THE URBAN ROCK GARDENER T M A NEWSLETTER PUBLISHED BY MANHATTAN CHAPTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ROCK GARDEN SOCIETY Volume 22, Issue 7 May/June, 2009 ~ SPECIAL EVENT ~ Join us for a rare opportunity to hear the world-renowned alpine plant authority, taxonomist, author, plant explorer, and garden designer from the Czech Republic WAVE HILL & THE MANHATTAN CHAPTER OF NARGS invite you to attend back-to-back talks by ~ JOSEF HALDA ~ ❧ “Rare Bulbs From Turkey to China ” & “Troughs From A Czech Perspective ” ❧ Sunday, May 17, 2009 1-3:30 PM *At Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center, 675 West 252nd Street ❧ (A tour of Wave Hill’s Alpine House and Trough Collection with Gelene Scarborough, M cNARGS member and Curator of Wave Hill’s Alpine House and Alpine Collection, precedes the second talk) ❧ In the way of many of his fellow Czech countrymen, JOSEF HALDA traveled to the mountains at a very early age. By the age of twelve he had his own collection of plants in his parent’s greenhouse. By sixteen, he was corresponding with Lawrence Crocker, a partner in Siskiyou Rare Plants in Medford, Oregon and subsequently sent them cuttings of Daphne arbuscula , a very hardy evergreen Daphne that grows only on the limestone cliffs of the Muran Valley in Slovakia. This led to more correspondence with other growers in both Western Europe and North America. One of those remarkable occasions where gardening trumped politics, but it would be another twenty years before Josef would travel to America. He and his wife, Jarmila Haldova , have collected seed of new discoveries in Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, Western China, and Upper Burma. Their Czech background has given them better access to remote regions in states of the former Soviet Union. Even now, travel can be restricted at best, or worse, dangerous. They have also researched and published monographs on Primula, Gentiana, Daphne, Paeonia, and Androsace. The photos Josef will share with us portray both plants we have never seen and their natural habitats that can hardly be described. From this vast region originate many of the hardy bulbs grown in our gardens. This is a wonderful opportunity to be taken to another realm by one of the world’s great field botanists. HARVEY WRIGHTMAN has known Josef Halda for 15 years, and during that time Wrightman Alpines Nursery has germinated and grown many new plants from seeds purchased from him. In addition, Josef has passed along a wealth of knowledge about the culture of alpine plants while generously sharing his advice. We are grateful to Harvey and to the Minnesota Chapter of NARGS for granting us permission to reprint this piece on Josef Halda, which originally appeared in Minnesota Rock Plant Notes, May ’09 Newsletter. } Exclusive offer to M cNARGS Members: There is no additional fee to attend this lecture. However, reserve your space in advance and * receive free admission to Wave Hill. Simply email your name and address to [email protected] to receive a confirmation email. You will need to supply your name and confirmation at the Front Gate in order to gain entrance. This offer is non-transferable. ~ MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT ~ MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2009 MALCOLM McGREGOR: “SAXIFRAGES” {Please allow 90 minutes for Malcolm’s very engaging and informative talk} Malcolm McGregor, who was born in 1947, lives in East Yorkshire, England but has traveled widely in North America, Turkey, Morocco, the Himalayas, the Olympic Mountains, Austria, and Italy observing and photographing plants in the wild, while continually in the pursuit of saxifrages. He was past Editor of both the Scottish Rock Garden Club Journal and Saxifrage , the specialist publication of the Saxifrage Society, of which he was Chairman. He is a well-known and passionate lecturer who has been growing alpine plants for 30 years. “Saxifrages have inhabited large parts of my garden, have dictated where I’ve been on holiday, and have generally absorbed an awful lot of my spare time: watering the plants in the alpine house, tending the rock garden and taking cuttings; writing, editing and giving lectures; learning botanical Latin, traveling to increasingly obscure places to find and photograph plants in the wild. As with all enthusiasms, the subject can become an obsession. I have been interested in wild flowers since I was a boy. Perhaps it was the sheer magic they represented when we moved from a basement flat in Fulham in bomb-damaged London, where we had no garden, to the outer fringes of London, and I was suddenly, at the age of nine, free to tramp the Kentish woods, finding flowers, watching woodpeckers, catching fish, and over the next few years exploring further on my bike, finding orchids in the chalk meadows, crayfish in the chalk streams. I can still feel the same joy in my searches for saxifrages or edging along a rocky ledge – even if today caution occasionally takes over.” And though our enthusiastic speaker has also worked in arts administration and writing computer software for the engineering industry, “it is the unforced charm of mountain plants” that most attracts him . Malcolm McGregor’s new book Saxifrages: A Definitive Guide to the 2000 Species, Hybrids & Cultivars , the first fully comprehensive account of saxifrages since the early 20 th century, will be available for sale and inscription. (See Book Review, page 9) MEETING LOCATION: 15 Rutherford Place is between 2 nd and 3 rd Avenues and 15 th and 16 th Streets. Our meeting room is on the ground floor of the building adjacent to the historic Friends Meeting House, facing Stuyvesant Square. Socializing begins at 6PM and the meeting starts at 6:30 PM. ~ NEW & IMPROVED WEBSITE ~ The website for the North American Rock Garden Society has been redesigned and uploaded to the Internet. It is still evolving in terms of a lot of the new features, but will ultimately include new functions for the Seed Exchange, Book Service, Chapter Information, as well as many other features. Check it out at the same and previous address: www.nargs.org . c ~ M NARGS SPRING GARDEN TOURS ~ (Gardener’s Alert: All of these events are rain or shine) “LARRY THOMAS’ ELEVENTH FLOOR TERRACE GARDEN” 340 East 74th St ~ Apartment 11 G MONDAY, MAY 18, 5-7:30 PM May is the moment when the whole Manhattan Chapter hoofs it over to Larry Thomas’ garden –as they have been doing ever since Larry first opened it to M cNARGS members in May 1990! Though the terrace is still not fully recovered from the indignities of Local Laws 10 & 11, Larry cordially invites us to join him for wine, cheese, and a visit to his award-winning terrace garden. “THE TROUGH GARDEN AT ROCKEFELLER CENTER” SATURDAY, MAY 23 @ 10AM or WEDNESDAY, MAY 27 @ 5:45PM Now in its thirteenth season The Trough Garden at Rockefeller Center has grown to 99 troughs and hundreds of additional containers. Spaced over two 200-foot long terraces the garden contains more than 700 species and cultivars of plants, creating a botanical garden in miniature. We have an exceptional opportunity to tour this project – the largest trough garden in the world! – with SUSAN KEISER , the garden’s designer and M cNARGS member. Please sign up with Zabel Meshejian (212.242.2459) for one of the two visiting dates and for specific directions to the site. For security reasons, attendance is limited. There will be a $3. donation collected from each attendee that goes towards the garden’s revitalization and plant amendments. (See Susan’s article, “The Trough Garden at Rockefeller Center ,” NARGS Rock Garden Quarterly, Winter 2009.) ~ RILEY ON THE ROCKS ~ Thanks again to Amy Goldman for getting us all straight on the subjects of Melons, Squash and Tomatoes – what’s next? (And, if you don’t have the books yet, Amy generously donated a few signed copies to our chapter so let me know A fast and furious Spring seems to be the agenda in New York please.) City, no matter how much we prepare for it ... it comes and goes faster than a speeding bullet. How to “get it all in” and We are all looking forward to the Joseph Halda and Gelene not miss the peak season in any garden, is the objective – yet, Scarborough event at Wave Hill, the gardens should be lovely to get everything planted and happily growing for that at this time (and any time!). Susan Keiser is ready, willing and extension into summer, harvest, and beyond is a complex able to guide us through the trough gardens of Rockefeller frenzy at this time of year. Thanks to Kean and Lola and John, Center; and if you thought you just couldn’t manage another we had an ample supply for our own gardens, with the Saxifrage in your garden ... Malcolm McGregor will tell us ‘feeding frenzy’ of our Annual Chapter Plant Sale. Everyone how to grow them all, and make room for just one more. His really pitched in and made this a success, once again – new book will be available for signing at the June meeting. THANKS to the donors and the buyers and organizers; and to Merchant House Museum, our host. Somewhere in the middle of all this – I will be skipping off to Ecuador (again) on a field trip to collect and study gesneriads The NARGS plant sale at Stonecrop in Cold Spring was a total in the northeastern slopes of the Andes. Many of these areas delight with perfect weather, perfect vendors, perfect plants have recently become accessible to botanists and are and a perfect setting – thank you Caroline, (and extremely rich in plant material that may be new to science.