Visited on June 6th, 2014 with the Lakeland Horticulture Society.
South of Vadstena we paid an afternoon visit to the renovated home and garden of George’s friend Sverker Kärrsgård (whom we met at Naturum Täkern) and his wife, Karin Hessland. Ten years ago they bought 24 acres (10 hectors ) of abandoned land of clay and stone with an older house now nearing a century old on the property. In their retirement they have renovated the home surrounding it with shady woods and leaving open spaces for growing vegetables and fruit trees.
Before moving onto the property they brought in trees and shrubs to plant on the abandoned land. Now it is a combination of forests, garden and fields including a swimming pond which has natural plantings around the water for purification. Apple, pear, cherries and plum trees are a part of the landscape.
Since the soil had no humus they got cattle manure from a local farmer and combined it with grass clippings to improve the soil.
With the improved soil Karin grows Jerusalem Artichokes with tubers the size of a cricket ball. There is a story that in 1585, the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh Scott found the Native American Indians in Virginia cultivating this plant along with their corn and beans. The tubers they called sun roots were used as a food source. The French explorer Samuel de Champlain recorded in 1605, the Indians growing sun roots in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He sent the tubers back to France where they were eventually introduced throughout Europe. Carl Linnaeus penned a proper name to this invasive tall, bright golden daisy-sunflower native to the Eastern Seaboard of America, Helianthus tuberosus.
The potato like tubers were food for the pilgrims. Later the explorers Lewis and Clark made use of Jerusalem Artichoke tubers on their Corps of Discovery Expedition west to the Pacific Coast when other food was in short supply. They were a poor man's vegetable during WWII. Currently the nutty flavored tubers are popular for culinary purposes in restaurants and with home chefs. They can be sliced and eaten raw in salad, added to stir fried vegetables, baked with olive oil or steamed and boiled. The health benefit claim is that the edible root is high in inulin which acts as a pro biotic in the digestive track (take in moderation), and is also used in the manufacture of pasta for people who are intolerant to wheat products.
It was to early for the rhubarb to be picked and the raspberry and strawberries to bear their fruit. Vegetables were grown in raised beds (several protected by netting from four legged country nibblers) or directly in the ground. The spinach was salad ready.
On a sloping rocky terrain bordering spruce and pine trees a woodland garden with the late spring favorites blooming. The Iris, peony, poppies, primula, columbine, ferns, cranesbill geraniums, daisies, daylilies, tall purple globe allium and twisting vines of clematis, fit naturally in the country setting.
Standing above rocks and boulders are a display of bright pink dianthus with buttercups and white cerastium.
Tucked away in the shade of the woods is a cluster of the European Yellow lady's slipper orchid as it is descriptively nicknamed. The Cypripedium calceolus is not common in gardens as it is difficult to grow for a long period of time outside of their native habitat. Transplantation shock, different soil chemistry, and their tendency to grow in very specific habitats can make this plant that lives in native colonies 40 years plus, short lived when removed. It has been over collected in some countries. In Denmark it is rare and in Greece extinct. In England a single plant remained and when found was protected and seeds eventually collected. Kew germinated the seeds, with difficulty at first, for reintroduction of the orchid back into native habitats.
A watercolor illustration of 1541 is an early record of the lady slipper. Philip Miller grew it in the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1731. Carl Linnaeus assigned the formal name Cypripedium, (from Cyprus the island home of the goddess Aphrodite and pedium for the sole of the foot) to the genus of slipper orchids in 1753 in his Species Plantarum. Linnaeus observed that the pouch (or modified petal) of the orchid resembled a delicate foot. To complete the analogy, the dark purple-brown ribbon flowers with twisted petals of the Cypripedium calceolus ( or little shoe), mimic shoelaces.
Sverker and Karin's garden was our last stop of the day. By late afternoon it was time to leave their country garden with it's mixture of vegetables, fruit trees and the peak of early June's perennial blooming floral colors. We would be leaving our lodgings at Vadstena in the morning but native Lady slipper orchids would make a return showing on our visit to the Island of Gotland.
Photos by Deborah McMillin.