winter scenes

I. seen
On Sunday, I had the garden mostly to myself.  - Just me and a handful of parents with children who, despite the cold, could not otherwise be soothed.  Nor could I.  With very few exceptions, I've made my weekly pilgrimage all year.

People often think that there's nothing to see in the winter garden; and certainly, at this point in the year, there's less to see, especially if you seek color.  Like so many Christmas decorations, all the delights of December are long gone.  By February, even the crimson berries of the crabapple (Malus 'Sugar Tyme') have faded to a modest mauve, and the paws of the paper bush (Edgeworthia chrysantha) are muted by the white snow beneath.

Magnolias.

Paperbush.

Paperbark maple.

But a tour of the garden in winter really is more enjoyable than just an accommodation to reality.  There is always something to notice: how the snow beneath the gingkoes has turned gatorade-yellow from their fruit, how a flock of birds mimes the air's dip and swell, fluttering like leaves from tree branches, drafting back up.

The garden in winter allows the visitor to appreciate the graphic, the severe, the structural, as it displays boldly what has been concealed beneath leaf and flower.  Now you may notice how the view of the Osborne Garden is lengthened when the far columns are shortened.  Without the distraction of their saucer-shaped flowers, you can appreciate how courtly are the magnolias, how elaborate are their gestures as they bow before you.

The garden in winter shows tree bark to its best advantage: the mottled orange of the Japanese zelkova, the burnished bronze of the paperbark maple (Acer griseum), the flayed and bloody crape myrtle "Natchez," the panda-print grey-and-white of the stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia).  The bark of the golden larch (Pseudolarix Kaempferi) fits together roughly like puzzle pieces, while that of the cherry tree mimics the warp and luster of raw silk.

II. making a scene
When you tire of subtlety, of course, there are the greenhouses.  Above you hang orchids soaked in color, orchids after which you can imagine doomed, malarial European collectors stumbling through tropical jungles.  Plants do not flower so much as they explode or swell or bulge into bloom.  They unspool, they unfurl, they fling themselves outward.  And then they collapse: decay is ever-present.  Sometimes you see both processes, bloom and rot, in the same plant:

Pink Powderpuff.

And here, in the tropics and temperate zones, you finally find the color you've been seeking since New York's September: the cape cowslip in blue and yellow, the tangerine Natal-Lily, the pure, unscented white of the common camellia.  

III.

And here, too, in the temperate greenhouse, you will find the plant where the delicate and the unsubtle combine.  Every weekend since October - when, as I passed an open window, its scent flagged me down - I've come to smell the fragrant olive, Osmanthus fragrans.  The romance of its name - Osmanthus! - does nothing to hint at its appearance: it grows unobtrusively in the back of the greenhouse, an evergreen with drab, peaked little flowers, and only by following your nose will you find it.  Plant guides will tell you that it smells like apricots; I would describe it as orange tic-tacs.  Either way, it is worth seeking out.  ...Last week, I discovered that another visitor, a tourist, was there before me, and as I approached she turned to me, eyes wide, and smiled, then closed her eyes, and breathed in deeply.