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My flower garden in Brooklyn is overshadowed by three blossoming trees (cherry, crabapple, and dogwood) which all bloom at the same time. I plant spring flowers to blossom in tandem the trees, which means the garden opens with a minor note overture (pansies and hellebores) and then suddenly becomes a stupendous symphony of tulips and flowering trees. it is glorious…but it is over so fast, and then there is a terrible hangover of fallen petals slowly turning brown and nothing blooming. After a few weeks of recovery the summer garden begins to bloom as the roses start (usually at the very end of May). That is where the garden is at right now, and although my favorite little pink hobbit carpet roses have not yet bloomed, the rose garden has started out beautifully with this pink/orange (bittersweet color?) rose named “Sunblaze” miniature rose.
This is one of numerous beautiful orange small roses which I have bought over the years, and each has expired quite swiftly (although the rootstock of “Gingersnap” came back from the dead, albeit as an unknown seasonal rose the color of dried blood). Perhaps Sunblaze will outlast the year…or maybe this is all I will get. Whatever the case, the glorious little orange roses against the dark green background are delightful right now and have given new life and vitality to the garden. I will post more rose pictures as the older roses bloom and there I have planted other summer surprises and delights. Keep your eyes peeled for more gardening beauty and let me know what your favorite May/June flowers are in the comments.
Oh wow! It is that time again: the time that Pantone announces the color of the year for 2019. As you will recall from years past, Pantone is a corporation taste-makers and of fashion insiders which crafts palates that allow all the world’s different corporate concerns to align their offerings with each other. That way consumers can buy matching outfits and housewares in a given season, but can’t find anything that remotely matches any of it the next. Pantone’s offering last year (which is to say the 2018 color of the year) was ultraviolet, a lovely mid-range purple with some blue notes.
Purple is one of my favorite colors…but it seems like the colors are just getting better, because this year features a real winner–“living coral”, a beautiful pinkish red which looks like it is alive. Not only do I love this color…I might actually BE this color (at least if I get out of a very hot shower, or spill allergens on my delicate flesh).
Pantone usually includes lifestyle blather with its color selections, and this year is no different. According to their press kit, the pinkish orange is a “reaction to the onslaught of digital technology and social media,” which represents our collective “need for optimism and joyful pursuits [and] authentic and immersive experiences that enable connection and intimacy.”
That is a lot to load onto a color, but Living Coral fits the bill if any color does. Looking at it just makes me feel happy…like I really did get out of a hot bath and then found some money lying on the ground (although that scenario sounds less good as I look at it on the page). You can read what else Pantone has to say about their selection elsewhere, but in addition to being a near-flesh color, “Living Coral” makes me think of axolotls, sunsets, summer melons, and roses.
This last choice probably makes you scratch your head, but my favorite hybrid tea roses were created by a mad German nurseryman in the mid-sixties and both of his timeless greatest hybrids were this same extraordinary orange pink. One was named “Tropicana” (above) and it was a large showy rose which was (and is) unequaled in looks. The other (pictured below) was smaller and more delicate but it had the most heavenly aroma, which is why it was known as “Fragrant Cloud.” It was my grandmother’s favorite rose and I remember it growing all around her house (and appearing in vases within) during the halcyon summers of my youth.
I poke some fun at Pantone for their florid language and their misfires like “Sand Dollar” (a lifeless ecru from 2006 which did not even have the visual interest of a dead echinoderm), however I think they actually do a good job. Thanks Pantone for the memories of summers past. Maybe 2019 will have some of the rosy happiness of “Living Coral) and if anyone sees a shirt that color, I definitely want one (although I think I might have once had one during those same summers of yore.
Here are two more little flounder doodles which I make during the spare moments of the day. The one at the top is a garden flounder which makes me think of spring…but with some sort of automated gardening machine that looks like a bug sitting atop of it. Below is a post-apocalyptic fluke in the middle of the desert badlands of the grim future. I have no idea what it means. Maybe these have something to do with that perplexing German flounder fable about what we really want.
The Coronet of Margaret of York
Two years ago, Ferrebeekeeper featured the crown of the renowned king Henry VIII of England. To my eyes it has been the prettiest crown so far featured here…but it’s fake, of course. All of the real historical medieval crowns from English history were melted down and sold in the aftermath of the English Civil War (which ended in 1651) when Oliver Cromwell and the protectorate took over the United Kingdom and ruled with a puritanical iron fist. Well, technically all of the actual medieval crowns from English history were destroyed…except for two. Above is the finer of the two, the coronet of Margaret of York, who, though never a queen, became duchess of Burgundy, one of the richest and most important ducal territories in all of Europe. This crown survived England’s tumultuous history by the simple expedient of not being in England (which sort of describes Margaret of York as well).
Anonymous portrait of Margaret of York, ca. 1468, Louvre
Margaret was born the daughter of England’s most powerful lord, Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, who served as lord protector of England during the madness of Henry VI (the pious but weak king who briefly ruled both France and England). Two of Margaret’s brothers were kings of England– Edward IV and Richard III (famous forever as a Shakespeare villain, whose remains were rediscovered 3 years ago under a parking lot in England). Margaret’s personal history of conniving nobles, kings, wars, alliances, betrothals, marriages, murders, horsing accidents, scurrilous sexual rumors, and complex treaties would make George. R. R. Martin pull out his beard in frustration, although Wikipedia amazingly manages to summarize it all in approximately 3 incomprehensible pages. When Margaret was married to Charles the Bold (whose untimely death precipitated two centuries of major wars) she wore this coronet. Burgundy was known for its wealth and extravagance. During her wedding the city was decorated with ornamental pelicans which spewed wine on the crowds!
Margaret’s coronet is tiny—a mere 12 centimeters (five inches) in diameter and height, but it is richly “ornamented with multi-coloured enamel, pearls, gems set in white roses, a diamond cross, the coats of arms of England and Burgundy, and letters forming the name: margarit(a) de (y)o(r)k. Margaret of York.” The reason the beautiful object has survived history in such good shape is that Margaret visited the Imperial city of Aachen in the summer of 1474 and donated her coronet to the statue of Mary in the great cathedral there. The little crown has remained in the cathedral’s treasury for the ensuing 541 years. It should be noted that the meticulous Germans have also kept the original leather case (which makes the crown more valuable for serious collectors?).
Flower Still Life with Tulips and Roses (Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder,, oil on copper)
Besotted with the beauty of spring, I am dedicating this week of Ferrebeekeeper to flowers and floral-themed posts (in retrospect I should have saved last week’s aquilegia post for this week—but consider that a teaser). To start this week’s flower celebration, we are returning to the Dutch Golden Age of painting to look at the life and works of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621). Bosschaert was one of the artists whose work initiated the Dutch mania for still life paintings and for fancy flowers (he lived through the tulip mania and may have helped precipitate that economic bubble). He also founded a family dynasty of artists which endured throughout the 17th century—which is why he is styled “Bosschaert the Elder” (though I am just going to call him Bosschaert).
Tulips, Roses, a Pink and White Carnation, Forgets-Me-Nots, Lilly of the Valley and other Flowers in a Vase (Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, ca. 1619, oil on copper)
Bosschaert was born in Antwerp, but to avoid religious persecution, he moved to Middleburg where he spent most of his life painting with his equally famous and important brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast. Bosschaert favored symmetrical bouquets of April-May flowers (mainly roses and extragent tulips) which he painted on copper—a surface which allows artists to paint in exacting detail. Unlike van der Ast, Bosschaert did not obsess over multitudinous insects, mollusks, and other crawly animals with symbolic meanings (although are usually a few dragonflies, cone snail shells, or moths at the edges of his paintings). Instead he concentrated on the pure formal beauty of flowers. Bosschaert concentrated on the lambent translucent beauty of an unfurling rose or the perfectly harmonized stripes of newly hybridized tulips. There are irises, poppies, and ranunculuses in supporting roles with their own elegance, but tulips and roses nearly always take a starring role.
Flower Still Life (Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, ca. 1619, oil on copper)
Bosschaert was extremely popular and his works commanded top dollar…er guilder, but there are fewer than collectors and museums would like since he also worked as an art dealer. The paintings we have from him, however are magnificent. Even after all of the intervening centuries of decorative art, Bosschaert’s work has an unrivaled power to call attention to the pure mesmerizing beauty of flowers in carefully organized bouquets.
The Huntington Botanical Gardens
Yesterday’s post concerning Pluto, Greco-Roman lord of the underworld contained a photograph of a beautiful two-thousand year old statue as well as one of the greatest and most harrowing of classical myths–but I am afraid it incorrectly tinted my recent trip to California with somber shades. So today I have decided to describe the roses from the Huntington Botanical Garden in San Marino (just outside Pasadena). This garden was once the home of a railroad baron who grabbed control of the steel rails which tied California together. He was a rare book collector (which I will get back to on Monday) and a lover of gardens.
A Tiny Portion of the Chinese Garden at the Huntington Gardens
All of the gardens at the Huntington were unreasonably lovely. The grounds contained both a large Japanese garden and a magnificent Chinese garden. I didn’t even get to see the world famous desert garden and I am still regretting it. However the real highlight for me was the rose garden. Pasadena styles itself as the city of roses. The city hosts a rose parade and some sort of huge rose bowl for college sportsmen. There is a reason for all of the fanfare—the roses everywhere in Pasadena and the towns nearby were beautiful. But the roses at the Huntington Botanical Garden were ineffably transcendentally gorgeous. It was the most splendid rose garden I have ever seen.
Some of the Roses at the Huntington Gardens
Here is the description of the garden as lifted wholesale from the Huntington website:
The three and a half acre rose garden was designed by Myron Hunt and first planted by William Hertrich as a display garden in 1908. In the 1970s, the garden was reorganized as a “collection garden” with more than 1,200 cultivars (approx 4,000 individual plants) arranged historically to trace the development of roses from ancient to modern times beginning with the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.
The entrance pathway leads to an 18th-century French stone tempietto and statue, “Love, the Captive of Youth,” encircled by “French Lace” roses. The beds north of the arbor next to the Shakespeare Garden have a paved walk, and feature Tea and China roses and their descendants, first introduced into Europe from China around 1900.
On the south side of the rose arbor are nineteenth-century shrub roses, descended from old European varieties. Climbing and rambling roses—from all periods and groups—grow on the arbors, arches, and pergolas.
The central part of the garden contains Hybrid Teas, Floribundas, Polyanthas, and miniatures, with separate beds for classic pre-1920 hybrid teas and for roses from the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. Other beds feature roses introduced since the 1950s and introductions from abroad, including recent plantings of roses from India.
This somewhat dry text indeed explains the basics of the garden, but, alas, there is a terrible frustration in trying to convey the true nature of such a place. The roses were all perfect. Each blossom was the size of a dinner plate and every rose was blooming. By some magical circumstance we visited the garden at peak season. The heady scent of roses wafted on the warm breeze and time seemed to dilate. Yesterday I wrote about the mythical gardens of the underworld. Today I am writing about the gardens of paradise—which, somewhat surprisingly, are real and are located just to the southwest of Pasadena.
The Temple of Love from the Rose Garden at Huntington Gardens
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