Quite a few years ago I went on a walk with a friend at Amethyst Brook in Amherst. As we got out of the car at what she called her secret parking space, she said, “Do you mind if we don’t talk for the first 20 minutes?” I was taken aback. I asked myself why a person would go walking with a friend if she weren’t in the mood to chat. But I agreed to keep quiet and off we went in the early morning silence. But it was hardly silent. Birds called, the brook burbled, the leaves and pine needles crunched beneath our feet. I don’t remember who broke the silence, but we eventually began talking and soon enough we were back at the car.
I saw my friend recently. We often talk about gardening when we run into each other, and she was eager to show me some pictures she’d recently taken on her iPhone. They were close-up photographs of woodland wildflowers she had seen the previous day on a walk at Amethyst Brook. “Look at this!” she said, pulling up a picture of a small magenta flower with two oval petals protruding like wings from a central core at the end of which was a tiny white pompom. “It’s a fringed polygala!” I had never seen anything like it.
She showed me several more photographs, one of a tiny yellow violet, with its larger lower petal veined in black, as if inked by tiny pen strokes. Another little beauty was striped wintergreen, a plant I had seen many times without ever pausing to look at it closely. The wintergreen consists of a base of narrow pointed dark green leaves with a silver stripe down the center, and a slender single stalk topped by three nodding white flowers. The flowers have five rounded petals and a prominent green pistil surrounded by tan stamens that look like eyelashes.
This impromptu slideshow reminded me that sometimes I’m too busy writing about plants to really look at them. There is so much to see and so much to miss if I’m not paying attention. These flowers are in full mating regalia, beckoning to pollinators to see, smell and taste them and then spread their pollen far and wide. It’s an amazing spectacle if you just bother to observe it.
I asked my friend how she comes across such amazing discoveries. She told me that she’s taken walks almost daily for many years, either at Amethyst Brook or in the Holyoke Range. “Holyoke Range is another ecosystem,” she said, “so it has lots of different plants.” By now she is on intimate terms with the plant life on the trails she follows. She knows where and when the trillium bloom in the spring and where she’ll find a spectacular purple mushroom in the fall. She is a connoisseur of odd-looking fungi, including the bright yellow nubbly ones and slimy orange ones, of which she showed me pictures. “They are so disgusting they’re really pretty fun,” she said, laughing. As familiar as she has become with local plants, she said, “every year I see something I’ve never seen before. It blows my mind.”
“I like to walk alone,” she said. “When I’m with someone, we just start yakking and I don’t get anything out of the experience. I’m addicted to walking.”
I doubt she remembers the walk we took that began in silence. But her statement brought it instantly to my mind. Years later, I have an answer to my question of why a person might want to walk in nature silently with a friend.
Mickey Rathbun, an Amherst-based lawyer turned journalist, has written the Get Growing column since 2016.
Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge will have an opening reception on May 31, from 5 to 7 p.m. for its new ART/GARDEN exhibition, Shimmering Flowers: Nancy Lorenz’s Lacquer and Bronze Landscapes, at its Leonhardt Galleries. The reception will include a demonstration by floral designer and Ikebana master Kan Asakura.
A New York City-based artist, Nancy Lorenz incorporates techniques from traditional Asian crafts, drawing on her years spent living in Japan and a 35-year career as a noted contemporary abstract painter. For Shimmering Flowers, Lorenz has created gilt and mother-of-pearl paintings that complement BBG’s collection of flora. Also on display will be her table-top landscape vessels in cast bronze. Throughout the summer, these vessels will hold arrangements created by a rotating group of talented floral designers whose interpretations of the art are reflected in their displays of flowers and other natural materials.
Free with Garden admission. For more information, go to berkshirebotanical.org
On June 6, BBG will host a visit to Battery Park City, located at the tip of Manhattan. The group will tour this extensive landscape, one of the most concentrated parklands in America, with instructor David Dew Bruner, who will focus on design. The group will visit areas of the park including Michael Van Valkenburgh’s Teardrop Park, Oehme van Sweden’s Rockefeller Park, two gardens designed by Lynden Miller, and landscapes by Olin Partnership.
The program will begin at Grand Central Station, NYC. Participants will have the option to meet at Grand Central Station at 11 a.m. or to carpool with BBG staff to Wassaic, NY and take Metro North to GCT departing from Wassaic at 8:28 a.m. returning to Wassaic at approximately 6:45 p.m. A snack and refreshments will be provided. Members: $70/ non-members: $85. Cost of the program does not include train fare to NYC or lunch.
Dress for the weather, rain or shine, and bring a water bottle and bagged lunch or plan to buy your own.
For more information, go to berkshirebotanical.org
The Botanic Garden at Smith is now recruiting volunteers to train to lead tours for groups of school children and adults. Volunteers are also trained to staff the reception area and provide hospitality for special events. The New Volunteer 2019 three-day training session runs June 5-7 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Registration is required. If you are interested in becoming a Botanic Garden Volunteer, please fill out a volunteer application (https://live-garden2.pantheonsite.io) and contact Sarah Loomis at 585-2740.