One day my mother-in-law was walking with me in the garden, and she spotted the hollyhocks growing against the south side of the house. She gasped, “Are those hollyhocks? Oh, I just love hollyhocks! My mother used to grow them.”
Hollyhocks are one of those old-fashioned or heirloom flowers that bring back memories of gardens past and the people who tended them. Heirlooms are plants that were grown in gardens more than fifty years ago. These plants have a history, and learning about their history is one of the joys of growing them. Many heirlooms also have fascinating names. Flowers like Kiss-Me-over-the-Garden-Gate and Love-in-a-Mist paint romantic pictures in our minds. Many heirloom vegetables also have fun names. One of my favorites is the Austrian lettuce Forellenschluss, which means “speckled like a trout”.
But even better than their names is the way that heirloom vegetables taste. You can’t go to the grocery store and buy peas with the incredible sweetness of the Amish snap pea or a melon that melts in your mouth like Northern Arizona. When you grow heirloom vegetables, you can travel around the world in your own backyard, sampling the flavors of Black Krim tomatoes from Russia and Corno di Torro (“horn of the bull”) peppers from Italy.
A few heirloom vegetables like the famous lemon cucumber have become so popular that you can find the seeds at most garden centers. But many more heirlooms are in danger of going extinct. The only way to prevent this tragedy is for gardeners to grow these precious and unique plants, and to save and share the seeds with other gardeners. Organizations like the Seed Savers Exchange assist in these efforts.
My own interest in heirloom vegetables prepared me to recognize the importance of saving the seeds of an unknown tomato that my dad got from a friend at his workplace. I contacted the friend for details about the tomato’s history and learned that it was an old Utah heirloom called Purple Passion. Here’s a real life example of a vegetable that’s in danger of going extinct because it isn’t being widely grown.
Preserving heirlooms is a passion for many gardeners. On the practical side, it means the preservation of genetic material which, once lost, can never be replaced. But there’s also the personal side, the way that growing heirlooms strengthens family bonds and links generations.
My friend, Mary Durtschi, explains this better than I can. She says, “It makes me happy growing the flowers that my mama grew. Every time they bloom, I think of her. My mama, Beulah Bamburg Browne, lived in Red River Parish, Louisiana. She raised nine children (three sets of twins). Mama didn’t really have much time for gardening when we were small. But after we grew up, gardening was her passion. I always gave her plants for Mother’s Day, and she also transplanted many things from our ancestors’ home sites.
“After Mama became an invalid, she lived with me for four years, and she would come and sit on the porch and watch me while I gardened. Several of us kids have moved plants from her garden into our own yards. It seems to keep Mama alive in our memories better. I know that my own children want plants from me, and it makes me happy to know that my passion has passed to another generation.”
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