Page 11 - Free State Winter 2022 - Website Version

their eventual take over? It’s one thing to teach them the the month before our arrival. That was when someone
ins and outs of everyday work but another to bring them girdled 32 trees with an axe causing four to be removed.
in on the big and hard decisions. That includes listening The trees were from 50 to 200 years old. They are trying
to new ideas and encouraging trials of those ideas. to save the remaining trees by replacing the bark where
I’ll tell you it gives me a sense of joy and pride to see it possible and bridge grafting. How can people do such
happening with us. ugly things to places of beauty?

In August, Flo and I took a cruise that was supposed Speaking of American Chestnuts or actually Dunston
to stop in three ports in Greenland. Bad weather kept hybrids, I was given some seedlings. The waitress at a
us from making one port, which unfortunately was the local restaurant gave them to me. She had bought the
capital city Nuuk. I can tell you now, I have never seen parent tree 15 years ago and it produced nuts which
a place before so rift of possibilities for anything in our she germinated and grew on. She no longer had room
line of work. In the two ports we did stop in landscaping to plant out more and gave me 20 plants. They were in
was just not done in any form. I saw only one house 3-inch pots 12 to 15 inches tall. I brought them home and
in Nanortalik that had anything that could be called repotted them into 3-gallon containers. After all these
that. It had three shrubs, two inside the fence the other years we will have some American Chestnut hybrids along
outside, neither one identifiable from the distance I was with our Chinese seedlings. A
from it. Also inside the fence was the stump of a very
dead tree. It was a couple feet taller than the fence with
a possible four-inch caliper trunk. No lawns, urns or pots
with annuals or anything else of a horticultural bent at
any house we saw. Natural plants except grasses were all
short and sparse among the rocks. Some areas of three-
foot grasses were along the shore. It was pretty in its own
way, including ice floating in the harbor.

The cruise had first stopped
in Halifax, and we decided Above right: American Chesthut
to go to the Halifax Public Below:Greenland Landscaping
Gardens. It was beautiful,
and probably the best
public garden Flo and I
have ever seen. The irony
of it all, we saw our first
mature healthy American
Chestnut, in Canada.
Castanea dentata is a very
impressive tree when seen
for the first time. This alone
made the excursion to the
garden worth the trip.

Halifax Public Gardens are
one of the finest surviving
examples of a Victorian
garden in North America.
They were founded by the Nova Scotia Horticultural Mike Hemming
Society in 1836 and were recognized as a National Historic Eastern Shore Nurseries Inc
Site in 1984. The Halifax Public Gardens is also part of 410-822-1320
Canada’s Garden route. esn@goeaston.net

Flo and I walked all the paths enjoying all the beauty easternshorenurseries.com
and care put into this wonderful gardens. Sadly, though
the beauty was marred by senseless vandalism in July,

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