Re: Ken Druse on garden tours

Courtesy of NY Times
  Snippers, Snackers and Garden-Tour Gaffes
By KEN DRUSE

CHARITY tours, backyard parties or simply swapping visits with fellow
enthusiasts - whatever the particulars, trekking through gardens has become
the voyeur's national pastime. This year the Garden Conservancy's national
listing, Open Days, offers 450 private gardens to visit, up 50 from last
year. In that sense, garden tours have become the new house tours. On a
house tour, people may look under beds or rifle through drawers; in the
garden, they may trample your beds and filch cuttings. In both, you will
probably find yourself staring down barbarians at the garden gate.
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The second week in June begins one of the best times in my New Jersey
garden, when the iris and poppies peak and the roses begin their show. The
star attractions are the Himalayan primroses bearing tier upon tier of
tropical-fruit-colored flowers on silvery celadon stems below my arched
stone bridge.

So when a friend asked if she could take her houseguest along on a tour, I
said yes. As a half-dozen friends walked through my house to the garden,
the houseguest spied a plant in the sunroom.

"I have that plant," he said. "Mine's bigger."

"Sansevieria cylindrica," I said.

  "No, no, that's not it," he said. "It's snake plant." (Or mother-in-law's
tongue.) "Mine bloomed once. Snake plants bloom, you know."

  I should have pushed him off the bridge. Instead, I kept walking, and he
kept talking about his snake plant. It's my pet peeve when someone comes to
my garden and talks about his plants, his garden and barely looks at mine.
It's just plain rude. But rudeness pales compared with other tourist
misdemeanors in the garden: snoopers, snippers, stompers who trample
through the Solomon's seal, or women in high heels, and, I'm afraid,
thoughtless smokers, unruly children and dogs.

Then there are the critics. "I hate white flowers," one woman pronounced at
my gravel garden, where thankfully, none were showing.

Jeanne Will, whose garden in central New Jersey is frequently open to small
groups, was more than a little annoyed after a two-hour tour when the only
comment she got was one person informing her that she had poison ivy
growing up a tree. People always point out poison ivy. They think you've
missed it. I tell them, "poison ivy has high value among native woody
plants: birds love its berries, and it moves onto disturbed land and sand
dunes to fight erosion." That usually shuts them up.

Because people have paid to go on a garden tour, they think they can treat
the place as entertainment, to criticize the plantings, the design, even
the health of the plants within earshot of the gardener.

A few gardeners know all too well the value of what you have, and they want
some too. In Britain, a retiring curator of a National Trust estate said
that the bane of his job there was visitors taking cuttings, sometimes
stealing whole plants. Guests on a tour at Anne O'Connor's garden in
Hudson, N.Y., must have thought the 20 small potted geraniums were
souvenirs - 12 of them were gone by the end of the day. Dr. Norman Ames
Posner said that some people touring his spectacular Columbia County garden
occasionally snip cuttings, and then have the audacity to bring them to him
to identify. The rule on this is clear: to steal a cutting is bad manners,
should be illegal in public gardens and is a sin in the wild. In fact, one
should always avoid interfering with someone else's garden. Sometimes as a
visitor, I absent-mindedly reach down to pluck out a weed. But I stop
myself. What if my weed is another man's treasure?

Some of us gardeners have skins as thin as an onion. Your companion may be
interested to hear you opine that impatiens are the equivalent of plastic
plants, your host may not.

Gushing on a visit is permitted, even encouraged, but speak softly. When
you meet the owner, offer praise. If you can't say anything nice, say
something specific. For example, "How long have you grown that euphorbia?
Is it hardy here?"

Part of the problem is that people assume, because they are outdoors, that
normal rules don't apply. They put out cigarette butts in flowerpots and
urns. They arrive after the hours for the tour, just as the host is sitting
down for dinner. Even worse, they come early, when I'm still picking slugs
off the plants. If you are early, wait in your car.

It would be thoughtful not to ask to use the bathroom. Ms. Will said that
asking to use the powder room is usually just a ploy to get to see inside
the house. When she attended a garden tour in Greenwich, Conn., she was
appalled to see the visitors cupping their hands over the windows to
glimpse inside.

Glenn O'Brien, a columnist for GQ whose house in Bridgehampton was on the
artists and writers garden tour last year, thought people would be asking
about the plants. Instead, he said, they asked things like "So, how much
did you pay for the house?" and "Who did your pool?"

Some people treat botanical gardens like parks, and treat private gardens
like their own backyards. Tourists have actually stripped down to sunbathe
on someone's lawn. Katie Porter, who gardens in Mendham, N.J., was shocked
when visitors spread a blanket on her lawn and began to set up a picnic
lunch.

I think it can be a general rule that garden tours are not family outings.
Some gardeners may have heard the horror story about Eve Thyrum's garden in
Delaware, where a young mother finished the tour, thanked her host and
handed her the 50 plant labels her children had collected.

Narrow paths in private gardens are badly designed for baby strollers;
strollers, perhaps the babies, too, should be left at home. Gardens aren't
childproof - can you say poisonous castor bean, foxglove or lily of the
valley? I saw a father with a baby in a backpack completely unaware that
his papoose was pulling leaves off every shrub and tree he could reach and
stuffing them in his mouth.

It doesn't hurt to dress appropriately. For some reason, people think
suitable attire for a garden tour or party is a vibrant floral print dress.
Hats are all right, but leave the flowers to the garden.

And do not wear high heels unless you've been asked to aerate the lawn, and
then please wear golf shoes. I gave a party once on my old rooftop in SoHo
and watched one woman slowly shrinking as her high heels sank into the tar
paper.

  In England, one's dog is immune from rejection. Here, however, it is a
mistake to take a dog on a garden tour, even if you plan to carry it like
an accessory. And I love pets dearly.

Chris Willemsen, who has been on hundreds of tours as a member of the
Garden Club of America, said that when the Garden Conservancy came to visit
in New Jersey, one couple brought a miniature dachshund. If she thought
their bringing the little dog was inappropriate, her Jack Russell terrier,
Sadie, thought it was lunch, and bolted from the house. Ms. Willemsen flung
herself on Sadie. Just then the members of the conservancy board rounded
the corner and found her, an apparent lunatic, wrestling a little dog to
the ground.

Why do we gardeners do it, then? Because we are egomaniacs? All the
backbreaking labor and the occasional visiting bores are worth it for the
one knowledgeable person who comes through the gate (quietly, appropriately
dressed, without dog) and says, "You've done it! This is it! This is
perfection!" Those are the people who get plants to take home.

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