The Moor Park Apricot, part 1

Today, I bought a Moor Park apricot for my garden.

"It was only the spring twelvemonth before Mr. Norris's death that we put in the apricot against the stable wall, which is now grown such a noble tree, and getting to such perfection, sir," addressing herself then to Dr. Grant.

"The tree thrives well, beyond a doubt, madam," replied Dr. Grant. "The soil is good; and I never pass it without regretting that the fruit should be so little worth the trouble of gathering."

"Sir, it is a Moor Park, we bought it as a Moor Park, and it cost us--that is, it was a present from Sir Thomas, but I saw the bill--and I know it cost seven shillings, and was charged as a Moor Park."

"You were imposed on, ma'am," replied Dr. Grant: "these potatoes have as much the flavour of a Moor Park apricot as the fruit from that tree. It is an insipid fruit at the best; but a good apricot is eatable, which none from my garden are."

"The truth is, ma'am," said Mrs. Grant, pretending to whisper across the table to Mrs. Norris, "that Dr. Grant hardly knows what the natural taste of our apricot is: he is scarcely ever indulged with one, for it is so valuable a fruit; with a little assistance, and ours is such a remarkably large, fair sort, that what with early tarts and preserves, my cook contrives to get them all."

(Jane Austen, Mansfield Park; engraving from Pomona Londinensis by William Hooker, 1818)

Today, I bought an apricot for my garden.
It cost $19.99, and was charged as a Moor Park.

Emily Dickinson's Herbarium

My nosegays are for Captives

Dim – long expectant eyes –

Fingers denied the plucking,

Patient till Paradise –

To such, if they sh'd whisper

Of morning and the moor –

They bear no other errand,

And I, no other prayer.

I remember once telling a friend who was getting a PhD in English literature that Emily Dickinson was my favorite poet.  She literally sniffed.  It was the first time I realized that not everyone thought as highly of  the belle of Amherst as I did, and that claiming her as a favorite apparently marked me as a bit provincial and unenlightened.

Provincial or not, all 1,789 of her poems will be read chronologically as part of The New York Botanical Garden's new Exhibit, “Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers".  The NYBG are not the first to think of the close connections between Emily's poetry and the garden; she was better known in her own community as a gardener/botanist than as a poet, and there are at least a couple of books that have previously explored the same ideas (see Emily Dickinson's Gardens: A Celebration of a Poet and Gardener by Marta McDowell, and The Gardens of Emily Dickinson by Judith Farr).

The exhibit, which includes a recreation of Emily's garden (or a least the sort of garden she might have had, since firm historical information isn't available), as well as pairings of flowering plants with the poems that give them mention, will also include Emily's herbarium of over 400 plants, now in the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 

If you can't get to New York you can turn online the pages of the book Emily started at age fourteen, when she wrote to her friend Abiah Root (I want a friend named Abiah Root!) that "...most all the girls are making one. If you do, perhaps I can make some additions to it from flowers growing around here."

It's the most beautiful herbarium I've ever seen; meticulous, beautifully arranged, carefully notated in a small intense hand.  I chose one of her early poems--in spite of its imperfect rhyme--to accompany this post because so many of the pressings are arranged as nosegays rather than as botanical specimens; perhaps like those Emily was wont to send along with poems to friends.   Artfully placed stems and stalks seem destined to occupy a buttonhole rather than butcher's paper.

Of particular poignancy are the botanical specimens forwarded by friends to this woman who lived in virtual seclusion for much of her life:  a leaf from Heidelburg castle, a fern from the Elysian fields in Greece, a stalk from the Garden of Gethsemane. 

They are generally one to a page, unlike Emily's own collections, which lie at close quarters nearly--but not quite--claustrophobic, with a compression of detail that leaves one breathless but not quite faint, which is just the feeling I always get from her poetry . A sun-faded copy still sits on my bedside table, ignoring sniffs from those who know better. 

Call for Applications: The 2010 ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship

I mentioned in the last post that my investigations of the Art Deco garden were funded by a travel grant from Robert Adam Architects (now ADAM Architecture).  In 2010, for the first time, the travel scholarship is open to international applications.  It provides £1500 for research and travel into a significant issue related to architecture (includes landscape architecture!) and urban design.

I can't say enough about how significant it was to my research to have the funding to visit several European countries, as well as British archives in search of "Gatsby's Garden", as I entitled my investigations...if I ever do get to publish that book on the Art Deco landscape (no publisher has picked it up as yet! call me!), it will be in large part due to their early investment in my work, and you'll not meet a nicer group of architects. 

Full details at the ADAM Architecture site...the deadline is May 14th!

Man Ray in the Garden

The artist Man Ray is best known as an experimental photographer but figures in garden history for his documentation, both still and film, of the innovative landscapes commissioned by Charles Vicomte de Noailles and his wife Marie-Laure.  At the center of a group of avant-garde writers, poets, and painters, they commissioned two high art deco gardens, both intense and jewel-like.  At Hotel Noialles in Paris, modern parterres by the brothers Andre and Paul Vera featured colorful gravels and low bedding plants bursting out of a mirrored wall in lines closely following optical ray diagrams.  The Vera's drawings for the gardens exist, but Man Ray's photo (above) is the only documentation of their installed form, which differs from the original plan.

On the hills above Hyeres, their Riviera retreat, architect Robert Mallet-Stevens built Charles and Marie-Laure a cubist villa that must have shocked the traditional neighborhood surroundings, which can be seen during the approach to the house in a surrealistic short film shot by Man Ray in 1929.  Narcissistic though it is (Charles and Marie-Laure are of course the stars), it provides a fascinating glimpse into the time in which the landscape was constructed, as well as into the gardens themselves as simply one more art object in a house of many, and far more valuable, others.  The Countess' collecting inspired that of Yves St. Laurent, and one of the shots in the film shows a long series of sliding mesh doors in a hallway...these stored her artwork, which presumably was changed regularly throughout the house.

No wonder then, that Man Ray doesn't linger on shots of the gardens, his focus being largely his patrons.  But we see the terrace with its framed views and stacked porthole planters....

...and the stepped ziggurat garden designed by Gabriel Guevrekian glimpsed through windows from the house.

Guevrekian's garden was a variation on the one he had designed for the '25 expo, and the Jacques Lipchitz sculpture at the triangular site's apex rotated as had the silver sphere in his earlier jardin d'eau et de lumière.  The garden in Paris is gone, but the Villa Noialles is now an arts center and open to the public.  The garden has been recreated, though without the yellow tulips with which it was originally (inappropriately!) planted.  It also had orange trees next the house, and the terraces seem too arid in their absence.   Thanks to a travel grant from Robert Adam Architects, I visited the site in '07 as part of my study of art deco gardens. 

Who will climb up these terraces, indeed. Man Ray's Les Mystères du Château de Dé was, at 27 minutes, his longest film.  You can watch it on vimeo.