Flower thief strikes three times

Jamie Hall, edmontonjournal.com
Published: Wednesday, June 25
EDMONTON - Whoever stole Maria Berardi's flowers for the third year running would be well advised to go to ground and stay there.

As Berardi herself puts it: "I'm old but I'm still in good form. And I'm Italian; you don't want to make me mad, and, believe me, I'm mad."

Three years ago, when a thief excised all the flowers from the garden beds in front of her Mill Woods home, she was angry, but philosophical.

Last year, when it happened again, she was devastated.

This year, she called the police.

With any luck, they'll find the thief before she does.

"One time is one thing, but three times? Now it's personal," said Berardi.

Thanks to Const. Carol Weir, who delivered a floral donation from the Millcreek Nursery on Tuesday, and Berardi's daughter, who showed up with a trunkful of flowers, the beds are again a growing concern. Her children are also talking about installing a strategically placed security camera at the front of the house.

But the whole thing is still a mystery.

Every year, the flowers have been removed with surgical precision, the holes left behind perfectly formed yet dug deep enough to scoop out the plants' roots. Whoever committed this horticultural crime is likely the same person and needed tools, and the time to carry it out, seemingly with the intention of replanting.

If they did, they don't live nearby; Berardi has combed her entire neighbourhood twice over, standing on tiptoe to peer over fences into people's backyards.

"These aren't vandals doing this; if it was kids they would just pull them out and throw them away," said Berardi.

"Why would someone do this?"

Except for her exotic geraniums, the flowers, for the most part, were garden-variety annuals. Berardi intentionally purchased "cheap stuff" this year, worried the thief would strike again.

Maggie Easton, the president of the Edmonton Horticultural Society, is as puzzled as Berardi by the theft.

Childish pranks notwithstanding, this isn't something she's heard about from her members.

"Maybe it's someone who doesn't want to pay the money nurseries are charging these days for flowers," Easton said.

That's Kerri Buksa's guess, too, who said this sort of theft is quite common, committed by the same type of people who siphon gas from the tanks of cars.

"The bottom line is that some people just don't want to pay," said Buksa, who works for Greenland Garden Centre.

jhall@thejournal.canwest.com

Grand design

Some gardens should be visited with friends: they are sociable places that invite picnics. Others, such as Herterton House on the fringes of the Northumberland Moors, should be sought out when you need peace, a place to sit and gather together your thoughts. Within the dry-stone walls that give shelter from the searing easterlies is a garden so tranquil that it has the feeling of a monastic cloister. I have been visiting Herterton for 15 years, and my trips have slowly revised what I now consider to be the point of a garden.

Herterton House was a ruined farm that had lain derelict for 17 years when artists Frank and Marjorie Lawley took it over in 1976 on a long lease from the National Trust. What’s now an acre of garden, subdivided into four distinct areas each with its own unique planting, was then a field of unforgiving Northumberland pasture. They set to work on the land inspired by their extensive reading of 17th-century herbals and gardening texts, especially that of the Yorkshire parson William Lawson who, in The Country Housewife’s Garden, advocated beauty, simplicity and harmony. Lawson would have recognised many of Herterton’s plants – gillyflowers, forget-me-nots, foxgloves – and its humanist philosophy.

The Front Garden is all clipped box and yew with low hedges, a place to see people strolling past in the lanes and to invite conversation. The Fancy Garden, with its clipped box parterre and stone gazebo, is for walking and thinking. In the Physic Garden, centred by its tighty clipped willowleaf pear and bordered by mounds of London Pride, it’s enough to sit and breathe in the scent of rose, thyme and artemisia. The Flower Garden, at its most flamboyant in July, echoes the colours of the lengthening day. Near the house is dawn – pink, white and yellow; in the middle are the vibrant colours of midday; and towards the rear of the garden, the purples and dark reds of sunset.

It has taken the Lawleys 32 years to create this masterpiece, and they have felt the heft of it. In the first days they built walls, dug out all the stones by hand and imported topsoil from the moors. They funded the garden by selling plants such as hardy geraniums, Jacob’s ladder, pulmonaria and astrantia – cottage-garden favourites that because of Northumberland’s cool summers continue to look fresh throughout the growing season.

In the early days of their research they’d visit the “high priestess” of cottage gardening, Marjorie Fish, at East Lambrook Manor. She had been married to the editor of the Daily Mail, Walter Fish, and wrote a classic book, We Made a Garden. As a dedicated plantswoman, she always carried a spade and a sack in the car in case she found good leaf mould, and Frank recalls how she collected old cottage garden plants that had been discarded during the Second World War in the Dig for Victory campaign. “She’d be driven around by her chauffeur, who doubled as the local butcher, and tour local country cottage gardens bellowing, ‘Stop!’, when an interesting primrose, euphorbia or hellebore caught her eye. She’d then negotiate with the owner and instruct her chauffeur to dig up a piece of the plant – usually with the starting handle of the elderly car.”

The Lawleys, realising that many cottage-garden favourites were in danger of dying out, adopted Fish’s plant-hunting technique – though without the help of a chauffeur – and have amassed an enviable collection of unusual varieties of plants. They favour simple flowers such as violets, campanulas, sea holly, astrantia and poppies and grow rare, double-formed varieties or those with an interesting leaf form. A treat before leaving Herterton is to visit the stock garden. Each day, those plants that have just reached their peak are dug up, wrapped in damp newspaper – Frank favours the broadsheets for their durability – and sold. Only the heartless could resist.

Seeing Herterton today, many visitors remark how fortunate Frank and Marjorie are to have had the opportunity to create this garden. The Lawleys are philosophical. “It was a calling,” they say. Like most artists, they are driven by their creative impulses, and roughened hands, worsening arthritis and a shortage of money throughout their lives testify to what a labour of love it has been. The sad thing is that, because they are tenants, they cannot be sure that after their deaths the garden will continue, with the National Trust unable to give an undertaking that it will be maintained as it is now. I urge all those who love gardens to visit Herterton soon.

Herterton is about 20 miles north of Morpeth in Northumberland, near the village of Cambo (01670 774278). It is open until September 30 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 1.30pm until 5.30pm. It is also open under the National Gardens Scheme on July 17 and August 7 from 1.30pm until 5.30pm

Organic gardening: Growing roses

If you like to garden organically, trying to grow healthy roses is a nightmare. If they succumb to blackspot, for instance, you can't reach for the chemicals. As a result, I've grown many different roses for periods of two years or so before abandoning them to disease. This trial-and-error process has shown which roses are strong and healthy; these days I tend to grow trouble-free rugosas, gallicas and many small-flowered ramblers instead of modern, repeat-flowering varieties.

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon the British Association of Rose Breeders (BARB) Rose Trials held at Pencoed College near Bridgend. The small team does not have time to spray the roses as well as judge their performance, so a true picture of each rose's constitution emerges - making the trial unique in Britain.

Ivor Mace (the trials supervisor) and other judges noticed that roses bred by German nursery Kordes stayed healthy while others around them floundered in the damp climate of South Wales.

The health and vigour of Kordes roses isn't a fluke. This company stopped spraying their own rose beds in 1976 because eco-minded young German gardeners had virtually written off the rose as ungrowable. Initially whole fields of roses went down with disease. The few healthy specimens were selected to form the basis of a new breeding programme and within 10 years, Kordes had bred a range of healthy, modern roses. They were sold in Britain by Mattocks Roses, then part of Notcutts.

Following the Pencoed trials, I started growing Kordes roses in my own garden. The star performer has been Champagne Moments, a soft apricot floribunda (flowering June-Oct; see no27, right). I surrounded these with sultry late-flowering penstemons ('Blackbird', 'Purple Bedder' and 'Bredon') and added cream peonies (Paeonia lactiflora 'Duchesse de Nemours'). There has been no hint of disease, even in 2007's damp, disease-ridden summer. It proves that some roses can perform well au naturel - just as well, because roses that need chemical props are no good to green gardeners.

TOP PERFORMING PLANTS ARE HONORED AT ANNUAL COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY FLOWER TRIALS

Note to Editors: Top performing varieties at the Annual Flower Trial Gardens for the 2007 growing season and evaluators' comments on all varieties are available at www.flowertrials.colostate.edu. Selected high resolution images are available by visiting www.newsinfo.colostate.edu and clicking on the headline for this release.

FORT COLLINS - Colorado's varied climate presents challenges to flower gardeners. Summer heat, inconsistent moisture, drying winds and severe weather can all play havoc on flowers. To assist both homeowners and commercial operators, Colorado State University has released the results of its annual Flower Trials Garden Performance Report.

Thousand of flower varieties from geraniums to dahlia's to petunias were planted in summer 2007 at the Flower Trial Gardens, 1401 Remington St. in Fort Collins. Judges tracked the progress, paying close attention to vividness of colors, number of blossoms and heights of the plants. The judges, who included horticulture industry representatives, Colorado State experts and Extension master gardeners, then selected the healthiest and most vibrant of each type of flower.

Best of Show was Cleome "Spirit Appleblossom" from Proven Winners seed company. Judges noted that the plant's delicate white and pink flowers bloomed throughout the summer and that it stood out from a distance in the garden. Best New Variety for 2007 was Dahlia "Mystic Illusion" from Proven Selections by Proven Winners, with its striking combination of bright yellow flowers against dark purple foliage.

For a full list of winners, visit www.flowertrials.colostate.edu.

Twenty-two seed and vegetable companies from around the United States and the world participated in the trials. The Annual Trial Gardens program is directed by Jim Klett, professor in Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Colorado State.

"The main purpose of this is the evaluation of annual flowers to see how well they perform in Colorado's high light intensity and low humidity," said Klett, who runs the largest flower test garden in the state and one of the five largest in the United States.

Most of the winning plants are available at local nurseries or garden centers for this growing season.