration
~Events~
Social Mixer and Heather Parlor Show &
Board Meeting
Little Siberia Display Garden
Home of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Waterbury VT
Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT
Barbecue & Annual Membership Meeting at Mackay’s Heather Garden, Waitsfield, VT
We hope you don’t mind that this issue of the Heather Notes is a little late. We definitely wanted to include the tentative plans for our Annual NEHS Conference in this issue which were discussed at the Board Meet-ing after the Fort Tryon Heather trimming event which took place on April 13, 2013. The conference home base will be centered around Don-ald Mackay’s, President NEHS, home in Waitsfieild VT. Mark your calen-dar and make every effort to join your friends, new and old, this year, August 16-18. Watch for final plans and registration in the July issue of the Heather Notes
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My New Toy by Mary Matwey
Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener training starts early in January every year, usually with a pot luck brunch. This kickoff is followed by weekly presentations, workshops or trips and tours until in late April when we be-gin working in Cutler Botanic Garden. Classes have run the gambit this year from ‘Starting Seeds’ to ‘Global Warming effects on the New York Growing Cli-mate’ to ‘Insect ID’ and ‘Mounting Insects for Display’. Somewhere in there we had a class on ‘Growing Plants using Hydroponics’. That left quite an impression on me espe-cially when the presenter started talking about cloning: Cloning as in taking cuttings of Heather ???? His talk em-phasized the absolute necessity for a moisture and oxygen and nutrient rich environment during the critical stage when the cutting is beginning to root. As the thousands of heather cuttings I have killed over the years, because of the absence of these three criteria, past before my eyes I knew I would have to get myself “one of these”. One week later I was the proud owner of a ‘Clone Machine 25 Site’ by Botanicare™ Did I start with something easy like Coleus, Ivy or Geraniums? Not on your life. I went for the most difficult semi-woody cut- tings of Calluna, Erica, Vac- cinium and Arc-tostopholus taken during the non-prime season of winter in Febru- ary. I carefully followed the instructions assembling the cloner, added wa- ter and the sup-plied nutri- ents and then took the cuttings placing them in the supplied plugs with the bared stem of the cutting hanging down into the con-tinuous water spraying, nutrient rich environment. It is now “day 16” of this experiment and I nearly screamed with joy when I saw 1/8” – 1/4” white hair like roots on the bare stems of the Vaccinium “Cranberry”. The Vaccinium that has roots show little new top growth but the Calluna, Erica and Arctostophlos look very much alive with new leaf bud-ding on top but no visible roots yet. All of my observations are recorded of course since this is a new cloning approach for me. Last week the water level in the closed-system clone machine became low so I visited the Hydroponics store and asked why. The expert opinion was that the cut-tings were using up the nutrient enriched water. Am I con-vinced that would cause that much water loss? I don’t know but there is no better answer to account for the water loss and I do have new top growth. Water level monitoring will definitely be watched closely. On day 19, roots were observed on the Erica and Calluna
Continued on page 3
Clone Machine 25 Site
Underside
Multiple Rooted Cuttings
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DON’T BE PRUNED! WE WOULD MISS YOU!
Check the expiration date on the address page of this newsletter.
Send your renewal to Treasurer Peter Matwey, 7 Heights Court, Binghamton, NY 13905
NEHS OFFICERS & DIRECTORS, 2013
President Donald Mackay 135 Deerfield Lane Pleasantville, NY 10570
(914) 769 6553 [email protected]
Vice-President Bill Dowley 28 Hurricane Road Keene, NH 03431
(603) 355 8801 [email protected]
Treasurer/
Corres Sec. Peter Matwey
7 Heights Court Binghamton, NY 13905
(607) 723 1418 [email protected]
Recording Sec./
Content Editor Mary Matwey
7 Heights Court Binghamton, NY 13905
(607) 723 1418 [email protected]
Director Emeritus Harry Bowen 18 Chase Road, Apt. A Falmouth, MA 02540
(508) 548 3113 [email protected]
Director Pat Hoffman PO Box 305 Swedesboro, NJ 08085
(856) 467 4711 [email protected]
Director Vivagean Merz 55 Upland Drive Falmouth, MA 02540
(508) 548 3282 [email protected]
Director Paul Murphy 2473 Hickory Hill Road Oxford, PA 19363
(302) 559 6052
Director Alice Schaefer 27 Waverly Avenue Newton, MA 02458
(617) 965 0546 [email protected]
Director Priscilla Williams 35 Turner Road Townsend, MA 01469
(978) 597 3005
Director Suzanne Barnes 9 Giles St. Binghamton, NY 13905
(607) 770 9414 [email protected]
Director Bunny van Valey 108 Mossman Road Sudbury, MA 01776
(978) 443 6454
Director/
Publishing Editor Jane Murphy
2473 Hickory Hill Road Oxford, PA 19363
(610) 883 2171 [email protected]
PLANTS WITH WINTER COLOR
Heath Heather Witch Hazels Dwarf & Mini Conifers
Japanese Maples Twig Dogwoods
HICKORY HILL HEATHER Paul & Jane Murphy
2473 Hickory Hill Road, Oxford, PA 19363
www.hickoryhillheather.com Hours By Appointment
610-932-3408
which for me makes the whole exercise worth it. The next step will be to plant the rooted cuttings into a soil environment. If you have ever stuck a sprig of Hedera “Ivy” in water where it developed those long leggy roots you will agree that those water roots are different animals than soil roots. Transplanting them into soil at that stage greatly reduces the success rate. So the big questions at this stage are; how long should the roots get before transplanting into soil, how do I minimize the transplant shock from a nutri-ent rich, misted growing environment to a soil envi-ronment? There are soil supplements to reduce trans-plant shock and that may be what I will use. In any case I will try to transplant at various stages of root lengths and supplements in the soil. This is not an economical way to propagate plants for the commercial growers but it is a very satisfying en-deavor to people like me who propagate cuttings just for the thrill of seeing new life emerge from a stick.
My New Toy continued from page 2
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The Declining Use of Heather
by Donald Mackay No one is more sympathetic to the vernacular connections of heather than I am. But even so some of the putative uses of heather, listed in our heather texts as links between the plant of the heaths and the people that live on them are rather speculative. Some of the uses undoubtedly had currency one to two hundred years ago when the Scottish Highlands was mostly Terra Incongnita. Heather was used then as a dyestuff, along with a few other plant stuffs, but today one would have to be one of the greenest of the greens to make dyes out of heather to use on wool degreased with strang, i.e., stale urine. Flora Celtica, which maintains a website devoted to current uses of Scottish plants (which occur mostly in the Arts & Crafts area) has an exhaustive list of plants used currently in such activities as basket making, dyeing, thatching and jewelry. Surprisingly, heather shows up only as a trivial use (bundled resin impregnated heather stems) in jewelry. No mention of any current heather use in basketry, dyeing or thatching. In basketry the dominant plant in Scottish use is the willow, though much of it now comes from Somerset in England. Other plants used include hazel, oat straw, marran grass and rushes, all in long traditional use, as heather once was. Gaelic dictionaries contain many entries for articles made of heather such as baskets, mats, ropes, brooms and pot scrubbers, but such heather usage has escaped the Flora Celtic survey. This survey seems exhaustive as plants used for basket making also included ash, rowan, honeysuckle, crab apple, birch, dogwood, elm, bog myrtle, larch, lime, sycamore, brambles and raspberries. How could heather fail to make such a list? The answer must be that basket making in Scotland – described as a thriving craft – no longer makes use of heather. Flora Celtica goes into the eco-nomics of willow supply, looking at various sources of supply, natural and planted, and even beds of organically pro-duced willow. In dyeing, where heather was once used for a range of colors, the latest survey shows only lichen and fungal dyes in use. Native plants were once in economically significant use in the Harris Tweed industry, but sadly this is no longer so. Usage is now in craft, hobby and semi-professional areas, but it is not economically viable, even with weeds or very common plants like ragwort, nettles, dock and heather available at no cost. This is one of the few mentions of heather I could find in this report, even in the long section on thatching. Five pro-fessional thatchers are still operating in Scotland, and most are employed in commercial thatching This is done with the common phragmites reed secured with hazel staples and broom battens. The reed comes from beds in the River Tay estuary, but most of it is exported to England and Wales. The report mentions some specialist thatching with other materials in Scotland such as heather, bracken, marran grass, rushes, broom and turf, but notes “this tends to be mainly for visitor centres or local museums, film sets, grant-aided renovations etc. Most heather in Scotland is unsuitable for thatching, having been burnt or grazed too short to be of use, and this can present problems for thatchers.” It is clear a remake of “Braveheart” is in order. One company specializing in traditional techniques “has found it necessary to bring in heather from Yorkshire to thatch houses in the Outer Hebrides.” There are some areas where suitable heather does grow in Scotland but they are protected for environmental reasons. Where not protected the cost of scouring the country for good heather and transporting it to the thatching site becomes a problem. But even so the demand for heather had doubled in the two to three years prior to the report, raising the suggestion that certain moorland areas might be excluded from burning in order to provide heather suitable for thatching. The Flora Celtica report ends up with a pessimistic outlook for native plant usage in spite of a public reawakening of interest in crafts like basketry and dyeing, citing limited markets and economic competition from overseas. For some reason the gardening area is outside the scope of the survey, presumably because the use of natural plants is miniscule compared with commercial nursery production, and in any case there are very few native heathers that have the potential to stand up to the flood of other heathers available from other countries. A pity for Flora Celtica but a boon for heather gardeners around the world. O tempora! O mores!
Website Update I hope you are visiting our website www.northeastheathersociety.org to follow the NEHS’s activities throughout the year. One new change is the removal of the Members Only page with loginname and password. All the information is available to any visitor to our website hoping they will like what they see and what we do enough to join the North-east Heather Society.
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President's Report By Donald Mackay
One of the consequences of declining membership is the difficulty of finding suitable meeting places for the active membership, particularly for the Annual Conference. Our other meetings have fallen into a rough concordance with Board Meetings and the obligations we have more or less assumed in maintaining public heather gardens around the region.
Bill Dowley has been working on establishing dates for our annual meeting and for pruning efforts at Fort Tryon in Manhattan and The Fells in Lake Sunapee, NH. As always they will prove to be very enjoyable affairs and, as Henry would undoubtedly have proclaimed, profitable to our happy few, our happy band.
Our Annual Conference, our main affair, will at least this year be affected more than usual by the number of mem-bers and guests in attendance, since fixed costs like buses become onerous unless largely shared.
I said 'at least this year' because the Board has under consideration sites much farther removed than usual from our core constituency. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are very desirable holiday locations that justify the cost and time of car travel,but only for members that are likely to stay in the area before or after the conference. And of course, as you move north the number of heather gardens and heather nurseries, our visit staples, falls way off.
The Board, therefore, needs member input on the numbers possibly interested in making perhaps a two or three hun-dred mile journey to see only a few gardens and nurseries and to attend a conference that may have to dispose of our usual bus visitations if our numbers are too low. Our current thinking on time is to favor mid-August, since fall seems to hasten the optimum bloom time in northern climes; but your views on timing are eagerly sought and will be deter-minative.
On the plus side think of the clear, clean air, maple syrup pancakes and the off-season rates at the many ski lodges around. The rest of Henry's address on St. Crispin's before Agincourt may not be entirely applicable, but you ought to get the idea. It ought to be a very memorable occasion, and one to boast about, no matter where we end up.
So write the Board. Are you willing to travel? Meet in mid-August? Other suggestions are most welcome. Show you care.
TBA Lasdon Park Arboretum Katoneh, NY
April 13, Saturday, 10AM Fort Tryon (Board Meeting) Manhattan, NY
April 27, Saturday 10AM Heritage Museum & Gardens Sandwich, MA
May 11, Saturday, 9:30AM Note The Date Change
The Fells (Board Meeting) Newbury, NH
TBA NEHS Conference
Tools for Trimming: Gloves
Layers of Clothes (Mother Nature is so unpredictable)
Light weight hedge trimmers or shears
Battery Powered Hedge Trimmer if you’ve got one
Small Rake
Snacks and Water
2013 Calendar of Events Heather Trimming and More
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Spring Visit By Editor, Mary Matwey
From a gardener’s point of view, creativity is the mother of finding ways to utilize what you have, turning the ordinary into a thing of beauty. If I had the power, I would have moved “spring break” to the end of April so that our visit to Paul and Jane Murphy’s ‘Hickory Hill Heath and Heather Nursery’ by way of DC, would have been the kaleidoscope of color that it promises to be. Instead we gazed upon a line of 100 or more Forsythia just beginning to break bud along with berry bushes Willows, Viburnums and Dawn Red-woods. The color was provided by the yellow and orange flowering Witch Hazel, winter kissed Calluna in shades of red, yellow, orange, grey and green, and the golden grass fronds waiting for the scythe. The first issue of the Heather Notes of 2013 featured one of Kurt Kramer’s Erica beds in bloom and as the photo shows, Paul and Jane’s Erica garden is promising to be just as beautiful. In Zone 6, their Ericas do best sheltered from the hot afternoon sun under a protective pine tree on a fairly steep slope. It looks like the plan is to enlarge the Erica garden along this slope out to the road edge where passersby will be enticed to stop and shop. We of course had the tour of the propagation shed, the greenhouse and the holding beds wherein grew this year’s and next year’s heathers, shrubs and trees. The next few months are their busiest with prepping the plants and plant shows so I advise you to shop early for best selection. See their ad, this issue, and visit their website www.hickoryhillheather.com You won’t be disappointed.
Photos of the Murphy’s and their nursery, are on the opposite page.
Grace at Easter by Donald Mackay
Easter was early this year, coming at the very end of March. Spring started on March 20 as the sun dic-tated, but the snow on the ground in Vermont ski country belied the calendar. Snow was still accumulating a few inches each night with way-below freezing temperatures at night to keep the snow in place. But all of a sudden warm winds from the south melted the snow off roofs and formed grassy circles under the trees.
Finally on Easter Sunday the grassy patches had enlarged enough to reveal the varicose lawn and outlines of the heather beds, allowing many heathers to show their true colors after three months under snow. Not all plants were uncovered, but the winter-blooming callunas I saw had either kept or developed their red-dish hues under two to three feet of snow. Snow depths were very variable. There is a large drift five feet or more at the bottom of the garden, but the snow is very soft and I sank in almost to my waist.
My general impression is that this winter in Vermont was very easy on nearly all the heathers, with the no-table exception of Erica spiculifolia and some E. carnea which normally survive the roughest winters with-out complaint. They looked pinched and dried out, as did last year's extended flower stems from Calluna vulgaris 'H.E. Beale'.
In the same bed there were notably extended flattened stems of C. vulgaris 'Harry's Grace', but these looked vibrant and verdant. On closer inspection I concluded these stems had grown over the winter, though the flowering stems from last year looked rather dark and dried out. The two kinds of stems looked very similar, but under the glass the new stems looked like they carried unopened flower buds but didn't. Their whiteness was due entirely to a white downy covering over the end of tiny branchlets covered with densely packed bracts. The old stems still had a few flower buds, the new ones didn't, but it sure looked like they were well on the way to pointed buds.
The overall effect is very encouraging if not pleasing to someone looking for any sign of green or color in the garden after a long winter. Perhaps these branchlets (often one-sided) will bear their flower buds un-opened in time to become points of color for the fall, but whether they do or not matters little now. I am glad to add a plus for 'Harry's Grace'. If there were a category for restoring confidence in the vitality of heathers after a long winter, this would head it.
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HEATHER NOTES, all rights reserved, is published quarterly by the Northeast Heather Society (NEHS), a tax-exempt organization and a chapter of the North American Heather Society (NAHS). The purpose of the Northeast Heather Society is to foster interest in growing heathers (Calluna, Erica, Daboecia, Cassiope, Phyllodoce and Andromeda) in northeastern North America, by serving as a conduit of educational information for both the experienced and the novice gardener. MEMBERSHIP in the Northeast Heather Society is open to anyone who pays dues to this chapter. Membership benefits include: a subscription to this quarterly newsletter, participation in chapter meetings and elections, borrowing privileges for slide/power point presentations, and, most valuable of all, contact with fellow heather gardeners who mostly live in or near your growing zone, all willing to share helpful advice and their experiences. A family membership permits more than one family member to vote and participate in all NEHS activities for an additional $5 per year fee above the annual dues. The family membership includes all household members residing at the same address and each member has one vote. Each household will receive only one copy of Heather Notes.
Dues for an Individual: $15 a year; $28 for a two year membership; $40 for a three year membership
Dues for a Family $20 a year; $33 for a two year membership; $45 for a three year membership
Remit payment to: Peter Matwey, Treasurer, 7 Heights Court, Binghamton, NY 13905
For digital presentations, contact Bill Dowley, Keene, NH. Tel. (603) 355-8801; [email protected]
WEB INFORMATION: North American Heather Society website: www.northamericanheathersoc.org
NORTHEAST HEATHER SOCIETY website: www.northeastheathersociety.org
ADVERTISING: Quarter page ad: $35 per issue; $25 per issue if advertising in two or more consecutive issues.
Contact: Pat Hoffman (856) 467-4711; [email protected]
BE A CONTRIBUTOR TO HEATHER NOTES:
Do you have a suggestion, a question, a story, an anecdote, a poem, or a photo to share? Contact the Content editor:
Mary Matwey, 7 Heights Court, Binghamton, NY 13905 (607) 723 1418 [email protected]
All material may be edited for clarity and length.
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