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Saving Our Floral Heritage
by Tovah Martin
For some reason, I've always been interested in plants from the past. If a flower was pretty, I admired its beauty. If a plant had handsome foliage, I valued that virtue. But if there was a story behind a plant—if it had roots deep in history—then I was truly intrigued. Even if it lacked the bright colors, the compact growth habit, and the easily controlled demeanor of its modern counterparts, I liked the plant because it was old.
Tovah Martin's cottage garden. By growing vintage varieties, we can help preserve our floral heritage.
There's an enchantment to old-fashioned flowers. They were the blossoms that furnished our ancestors with food, medicines, cleaning aids, and insect repellants. They were the blooms that the pioneers brought with them across the country. And they provided the inspiration for poetry, the emblems for political movements, and the bouquets for lovers. They fostered myths and legends; they were the fodder for old wives' tales and superstitions.
According to Scott Kunst of Old House Gardens, heirlooms are some of the hardiest plants in the garden. Certainly, many vintage flowers have survived over the centuries, stubbornly staying in cultivation despite the ebbs and flows of fashion. And fashion has often been the enemy of heirlooms.
Thanks to the efforts of a handful of preservationists, old-fashioned flowers are still available. In this handbook, a few of the activists in this growing field share their knowledge. They are the foot soldiers of the movement, working to ensure that vintage flowers do not disappear—and that the stories surrounding heirlooms do not slip away. While enrolled in the Longwood Garden Program through the University of Delaware, Peggy Cornett of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants spent years thumbing through dog-eared period catalogs, studying the fluctuations in popularity of annuals between 1865 and 1914. Christie White of Old Sturbridge Village has devoted equally long hours to seeking out references for vintage vines. Ellen McLelland Lesser went to art museums and libraries, looking for hints in oil paintings to teach her how flowers were used in arrangements before the 20th century. Every contributor to this handbook has made an equally important contribution to our wealth of knowledge of the past.
Choosing which plants to include in this handbook was a treacherous dilemma. So many of our treasured garden flowers are heirlooms. We could easily list all the wildflowers of the field and continue on for hundreds of pages—and we'd only be touching the tip of the iceberg. So we focused on the most commonly grown, easily recognizable heirlooms, leaving many gaps. Some of the plants you'll find in this book, however, are no longer commonplace.
While many once-valued plants have already been lost, preservationists have found many of the heirlooms described here by searching in obscure places and linking up with other gardeners. You, too, can help keep old-fashioned flowers alive by collecting seeds, growing vintage varieties of roses, sweet peas, phlox, or whatever happens to catch your fancy, and sharing seeds and plants with friends and family. Through our collective efforts, we can save our floral heritage from disappearing.
Tovah Martin's interest in heirlooms began with indoor plants at Logee's Greenhouses in Danielson, Connecticut, where she spent more than 20 years caring for the vintage begonia collection. She is the garden editor of Victoria magazine and the Litchfield County Times. Her writing has appeared frequently in the Sunday New York Times, and she is the author of several gardening books, including Tasha Tudor's Garden (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1994). She is the guest editor of two previous BBG handbooks, Greenhouses and Garden Rooms (1989) and A New Look at Houseplants(1995).