To everything there is a season

Posted Jan 26, 2012 By Dan Clost

EMC Lifestyles - To everything there is a season and for gardeners, those seasons are what give us the joy, the anticipation, and the urgency to live each gardening day to its fullest. We know summer is too short, autumn is tomorrow, winter is always longer than it needs to be, and spring is forever away.

Yes, indeed, to everything there is a season ... unless your name is Pat Brinklow. Spring is whenever Pat decides it should be.

How do we go from Maia Maia, Eostre, Diana, Persephone, all mythic harbingers of spring, to Pat?

Gentle Reader, I've seen Pat. His is a visage a titch more rugged than any fair maiden yet, unlike these fabulous mistresses, his is the ability to invoke spring within a timetable of his choosing.

Pat is a nurseryman in the old meaning of the word. At Brookdale Treeland Nurseries (BTN), it is his responsibility to make sure our country's premier plant show, Canada Blooms, actually does bloom. The show's March timing means many of our native plants are enjoying the last few days of dormancy. We do not have native red maples, fully leafed, swaying in warm gentle zephyrs, until the latter days of April. Ornamental crabapples are waiting for May before adorning themselves with fragrant boutonnieres. Hydrangeas are still having nightmares about spring pruning. We do not have magnolias blooming along the Don Valley Parkway in March.

So how is it possible that when you visit Blooms you will see these and more in full flower and/or leaf? In deference to the goddesses, Pat is a man of horticultural science with a keen sense of observation. BTN is the nursery that has taken on the daunting responsibility of having the plants ready and on time for the show. Contributors include some of the largest nurseries in the business and some with a reputation for specimen quality plants but it is to Pat that they send their materials.

In the jargon of the trade, "forcing" is the practice of deliberately manipulating the cultural environment to induce a plant to forgo its natural timing and bloom "out" of season. This is something many of us have done with pussy willow twigs, forsythia stems and apple blossoms. We bring our cuttings inside, stick them in a vase, add warm water, sugar, floral preservative, 7-Up, a pinch of salt, sing a verse of The Gardening Song and, when success flushes out, we proclaim our mastery over all plants on the planet. When they just sit there until the water begins to smell we surreptitiously consign the woody bones to the compost graveyard. However, to produce at the level at which Pat operates is a whole different matter. It's the difference between me growing some purple carrots in my backyard and a farmer with a three-acre crop of carrots. All the same principles are involved but the stakes are a titch different.

I visited BTN about ten years ago when they had just erected their "forcing" greenhouse. There was a definite feeling of spring in the air, even though the calendar read September. This January, I once again crossed the threshold into an a-seasonal spring. To put this in perspective, GR, our store has a double range tropical greenhouse chock-a-block with all manner of flowering tropicals so why would a bare floor, plastic walled building with a couple of trees cluttering up the area have such a different cachet? Those plants are awakening and there is a "sense" in the air, increased humidity from the quickening of sap flow, bud swell almost unnoticeable but one can "feel" them getting ready to bust out, the alarm clock has been reset.

A few hundred feet away, incoming plants are stored inside an unheated warehouse waiting their time. It's a cold, barren, lifeless place, unless of course Charlie Dobbin is clambering about as she was this day. (Charlie is the Horticultural Director for Blooms, she is one of the important people who decides where the plants go.) The deliberate transition from dormant sticks to awakening flora is where Pat's expertise comes to the fore. As humans, we all wake up at different times and with differing sensibilities. Babies wake up one hour before you want them to but they're always smiling: teenagers wake up several hours after they should and surly is a generous descriptor. Plants display the same range of behaviours. A red oak needs 12 full weeks to fully leaf out while a Betty magnolia, a mid-1950s introduction meaning it is still a precocious wee thing, will be fully flowered in two weeks or less. (If you're a hort person, "precocious" is a pun. If you're not, a botanical lexicon would be helpful.)

Pat needs to work with all of these quirks in order to have the thousands of plants at the peak of their performance on March 16, the opening day of Canada Blooms. Gentle Readers who have toured previous shows with eyes wide and jaws agape at the marvelous display of plant material now know that their appearance is not the result of overnight drives from some nursery in Georgia. It's a short haul from north of Port Hope to T.O.

Canada Blooms is the culmination of designer's plans, director's systems management, and a show manager's logistical nightmare all backed up with nursery expertise. Too often, even those of us in the business, take for granted the skills and experience needed to support the creativity of the "artistic" people. Without folks like Pat Brinklow and Brookdale Treeland Nurseries, we would be looking at photographs and watercolours during Canada Blooms.

Sox note: alive and well, hibernating for winter.