Good Evening, I hope you enjoyed a spring day today. Just to add a little color to your weekend in case you are too busy, not from the northeast or having a hard time getting outdoors, I thought that you might like to see what's coming up in a 250 acre garden that I've been pretending is my backyard for most of my life.
I'd like to dedicate these photos to a man so few seem to remember. This diary is dedicated to Thomas H. Everett. It is a personal dedication because I had a formative relationship with the man who taught me so much about botany and horticulture, a man who instilled a respect for nature in me from my childhood years. But what Dr. Everett did for me was not really important, he did it for so many. Sadly in this era of information that great man does not even have a page at Wikipedia.
Before the photos here are a few words from The New York Botanical Gardens Library about Thomas H. Everett;
T. H. Everett (1903-1986), a staff member of the NYBG for 55 years, was one of the world's leading horticultural authorities and educators. Mr.Everett had an international reputation as a horticulturist, author, lecturer, educator and consultant. His influence in the field of horticulture was magnified through those who learned from him as a teacher, those who worked with him as a gardener and those who relied on his publications for horticultural information. At various times in his career at the Garden, he headed the education, horticulture and maintenance divisions.
Born in Woolton, England in 1903, he gained horticultural training early on by working on several estate gardens. He enrolled in a three year horticultural course at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1925. Arriving in American in 1927, his first position was gardener on the estate of Samuel Untermeyer in Yonkers, New York. The following year he moved to a position as head of greenhouses and estate gardens for H. E. Manville in Pleasantville, New York where he worked with the renowned landscape architect Beatrix Farrand. In 1930 he returned to England to take his final examination for the coveted National Diploma of Horticulture, awarded jointly by the British government and the Royal Horticultural Society.
In 1932 he was offered a position as Horticulturist and Head Gardener at the New York Botanical Garden. He was successively promoted to Horticulturist and Head of Education in 1934, Assistant Director of Horticulture and Senior Curator of Education in 1959, Director of Horticulture and Senior Curator of Education in 1967 and Senior Horticulture Specialist in 1968 at which time he set aside most of his duties to concentrate on the compilation of his Encyclopedia. He designed and supervised the construction of the renowned rock garden, which was eventually named in his honor. He was a founding member of the American Rock Garden Society. He also designed, developed and installed the famous NYBG rose garden as well as numerous lavish conservatory displays and exhibits at the New York International Flower Show.
He traveled widely throughout the world in his work and was a tour leader for many horticultural trips offered by Linblad Travel. The recipient of almost every medal and citation the horticultural world has to offer, he was also a participant on numerous television and radio programs. Over a twenty year period he answered gardening questions for the Herald Tribune and several gardening magazines. He authored the sections on Trees and Houseplants in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He served as landscape consultant for both the Port Authority of New York and the Staten Island Botanical Garden. Called the patron saint of Wave Hill, a 28 acre former estate in the Bronx with gardens, greenhouses and striking views of the Hudson River, Everett made an appeal to New York City Parks Commissioner Thomas Hoving to preserve this garden for the public. In 1982 an alpine greenhouse there was dedicated and named in his honor.
Founder of the acclaimed New York Botanical Garden School of Horticulture, Everett was deeply concerned throughout his career with effective public and professional gardening and horticultural education. Appointed Curator of Education in 1954 and Senior Curator of Education in 1959, he initiated a program of instruction for professional gardeners in 1932 which continued until 1942. This program produced a group of outstanding American horticulturists who later occupied important positions in the U.S. and abroad. As Senior Curator of Education, he organized three major certificate programs in botany, gardening and landscape gardening. In 1957 he instituted the Children's Gardencraft Program in which over 200 children a year cultivate their own garden plots. In 1963, he organized the highly successful Municipal Cooperative Trainee Gardener Program for New York City high school students.
Perhaps his greatest accomplishment is authoring the ten volume New York Botanical Garden Illustrated Encyclopedia of Horticulture upon which he labored 14 years to produce. He took most of the 11,500 photographs himself. The first of its kind to be published since that of L. H. Bailey in 1914, it is considered one of the most complete horticultural reference works and a benchmark in the field. Much of his success he attributed to his secretary Lillian Weber who had been with him for over fifty years and to his longtime friend Miss Elizabeth Hall, Chief Librarian of the New York Botanical Garden. Both of these women assisted Everett in the compilation of his monumental Encyclopedia. Both he and Miss Hall were recipients of the New York Botanical Garden Distinguished Service Award in 1969. All three of these friends founded and operated the Garden's Plant Information Office from 1981 through 1986.
Of all those accomplishments of a man who educated so many to become both naturalist and environmentalist, that renowned rock garden is the most lasting.
It's easy to see why this has been described as one of the most beautiful public rock gardens in the world. A dramatic three-acre oasis, it offers plenty of surprises to those unfamiliar with rock gardens—for while there are rocks aplenty, the real treasures of this garden are its thousands of jewel-like alpine flowers, its graceful woodland plants, and its sparkling waterfall and stream flowing to a flower-rimmed pond. Different seasons offer different delights, from a kaleidoscopic display of autumn colors to an explosion of glorious spring flowers drawn from the mountainous regions of all seven continents.
The garden still has a plaque to honor his memory. After the dedication is a quote.
"And Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away."
-Kipling
That garden is just beginning the season but here are a few of the flowers from yesterday, some double tulips, a late blooming Pasque flower and a blue variety of tulip called Tulipa Humilis var. pulchella.
For me it is the wide view of the Alpine Rock Garden that is the most pleasing. Here is the entrance to both the Rock Garden and the Native Plant Garden. It stands besides my favorite Cherry Tree (Prunus pendula) and the wall will soon come to life in wisteria.
Once inside this is the scene that Dr. Everett created.
Next door in the Native Plant Garden there was also plenty to see. This being the time of year just before the broadleaved trees turn the forest to shadows, the ground flowers have their chance. The best showing was the trout lily. There was also Bloodroot and I think the last photo may be the Swamp Buttercup. Note: corrected in the comment section, the real identity of the third flower.
But if there is any seasonal show to be seen at the NYBG it is Magnolia Way and this is the weekend for that.
For me it was an introduced species that made my day. In my nature in winter diary I mentioned anxiously awaiting the arrival of Ranunculus ficaria and someone commented that it was a nasty invasive species. I like to think of this plant that covers the silt bed of the Bronx river each spring more as a naturalized immigrant.
There is an obituary in The New York Times for Dr. Everett that captures his spirit.
Known affectionately by colleagues as T. H., Mr. Everett, according to friends and colleagues, maintained a vigorous sense of wonder about nature, which prompted him numerous times during on a visit to China to jump from the seat of a tour bus and commandeer the microphone of the astonished tour guide to cheerfully expound on the trees, plants and flowers his fellow tourists were seeing.
I like to think that I inherited that that "vigorous sense of wonder about nature" from him. I remember when I was a docent at the NYBG and T.H. as a way of keeping busy would come into the garden to man the phones on the plant hotline that he founded. After all of those accomplishments telling people on the phone how to get rid of aphids was not below him.
I've been over at the NYBG library a great deal lately and the librarian mentioned to me the sad fact that nobody has updated his Encyclopedia of Horticulture.
I can end this diary with a story I remember the man telling me a long time ago. Do you know how the daffodil came to be named Narcissus? See how the flowers point down. Perhaps Linnaeus saw some daffodils staring at their own beauty in the reflection from a pool of water.