Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia

26. Columbine

132 & 26. Columbine i’ve planted a tiny green columbine in the garden on the side of the house. It’s perfectly shaped, and the bloom is lime colored with long bright yellow stamens. I bought it at a garden in the bend of the river across from where the shad spawn. The garden is in Gladwyne but Philadelphia is right across the river.It’s a garden made over many years by Mary Gibson Henry,a woman inspired by William Bartram to collect native plants starting in the early part of the twentieth century. She carried the plants back from the swampy areas of the Gulf Coast or the high valleys of British Columbia and nestled them in the ground of her garden with just the right soil and conditions for them to survive in Pennsylvania on an old Quaker farm. Her granddaughters are in charge of the garden now, and each spring they have a plant sale. I’ve been reading gardening books about small gardens.Our patio is very tiny here, and each book tells me I must have a focal point. Our garden has not come into focus yet, no strategic bit of garden ornament draws the eye. I’m drawn instead to individual plants. Sometimes I sneak out early in the morning and study the leaves and petals, snaky roots, and buds before anyone is coming by on the sidewalk. All around us the trees are leafing out in their new green. On the river shad may be swimming upstream to spawn like they have for a million or so years.Two different sparrows hop on and off the deck. In the morning I hear their songs. The white-throated sparrow and the white-crowned sparrow. On their way through to somewhere else. The cardinal whistles, and the large woodpecker drinks sap from the pruned limbs of the elm.Peter Kalm wrote that the settlers columbine 133 complained about woodpeckers. The birds drilled holes in the apple trees. Gladiolas knife their way out of the dirt and matted mulch. The ferns spread out in their tangy light green breadth. Everything is miniature and perfectly made. Are all these enough for a miracle? Father Georges comes by on Saturday and admires the flowers in the bed along the side of the house. I don’t discuss theology with him. He tells me he rows. His father rowed and his uncle too. He grew up in Mt. Airy. Our house sits at the intersection of our neighbors’paths. I watch Mary Robinson make her way to her job a block away, leaning on her cane as she walks past the window. She told us on Sunday that she used to play in the puddles of the ice house that stood near her house down the street.During Prohibition she would warn her father and his friends, playing cards and drinking in the ice house, that the police were coming around the corner. She knows the shortcuts through the rectory to the church and lives in the house that her parents bought before she was born. In 1970, she told me the other day, she planted the tree in front of her house in honor of her son’s return from Vietnam. “It’s too big now,”she said.“I asked the city to cut it down,but they said I’m on a list.” When Scott carries bags of soil into the back patio,Mary Robinson walking by says:“My mother-in-law who lived in the house right next to mine used to go to the park and dig up soil there with the kids and I would say to her,‘You’re teaching those kids to steal.’And she’d say, ‘It’s good stuff and it’s free.’” Sometimes I see Father Alberto as he strides down the street past our house on his way to the store. He straightens his shoulders and rushesahead,dinneronhismind,hisnighttocook.Yann,anarchitect 134 kingsessing who looks like Mr. Clean, comes by in the morning on his way for coffee and later on his way to the gym. He’s been up half the night drawing plans for new building projects. At two-thirty the children run past the garden,dressed in their uniforms of red and blue,all talk as they head for home.Some push themselves along the sidewalk on their shiny new...