Johanna Buchert Smith - The Story Garden: Cultivating Plants to Nurture Memories

The Story
Garden

Cultivating Plants to Nurture Memories

Ellen Sheppard Buchert & Johanna Buchert Smith

Illustrations by Ellen Sheppard Buchert

The Story Garden

Cultivating Plants to Nurture Memories

Digital Edition 1.0

Text 2017 Ellen Sheppard Buchert and Johanna Buchert Smith

Illustrations 2017 Ellen Sheppard Buchert, except as noted otherwise.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith

P.O. Box 667

Layton, Utah 84041

Orders: 1.800.835.4993

www.gibbs-smith.com

ISBN: 978-1-4236-4582-5

FROM ELLEN

A sunflower to Rob for help with transportation, and a beautiful bower of chickpeas and lentils to Georgia, who fed us all. A giving pink grapefruit tree to Chris for doing some drives and babysitting, and to Amy for painting our portraits. Rabbitbrush for Marilyn Hayes and roses for Sue Parkinson for letting me use their studios and critiquing my paintings. Persimmons and apricots to Heather Jenkins, who babysat at a critical moment. A manzanita for John Muir Laws for his great YouTube tutorials on drawing birds and bugs. Fragrant French lilac for Jeanne for a tutorial on symbols, and for months of general cheering and support. An apple tree, a long-term commitment with roots that run deep, for George. His love, knowledge, advice, and patience have made this book possible.

FROM JOHANNA

A mountain lupine for Marlena Korpela, for doing all the canyon driving for childcare swaps, for her enthusiasm, and her instructive example of making working from home work; a yellow raspberry bush for Jodi from Montessori Childrens Garden for creating a sunny, loving place my three-year-old loves to be; a bouquet of cosmos for Bethany Brady Spalding, a master craftswoman at seeing and articulating goodness and strength and imbuing confidence, and also for reading early drafts and letting me store plants in her fridge; a wild blue indigo for McArthur for enthusiasm and help with marketing; a bush of basil for Leah Moses for watching my kids while I worked, cheerleading, and being willing to take on the impossible; a bouquet of coneflower and black-eyed Susan for Jacqui Taylor, the estate of Eric Sloane, the estate of Robert Francis, and Patricia Lehnhardt, for permission to reprint their words. A blueberry bush for Rob, who spins a yarn finer than most and who allowed me to knit with it; an herb garden for Jeanne, auntie extraordinaire; and an orchard of rare and unusual fruits for our whole beloved family for their support and encouragement: thank you for letting us be part of your stories so yours and ours overlap. A blooming crabapple for Scout; a young dogwood for Finn, with loose bark for easy carving; and always a pie cherry tree for Eliot. In gratitude for windowsill real estate, a mature mango tree for my Andy.

AND FROM US BOTH

English lavender for Michelle Branson, our editor; the creative, capable team at Gibbs Smith; and our books designer, Mina Bach. Thank you all. When you brush against a lavender bush as you walk by, its fragrance flows around each step you take. Like the scent of lavender, their contribution wafts through this work. For Suzanne Taylor, a sugar pine cone, full of seeds. As ever, thank you for the chance to grow.

Johanna

Johanna

Illustration 2017 by Amy Buchert

My earliest memory is a botanical one: cross-country skiing with my family, finding some wintergreen sticking out of the snow, snapping the shiny leaves in bits to release the aromatic oils, and tasting the minty, mealy red berries. I was not quite, or just barely, three. Because both my fathers profession and my mothers passion were botany related, it was natural that much of my growing-up experiences connected me to plants. Family outings were to the arboretum behind dads lab; family picnics were to nearby undeveloped woods; family chores included stacking firewood and working the garden; childhood treats were dispensed upon memorization of botanical Latin names. I thought we were just unique, but one of the best things about writing this book has been that once Ive explained its purpose to friends and acquaintances, almost universally their faces light up as they immediately recall a beloved person, place, or time whose memory is distilled in a plant. Its a pleasure and a privilege to hear the delightful intimacies of their everyday lives. Turns out, connecting memories to plants isnt as unique to my family as my childhood self imagined.

Almost every person Ive spoken to about this project wanted to share their own story about a special tree, a special flower, a special garden vegetable, and the way it had meaning for them and someone they loved. Even the one person I spoke to who couldnt come up with any plant connection between him and another personminus good foodeventually landed on a memory of daily bike rides through the wheat-planted Palouse in Washington, which brought back the details of a beautiful season of his own life. It may take you a moment of considering, but theres a good chance you connect a beloved person, time, or place from your personal history to a plant that they loved, that shared their space, was always on the menu, or that was a defining part of their setting in your own memories.

As humans, we long for connection to each other, and we often mourn the irreversible passage of time. We hold onto both with photographs and videos to try and keep specific moments nearby. The plants you grow can be another way you hold onto these things. They can be touchstones of celebrations, joyful events, and people. In The Story Garden , we show you how your garden can be a multisensory journal of people, places, events, and the celebrations of your life. As a book that focuses on the experience of the gardener as well as the creation of plants for the garden, this is a book of stories about the magic of self-discovery, memory, and human connections transmitted through botany.

Our goal is to help you create a different mindset about gardening .

In much the same way that your home can be a designer showcase of furnishings with no connection to the folks living with them, orprobably more to the point for many of usan unedited collection of the stuff that has come your way to which you also may have no soul connection, your garden can also be on the deliberate end or the random end of the spectrum. Instead, grow the plants that really mean something to you. Grow the plants that bring you to one of the happy places or times or relationships in your life. In this way, your garden will become as individual as you are.

But we dont just want you to be inspired, we want you to be equipped with the basics of making more plants from plants, and so the stories in each chapter are supplemented by simple plant propagation how-tos.

There is a tremendous sense of accomplishment that comes from propagating plants, and a sense of preciousness that comes from propagating plants that tell part of your life story. We created this book to inspire you to find the botanical connections in your own stories, and to give you the skills you need to propagate those plants in a spirit of can-do-ism. Is it exhaustive on the details of every plant you might encounter? No. Thats what Wikipedia and YouTube are for. But it will teach you what you need to know to not be afraid to try (and succeed) with a wide variety of common plants that grow all over the United States and Canada. And it gives firsthand accounts of why preserving family heirloom botanicals matters, or how to cultivate new ones.