historic garden

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Dig of the Day: original plant tag

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The “dig of the day’ for February 29, 2024

It isn’t often that digging in Elizabeth Lawrence’s garden yields the discovery of an original plant tag, but when it does, it’s like a lightning strike… only in the very best way. Maybe that isn’t the best analogy, but I think you know what I mean. With every unearthed (and legible) original plant tag comes the potential of another piece of the most intricate, complex and dynamic puzzle you can imagine. Yesterday yielded one such puzzle piece that I’m still somewhat figuring out.

“Labels… must be permanent, easily read, and inconspicuous. The best… I have tried are strips of zinc or copper. (I got a sheet metal dealer to cut his scraps into strips about an inch wide and eight inches long.) I print the name with acid and a gold pen.”

-Elizabeth Lawrence
A Rock Garden in the South

Elizabeth did not always stick to the method described above. The bulk of tags I have found have been a mix of metal strips, tie-on lead strips, and standard metal nameplates slid on a two-prong stake. Sometimes I find tags completely or mostly intact. Sometimes only metal fragments remain, casualties of decades of intense cultivation and being buried in slightly acidic soil for who knows how long.

Site of discovery

If I’m really lucky, some portion of handwriting is still visible after decades of dirt is very carefully cleaned off. Yesterday’s find is a completely intact nameplate. The legibility of the handwriting is partially decent. When I tilt the cleaned nameplate just the right way in the light, I can make out “Rosa”. Excellent! Now I know there was a rose planted in or very near the spot of the discovery. My research starts in Elizabeth’s card index—several metal drawers and small boxes of three-by-five index cards on which she recorded an immense amount of information about every plant she grew, read about in books, and learned about from other gardeners. It is a mind-boggling handwritten database consisting of (by my best guesstimate) somewhere between 15,000-20,000 cards. Thankfully, they have been digitized, which makes it much easier to access their information, but then there is the issue of Elizabeth’s penmanship.

While I only have a portion of viable information from yesterday’s “dig of the day,” I am one tiny puzzle piece closer to the overall picture of seeing this garden space through its creator’s eyes.

Surprise Discoveries

Surprise Discoveries

Two weeks ago, volunteers and I dismantled the rotting wooden privacy fence along the west side of the Elizabeth Lawrence House & Garden, to make way for new fencing to be installed this week. Doing the demolition in-house gave me the opportunity to get out the metal detectors (thanks, Ellen & Bill Archer!), and spend some quality time combing the property line for any original plant tags. …

Let's Walk and Talk Plants

Let's Walk and Talk Plants

This Thursday, October 6, from 4-5:30 is Imbibe & Inspire, our monthly tour of Elizabeth Lawrence’s garden. Some of the things you will see of interest this time may not surprise you, like the perennial sunflower, Helianthus angustifolius, and hardy blue ageratum, Conoclinium coelestinum. There may be a couple of things that may surprise you, like hardy cyclamen, Cyclamen hederifolium, and a tiny autumn-blooming daffodil, Narcissus obsoletus.

A Return to Garden Structure

A Return to Garden Structure

Recently I migrated every post from the original Elizabeth Lawrence House & Garden blog, which was begun in 2009 and on the Blogger platform (not integrated into the Wing Haven website, as this one is). …
I re-read every post. In so doing, I realized that there are more layers to some of those topics than meets the eye, and what has been learned in the years since the posts were written should be shared. …

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Red-letter Relics

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Red-letter Relics

When I began my work here at the Elizabeth Lawrence House & Garden in November 2010, I had a lot to learn. I think it was about 2012 before I thought it would be a good idea to take at least a visual inventory of everything that was in the house. I set about on a search through every closet and cabinet to see what was there. In one of the hall cabinets, I found a collection of metal items. Among them was what I thought at the time might be a curtain stay.

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A Single Bulb, A Legacy in Bloom

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A Single Bulb, A Legacy in Bloom

Last week, I had an incredible discovery: one of Elizabeth Lawrence’s original plant tags intertwined in the original hog-wire fencing on the west property line. As soon as I saw the tag, just hanging out with its “legs” wrapped around the fencing, my brain went all fizzy and buzzy…

Garden-worthy Gems, Plants to Know & Grow

Garden-worthy Gems, Plants to Know & Grow

I truly wish this plant had a common name, but apparently it does not. What it does have, however, is three solid seasons of subdued attractiveness in the woodland garden. So what is this plant, you ask?

Pachyphragma macrophyllum is a nearly evergreen perennial. It is not a showy top-billing plant, but rather nicely fills a supporting role under larger shrubs or at the edge of a path.

The Beauty of Autumn

The Beauty of Autumn

As I walked through the garden this afternoon, the brisk cool air biting my cheeks, I thought of all that I see here, nearly every day of the year. There is so much beauty all around us—so much that can ground us and muffle the squeal of the outside world (or sometimes even the inside world)—if we take the time to really see.

One of the most valuable lessons I have learned from Elizabeth Lawrence is to not just look, but to really see the garden. So, I wanted to share the beauty that caught my eye today.

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Lovely Lycoris, the Bewitching Bulbs, Part 2

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Lovely Lycoris, the Bewitching Bulbs, Part 2

In this segment, we’ll take a look at the last four lycoris to bloom in Elizabeth Lawrence’s garden, those that span August to the end of September.

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Lovely Lycoris, the Bewitching Bulbs, part 1

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Lovely Lycoris, the Bewitching Bulbs, part 1

There are few flowers that I long more to see each year than those of lycoris. There is something bewitching about these bulbs. Perhaps it is the way they spring from the ground seemingly overnight; perhaps it is their brief but spectacular flowering. The anticipation is like a siren that lures me in more every year.