May Photo Winner!

Congratulations to Kerry, with a beautiful picture of three hidden cardinal eggs!

Remember, if you submit by the end of the month you can win $25 off your next Birch Meadow visit! Just email your photo to shannon@birchmeadowgc.com. 

Details about the contest, is in our January newsletter.

JC Raulston and the Lavandula & Labiatae Society

Many of you have probably visited the JC Raulston Arboretum (formerly the NCSU Arboretum) in Raleigh, where Dr. James Chester “JC” Raulston and his students transformed an 8-acre patch of NSCU’s campus into a collection of woody plants that would become a nationally acclaimed botanical garden. Today, the arboretum hosts one of the largest and most diverse collections of landscape plants developed for landscape use in the southeast United States, and is open to the public (for free!) every day of the year. Raulston’s contributions extended beyond the arboretum however as he helped diversify and broaden the range of traditional landscaping plants available in nurseries, promoting some favorites of many gardening enthusiasts today, like the ‘Little Gem’ Magnolia. The arboretum also holds the largest collection of redbud trees in the United States!

Soon after turning 35, Raulston realized he was gay.  He organized an informal network of queer people called the Lavandula Society as a result. This society was made up of students and professionals in the fields of botany, horticulture, landscaping, and public garden management, and also included nursery workers and serious gardening amateurs. Beginning as a small gathering at members’ homes, garden centers, or at bars, the group continued to grow. As more women joined, Raulston acknowledged this by renaming the group the Lavandula and Labiatae Society (coming from the Latin words for lavender and mint, respectively). The group met for many years until Raulston’s untimely death in 1996. This group connected through their love of plants as well as through their queerness, and provided queer people a safe space to meet in a very unwelcoming and dangerous era to be openly queer. 

JC’s legacy in the horticulture community lives on through the national network of professional and amateur horticulturalists and gardeners he brought together. Today, countless queer and trans people have contributed to the field throughout the country. As Raulston used to write in many of the Lavandula and Labiatae Society newsletters: “Plan and plant for a better world.”

• Kel

It’s Time to Order Bulbs!

June may not be the time that you are thinking about planting bulbs for fall, but it is definitely the time to be ordering them.  There are a lot of really beautiful options out there if you are interested in something new and different for your garden, but the more unusual bulbs tend to sell out quickly in late spring/early summer.  

If you would like us to order bulbs for you, we charge a 50% markup to cover administrative costs.  We also invoice you when the order is placed so that we aren’t stuck paying for bulbs that someone forgot they ordered and no longer wants.  

Because of the added expense for you, we strongly encourage you to order your own bulbs and then let us know when they arrive if you would like help with installation. We recommend Van Engelen for larger quantities or John Scheepers, Inc. for smaller quantities, but there are a lot of other choices out there.  Bulb shopping can really suck you in with all of the amazing colors, shapes and textures!  If you don’t mind the added expense, we are happy to take care of your bulb order for you.

- Mary Beth

Pattie Gonia: Be Gay and Be Outdoors

Wyn Wiley is an artist, environmentalist, and drag queen, who professionally goes by her drag persona, Pattie Gonia. She defines her drag style as campy, witty, sustainable, and unapologetic.

In drag she helps LGBTQ+ youth explore the outdoors and learn about the environment, and through her nonprofit, Outdoorist Oath, she brings the queer community of Oregon together in the states’ beautiful parks and wild spaces. The “Oath” of Outdoorist Oath is “an action-based commitment to planet, inclusion, and adventure.” The organization offers both tools and education for exploring the natural world while serving as a mobilizing hub for a community that cares to build a better future. In addition to bringing the community together for a good cause, each year that same community fundraises to send 10 queer youth on a fully scholarshipped backpacking trip. One year, a participant told Pattie Gonia “Being on this trip has helped me reclaim a childhood I didn’t get to have.”

Pattie Gonia’s activism travels far beyond her local queer community in Oregon, however, as she has collaborated with notable institutions like the Smithsonian Museum, NASA, and National Geographic (to name a few). On TikTok, she uses her platform to bring attention to a wide range of causes, especially environmental issues. Her commitment to educating and mobilizing people is matched by her commitment to sustainability: aside from the dress she made from the single-use plastics she acquired in 2020, she finds creative ways to repurpose materials and incorporate them into her drag. 

If you like being served both looks and education, you can follow Pattie Gonia on Instagram and TikTok (@pattiegonia), or learn more about her at her website.

- Kel

Book Review

Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, by Joan Roughgarden

From a Sierra Club review:

“Biological sex is often treated as something binary and universal, while the diverse qualities of actual wildlife—fish that change sex, reptiles whose sex is dependent on temperature rather than genes, and birds that form same-sex pairings—are often treated as strange outliers. But biologist Joan Roughgarden centers such animals in Evolution’s Rainbow, a compendium of ways in which nature bucks the binary conventions we’re so often taught. The book is an excellent popular science overview of how wonderfully variable and vibrant nature really is, with our own species being part of that biological spectrum.”

Being queer and trans is not something new.  Aside from there being a rich history of queer people throughout history and all over the globe (Sappho wrote her famous lesbian poetry in the 6th century BCE, for example), homosexuality, changing one's sex, and exhibiting intersex and multisexed characteristics is incredibly common in the plant and animal kingdoms. Evolution’s Rainbow delves deep into the vibrant diversity of the natural world and then compares it to the biological and cultural diversity of human beings.

Find Evolution’s Rainbow at your local library or anywhere books are sold!

• Kel

June To-Do’s

• Click here for Planting Calendar for Annual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs by city. This link provides dates both based on estimated last frost and the lunar calendar.

• Click here for May’s list if you are still catching up.

• Plant beans, lima beans, southern peas,  peppers, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and tomatoes.

• Prune hydrangeas when the flowers fade.

• Nip the faded flowers of phlox, shasta daisies, and daylilies to encourage a second flowering.

• Remove dried foliage from your spring flowering bulbs.

• Prune dead branches from rhododendron, azaleas, mountain laurel, and blueberries.

• Remove Japanese beetles by hand and place in soapy water.

• Propagate azaleas, camellias, hollies, pieris, red-tips, and rhododendron by taking cuttings and rooting in late June.
• Water your favorite plants at least one inch per week during periods of dry weather. Watering in the early morning is best.

• If you need help, you know who to call!

-Kel

Plant focus
Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema sp.)

Most Arisaema species (jacks) are paradioecious, which means that individual plants can change their sex from year to year. Young plants are typically male and only produce pollen since that requires less energy, and once they are mature enough and have accumulated enough energy they produce a female flower (and fruit) the next year. Producing fruit takes a lot out of a plant however, so that same plant might take a break by producing a male flower the following year. While for the most part Arisaema tend to be dioecious (having either male or female sex organs at one time), in addition to being able to change their own sex, Arisaema can also sometimes be monoecious (having both male and female sex organs at one time). 

Among the transexual Arisaema species are our native jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum, pictured) and the Japanese cobra lily (Arisaema ringens). A. triphyllum was used by Native Americans for food and medicine, although the edible parts need preparation before consumption to avoid unpleasant and potentially harmful effects. Among other medicinal uses, A. triphyllum was used as a contraceptive, and ethnobotanists have documented their seeds being used in childrens’ rattles. 

🏳️‍🌈Be Gay, Do Gardening 🏳️‍🌈

It turns out that queerness, changing your sex, and having multisexed characteristics is actually quite common in nature, and not limited to just plants and humans. The LGBTQIA+ community continues to be vulnerable to both oppression and violence, so it is always important to speak out in support and help create safe communities for all marginalized people. If you want a place to start, the LGBTQ+ Center of Durham is in desperate need of donations to sustain their community center which offers numerous resources and programs (including a youth center and library) for the queer community in Durham. You can donate to the LGBTQ+ Center of Durham at this link!

• Kel

“No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.”

– Martha P. Johnson 🌟

Happy Gardening!