Hortus Bulborum — Soooo Yesterday

Thanks for the article, I too enjoy the older varieties of shrubs and flowers. Though I am certainly not anti-progress I consider myself anti-fashionable. It is quite difficult these days to locate older varieties, shrubs especially.
My tools and garden clothes come from thrift stores and garage sales. My wife is concerned of what the neighbors think when I trudge out into the yard in my second-hand attire. My response “It’s good enough for gardening”

I think it’s a balance, don’t you? My garden has plenty of novelties also. Isn’t the Tiger Eye sumac a nice spin on the plain old vanilla version? But none of the new phlox have mildew resistance like my ‘Old Cellar Hole’ and it always gets a smile when I mention the name to visitors. But many of my plants have lost their names over time — they’re just passalongs. But they have great stories. I have a ladies’ swan-necked shovel from a flea market that they don’t make any more and it’s perfect for a small person. What will I do when it breaks? — Tovah

Great post and such an important topic right now. At the Midwest Perennial Conference this spring, we heard one talk about old garden favorites, and then next speaker basically made fun of the whole talk by contrasting the benefits (longer bloom time, mostly) of all of her company’s newest cultivators. it kind of made me squirm, they way she just wanted to throw away the old varieties.
We plant upwards of 10,000 perennials and thousands of shrubs a year, and have for many years. I grow less and less impressed with most of the new stuff. Sure, it is amazing the first year, but many (NOT ALL-some are amazing!) introductions lack staying power.
Roccoco, Mystery of India, and Gele Prins above are all stunning as all get out, BTW.

Wish I had been to the old garden favorites talk, Danniel. But you hit the crux of the issue right on the head — Staying Power. Some of the newbies are here today and gone tomorrow. Some are just ugly in my opinion. Variegated versions of plants that look perfectly lovely in plain green. Plus the variegated new kid-on-the-block can be a weakling (not always, though). LOVE your blog. — Tovah

I’m an historian by training, so I’m protective of weird old heirloom vegetables. They may not be ‘the best’ but they’re distinctive, and if your interest runs to historic cooking at all, they’re vital. Modern cabbage is not the same as mediaeval cabbage. Celery is a very weak substitute for lovage. And so on. So if you have hopes of eating as someone from the past ate, you need those old veggies.

And as for flowers? I like fragrance and disease resistance and I often get much more of that from the heirlooms. The old roses in my garden don’t curl up with blackspot and powdery mildew in July the way the most modern roses do.

I grow ‘Winningstadt’ cabbage (1866) from the Seed Savers Exchange, ‘Nora, and it’s furled like a flower. Truthfully, it’s hard to pick the heads because they’re so beautiful. But when I do, they taste like butter — just melt in your mouth. What I love about heirloom flowers is that they aren’t bred dwarf with zillions of blossoms and no green foliage. Before dwarf was in vogue (for flowers), the garden was a more balanced picture with green leaves serving as a frame.—Tovah

Fabulous post and so timely. Most of the roses in our gardens are “oldies”… the average age of introduction is somewhere in the 1950’s and quite a few, like my prized Zephirine Drouhins date to the late 1800’s.

I’ve never been a fashionista – they don’t call me “frumpy” for nothing (I earned it). But the observation that in coming up with newer, more modern varieties, fragrance is the first to go, is oh so telling.

From mid-May to mid-October, our gardens are a cacophony of color and fragrance. More than a few visitors to our gardens have asked why their modern rose, which looks exactly like my old bourbon (or so they claim), doesn’t smell like ours. One person actaully asked us what we “spray” to get our garden to smell so wonderful.

We too, have modern additions in many of our beds but they all bloom in the shadow of what came before. We have a mix in our garden that spans three centuries of horticulture. And while it’s fun to have a reblooming iris burst forth in bloom in August, those heirloom fragrances are something you only capture in spring.

Just as fragrance seems to be lacking in intensity in many modern flower cultivars, I am also unimpressed with the flavor of many “modern” vegetables as well. What a price we pay for progress!

But things do cycle through again. Hubby and I were shopping yesterday and while we were getting a new garden tool at Lowe’s, we saw a display of “Proven Bloomers” roses which prominently featured Climbing Blaze (first introduced in 1932) and Karl Herbst (1950). Both are long time residents of our gardens. They may be in a new package, but they are not “new” roses. And yes, ‘nora, as you observed, they are very fragrant, very disease resistant, and truly divine. “New Dawn”, which has also seen a surge in popularity in recent years, dates to 1930. Rarely is it the old girls who disappoint; it’s the modern teas who break my heart every time.

Thanks for making me feel not so dowdy!

Your visitor asking what you “spray” your roses with said it all, Cathy. I worked in retail for 25 years and do you know that some of the school children who came to tour the greenhouses DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SMELL A FLOWER? That’s right — they had never before touched their noses to a flower and inhaled. It was a totally new concept to them. Other children thought that “smell” was only negative. I have a ‘Zephirine Drouhin’ (1868) in front of my office and it’s the only rose that has survived winter reliably here. Besides scent it has another priceless trait — it’s thornless! Perfect for in front of a door. While the locomotive of fashion hurls itself forward, we can’t be throwing these ole Mommas from the train. — Tovah

Funny you should mention David Austin roses. Ive had poor luck with them in the past, but after joining the New England Rose Society and speaking with some members about them, I’ve been inspired to try again. I just ordered four of them. Crossing my fingers!

I didn’t know about the “hired nose” but I do know that they are truly fragrant roses and I hope that the second time around is a charm!

Ditto for me with the Austin hardiness issues (although even all the ‘New Dawn’s died in our region one winter), that’s why I’m hoping that the own root route will be the trick. — Tovah

Hooray for weird old plants!

I’m a native plant enthusiast myself, and sometimes I get kinda frustrated with the developer’s desire to “improve” everything–yes, the variegated Jacob’s Ladder is lovely, but I just want the normal stuff, damnit, I’m trying to fill a wooded corner, and your Propagation-Forbidden stuff is kinda at odds with my intent. And while I am deeply delighted by the eighty million varieties of Heuchera, I confess, I think they’re probably stretching when they claim that the microscopic color shift between this one and that one merits such exorbitant price tags…and some of the new coneflowers are just plain depressing.

Besides, I’d argue for purely aesthetic reasons that the world is a better place for having vegetables named “Mortgage Lifter” and “Painted Serpent.” What is it with modern tomatoes and boring names?

I’m with you, Ursula. And don’t you just love when something is patented, but it is the spittin’ image of the species? And you try in vain to acquire the species, but it’s no longer in the trade…And how can they justify naming a tomato ‘Big Boy’? Geez. As for me, I’m sending for some ‘Drunken Woman Fringed Headed’ lettuce — just so I can say that I’ve got her on the property. — Tovah