Each Little World

Garden visits: Ken and Jean Nordlund

Every time I've visited the Nordlund's garden, it is more lovely than the last. Ken says that he couldn't do much more than "distinguish a petunia from a pine tree" when he and Jean moved to this house in 1989. Even a brief glance at this front garden indicates this is the home of a consummate plants person. Front to back and side to side, this is a swoon-worthy garden. 

Heading around the garage (to the left in the above photo) is this walkway with a tall hedge creating a narrow garden room.

The garage wall on the right holds attractive trellises for clematis to scramble over. 

This is the view as you walk out into the gardens behind the house: big trees, hedges and deep dramatic beds of plants and grasses.  

As someone who loves a tightly clipped hedge, I am in awe of this sweep of yew setting off a space for entertaining right in the midst of the garden. 

This garden has a number of Carexs as well as grasses. 

The fenced area in the center back of the view below is the vegetable garden. 

A dairy state icon guards the veggies.

Continuing towards the back left side of the garden leads you to an entirely unexpected view. 

From the street, it is not obvious that the Nordlund's home and those of their neighbors circle a hidden park.

Ken and his neighbors are working on a prairie landscape where his and other properties adjoin this community space. 

Back in the main garden, we are now looking at the beds that border the right side of the property. If you need to reorient yourself, go back to the 3rd or 7th images which show wide views. 

Another garden visitor provides a sense of the scale of some of the hedges and plants. These borders are deep enough that that have paths running through the middle of them. 

Whether you look up . . .

or down, there is something wonderful to see.

All good things must come to an end. 

i'm already looking forward to this year's tours of gardens of members of the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society.

Blue Monday

Freezing rain on Friday evening with a bit of snow on Saturday has done little to provide protection for the garden from the single digit temperatures forecast this week. Nor did it glam the garden up the way a heavier snowfall would do. That means my focus for the foreseeable future will be the gardens I visited last summer.

It is rare to see a bottle tree up north, but this one looks completely natural as it repeats the intense color on the trellis in the image directly above.

Betsy True and Danny Aerts garden on one acre with mushrooms, fruit and flowers, a pond and a prairie, bees and chickens, a pizza oven and more. This is a shot of their fenced veggie garden which also contains pears, quince and espaliered apples. 

It's inspirational — and educational — no matter where you look. That's Betsy between me and another WHPS member. 

More signs of Spring

Despite the fact that I live in an urban area, prairies are a common sight around town. There is a city-maintained prairie at the end of my street which we have often walked through. The nearby University Reseach Park (URP) is landscaped with swaths of prairie surrounding the assorted contemporary office buildings. The land itself is gently rolling rather than flat which makes these landscapes of interest any time of the year. Should you drive by them right now you can clearly see how prairies are managed: by regular burning. This process helps to restore and enhance native vegetation which, in turn, filters and improves ground water quantity and quality.

We took a shortcut through URP the other day and discovered they'd burned the prairies and we missed seeing it take place. Mark has helped a couple of friends burn their prairies which is a pretty dramatic sight. 

The sign notes that this area is a "Native Habitat Planting" and says "Please do not mow, plant or dump" and describes the benefits of the planting.

Here's a brief video of what that controlled burn process looks like at URP. 

 

The URP prairies are localized plantings and generally smaller than what many people are doing with prairie restoration projects in the country. Curtis Prairie, at the UW-Madison Arboretum in Madison, is the world's oldest restored prairie. When it is burned it is quite a sight (below). The Arboretum was recently listed in the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing its significance as the birthplace of ecological restoration.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

One of my most vivid youthful memories is of my Dad stretched out on the couch in our living room, surrounded by his daughters. He was reading aloud to us from "The Long Winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. If I examine that scene more closely, I remember we moved to that house when I was in about 7th grade. That means I was beyond the age of most devoted readers of Wilder's "Little House" books.

For me, Laura's books are a pleasant jumble of images of a stalwart, honorable, loving pioneer family and their tribulations. I mention this fact because it meant I could read Caroline Fraser's exhaustive book — "Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder" — without the true back story of the Ingalls and Wilder families breaking my heart. 

At 515 pages (with another 100 pages of source notes etc.), it is not exaggerating to call Fraser's book "exhaustive." The print is a bit larger than typical for this kind of serious book with generous spacing between the lines making it easy on the eyes — important considerations with a volume this big.

Don't let the size deter you. Fraser has written a tale as vast and enthralling as the frontier. She never shies away from the hard questions like those that have swirled around the famed series of books in recent years: Are the stories fact or fiction, did Laura — or her daughter Rose — write them and were mother and daughter anti-goverment Libertarians? Fraser has dug deep, searching through letters and land sale/mortgage documents, unpublished manuscripts and memoirs, newspaper files and more.

From the beginning of her book, Fraser points out that if Laura's story is to be told in its historical context, that story will be different than the charming books she wrote. Her story, Fraser shows, was "broader, stranger and darker than her books." Even Laura herself admitted, "All I have told is true but it is not the whole truth."

That truth was devastating for so many Americans — like Laura's father — who answered the siren call of the prairies and went west in the 19th century. In the front of Fraser's book is a map showing all the locations where the Ingalls and Wilder families lived. Charles Ingalls endlessly searched for more land, better land, a place with fewer neighbors and more opportunities. One of the biggest shocks of Fraser's book is the discovery that Pa — illegally and knowingly — settled on Osage Indian land that was not available for settlement. Then there are instances of Pa uprooting the family and just walking away leaving debts unpaid. 

These vastly differing landscapes later became the sites of all the "little houses." In reality, those many moves never supplied what Charles Ingalls, and later Laura herself, were searching for. The prairie was the great love and the great tragedy of their lives; offering crippling debt that the delights of waving tall grass and birdsong could not dispel. The truth is that few farmers who went west were able to make a living without an additional source of income.

At age 9 Laura has to go to work and her financial help is critical to her family's survival. Her jobs are not what we would consider appropriate to her age, including washing dishes and waiting tables in a hotel. I kept picturing her as one of those tragic children in Lewis Hine's photographs.

Carrie (left), Mary and Laura in 1879 or 1880.

One of the strengths of Fraser's "Prairie Fires" is that it places each of the Little House books in the context of its era with all the economics, politics and natural and man-made disasters that affected the family in full view and fully explained. Fraser's book rangers from Frederick Jackson Turner to Ayn Rand and the Koch brothers, from the Peshtigo Fire to the Great Depression, with bank failures and corporate deception on full display.

The description of the locusts that hit the prairies in the early 1870s is almost beyond belief — though the fact that the government response helped little is not. In fact, again and again Fraser brings drought, land clearing, monoculture and monolithic farms right into the present. It becomes quite clear that stripping the prairies of native grasses in order to farm it had profoundly negative effects on farmers, brought on by themselves and from farming in areas not meant for crops.  

At age 16, Laura marries Almanzo Wilder, the hero of "The Long Winter," and leaves her family and her beloved Pa. You can't read the Little House books without falling in love with Pa and Almanzo. But it turns out that though they may have been willing to work hard, both men had little business sense and were always on the edge of ruin. Thus married life does not bring the economic security lacking in Laura's childhood.

In the books, despite all the hardships and poverty, Laura celebrated family closeness and the fun they made for themselves, especially Pa's fiddle playing. The relationship with her father that she so cherished does not seem to ever have existed between Almanzo and his daughter Rose. More often than not, Laura and Almanzo, as a couple, seem to have had little room for their daughter. Then again, after Laura travels back to the Dakota Territory for Charles Ingalls's funeral in 1902, she never saw her mother or sister Mary in person again, though both lived another 20+ years.

LAURA INGALLS WILDER (LEFT) AND HER DAUGHTER, ROSE WILDER LANE

Laura's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, is unlike her mother in many ways. She has a failed marriage, travels the world, has little regard for truth and is a spendthrift. She and her mother, however, both turn out to be talented writers with Rose often competing with her mother for the same material. It seems clear from Fraser that the "Little House" stories are Laura's and she is the main writer; but her daughter instigated her mother's writing career and gave her advice, editing and did some writing. As Fraser says, in every book, it is "the combination of their skills that created the transcendent whole."

Despite that, the two women had what can only be called a tumultuous relationship. Looking back from the 21st century, it seems clear that Rose had some type of mental illness and was probably bi-polar. She was a talented writer and was quite successful in her day. But both women saw "truth," in writing at least, as something "which reflected not objective reality but something closer to felt experience." Rose's relationship with her mother and her delusional behavior become difficult to read at times; partly because the rapprochements between the two never seem to last and we are constantly back to square one. 

ROSE WILDER LANE IN HETCH HETCHY VALLEY IN YOSEMITE, 1916-18. LANE WAS WRITING A STORY ABOUT THE VALLEY WHICH WAS SLATED TO BE TURNED INTO A RESERVOIR. (HERBERT HOOVER PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM)

If I was surprised at how much the past — at least environmentally — seemed to be endlessly repeating itself from Laura's childhood right up to the present, I was stunned at the political repetition. According to Fraser, "religion suffused" the politics of Laura's great-grandfather, Samuel Ingalls. The Puritans believed every affliction (like locusts) was a sign of God's judgment, but that dealing with such tragedies was the responsibility of the individual.

Fraser notes that over time and westward movement, the Ingalls family became less strict religiously; but one thing never changed: "the belief in self-reliance as an absolute sacrament." When the family failed it was easier for both Laura and Rose to blame the government than to admit their own part in their failure. Rose obviously took this concept to extremes as she grew older but this is clearly where their political stances originated. They did not take handouts and did not believe in giving them for the most part. 

Fraser covers the television series based on the Little House books, looks at the different illustrators, the trajectory of getting the stories published as well as the twisted thread of how Laura's will and the rights to her books was subverted. There were times I found the American history as fascinating, if not more so, than Laura's story. Because Fraser looked so deeply into what happened in Westward expansion, what caused it, whether it worked and how it played out right up to the present, the book functions equally well as a look at how all of us got to where we are today. 

Wisconsin summer

Mark belongs to a book group that meets the last Sunday morning of the month. I join in when the book interests me and I'm willing to give up time in the garden. I went along this week as the garden is too wet to work in. The drive was absolutely lovely and reminded me again of what I love about where I live.

Drive ten minutes outside of Madison and you're in the country. We saw fields and terraced hills of corn as far as the eye could see. 

This natural area, however, was almost as far as our friend's house about an hour from town.

The roads were lined with Queen Anne's lace and Chicory, a site that says summer in Wisconsin to me.

We also saw some low lying fields that were water-logged and the crops planted there had rotted away. A very sobering site. I may complain about my wet garden but it's not my livelihood like these crops are for farmers.

We could also see where the high winds had come through in the recent storms. Lots of huge branches and big old trees were down by the roadsides. There were a couple of downed trees where I hoped the vibrations from our truck driving by would not cause them to fall onto us.

It made driving on twisty and hilly roads with tree canopies meeting overhead a little disconcerting this time instead of its usual charming.

But our journey proved safe and uneventful. We arrived home to discover a little rainstorm had visited while we were gone. And we ended the day with a turkey play date in the garden. We've discovered the turkeys are nesting in the black walnut tree in the neighbor's yard. 

A pair of moms (yes, two of them!) came for an evening stroll in the garden with a hoard of little ones. I guess that's what happens when you spend twenty years creating a beautiful habitat around your house — there are always visitors stopping by.

 

Trilliums

If it's been a good spring for Epimediums, it's been equally good for Trilliums — at least in my garden. This is an old clump of Trillium sessile photographed on a cold and cloudy day (April 26th).

Here's the same group this week surrounded by Primula japonica 'Postford White'.  This particular Trillium is one of the largest I've ever seen in my garden. 

It measures about ten inches across and is a stunner. 

This Trillium recurvatum (at least I think that's what this one is!) has seeded itself around the garden: in sun and shade, in pebbles and soil of all types.

Though most gardeners think of Trilliums as native woodland plants, I think they are as sophisticated looking as many of our highly cultivated and hybridized garden plants. What could be lovelier than this clump of Trillium flexipes? 

Trillium albidum produced four flowers after only being planted last year. That's pretty dramatic growth for a Trillium.

When we moved into our house we discovered a Trillium grandiflorum plant already growing here. For years I was afraid to touch it until Gene Bush of Munchkin Nursery told the WHPS that Trilliums will die out if you don't periodically divide them. So I finally pared away some pieces which have grown into nice plants themselves as you can see from the photo below.

In fact this Trillium is so happy that it self seeded into the dry stream bed in soil that has been compacted by big equipment and big feet for many years. It's the last place I would have ever planted one and it came back this year after I forgot to dig it out and move it last year.

Big mama is trying to open if the sun would come out for more than a few hours. This original Trillium grandiflorum is surrounded by white Dodecatheon which are almost ready to bloom as well. 

My patch of Trillium luteum is increasing very slowly. This one is near a path that I traverse almost daily so I am more aware of the speed with which it's growing than most of my other Trilliums which require a special trip out into the garden to see them. I guess I can't really complain given how many Trillium varieties I'm growing with no real problems. I give all the credit to my microclimate rather than this gardener's expertise.

Ken and Jean's garden

I usually post about what is happening in a garden at the time I visit. But I have been enjoying other bloggers' posts about gardens and nurseries they visited during the growing season and that they are featuring now. Seeing all that green foliage and flowers in full bloom is a real boost to the spirits at this time of the year.

I am joining in with these images taken last summer and then forgotten until now. You can tell what a beautiful evening it was when we toured this garden on the very far west side of Madison. We had met Ken and Jean a few years ago and reconnected in their garden last summer.

Dahlias brighten the space between the driveway and the front entrance.

The other side of the path to the front door leading down and through the front garden.

This section of the garden wraps around the front of the house and ends where it meets the neighboring property.

There is another large garden all along the edge of the driveway. At the far end of this border a path leads past the garage and into the back garden.

As someone who loves foliage I was smitten with all the wonderful combinations in this garden.

Looking back toward the street and the driveway border. I love the way the red blooms and the mounds of Japanese forest grass draw your eye though this area. But what I really appreciate is the fact that they used different red plants at different heights with dramatically different flower shapes.

That grassy foliage at the back is Helleborus foetidus. It was so gorgeous it inspired me this spring to order a few plants of that variety of Hellebore for my own garden.

Isn't this just a perfect location for a grown-up garden retreat? I would be out here for every meal and I'd add afternoon tea and cocktails to give me even more excuses to sit back and enjoy the garden instead of just working in it.

At the edge of the formal garden Ken is working on a prairie garden on the other side of the fence.

All the homes in this area are located around a central communal park area which belies the fact that it is an urban neighborhood.

The prairie in bloom.

More great plant combos including Carex muskingumensis, the grassy lime green plant in the rear. I am growing this in my bog so it was a surprise to see it in such a different context.

A perfect garden and a perfect evening.

You can only see it here

In the Midwest, on public and private land, prairies have almost become a landscape cliche. People often "plant" a prairie before they know much about that unique ecosystem or what's involved in creating and sustaining one.

But here in Madison you can learn about prairies as well as experience the essence of this unique landscape at the UW-Madison Arboretum. At this time of year I always try to visit the famed Curtis Prairie. These photos were taken there when our little blogging group made a stop at the beginning of September. 

CURTIS PRAIRIE IS THE WORLD'S OLDEST RESTORED PRAIRIE and occupies 73 acres of Arboretum land. It's predominantly a tallgrass prairie and shows off many native species, including big bluestem and Indian grasses. If you're interested in prairies this is the Holy Grail of that landscape in terms of age and information.

Many classic experiments with planting techniques and the use of fire to manage prairies were conducted here during the 1930s and ’40s. Most of Curtis Prairie is a restoration, but the northeast corner is actually a small remnant of original prairie abundant with native species, according the Arboretum's website. There is nothing quite as restorative and romantic as walking through Curtis Prairie with the grasses waving in the breeze high above your head on a September afternoon.

On the opposite end of the garden spectrum is the Thai Pavilion and Garden at Olbrich Botanical Gardens. This gorgeous building — known as a sala — was a gift to the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the Thai Government and the Thai Chapter of the Wisconsin Alumni Association. UW-Madison has one of the largest Thai student populations of any U.S. college or university, according to Olbrich's website. I think that last bit of information was a big surprise to most of us who live in Madison. The Thai Pavilion is connected to the rest of Olbrich Gardens by an ornamental bridge which emphasizes the feeling of stepping into another world.

Salas are common in Thailand and are typically used for protection from the elements. The pavilion at Olbrich is more ornate than most roadside salas in Thailand and is more like the ones you might find at a palace. It was built in Thailand, taken apart and shipped by ocean transport, rail and truck to Madison. The Thai artisans who came to Madison to reassemble it arrived in Chicago on September 11, 2001. The building is only one of three to be built outside of Thailand and is designed to withstand our weather. 

The Olbrich horticultural director and staff have done an amazing job of creating a tropical garden around the building and along the approach route. You can imagine how impressive a feat this is in the Midwest. 

Water in typical Thai-style containers as well as in reflecting pools is an important feature in this garden.

The Thai garden also includes fountains so the sound of water adds to the atmosphere.

Olbrich Botanical Gardens and the UW Arboretum are wonderful assets to our community and to the Midwest in general. For my money, the Thai Pavilion and Garden alone is worth a visit to Madison. No matter how many times I visit it always takes my breath away.

Wordless Wednesday

More of Mark's foggy photos from last Sunday morning.

Frank Lloyd Wright in Buffalo

Say "Buffalo, New York" and the first thing that comes to mind is usually not Frank Lloyd Wright. Buffalo's reputation for record-breaking snowstorms has overshadowed its record of a different sort: the city boasts more Wright houses than any other place in the country, outside of Chicago.

Wright's architectural legacy in Buffalo virtually all stems from his 30-year friendship with Darwin D. Martin, a local businessman. It was Martin who got Wright his first large-scale commercial commission, the Larkin Building, and then gave him free rein in the design of his own house shown here. Though we toured all the buildings on site last spring, no photos of the interiors are allowed.

Martin was born at the end of the Civil War, just before Wright. Both men spent time on the prairies of the Midwest as youngsters and both had troubled childhoods that left them trying to create the ideal home they never had. For Wright, family and home was embodied in Taliesin; a place well-known to those of us who live in Wisconsin. The design and creation of the Martin home in Buffalo offered Wright everything the architect ever wanted: a large lot, an unlimited budget and complete freedom of design.

Wright responded by giving Martin a stunning composition, what he called his "opus." Wright designed a complex of six buildings totaling almost 30,000 square feet and including a pergola, conservatory, carriage house and a house for Martin's sister. Wright called the Martin property's arrangement of buildings to each other and the landscape "well nigh a perfect composition." After visiting last summer I'd have to agree. 

Construction on the entire complex of buildings took from 1903 to 1907. Wright estimated the cost of the Martin house — built in 1904-05 — at $35,000, but in true Wrightian fashion it eventually totaled $175,000. The tab for the restoration of the Martin house and the reconstruction of the demolished pergola, conservatory and carriage house that is currently under way in Buffalo is $35 million. Total restoration of the property plus construction of the visitor center is estimated at $50 million with all but $10 million raised at this point. Having grown up in Buffalo during the years the Martin House and complex fell into serious disrepair, it was a thrill to see it being restored to its full glory.

The pictures above and below show the plaza between the Martin house and the almost all-glass visitor center.

One of the most stunning aspects of the Martin house is this long covered pergola leading to Mrs. Martin's conservatory with its huge reproduction sculpture of Winged Victory amidst the greenery. 

What is so wonderful about Wright's work is that no detail is too small to be ignored whether it's the house number or a spot for chores.

The large building on the left (below) is the carriage house with the chauffeur's apartment above. Double click on the picture below and you will see that the poles that held the wash lines in this beautiful laundry yard match the detailing elsewhere on the house. It reminded me of some of the things that Arne Maynard does in his garden designs which he talks about in his new book.

Wright designed 394 original pieces of art glass, including 15 window motifs for the Darwin Martin House. The Chazen Museum of Art in Madison owns one of the "Tree of Life" windows from the Martin House. The Martin House itself only has one original "Tree of Life" window, though they know the whereabouts of most of them. The glass panels perpendicular to the stained glass windows let light into the lower level.

You can find more information on the Martin house and tours here.