Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Plant Jewels of the High Country

I picked up ‘Plant Jewels of the High Country’ at Powell’s Home and Garden Thanksgiving weekend. As a used book (published in 1972 by Pine Cone Publishers in Medford, Oregon) it was a bargain. Once I got home and started reading I realized just what wonderful little time capsule I’d found.

The author, Helen E. Payne and her nursery Oakhill Gardens, in Oregon, seem to have both passed on in the 42 years since this book was published. Whoever owned this copy was a fan of both Helen and her nursery. The book is autographed by the author and taped just inside the cover is a post card (shown below) featuring a green roof at the nursery, which Helen writes about in the book. Referencing semperviviums she says: “One of the most fascinating things about these plants is their tremendous will to live. I have known them to put out roots in midair, to root to a damp board and even on a bare rock. On tending to our sempervivum and sedum display beds, I often find myself with a surplus of plants. Once when carrying a “chick” which I planned to pot up, I paused to help a customer. I put the “chick” down in the nearest place, which happened to be a lava rock. Now, a year later, it is firmly rooted and surrounded by a family of chicks. As a further experiment, I tossed plants onto the metal roof of another shed which had a thin skim of fallen leaves, dust and totted branches from our towering oak trees. When the shed was torn down two or three years later, to my amazement I found that several of them had made large, healthy mats. Now I am in the process of planting sedums and semperviviums directly in the mossy limbs of an ancient oak tree which grows within a few feet of our back door.”

The printed text on the back of the post card reads “Oakhill Gardens – a garden in the European style. “Hen and Chicks” (Sempervivums) are grown on roofs from Norway to Ireland as a guard against lightening or a charm against the devil”

The book dedication reads “To Slim (her husband) without whom this book could never have been written” and just under in a cursive script there is a note added (presumably by the books former owner), it reads “who died 2 ½ years ago – (July 1989 today).”

The book is full of hard earned wisdom and a few signs of the time. For example in the introduction we are told “In order to keep the price of this book as reasonable as possible ($15), the number of color plates was necessarily restricted. While the decision to not show some items was arbitrary, other photographs were not easily available.” We live in such a different time, color images surround us.

Writing about her beginnings…“A windfall, a very small inheritance from a great-aunt whom I had met only once, and I had a small greenhouse built. Looking around the 12 foot by 20 foot space, I wondered how it would ever be filled. This is a standard reaction, no matter what size the greenhouse. I became interested in propagating azaleas and camellias, and before long the greenhouse was full and overflowing. The next step… a small nursery business.”

And going into detail about the semps… “The mother hen will usually bloom in its third or fourth year. Let it. If you want to see the bloom, but don’t let it go to seed. Sempervivums cross as readily as fleas in a hopper, but the seedlings are seldom as fine as the named hybrid plant. Remove the flowering stem by running a sharp knife around the base of the plant, creating a small hollow. Add a tablespoon of soil to this hollow and place one of the chicks in it so that an ugly bare spot is not left. If it is a good sized clump with many chicks, they may usually be gently pulled or twisted around until apace is closed. The blooms of the smaller sempervivums may be snipped off with scissors since their stems are more slender.”

There is also a healthy section of the book devoted to sedum. Talking about propagations she notes: “It has been said that most succulents can be propagated from leaves or parts of leaves. This is not true of sempervivums or hardy sedums with the exception of Sedum dasyphyllum glanduliferum. All the hardy sedums must have stems and leaves. No sempervivum can be propagated in this manner. You must use one of the offsets or “chicks”. A further word of caution: do not set the rosette too deep. Many people do this thinking that they are protecting the plant, instead of which they are inviting rot.”

On pg. 117 I came face to face with proof that there is really nothing new “Discarded farm plow discs make excellent planters. Ask or them at a farm machinery supply store. Be sure that the outside edge is not dented or too badly worn.” And here I thought plow disc planters were a relatively new idea!

Inside the book I discovered a pair of articles cut from our local newspaper, The Oregonian. Dated July 21, 1989 and June 8, 1990 they both carry the byline of Dulcy Mahar. I only know Dulcy as the author of a much loved column which appeared weekly in the Homes and Gardens section of the paper. It was interesting to learn she was once a reporter for the paper. Here's a photo of Mrs. Payne...

There is a sizable section of the book given over to descriptions (and a few photos of) select semps and sedums and then the book wraps up with 15 pages devoted to sharing her experiences collecting plants in the field (a fun read). Finally tucked in before the requisite credits, bibliography and mentions of specialists and collections, is a page that says simply "To see..." followed by a list of 11 scenes such as:
...a preview of spring in the returning color of the sempervivums;
...in the shining mountains of the Sierra Nevada, obtusatum growing on a white granite ledge;
...spathulifolium purpureum shining blood red in a spring rain;
...from season to season, the folding and unfolding of the lunar rosettes of Silvermoon...

I wish I could have met Helen E. Payne.

All material © 2009-2014 by Loree Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

36 comments:

  1. It's so rare that notes from previous owners actually add to the experience. What a find!

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    1. So true, in fact I've left many a used book on the shelf because there was too much highlighter!

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  2. What a lucky find - fabulous! Me too! Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Glad that you enjoyed it! Turns out Sean knew her and the nursery and she was just as wonderful as you would think.

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  3. What a cool book. Thanks so much for sharing some of its wisdom. Especially the bit about what to do with flowering semps, I have wholes in my plantings every year because of them, and often pull up babies when trying to uproot the old dead hen. She sounds like such an interesting woman, I agree with you about how cool it would have been to know her.

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    1. I've done the same. Just a tug on the bloomed out center plant and yikes! Babies come with. (haste makes waste)

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  4. One of the reasons I haven't jumped on the Kindle bandwagon is I like the feel of holding real books. No e-reader will ever take the place of getting your hands on a book like this one.

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    1. Except when the older books no longer exist due to decay or other destruction. A scanned, digital copy is certainly better than having old works lost!

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    2. I agree with both of you. Digital readers certainly work for trash fiction (does the world need another copy of the latest by Tom Clancy or Danielle Steel?). But for my garden books no way no how!

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  5. You found a book jewel in this one! How cool to have the other materials with the book, like a nursery/garden time capsule!

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  6. Very special that you found this treasure of local gardening. The book found its way into the right hands since you have a way to share the experience of it with us too.

    I wonder what has happened to the property in the years since.

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    1. That's a good question (the property), perhaps a little investigation is in order.

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  7. Thanks for sharing! A gem indeed!

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  8. Just wonderful! I do get disappointed by photographs in older books though -- printing tech sure has advanced!

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    1. We are living in the golden age for photography and printing. Lucky lucky us.

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  9. What a great find! That's why I loved used book stores.

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    1. When we travel Andrew always has the used bookstores in the area mapped out. I was sure the SW would offer me all sorts of used cactus and xeric garden books. Nope, it turns out people move there and then get rid of all their rhododendron, fern and bulb books.

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  10. That looks like a gem of a book, and good advice on flowering semps too!

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    1. There are all sorts of wonderful tidbits like that in between the covers.

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  11. Thanks for sharing your new gem of a book! I love the To See page. I wish that you could have met her too.

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    1. I almost missed that page too, glad I didn't.

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  12. Wow! What a find! How delightful to find the added treasures inside. You picked up a gem.

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  13. Putting this book on my wish list! And from Medford, too! So close!

    I probably could've guessed you picked up this little beauty at Powell's, even without the first sentence. But a seperate Powell's locale, dedicated to home and garden? New to me! Is this close to a Tri-Met rail by any chance?

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    1. Oh you've got to check it out! It's not anywhere near rail but there are a lot of buses on Hawthorne and it's a straight shot up from downtown. Should be pretty easy to get to. There's also a "regular" Powells next door.

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  14. Her voice comes through so clearly in her writing that I'm tempted to say you DID meet her...and then introduced her to all your friends. I'm going directly to the Multnomah County Library site to see if they have this book.

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    1. If they don't you are certainly welcome to borrow my copy!

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  15. Cool find! I love old gardening books. They offer a window into the past and sometimes are better than the new stuff being put out, the kind on the little bookshelves at Lowe's or in the garden section at Fred Meyers.

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    1. I couldn't agree more. Even if some of the information is outdated there is always plenty that's still useful.

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  16. Oh, almost forgot to add, she's not entirely right about sedum propagation. I've had Sedum oreganum, S. stenopetalum, and S. spathulifolium grow from leaves that I knocked off while working around them. Easy little suckers to grow from leaves. But the ones like Sedum 'Dragon's Blood' I think don't propagate from leaves, like she says, at least not well.

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    1. Interesting. I'll have to pay more attention to that in my own garden. Having a dog does tend to increase your sedum population as things get stepped on and moved about.

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    2. Hahaha! Oh, the little helper. Oh, and anyone who has grown burro's tail sedum as a houseplant can tell you that the leaves, which break off if you look at them funny, will grow wherever they fall on soil. Ay caramba! Maybe the ones with thicker leaves are more likely to propagate from leaves, versus the thinner-leaved types like Sedum spurium. That's my theory at least. I'll have to watch more closely myself.

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  17. We've lived in Dallas Oregon for three years. Does the book or any of its contents mention the address of the former garden and nursery? It would be interesting to see where it was, and what is there now.

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    1. I found an address, but written in a way that I doubt will help you much: Oakhill Gardens, Rt 3, Box 87, Dallas OR 97338. On one of the newspaper clippings there is a little map though, "getting there". I took a photo of it and would be happy to send it to, email me at: spiky plants at gmail dot com.

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