Not long ago, Jane Lawrence of the Dauphin County Master Gardeners was at the entrance to Harrisburg Cemetery, looking for the right plant for a low limestone wall across from the caretaker’s cottage.
The difference between the right plant and the almost right plant, to adapt a line of Twain’s, is the difference between a fox and a foxglove, and the right plant for Lawrence would have to meet several demands. For one, the view over the limestone wall, of the Capitol dome, had to be preserved. So whatever variety she picked would have to be small—under 3 feet if possible.
It would also have to be interesting to look at for more than one season of the year. Every plant has seasonal offerings. Some, like the crabapples on a nearby plot, have spectacular spring blooms and ornamental fruit in autumn, but are dull in winter. Others, like the Kentucky coffee trees just up the road, are scrappy most of the year. The ideal plant for the prominent entrance spot would have something to show every season: flowers in spring and summer, leaf color in fall and berries in winter.
Lawrence decided, provisionally, to plant hydrangeas. But there were further considerations. Price mattered, as did ease of propagation. Her selection had to be limestone-friendly and had to tolerate being exposed. And the question of height remained. Most hydrangeas grow to 3 or 4 feet. There are dwarf varieties, but only in a narrow range of colors. One has pink blossoms, the other blue.
“But I wanted white,” Lawrence told me later, when we met in town. “So I’m still holding off on that one.”
Lawrence grew up in Detroit Lakes. Her grandmother, an avid gardener, gave her a plot to tend in her backyard. She later moved to Muncy, Pa., and raised chickens, rabbits, fruits and vegetables on an 11-acre farm. At the same time, she taught social work in the graduate school at Temple. “I liked people. I also liked growing things,” she said. When a position opened at Temple’s Harrisburg campus, she moved. She eventually settled in Bellevue Park, a bosky, undulating neighborhood to the city’s east, near John Harris High School.
Lawrence is short, with a sandy pixie cut and a sweet demeanor. She expressed a concern for animals and insects that “can’t feed their babies.” A few years after she moved to Bellevue Park, a series of heavy storms struck the region. A wooded area in the neighborhood lost several large trees, and the resulting hole in the canopy allowed plants closer to the ground to thrive. “I began really watching the woods,” Lawrence said. Soon, the floor was overrun with honeysuckle, privet and other invasive species. She became interested in the challenge of repopulating hollowed-out woods.
In the fall of 2008, Lawrence joined the Dauphin County Master Gardeners. Master Gardeners are unpaid volunteers who apply for certification by the Penn State Cooperative Extension. The certification process is rigorous. They must pass an exam and complete 40 hours of training, plus eight hours of update training each subsequent year. They volunteer time and expertise in their communities, answering hotlines, maintaining demonstration gardens and offering public workshops and lectures. According to Penn State guidelines, their role is to disseminate “unbiased, research-based information” to home gardeners. They are not to attach themselves to commercial products, nor can they charge a fee.
They also frequently involve themselves in civic beautification. Lawrence got involved with a group of Master Gardeners who had started working at the Harrisburg Cemetery, cleaning up overgrown patches and identifying trees. Eventually, seeing that some of the oldest canopy trees were in decline, they started thinking about planting saplings. They noticed that the cemetery was missing a “middle story”—that is, trees between the canopy and the low ornamentals. In late 2010, they developed a list of preferred trees for new planting, with an emphasis on native species, including mid-height trees like sourwoods and yellowwoods.
“We decided on a focus on native plants because these seem to be outnumbered in most private and public gardens,” Lawrence told me. “We are very concerned about promoting native wildlife, and the best way to do so is by providing them the food sources they evolved with.”
In 2011, one of the Master Gardeners, inspired by a visit to Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia, suggested the group pursue the creation of an arboretum in Harrisburg. Lawrence did some research and came up with a list of goals. When it came to choosing an appropriate site, the group did not look far. “We were all so fond of the cemetery plantings no one considered looking elsewhere for an arboretum, feeling we had the makings of one where we were,” Lawrence said.
Through this effort, the Master Gardeners will be adding to the appeal of one of Harrisburg’s most remarkable, and yet least-known, historical landmarks. They’ll also be waging a local battle in what might be described, with only modest exaggeration, as a nationwide horticultural war.
Feel of a Park
Harrisburg Cemetery is the largest and oldest cemetery in the city. It sits on a bluff at one end of the State Street Bridge, overlooking the railroad and the Capitol dome. Chartered in 1845, its grounds were carved from the city’s largely rural outskirts, and they gradually filled as church graveyards in town were relocated to make room. In time, it became the resting place of prominent local families. The headstones now feel like a survey of Harrisburg street signs: Verbeke, Calder, Cameron, Reily, Boas, Herr and Forster are there, among others.
The cemetery is also home to an astonishing variety of trees. There are flowering dogwoods, cherry trees, cedars, ashes, oaks and maples. They have a global pedigree: not far from the entrance is a towering European beech, whose gray trunk looks like a swollen elephant leg, and nearby is a bald cypress, native to the United States, with a thin coat of feathery needles. There’s a dawn redwood from China, several Korean dogwoods and at least one English Hawthorn that, despite its name, is believed to hail from Africa.
The trees, combined with the grounds’ crisscrossing avenues, lend the cemetery the feel of a park. The effect is deliberate and reflects a taste in the mid-19th century for cemeteries one could visit and walk around. Nowadays, visiting a grave with a purpose other than to mourn can seem like a form of trespassing or disrespect, but, in the last century or two, it was nothing unusual. (In Woodlawn, a historic cemetery in the Bronx, N.Y., where I once gave tours, some mausoleums had rooms where relatives could sit, read and even picnic.)
In May, on the first day of spring landscaping, I took a tour of the Harrisburg Cemetery with David Via, the resident caretaker. I found him halfway down a row of headstones, next to a plume of blue-white smoke. Via and two colleagues were clearing some graves of stiltgrass, a tenacious invasive weed, and had resorted to lighting clumps of it on fire.
Via apprenticed at an art conservation shop in Watertown, Mass., the area of the shootout after the marathon bombing, a little over a week before we met. “Actually, the diner we used to go to was in the news, because of those two idiots from Boston,” he told me. He travelled often, mostly restoring bronze. “But then the economy tanked, and there was no money for public art.”
He now works at the cemetery full time, addressing whatever needs addressing, which is usually some combination of overgrowth, fallen trees and damaged markers. In the winter, when he can’t do landscaping, he works in the cottage. “I have paperwork going back to 1843,” he said.
We headed for the cemetery’s western edge, past patches of grass dotted with flowers. “Traditionally, it was the time to start mowing when the violets started dying,” Via said. He pointed out a toppled headstone. Vandalism is a recurrent issue, and cutting back foliage often comes with the tradeoff of making for easier trespassing through the woods.
As we approached the cemetery’s boundary, we came upon a massive tower built into the hillside, like the last remaining turret of a ruined castle. This was the monument to Marlin Edgar Olmsted, a statesman who drafted Puerto Rico’s constitution and served as a member of Congress for 16 years.
A few steps away, on a stout square pedestal, stood John Geary, the only bronze statue on the grounds. The inscription notes that Geary, who died at the age of 57, was a colonel in the Mexican War and major general in the Civil War, as well as San Francisco’s last alcalde (a Spanish municipal official) and first mayor, governor of Kansas and, later, of Pennsylvania. “He packed a lot of life in,” Via said.
As we walked, Via plucked up the occasional weed. He held up some garlic mustard, a European herb that is currently invasive across much of North America. “The funny thing is, you can actually eat this stuff,” he said.
Tastes in burial, like tastes in cemetery styles, have changed over the years, and, as we walked, we passed a diverse assortment of markers. Some graves are ornate and imposing, while others are humble and spare. Some convey the presence—or rather, absence—of a singular individual; others present a collective, identities lost among the closely packed stones.
Via pointed out the Lutherans: several crammed rows of headstones, their lettering faded. They were dug up and relocated from a churchyard in town to make space for the railroad station. Not all were identifiable, and an obelisk now marks a single large plot where unknown remains were piled. Further along, we came to some shining white headstones. They marked the graves of Civil War soldiers who died at Camp Curtin, the major Union camp in Harrisburg. A year ago, for his Eagle project, a Boy Scout replaced the old graves with new, legible markers.
We circled back to the lot with the burning stiltgrass. Terri, a part-time employee, was working with a handsaw, cutting at weeds growing between the stones. “I disturbed an ant colony and now they’re biting,” she said.
Via lit a cigarette. With one hand on his hip, in a straw hat, his leg cocked at the knee, he looked not a little like the statue of Geary. Though he laments the lack of money for conservation across the state, Via is pleased that the cemetery, at least, faces no imminent threat of a funding shortage. Harrisburg Cemetery has an endowment that pays for its upkeep, and it requires no outside grants. It is also, so to speak, still open for business.
“It pays to keep the cemetery running,” Via said. There are plenty of available plots, and, with current tastes tending towards cremation, the number of potential internments per plot is high. Unlike some cemeteries, Harrisburg has virtually no restrictions on the number or type of burials. “If you can fit ‘em in there, go for it,” Via told me. “We just buried a gentlemen in a fishing tackle box.”
The Perfect Earth
Gardening, with its bent towards trading and collecting, has not always had benign effects on ecosystems. American horticulturalists, seeking plants that were both hardy and aesthetically interesting, historically transplanted species from abroad, especially from Europe and East Asia, where temperate climates harbor varieties that easily can flourish here. But the feature that makes non-natives desirable for gardens—their resistance to native fauna and disease—also makes them dangerously resilient in forests, where the lack of local predators gives them a competitive edge.
Eric Burkhart, the program director at Shaver’s Creek, a nature center connected to Penn State, has fought the spread of invasive species for years. Burkhart, who holds a Ph.D. in forest resources, teaches courses on plant identification and invasive forest plants. He explained that Pennsylvania, like many states, has witnessed an increase in invasive populations over the last few decades.
“Most of our native stands have seen slow change happening,” he said. “In a state like Pennsylvania, it’s mostly been due to fragmentation.”
Fragmentation refers to the division of intact woodlands that comes with urbanization—the paving of highways, for instance, or the clearing of power-line valleys. Fragmentation creates exposed edges, where invasive species tend to flourish. “When you create a zone of disturbance, you set up for a species adapted for disturbance to make its way in,” Burkhart said.
“Invasive” is not a straightforward distinction. It describes a tendency or pattern of growth rather than an inherent quality. Not all non-natives are invasive: hostas, native to northeast Asia, are popular in the United States, but deer love to eat them, which keeps them from outgrowing other species. And many plants that are native here have invasive tendencies abroad. An American species of black cherry, for instance, is becoming invasive across Europe; red maple, native to the Northeast, is invasive in Hawaii. “Generally, what defines an invasive is that it will spread to an adjacent ecosystem,” Burkhart said. “It’s not the non-native wildflower in your garden, but what spreads from your garden to the state park down the street.”
Invasives not only spread quickly, but also are often difficult to eradicate. Take garlic mustard, the edible herb Via pulled up in the cemetery, which is a tall weed with floppy green leaves and clustered white buds. In certain months, it’s easy to remove manually. But an individual plant produces 1,500 seeds each year, and the seeds can sit in the soil for seven or eight years, waiting for a chance to grow.
Coupled with the non-natives’ resilience is their relative uselessness to the rest of the ecosystem. I met with Steve Kidd, the owner of Perennial Gardens, a nursery in New Bloomfield that specializes in native trees and shrubs. Kidd sells plants out of a tent in the Farm Show Complex parking lot on Friday mornings, and the Dauphin County Master Gardeners are among his regular customers. Like Lawrence, he is keen to emphasize the importance of natives to local wildlife.
“You have to think back to the perfect Earth, before the white man showed up,” Kidd said. “Why do birds and bees migrate? They have certain plants that they need to eat.” He offered the example of the monarch butterfly, which depends on milkweed. “It can’t complete its lifecycle without it.”
At the same time, though, non-natives can be easier to maintain, and they offer characteristics a gardener can’t get from a native plant. “We’ve historically always moved plants around,” Burkhart said. Watermelon, for example, is originally from Africa—the Spanish introduced it through Mexico. Lawrence and some of the other Master Gardeners have created a list of natives with similar traits to popular non-native species; they distribute it to other gardeners to encourage substitution. But even their plans for the cemetery include non-native varieties. (At the time of this writing, Lawrence’s plan for the limestone wall was deutzia, a genus of flowering shrubs whose species are mostly the right color and height—and mostly from China.)
Kidd also sells non-native plants. In the back of his truck was a miniature nursery, and among green weeds was a flower that stood out for its bright red blossoms. “That’s not a native,” Kidd said. “I also have to attract the American woman. It is a business. People will say to me, ‘You’re not a native plant vendor! You’re someone who sells some native plants!’ Well, yeah.”
Burkhart’s outlook is not apocalyptic. He discusses the problem with an academic’s tranquil tone. “Many of these plants, they’re not bad plants—they’re just plants,” he said. “They have many positives, like medicinal uses and removing carbon.” He worries, however, about the virulence of invasives, particularly when it comes to out-competing native sources of food.
“People say, ‘Things change in the world,’” Burkhart said. “While that’s true, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a negative impact. We’re creating areas where there’s nothing to eat.”
Call It a Pin
On a Wednesday in June, the Master Gardeners met for their monthly meeting on the Harrisburg Cemetery grounds. Lawrence arrived early, her middle finger wrapped in a ball of bandages. It had been a difficult couple of months. After recovering from successive bouts of illness, she had snipped off the tip of her finger with pruning shears.
A clunking sound came from the lock on the cottage door. Via emerged with a cigarette and a cup of coffee in a Ball jar. “How you feeling, Jane?”
“My one problem’s over, but I’ve had other problems since then,” she replied. “It’s just gonna be a year of agony.” She laughed.
As the gardeners arrived, they crowded around a table in a front room of the cottage. Above the lintel of the open door was a trio of papery flags on thin wooden stems. Birds chirped in the trees.
For the arboretum project—as for anything involving the growth of trees—the gardeners have had to take a long view. They’ve started some saplings in a nursery, but, in the meantime, they must also keep up with basic maintenance. Lawrence mentioned the rhododendrons planted on either side of the entrance gate.
“They’re facing south in the sun all day. It’s not their natural habitat,” Lawrence said. “They’re sick and they’ll never make it.”
The group discussed possible replacements. “Since we’re Master Gardeners, maybe we should put in demonstration gardens,” someone suggested.
“I would just say, something like that is high maintenance,” another gardener replied. “With all the maintenance already…”
“Could it demonstrate maintenance-free?”
“There’s no such thing!”
The group knocked around several options. Someone had seen a variety of Indian grass bearing pink and blue blossoms. Woodland sedum, a perennial herb, was considered but passed over because it would require too much shade. Then someone brought up epimedium, a genus of low-growing perennials. It began to gain traction.
A newer member piped up. “For those of us not fully indoctrinated—epimedium? Help me out.”
“Barrenwort,” another gardener replied. (Epimedium has been bestowed with a number of colorful names, including barrenwort, bishop’s hat, fairy wings and horny goat weed.)
“It has a thin, wiry stem and little heart-shaped leaves,” said Lawrence, “and yellow, white and red flowers.”
“And there’s a native variety,” someone added.
“So, if we had that with some shrubs…” said Lawrence. The group settled, for the moment, on an evergreen shrub with native epimedium beneath.
The next order of business was finding a rose bush to plant by the grave of Horace McFarland, a proponent of the City Beautiful movement, who was the first president of the American Rose Society. There was discussion of his favorite rose.
“I still think, if he had lived long enough, he’d have loved the Knock Outs,” someone said. The room erupted into laughter. “Knock Out” is a disease-resistant variety of rose, bred in the late 1980s. It was a gardening joke.
The group walked out to a huge bush of pink roses growing by a nearby grave. They tried to determine how old it was, based on the burial dates on the marker—1910 or 1936 or later. No one knew. They looked it over and decided it was worth taking a few cuttings. “We already know it can live in this space. It likes the cemetery,” someone said.
“I do like it,” said Lawrence. “It’s a very pretty color. Who else will take a cutting? That way we’ll hedge our bets.” Four gardeners agreed to pot a piece of the bush at home, in the hopes that one would take.
The final task was tree identification. For the arboretum, in addition to rearing and planting new trees, the gardeners must label what’s already there. The gardeners divvied up the plots among identification teams.
Lawrence set out with two other gardeners, Alicia Mercik and Marie James. James, a newly minted Master Gardener, admired Mercik’s official pin. “It’s a mixed blessing,” said Mercik. “You show up at a public function, and people think you know everything.”
Identifying trees can be painstaking work, and Lawrence is constantly looking for volunteers. Some species are common, but others in the cemetery are over a century old, and knowledge about them has departed with the people who planted them.
“We had a couple of professors come in, and even they were having trouble,” Mercik told me. The variety is also an asset, however. “They said it was a teacher’s dream in here.”
The group headed for a plot just south of the cottage. A row of Norway maples, a non-native, highly invasive breed that can be found all over the city, stood on the side of the road. The Norways, the gardeners told me, are insidious; they shoot up anywhere their seeds drop and excrete a chemical that suppresses other growth. Via hopes to scrape together funds to have them all removed.
We gathered beneath a towering oak whose leaves were far out of reach. Lawrence peered at them. “They’re pointed, so it’s a red oak,” she said. “But the leaves are small. So it could be a scarlet oak.” She sat in the grass and opened a guidebook, a sizable, hardback tome. Mercik and James scoured the grass for fallen acorns or leaves.
The tree, despite its imposing size, was dying. Half of its branches were bare, and bark had fallen off in patches. “Oaks are in serious decline because of warming,” Lawrence said. “It’s just too warm for them to survive.”
Mercik found a leaf, and, with a bit of reading, they confirmed their initial guess. Lawrence took out a pen and wrote the scarlet oak’s Latin name, quercus coccinea, on a long white tag. She nailed the tag to the trunk.
Nearby, another huge oak stretched towards the sky. Its leaves, too, were high above the ground, but Mercik found a fallen branch loaded with dried-out, caramel-colored leaves. They noted their narrow shape and deep, U-shaped lobes. Lawrence opened her book to a set of pin oak drawings. Just like the sample sketches, a twig on their specimen had spots, as well as a pair of forked buds at its tip, like the upturned hoof of a deer. They cross-checked the entry for red oak, just to be sure.
“I’m ready to call it a pin,” said Mercik.
“We’ll call it a pin,” said Lawrence.
“Call it a pin,” echoed James.
Lawrence scrawled with her marker—quercus palustris, “swampy oak”—and hammered the label in.
“My hungry body’s burning for a swim,” the Jamaican-born Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay wrote in his poem “Thirst,” from his 1922 collection “Harlem Shadows.” For city dwellers in the midst of a hot summer, there’s no relief quite as sweet as jumping into a pool. And yet, for the past few summers, Harrisburg residents have had only one city pool in which to swim.
