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The Gardner Museum’s horticultural department created these tall, single-headed mums.
(Image By Clements &Amp; Howcroft Photography, 2009. Courtesy of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ) |
A Japanese look to Gardner’s mums
Isabella Stewart Gardner used to display masses of fall chrysanthemums in the courtyard of her museum. Now the tradition lives on, with a Japanese twist.
Since June, the Gardner Museum’s horticultural department volunteers and staff have been pruning and disbudding about 300 mums in its greenhouses to create a show of the classic Japanese single-stem style called Ogiku. Each plant produces one large flower balanced on a 4-foot-high stem, a big fluffy head on a skinny body.
“The mums on the [courtyard] balcony look like a choir about to sing,’’ said volunteer Joy Bitner of Belmont. The revolving display, which includes about 50 mums at any one time, will continue through Nov. 21.
About 125 chrysanthemum varieties now in the museum’s plant collection started as cuttings donated by Angel Valley Heritage Mums of Ohio when it went out of business two years ago and wanted to make sure its inventory of old-fashioned chrysanthemums was not lost forever.
The windfall, augmented by chrysanthemum gifts from Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania and Smith College in Amherst, has dramatically increased the Gardner’s mum collection and gotten the horticultural staff excited about showing them off. This is the second year the flowers have been displayed, and “we expect to do this again, now that we have a large collection of interesting mums,’’ said JoAnn Robinson, a staff landscape researcher. Gardner would doubtless approve.
The Gardner Museum is open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Call 617-566-1401 or visit www.gardnermuseum.org for more information. 
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
