Hard-Won Wisdom and Gardeners' Generosity FINAL Edition

• Published in: The Washington post
• Main Author: Fenyvesi, Charles
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, D.C WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post 12.04.2001
• ISSN: 0190-8286

Look at the empirical side, [Frank Santamour Jr.] would emphasize: The mechanism for proper compartmentalization is located in a narrow collar around a limb or a branch as it grows out of the trunk or another limb or branch. Therefore, we must not saw off a limb or a branch flush, but leave something like a clerical collar around the growth we remove. [Charles Thomson]'s thinking also fitted into a larger vision of plant life. But he distrusted science as "only partial truth or truth-in- becoming." To him, the garden was not just a testing ground but reality itself. He was a whimsical gardener who loved the biblical story of a seemingly dead almond staff rooting itself in the soil and bursting into bud and bloom. Almost everything in the garden depends on the gardener, Thomson used to say, but first the soil must be made ready: deep dug and enriched constantly. His daffodil and tulip bulbs and their numerous offsets cradled in the deep earth would have choked for lack of oxygen or drowned when waterlogged if he had not added manure and compost to a depth of two feet. The stalks seemed to rise out of his bulbs as effortlessly as if the medium had been soft, uniform sand rather than upgraded clay.