This week marks the 25th anniversary of North Shore Gardener!
Twenty-five years ago, when I proposed doing this column, my editor asked me if I could sustain it for more than a few weeks — 25 years later and we're still here! That's more than 1,300 articles about gardening in New England. Where has the time gone?
This is what we wrote 25 years ago in the very first column:
North Shore Gardener — May 12, 1983
"Today begins a new column for The Salem Evening News — and the North Shore.
North Shore Gardener is designed to be a very personal, very regional gardening column, written by a gardener who lives and works right here with you and will be gardening right along with you, hand in hand, through every season. It is designed to be as personal as a chat over the backyard fence with a neighbor, because gardening is a year-round exchange of ideas and information.
We'll talk about what is growing in your garden and mine — the houseplants on the window sill and what grows and works for us outdoors here in the Northeast — and what doesn't. We'll try to answer your questions and even try to help find products pertaining to this area. We will try to help the novice with his first tomato or spider plant and we'll even try to help the poor soul who complains about not having had enough zucchini last year. And we'll remind you of the seasonal garden chores ready to be done in our area this week — or put off in favor of a game of golf.
We live on a unique piece of our fragile planet — we cope with ice, deep snow, September fogs, summer heat and the fury of ocean storms. We cope with the elements because it's worth coping to live in the Northeast — you can fool Mother Nature — you can have your garden and eat it, too. ..."
And so began North Shore Gardener, 25 years ago this week.
What's happened in 25 years? We've become good friends. I know all about you!
You wrote to tell me when someone was ill and you had to take care of their plants while they were in the hospital. You needed a little advice on what should you do because the health of those plants was so important to the sick person.
You told me about your own heirloom tomato seeds, brought from Italy from your parents, which you insisted grew more wonderfully delicious tomatoes than any tomatoes on the market today. Their priceless seeds had been passed down through generations, from grandfathers and mothers to fathers and mothers, and then carefully saved by you and planted every year, and now heirloom veggies are increasingly popular.
There were letters about cherished rose bushes and azaleas which bloomed, almost miraculously each year, on the anniversary of the death of a loved one.
I heard about your kid's school projects, growing plants in paper cups, and making terrariums in a mayonnaise jar or planting a first vegetable garden.
We advised you to grow a pot of grass just for your indoor kitties, so they (hopefully) wouldn't eat the houseplants.
More than a decade ago, we adopted in a huge lemon tree from one reader, a cherished plant that she was going to have to leave behind when she retired to a smaller place. She needed a good home for her tree. We adopted it and named it "Lucy," after the owner. Five-foot "Lucy Lemon tree" is still with me, spending winters on a glassed porch and basking each summer in a sunny garden spot outdoors. And each year, we have high hopes that we will see a lemon or even just one flower — we haven't! Maybe this year ...
You've shared with me, but what have I shared with you over the garden fence?
It got kind of personal
We've shared my garden failures. Sure, there are failures! Whoever said that gardening is bed of roses?
Remember the small pond I built, which then had to be stocked with goldfish to prevent mosquitoes? Local raccoons declared it a sushi bar and fish skeletons were found all over the garden one morning! The pond was promptly drained and the spot was re-planted with annuals that fall.
We warned you first-hand of the dangers of bacterial infections in garden products when I was hospitalized for two days after puncturing my hand in a bag of bark mulch. Right then I began my campaign on gardening with gloves — and the need to get regular tetanus shots!
And you were in on the secret when I bought a birdbath for my hubby's birthday and a tree for our anniversary! Just to be fair, I must tell you he's given me a wheelbarrow and a load of compost.
You've shared the lives and deaths of my pets/companions. I was amazed and grateful at the sympathy expressed when our 19-year-old Siamese cat died a few months ago. Our sole furry (indoor) resident now is the 13-year-old Persian, whose only fault is peeing in the gravel of the greenhouse.
And you gleefully read and offered suggestions one year as my hubby chronicled his attempt to grow tomatoes from seed in his very first garden ever; we counted on one hand the number of tomatoes he harvested that first year! I must add that his gardening skills haven't changed much over the years. This year, he announced that he was bravely going to plant about six carrot seeds this year. He thought that six bunches of carrots would be enough carrots for the summer.
This year, the joke is on him: I've ordered some highly colored heirloom tomatoes plants for him to grow. My intention is to surprise him with tomatoes that are yellow, and green striped and almost black.
What else have we done together?
We've done some daffy things over 25 years, like growing our own bamboo stakes one year when there was a shortage. Now we have all the bamboo stakes we'll ever need, but we're also stuck with an ever-increasing clump of running bamboo that is menacing my lawn and garden and threatening the lives of others in the vicinity! Get out the machete!
We've taken you native plant collecting for yellow-eyed field daisies, and 6-foot silvery mullein and indigo blue trandescantia at the old city dump.
We've tried to humanely rid our garden of certain pesty garden mammals — no traps, no poisons but by using everything from animal hair to fox urine and mothballs to used cat litter. Nothing seems to work on all of these pesty animals all of the time — so we've learned permit a certain amount of noshing, and don't get too excited (except that when a skunk ate four dozen prized pink tulip buds, I almost considered a pellet gun).
Some things have changed in 20 years
A lot of plants have been lost from this earth in the last 25 years, some through the ever-disappearing rain forest, some through pollution and global warming, but some plant loss occurred a lot closer to home. I'm happy to report that some of the native wildflowers that were disappearing in New England 25 years ago are now making a rebirth because you and I are more careful in the fields and forests. We're growing some of the endangered species in our gardens, because these gorgeous plants are now commercially available, grown through responsible harvesting of seed by professionals. Thanks to you, our grandchildren will be able to enjoy many of the same cherished flowers we've loved.
And we're all doing more recycling. We've learned that composting is for everyone and composting even a little bit helps. There's more ecological awareness, because we know what will happen if we don't do it and we care.
And some things remain the same
Gardening hasn't changed that much in 25 years. We're still growing many of the old favorites because they grow best in the Northeast and we still get our hands and knees very dirty!
We still get many of the same questions, about bulbs, tomatoes and geraniums and lots of questions about pests. We've all got 'em! But how do we deal with them? Now we're using safer insecticides instead of harmful poisons.
We still plant geraniums in at Memorial Day and tulips in the fall, but we're getting more adventurous indoors, growing orchids and tropicals on the windowsill.
We still move the houseplants out in June for their brief holiday in the sun and back in September. And we still save yogurt and milk cartons each year for seed planting.
Contact with my readers through mail means so much
I know and appreciate the effort it takes to write, stamp, and mail a letter. We promised we'd answer every letter promptly, either in the column, by mail or sometimes by phone, and we've kept our promise!
Thank heaven for e-mail and what a difference! Now you can have an answer from me in a day or two or sometimes, on a rainy day, within hours. And that can mean the difference between life and death for your plants. But we still love those old-fashioned letters!
And we have a new Web site, www.nsgardener.com, where you can access questions from years past and see some of our favorite pictures as well. And the column is now syndicated in other newspapers in our New England region.
We're here to answer your gardening questions. I don't have all the answers, but boy, do I have a network and resources built over the past 25 years! We know where to get the information you need. But the best garden sources are still my readers, who know exactly what's growing here in the Northeast, indoors or out.
Now it's 25 years later and we love being your neighbor
We're here, every Wednesday in the newspaper, but we're also here every day to share information over the garden gate — your gate or mine! If you're around for the next 25 years, I'll try to be here, too. We said it 25 years ago, and we'll say it again:
"Walk lightly on the earth as we pass through. Take care of this world — it's the only one we've got."
Thank you for the past 25 wonderful years of gardening!
Now let's get busy. We have another great year of gardening ahead.
nnn
North Shore Gardener by Barbara Barger of Beverly is a regular feature of the Home North section. Reach Barbara by e-mail at nsgardener@comcast.net or write to her c/o Salem News, 32 Dunham Road, Beverly, MA 01915. Her Web site is www.nsgardener.com
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