The North Carolina Arboretum
Resilient by Nature
7 December 2024
By: James Lennox
Garden photographers are obsessed with light. Full sun at midday, as my long-suffering sidekick claims, is something of a challenge - harsh, glaring and ‘contrasty’, apparently. Golden hour, when the shadows are long and the sun low, is king - soft tones, a hint of mist, the world slowly coming into focus. Wordsworth nailed it before photography, let alone garden photography, was even invented: ‘Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive’.
We gardeners, on the other hand, are all about the vagaries of the weather. Show me the gardener who doesn't keep a sharp eye fixed on the horizon at all times. But we’re not necessarily unreconstructed Luddites, so these days we’re just as likely to be constantly glancing at our preferred apps for advance warning.
Whether it's fretting over the arrival of the dreaded early first frost or a dry spell that's overstayed its welcome, we're always on high alert for whatever the weather gods are ready to throw our way next. Armed with bundles of fleece to protect borderline-hardy boundary-pushing experiments or a hosepipe to revive wilting perennials, we do our best to anticipate what's coming our way and deal with it when it arrives.
But there's not a lot you can do to protect a heavily-wooded hillside from a hurricane. The North Carolina Arboretum was hit on 27 September this year. It's estimated that more than 5,000 trees came down over the 434 acre site. Astonishingly, the 65 acres of gardens at the centre of the arboretum re-opened just one month later while the clear-up continues elsewhere.
I visited well before the storm struck. A year before, in fact. And I knew I was in for a treat when I spotted a nonchalant franklinia gracing the car park. It's the kind of planting that screams confidence in the staff’s horticultural abilities and in the growing conditions - as well as an urge to cram in as much good stuff as possible. (I empathise - why else do I have a suckering sassafras in an orchard?) Plus a dash of incongruity to make the visitor stop in his tracks never harmed anyone.
The next jolt to the senses arrives hot on the franklinia's heels. In the midst of the glorious Southern Appalachian hills and placed at the very centre of the Arboretum’s formal gardens is the Quilt Garden, a dazzling parterre of bedding plants arranged in a geometric pattern recalling one of the region’s traditional craft skills. The exact design changes every two years, with the planting refreshed three times during the growing season.
Carpet bedding has been pretty much abandoned in Britain for financial reasons masquerading as a pre-occupation with sustainability. It was refreshing to see the skill still being practised here. On my visit, the garden was made up of a mix of Chrysanthemum x morifolium interspersed with the recently re-named Jacobaea maritima ‘Silver Dust’. Quite the combination.
Even as a set-piece viewed in isolation, garden statements don't get much bolder or more striking. But then there's the Quilt Garden's relationship with the wider environment. It's not sited in an enclosed garden room. Instead, somehow, the viewer is supposed to lift his head from the intricate design and allow his gaze to be drawn to the distant tree-clad hills.
As challenging juxtapositions go, it's a triumph - demanding, unsettling and irresistible all at once. And in case you were in any doubt where you should be looking, there’s a pair of columnar Liquidambar styraciflua ‘Slender Silhouette’ to focus your attention. Who needs a boring old ‘Dawyck’ beech, purple or otherwise, when this sweetgum selection is on offer?
This composition serves to encapsulate the dual purpose of the arboretum - it's a place that wants to entertain and educate at the same time. The aim is to gladden the eye while instilling knowledge, hence at its core a display garden of possibly under-appreciated native plants in a sensitively preserved, sublime natural setting.
This is no dusty old hodge-podge of weedy-yet-worthy plants but a lively and exciting exhibition of possibilities, a well-judged assortment of native species and garden-worthy cultivars thereof. I've never come across the striking groundcover Pachysandra procumbens ‘Forest Green’ before, a welcome change from the more common Japanese species, or seen Muhlenbergia capillaris used more effectively. And I always love to see an illicium thrown in for good measure.
The rest of the formal gardens are slightly more conventional, in design terms at least. There's a Stream Garden, a Heritage Garden (with a chimney folly and hammerbeam pergolas now added to my wishlist), vistas along paths and even an amphitheatre.
Throughout are sprinkled various sculptures - whimsical, figurative, naturalistic, you name it - as well as hard landscaping elements, such as pools, steps, railings and gates that have all been carefully considered and obviously commissioned for each exact location. There's no hint of the ‘shop-bought’ or run-of-the-mill here. I had serious ‘bling envy’, as I often do on my travels.
And then there's the bonsai collection, an incongruous element only if we think an arboretum should be concerned exclusively with growing specimen trees in their natural form.
There are native species on show (Tsuga caroliniana and canadensis, Acer rubrum and Carpinus caroliniana all caught my eye), highlighting the potential to control and snip away at what would otherwise become a forest giant. Even an art form as distinctive and rarefied as bonsai can be adapted and developed to suit its non-traditional surroundings, a Southern Appalachian twist on a theme.
As displayed here, with a starkly simple concrete backdrop and a winding walkway that suggests something akin to a pilgrimage to a mountain-top monastery, the bonsai aspire to the condition of living abstract art. It's a stunning and unexpected interlude.
Beyond the confines of the ordered, formal gardens are areas that tentatively push out into the surrounding forest. The gentle slope below the education centre (featuring one of my favourites, the North Carolina-bred Magnolia ‘Daybreak’), the grassy knoll dotted with specimen trees (Stewartia malocodendron and ovata now firmly in my sights), the meadow ablaze with goldenrod - all aim to provide a transition from the manicured to the wild. It's skilfully done without minimising the sense that at any moment the forest could reclaim the man-made clearing.
And it's quite a forest. I defy anyone not to take the plunge (especially on a scorchingly hot day) into the woods. Only then will you realise that this is really a garden with a vast forest of native trees attached - Quercus rubra, coccinea, alba and montana to name a few oaks, hickories of course and even endangered rarities like Torreya taxifolia from slightly further afield.
Hiking trails strike off in every direction. Down by the stream lies a comprehensive collection of native azaleas, those rhododendron species that first caught the eye of discerning British gardeners back in the early eighteenth century. Overshadowed by later Himalayan and Far Eastern introductions, these shrubs have a charm and simplicity in a woodland setting that suggest they've been unjustly neglected, in Europe at least. And there were even one or two in flower at the start of autumn (including Rhododendron prunifolium first collected as recently as 1913), a gift to any garden flagging at that time of year.
Garden-visiting in Britain rarely comes with the opportunity to go for a serious hike. Strolling along the herbaceous borders and making a bee-line for the cafe for a slice of cake is about as much exercise as you're likely to engage in. Here there are gullies to explore, hills to scramble up and majestic trees to hug around every corner. It's a fully immersive experience, a world away from the bedding out and delicate sculpture elsewhere.
More than anything, the Arboretum serves as a reminder of the riches lurking in the local forests. It’s astonishing to be reminded there are probably more native tree species in one acre of a wild hillside in Asheville, North Carolina than in the whole of Britain.
Whether tree, shrub or perennial, some of those plants have been brought into our gardens and cultivated; others have been left exactly where they've always been, fending for themselves, supporting each other. It's this diversity that is its greatest strength, a natural in-built resilience to outside threats, whether wildlife, disease or storms. Something tells me it'll take more than a hurricane to destroy that.
More information here: https://www.ncarboretum.org/
