Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia

37. Franklinia

183 & 37. Franklinia in 1870 william robinson published a book called The Wild Garden. His idea of wild was not wilderness but a kind of ordered use of wild edges. He liked to fill meadows with spring flowers and harvest the useful hay later. He planted the edges of woods with drifts of lupines and lilies, the margins of roads with ferns. On old stumps and large trees he coaxed clematis and honeysuckle.I like one wild garden in particular where lilies bloom on the wet margins of a stream and huge magnolia blossoms fall on a winding grassy path, up the river from Bartram’s Garden around the bend just outside of Philadelphia. Mary Gibson Henry gardened here in the soil of an old Quaker farm for a good part of the twentieth century. She collected native plants.Inspired by William Bartram’s book,she said she wanted one of the plants he described in his Travels that was no longer available to American collectors: Rhododendron speciosum, Oconee azalea. Bartram seemed to define her impulse when he wrote, “Whilst I, continually impelled by a restless spirit of curiosity, in pursuit of new productions of nature, my chief happiness consisted in tracing and admiring the infinite power,majesty,and perfection of the Great Almighty Creator,and in the contemplation,that through divine aid and permission,I might be instrumental in discovery,and introducing into my native country, some original productions of nature, which might become useful to society.” Mary Gibson Henry’s husband was a doctor.She was a descendent of one of the first Quaker families to settle near Philadelphia. I’ve seen a photograph of her in a gown at the top of a staircase in the 184 gladwyne cool stone ballroom in her grandmother’s house outside Philadelphia. She’s dressed in a long black silk dress,daughters to her left and right in shimmering slips of gowns. On the floor is a lion’s skin, the head facing the women on the marble steps. For many years Mary Henry lived in Philadelphia.She had a small yard like ours and grew lilacs and bearded iris and narcissus.Her yard was big enough for a greenhouse, and she grew orchids there. She had five children. Her first day off, she wrote in her autobiography, was after nineteen years of marriage. In 1926 the Henrys bought land just outside Philadelphia on a hill above the river in Gladwyne, where they built a house and a large greenhouse. And then her youngest son died. Many years later she wrote, “Great grief came to us in 1927, when we lost our youngest son, aged six. I craved solitude and working with my plants was all I cared to do.” It’s fall and we’re taking a guided walk in Mary Gibson Henry’s garden. Her granddaughters are leading us up to the rock garden and down through the thick woods to the sparkling streams that Mrs. Henry describes in her autobiography. Perhaps all gardens are built on grief. That impulse to make something beautiful out of the slippery stuff that crumbles away as you pat and water each plant. Graham runs up the grassy slope looking for jungle plants,all the way to the outcrop Mary Henry exposed on the crest of her hill above her house. “Excuse me,”he says to Betsey, one of Mary Henry’s granddaughters .“Do you have any carnivorous plants here?” “No,” she says.“But a botanist who was here a few days ago told us about some plants in the Amazon that eat small children, or at least small animals.” Mary Gibson Henry writes in her autobiography that she “fell in love” at seven with the tiny Linnaea borealis ssp. americana, the twinflower, delicate and pink nodding above shiny evergreen leaves. franklinia 185 Even though she was a “city girl” she “loved the outdoors.” In 1908 she climbed Mont Blanc with her brother and three guides. After her children were old enough she started collecting native plants and spent the rest of her life consumed by her garden. She traveled in a specially outfitted car—with an“attic,” an electrically lit desk, and a bookcase. The rear compartment was“insulated and ventilated so that newly collected plants travel comfortably. Three plant presses, numerous buckets, spades, etc.,” were part of the equipment. Her chauffeur was also her gardener...