THE ART OF GARDENING

THE GRAND MASTERS OF MAINE GARDENING: AND SOME OF THEIR DISCIPLES
By Jane Lamb
143 pp. Camden, Maine:
Down East Books. $30.

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

Wild roses are an apt metaphor for Maine: rugged, beautiful, sensible, adaptable.
—Jane Lamb, The Grand Masters of Maine Gardening: And Some of Their Disciples

Most gardeners are optimists by nature. Despite the forces arrayed against them—marauding insects, the vagaries of weather, and disease—gardeners return to their gardens year after year. And they do so not with a sense of dread but instead with pleasure and hope. Oh, the irises, the lilies, the roses, and the daisies! Can anything be more sublime or bring more joy to the heart? (Nongardeners, of course, can think of many things.)

For the Maine gardener, there is the additional challenge of winter, of too little snow and too much cold. This year, such conditions killed the whole front row of my backyard bed. Still, I greeted spring with delight, eager to fill in the emptiness, even though the cost of doing so strained my budget.

In the book The Grand Masters of Maine Gardening: And Some of Their Disciples, Jane Lamb captures the enthusiasm of some of Maine’s eminent gardeners, past and present, and gives us a vivid portrait of their gardens. In addition, she explores the notion of gardening, of why in these hectic times people persist in spending money and time on an endeavor where the outcome is far from certain. She even captures the dark side of gardening, the death and decay, and describes “the tension between the formal and the random,” a tension that exists in life as well as in many great works of art.

At this point, I suppose it is only fair to come clean with a full disclosure. Jane Lamb is a friend, and I have admired her writing for many years. However, The Grand Masters of Maine Gardening is so fine that friendship is irrelevant. Few books on gardening manage to be as complete and as absorbing as Grand Masters is. The book is a satisfying blend of ideas, advice, and profiles of gardens and gardeners. Best of all, Lamb’s writing is so engaging that this reader actually felt as though she was visiting the gardens and gardeners described in this book. Beautiful photographs, taken by a variety of photographers, accompany the profiles and provide stunning shots of flowers, people, and places. Master gardeners as well as novices will want to add The Grand Masters of Maine Gardening to their collection of gardening books.

In the introduction, Jane Lamb tells us that she has been writing about Maine gardens and gardeners for Down East magazine for over twenty years, and the chapters in Grand Masters “were originally published as articles in the magazine from 1982 to 2003. Updated information, as of July 2003, appears in the brief introduction to each chapter.” Because Lamb has been looking at and writing about Maine gardens for so many years, she has a perspective and a familiarity with them that feels natural and intimate. Finally, her own love of gardening brings wisdom and pragmatism as well as affection to the profiles in the book.

Here is a brief description of some of the gardens and gardeners featured in this book. Maine Gardening begins with Currier McEwan, who “started gardening almost by accident in 1956 and spent the next forty-five years developing spectacular new iris hybrids.” He most certainly was a grand master of gardening, and Lamb dedicates her book to him as well as to Bernard McLaughlin and Roger Luce, two other grand masters who have also passed away and whose gardens and work Lamb so beautifully evokes. There is Charles Savage, “a friend and disciple of the great American landscape designer Beatrix Farrand.” Savage created two of Maine’s loveliest public gardens, Asticou Azalea Garden and Thuya Garden, both on Mount Desert Island. There is Carolyn Jenson, who developed a method called “sod-top gardening” as a way of dealing with unwanted tree stumps. According to Lamb, this technique has been a resounding success, and Jenson’s gardens are a “festival of color [that] begins in early spring…and continues unabated well into October…”

A favorite of mine is the indefatigable octogenarian Corrine Mann and her zeal for daylilies: “Daylilies are…so many things. The colors, the forms, the shapes, the textures are so varied: crepe, satin finish, diamond-dusted, star, wheel, ruffled…” Another favorite is Russell Moors, who along with his wife Joan, started their “garden in their Auburn backyard more than forty-five years ago…” So devoted is Russell Moors to his garden that for awhile he worked in a temporary job “rather than accept a position overseas that would have meant leaving his garden.” Needless to say, this man has his priorities in the proper order.

Yet another favorite is Nellie Davis, who transformed her yard in North Jay into a garden that literally stops traffic. “From rainbow ribbons of deep purple dwarf iris and pink creeping phlox in June to the autumn bonfire of gloriosa daisies, every inch of this…garden…overflows with color.”

Bernard McLaughlin, “who died in 1995 at the age of ninety-eight,” thought “the secret of a long, healthy life…[was] found in the garden.” Clearly, he had a point. Many of the gardeners profiled in this book were in their eighties when Lamb wrote about them, and Currier McEwen died when he was 102.

However, gardens often outlive their creators and then must struggle to survive what will eventually be a losing battle if they are not adopted by another gardener. As the garden writer Michael Pollan put it, nature abhors a garden. Lamb does not shy away from this aspect of gardening: “trees grow taller and thicker, flower beds become jungles, and winters take their toll.” In a very short time, the order of a garden can be overcome. Beatrix Farrand took care that this would never happen to her gardens at Reef Point, her Bar Harbor estate. “Several years before her death…she…made plans to have [her gardens] dismantled,” and she almost seems like a mythic figure as she destroys what she created. Bernard McLaughlin’s gardens have been luckier, and they are now being cared for by the McLaughlin foundation, “established in 1996.”

In the garden, we see many aspects of life—birth, beauty, creativity, disease, destruction, decay, and death—and every kind of drama can be found in miniature. As gardeners, we do what we can to create beauty and order in a world that is not always beautiful and orderly. Sometimes we succeed, other times we fail, but we keep trying until old age or our own death stops us. I suppose this zeal is puzzling to those who do not garden. Perhaps such people should read The Grand Masters of Maine Gardening. It might broaden their outlook.

Those who love gardening will need no incentive at all to read The Grand Masters of Maine Gardening. Not only will it affirm their passion for plants and flowers, but it will also provide inspiration as well as practical advice.
Now, if only I could convince my husband to go into the woods, grab a large boulder from an old stone wall, and bring it to my garden. In The Grand Masters, Bernard McLaughlin describes how to start a hens and chicks garden on a rock, and there’s even a wonderful photograph of one. So far, my husband has, shall we say, been less than enthusiastic about this project. But I’m working on him. 

 

5 1/2" x 5" 2008 Wolf Moon Calendar just $10.00 each
More Info

More Info

© Wolf Moon Press 2002-2008 all rights reserved.

Submission Guidelines