Gardening with Galligan: The color of spring
Spring is truly here.
The Island is yellow from one ferry to the other, with waving daffodils and forsythia in full bloom.
What a cheerful sight after this long and difficult winter. Both plants are easy to grow, mostly left alone by deer and virtually indestructible.
When I bought my first home here, on the edge of Mashomack in South Ferry Hills, it was an airtight shell virtually abandoned by its owners who hadn’t visited in several years. The grass was knee-high and there were no foundation plantings. There was, however, a large, unplanted forsythia bush lying on its side, balled in burlap, behind the house. We closed on a winter day and I didn’t return until spring.
I was, after all, a city girl, born and bred; trees and bushes grew in parks. The very idea of actually owning a tree made me laugh out loud. I certainly had no idea what to do with this balled thing but I did find out who to ask. Blaise Laspia (Michael’s father), then the owner of the nursery on St. Mary’s Road, came over, looked and volunteered to plant it wherever I wanted. And he did.
Can you believe that it actually bloomed? After lying there for years untended by anyone, unfertilized and unwatered except by Mother Nature, and we all know how difficult she can be. Now that’s a hardy plant.
Many people find forsythia boring, and it’s true that it’s ubiquitous so it may not be as interesting as other flowers. But it has a noteworthy history.
Its earliest known use was in China, where one variety, forsythia suspensa, the weeping type, was a staple of Chinese medicine, used alone to treat toxins, fever, swollen lymph glands, flu and other inflammation.
In addition, when the fruits were ground into powder and then mixed with honeysuckle flowers, similarly treated, the uses increased to include upper respiratory tract infections, acute bronchitis, acute endometriosis, measles, acute tonsilitis, encephalitis B and meningitis.
Of course, we don’t know how well this worked, but it is described in the literature. It’s interesting that almost any plant with a history of significant longevity — the rose is a good example — as initially prized for its medicinal values. Apparently it’s only now, in our age of relative ease and affluence, that the bloom is seen and appreciated as beauty.
Fortunei is a variety of forsythia suspensa; the most likely explanation for its name is that it was named after Robert Fortune, who was the Royal Horticulturalist Society’s plant collector in China during the 1840s. The shrub itself was named for William Forsyth, the English plantsman, born in 1737. He was a Scottish botanist, a royal head gardener and one of the founders of the English Royal Horticultural Society, an organization still in existence today and the host every year of the famed Chelsea Flower Show.
Now, not so boring, right?
Tips of the week: The annuals for sale everywhere are pansies and osteospermum; the latter are those flowers with the black or almost-black centers. If you’re tempted to use them to fill your window boxes now, bear one thing in mind. Both these plants are available now because they’re cold-hardy That doesn’t mean heat-and-humidity-hardy, which is what we have here all summer. And they aren’t.
If you use them, understand that they’re unlikely to make it through the end of July and will have to be replaced.
With the average date of last frost usually around May 15, this is a good time to begin seeds indoors, if that’s something you like to do. I’ve started sunflowers, morning glories, nasturtiums and two envelopes I stored in the refrigerator from seeds I collected from my own columbines and seeds from the wild blue asters growing by the roadsides. I want more of them.
