Last night I did something I don't do nearly enough - take advantage of the many wonderful gardening lectures available in this horticultural town. Jenny Rose Carey, director of the landscape arboretum at Temple University Ambler, was the featured speaker at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 20th and Arch. Her topic: Gardens of the Jazz Age. Her reason: The theme of this year's flower show, which of course is sponsored by PHS, is "Jazz It Up," the gardens and music of New Orleans. Opening day is March 2.
Jenny is a garden historian, a chronicler of all things fascinating about gardens and a walking "advert," as she says, for the idea that gardening, like art, music, architecture, fashion and politics, is as much about our time and place in history as anything else in our culture. Gardening doesn't exist in a vacuum, and those who dismiss it merely as a hobby miss much of the point. Yes, we love to plant flowers and grow vegetables, but it's so much more than that.
I think about this a lot, especially when people react indifferently when I tell them what I do for a living. (These are nongardeners, for sure.) More than ever, gardening is important not just for our amusement and mental health, but for our ability to be self-sufficient, to live an environmentally responsible life and to be, as is so often said, "stewards of the land."
Where was I? Oh, yes. Jenny. She's a Brit, grew up in Kent, gardens on a beautiful 4 1/2-acres in Ambler. She lives in a restored 1887 Victorian that she shares with husband Gus and three daughters. Fittingly, they live in what was once home to Wilmer Atkinson, the Quaker journalist who founded the Farm Journal in 1877.
Jenny's the daughter of a botanist, sister of a garden designer, if I recall correctly, and she designed her first garden at age 16. So it's in her genes - and she's had a lot of practice. Her garden in Ambler, perhaps more than any other modern private garden I've visited in a long time, is beautiful and smart and just plain buckets of fun. (Sorta like Jenny, who showed up last night in a low-slung, rose-covered "chapeau" to set the mood.) Among other features, she has a dry garden, herb and vegetable gardens, a cutting garden, a fairy garden and - what I've written about - a stumpery. Jenny and Prince Charles are among the few left in the world with stumperies!
Anyway, last night she spoke about gardening styles between the world wars - especially the 1920's, the "Jazz Age," in other words. It was a time of high-spirited prosperity, at least for the wealthy, emerging social and political freedom for women, increasing mechanization and interest in travel to and exploration of Italian gardens.
American gardens of the times, then, featured "outdoor rooms," fountains, pergolas and arbors, boxwood hedges and topiaries, sundials and birdbaths, axial views and vistas and perennial borders, a reaction to the carpet-like annual beds of Victorian gardens.
Jenny tossed into her slide presentation "adverts" of the era showing women in ankle-length dresses and bonnets of every sort strolling and digging in their gardens. Right!
The evening drew 90 people, quite a crowd for a Wednesday night in January. Enough to start a speakeasy!
