Over the next few weeks as the weather begins to creep into tee-shirt and (almost) shorts temperatures, flowers that generally do okay with cooler temperatures will begin to fade as ephemerals and other spring flowers take center stage.
I will be sharing a few more Substack posts completely free to everybody, but soon the newsletter will be restructured so that all events relating to Hortus Arboretum will be towards the top and the “content-rich” writing will be available for subscribers only, as well as the feature ~ “Ask Ally” about PLANTS!
I know you have questions about seed starting, seedlings, transplanting, tree health, etc. You can ask me anything plant-related, I’m here to help. And if I don’t know the answer I’ll go ask Scott!
This newsletter will follow that format so for those of you who only want to know what’s going on at Hortus will see it at the top of the newsletter.
…and those of you who are interested in all things plants can have the opportunity as a paid subscriber to read about ALL THINGS PLANTS!
These are things that I’ve been thinking about, reading about, researching, and now writing about to hopefully get you thinking too!
The Arboretum will be open starting Mother’s Day ~ May 12th from 10 am-4 pm
We will be open most weekends from 10 am-4 pm. Reservations are not necessary.
Please check the calendar since we do update often with new events and sometimes the gardens are closed for private events.
You can support the work we’re doing at the arboretum by donating to the “Fencing Fundraiser”, or directly through the website.
You can also support the gardens by becoming a member or through a legacy gift.
SAVE THE DATES
May TBD - Plant Sale Fundraiser!
June 15th - Tree ID with Levi O’Brien
June 8th - Hudson Valley Grape Talk & Book Signing with J. Stephen Casscels
July 13th - The Annual “Art in the Garden Event”
July 21 - Poetry in the Garden - Featuring 3 Past Hortus Writer Residents: Smelt, Jueds & Holt -Browning.
The Spring Art Residency that Hortus sponsors is taking applications through April 15th. Go here for more information on the residency & how to apply. Although we cannot provide any funding, you will have 24/7 access to the gardens, and get free accommodation to stay at the Barnette which is on the edge of the arboretum.
Maybe you’re not an artist but want to stay at the Barnette? It’s a sweet garden cottage with loads of art, including many works from past residents! If you decide you want to stay, let me know and I will give you a discount on your stay.
My book, (co-authored with my husband Scott Serrano) is available at all fine bookstores as well as here! The book is a good resource as you start to get ready to put in new plants this spring. Think low-maintenance edible landscaping!
March is a tough month. The saying March rolls in like a lion and out like a lamb, was definitely true when I was growing up in the 1970’s. But nowadays it feels more like the reverse, with extreme weather days becoming more the norm, and warmer days happening sooner.
Did you ever wonder why people planted Magnolia x soulangeana aka The Saucer Magnolia in the past, when these days the flowers are often subject to frost and ice? Every April, halfway through the month I ponder this thought. How did we all fall into this trap of purchasing a tree that has a more than 50% chance of getting zapped by a hard frost?
The Saucer Magnolia is a cross of two magnolia species: the M. denudata and the M. liliiflora. Both parent species are native to China and the hybrid was created in France by Étienne Soulange-Bodin, a true plant enthusiast. Large old specimens, with gracefully branched arms sweeping along the surface of a lawn, with hundreds, if not thousands of flowers opening up in early April, end up being subjected to below-freezing temperatures at some point during the month leaving behind a sodden mess of striped pink, white and brown blossoms.
Even though the Saucer Magnolia is a hardy tree to the Hudson Valley, and it is considered a late winter-early spring flowering tree, they are “precocious flowering”, because they flower before they leaf out.
What has been happening over the past five to six decades is that our days are warming up sooner than they used to. When these Magnolias were first planted (in my area at least), in the early 1900’s the flower buds would stay closed well into April because the air and soil temperatures were not consistently as warm as they are now. The ground had more snow during the winter months, and it took a longer time for trees like this to start breaking out of dormancy.
Blossoms are now subjected to unfurling earlier and earlier and being exposed to the occasional frost or snow event which is something they cannot endure.
At Hortus we also grow another “precocious”-type, called the Star Magnolia (S. stellata). Truthfully I find that there is something very beautiful about their strappy tepals layered in bits of snow and ice.
It pretty much sums up the whole feeling of March.
The “Little Girl” series was one of the first projects of this type that was done at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., starting in 1955. Plant breeders have worked for decades to select precocious magnolias that bloom later in the spring to avoid cold damage. The “Little Girl” series produced eight hybrid magnolias: ‘Ann’, ‘Betty’, ‘Jane’, ‘Judy’, ‘Pinkie’, ‘Randy’, ‘Ricki’, and ‘Susan’ – known as the “Little Girl” series. They were selected to bloom two-to-four weeks later than the Saucer Magnolias.
At the arboretum we grow two of the “Little Girl” hybrids, ‘Betty’ & ‘Jane’.
For the last 20 years neither has ever had any of their flowers be subject to any frost damage, and they are just stunning!
But why stop there?
One of our all-time favorites is the Bigleaf Magnolia (M. macrophylla) This tree always surprises visitors to the gardens that it survives in a zone 6 environment since it is native to the Southeast. Bigleaf Magnolia has the largest simple leaf (hence its name) of any temperate North American tree, and its flowers are bigger than most people’s faces!!
Our Magnolia collection is something we are very proud of at the arboretum and have continued to expand upon every year. We have a few rare and endangered Magnolias as well that are too young/small to put in the ground yet. Your contributions to Hortus over the years have helped us source these plants.
We cannot do this without you our donors! Please consider donating now.
One of my favorite Magnolias has become the M. x ‘Hattie Carthan”. It is not because it has the most spectacular flowers, although they are pretty special (what Magnolia flowers aren’t??) Or that its seedpods are pretty weird and make my mind go to the gutter.
There are two solid reasons for my love of this particular tree. The first is because it was named after an incredible woman, Hattie Carthan who saw the value in a mature Southern Magnolia (M. grandiflora) and fought the city of Bronx, to forgo tearing it out. Hattie also spearheaded planting trees for neighborhoods.
The second is because we did NOT do our homework when we planted the tree originally, and over the short time of a decade it was being crowded out by the two Bigleaf Magnolias. So the tree had to be moved!
The Instagram post below shows what the tree looked like after three days of hand-digging, and then hand-moving the tree to its forever spot in the Pinetum area.
Magnolias are among the most ancient of flowering plants, having existed for over 95 million years, and beetles serve as their main pollinators, before many of the more complex pollinators, such as birds, butterflies, and bees, had even evolved. Magnolias’ strategy to avoid self-pollination is for the flowers to open in the morning when the stigmas are receptive to pollen that is brought to them by beetles during the daytime. At night the innermost tepals close around the carpel which is simply put, the flower's female reproductive organ and trap the pollinating beetle. While the tepals are closed, the beetle deposits pollen all over the receptive stigmas. The stigmas then close and the anthers become active, covering the same beetle in fresh pollen so that when the sepals open in the morning, it will fly out and find another flower to pollinate.
Magnolia grandiflora ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty’ is a beautiful small native tree that according to sources is not reliably hardy in zone 6. In fact when we first planted it all the literature out there said contradictory things about its actual hardiness factor. According to the Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder page, one section says hardy from zones 5-9, while another section says “Reliably hardy in Zones 7-9. Can be grown in Zone 6 if sited in a protected location”. All I can say is the specimen as Hortus is absolutely lovely, and although it was slow to really put on any growth, everything about this plant; the scented flowers, the evergreen leaves the indumentum of the underside of the leaf, the seed cones, has made it worth the wait.
Many of these special plants that we grow at the arboretum should also be grown by you, the avid gardener! One of my biggest gripes is that a majority of these plants are not available in most local garden centers or nurseries, other than specialty mail-order ones, SO… imagine my surprise to see 4 specimens available at my local Lowes!
Recently a food writer, cookbook author, forager and above all an adventurous gardener that I have started following on Substack
(check him out!) pondered over if he could only put in one more tree would it be a Quince or a Magnolia? Although my gut reaction was of course “you gotta put in a Baltic Quince” (Cydonia oblonga) tree, because after all, I am a co-author of the book ‘Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts’.But after unwittingly devoting this newsletter to the charm of the Magnolia family and its many stunning species, hybrids, and cultivars, my response to Mark is - “Put in a Magnolia tree Mark, you can always buy some Quince fruit at the market. This way you can use the Magnolias flowers to make a lovely tea, a fragrant ice cream, or a floral cordial. Recipe courtesy of the Happy Pear.