Dig of the Day: original plant tag

The “dig of the day’ for February 29, 2024

It isn’t often that digging in Elizabeth Lawrence’s garden yields the discovery of an original plant tag, but when it does, it’s like a lightning strike… only in the very best way. Maybe that isn’t the best analogy, but I think you know what I mean. With every unearthed (and legible) original plant tag comes the potential of another piece of the most intricate, complex and dynamic puzzle you can imagine. Yesterday yielded one such puzzle piece that I’m still somewhat figuring out.

“Labels… must be permanent, easily read, and inconspicuous. The best… I have tried are strips of zinc or copper. (I got a sheet metal dealer to cut his scraps into strips about an inch wide and eight inches long.) I print the name with acid and a gold pen.”

-Elizabeth Lawrence
A Rock Garden in the South

Elizabeth did not always stick to the method described above. The bulk of tags I have found have been a mix of metal strips, tie-on lead strips, and standard metal nameplates slid on a two-prong stake. Sometimes I find tags completely or mostly intact. Sometimes only metal fragments remain, casualties of decades of intense cultivation and being buried in slightly acidic soil for who knows how long.

Site of discovery

If I’m really lucky, some portion of handwriting is still visible after decades of dirt is very carefully cleaned off. Yesterday’s find is a completely intact nameplate. The legibility of the handwriting is partially decent. When I tilt the cleaned nameplate just the right way in the light, I can make out “Rosa”. Excellent! Now I know there was a rose planted in or very near the spot of the discovery. My research starts in Elizabeth’s card index—several metal drawers and small boxes of three-by-five index cards on which she recorded an immense amount of information about every plant she grew, read about in books, and learned about from other gardeners. It is a mind-boggling handwritten database consisting of (by my best guesstimate) somewhere between 15,000-20,000 cards. Thankfully, they have been digitized, which makes it much easier to access their information, but then there is the issue of Elizabeth’s penmanship.

While I only have a portion of viable information from yesterday’s “dig of the day,” I am one tiny puzzle piece closer to the overall picture of seeing this garden space through its creator’s eyes.

75 Years of this Southern Garden & violet crocuses

This year, 2024, marks the 75th anniversary of the Elizabeth Lawrence House & Garden! To celebrate, we are highlighting some of our favorite snippets of Elizabeth’s writings, plants, personal items, and a few other new-to-us discoveries along the way.

This installment features a passage I came across while searching her book Gardens in Winter (1977, Claitor’s Publishing), now long out of print.

“The violet crocuses are my favorites, and I wish I had room for wide pools of violet instead of small clumps stuffed into the borders or crowded in with the daffodils…”

As I wander Elizabeth’s garden in winter, the smiling faces of crocus are some of the first of the little bulbs to greet me. A couple of the ones that have stayed here the longest are Crocus laevigatus ‘Fontenayi’ and Crocus tommasinianus.

Dark purple feathering on the outside petals and white anthers give away the identity of Crocus laevigatus ‘Fontenayi’ .

Unfailingly, there is a patch of Crocus laevigatus ‘Fontenayi’ in front of the house that blooms first: usually sometime in December. These bulbs are some of the tiniest treasures of this place, as they are original to Elizabeth, and were planted in 1955! The earliest blooming date I have in my records, which date back to 2010, is November 25th. The earliest date in Elizabeth’s records: November 15.

Pockets of Crocus tommasinianus have been returned to various nooks and tucked into unexpected spaces throughout Elizabeth Lawrence’s garden.

Crocus tommasinianus is a later bloomer. These usually begin in early February. The earliest date I have is January 16. They are tucked in here and there throughout the garden, and have apparently even seeded about in a couple of spots, escaping the confines of planting beds. The largest display of tommies, as they’re commonly called, is in the northwest bed by the pool. They have seeded themselves in amongst Elizabeth’s natal lily, Crinum moorei var. schmidtii, which is as smart as it is efficient; when the crocus begin to die down, the crinum is waking up, and when the crinum has died down for the winter, the crocus come out. This type of seasonal inter-planting is a hallmark of the brilliant and skilled gardener that Elizabeth Lawrence was.

Tommies brighten this corner bed near the pool, and play an important part in seasonal planting.

Fontenay’s crocus is unfortunately not very widely available. As a matter of fact, the only place I find it currently—at least in the United States—is Brent & Becky’s Bulbs. Tommies, on the other hand, are fairly readily available. Both should be planted in the fall.