Valley Gardens: Mum's the word -- Lyman Conservatory exhibit highlights the chrysanthemum

By Cheryl Wilson

Published on November 14, 2008

If you think the ubiquitous chrysanthemums of fall are boring, you really should visit the annual Chrysanthemum Show at Lyman Conservatory at Smith College in Northampton, open through Nov. 16.

Using techniques in the art of training chrysanthemums as waterfalls, fans and standards perfected by Japanese horticulture experts, staff members at the Conservatory have created a solid 30-foot wall of cascade chrysanthemums in lavender, bronze, red, yellow and orange. A bamboo fence helps camouflage the chicken-wire on which the plants are trained. In Japan, chrysanthemum displays are almost as popular as the spring cherry blossom festivals.

"This is more than a field of mums," said Madelaine Zadik, manager of education and outreach for the Smith College Botanic Garden.

Training the plants in the Japanese tradition requires tedious, daily work for months, said Rob Nicholson, conservatory manager. It takes nearly as long to train chrysanthemum plants into dramatic cascades of flowers as it does for a human fetus to grow  about nine months.

At Smith, the process began last winter with staff dividing old plants. New cuttings were planted in March and April. Smith buys special cascade varieties from King's Mums in California, which is an old nursery, Nicholson said. Among the varieties offered by King's are deep red anemone-flowered 'Kurume' and daisy-flowered 'Daphne'.

"The color palette for chrysanthemums is pretty restrained," Nicholson said. "They blend together pretty well." The flowers range in hue from creamy white to pale pink, deep rose pink, burgundy, lavender, purple, yellow, bronze, rust and pumpkin.

While the Conservatory's annual spring bulb show draws thousands of visitors who santhemum show has far fewer visitors. There were only a handful of people in the greenhouse on opening Sunday, many of them oohing and aahing while snapping digital pictures of the dramatic plants.

"We are here once a week at least, but I've never seen the mum show," said Louie Kanavares of Westfield. "It's beautiful, it's wonderful," said his wife, Linda. He would like to learn how to train his own garden mums into the waterfalls and fans in the show.

Barbara Schuman of Conway loves the tradition of the mum show with which she became familiar when she lived near Smith. "It's different every year," she said.

Pinching and tying

For the cascades or waterfalls, "We set them up in barrels," Nicholson said. There is one large division or 10 new cuttings for each barrel of cascade mums. "We let them grow for about two months and then start pinching and tying them onto the chicken wire," he explained. "Pinching is constant. There's always somewhere to pinch."

Pinching off the terminal shoots induces branching of the stems, eventually creating plants that are several feet wide and four to six feet long. From May until September Nicholson and staff workers Steve Sojkowski and Nathan Saxe go through the greenhouse several times a day, pinching the plants. It is important to maintain the pinching process so the stems remain supple enough to train downwards.

Pinching of the cascades, fans and standards continues until Sept. 15, Nicholson said. Different varieties need seven, eight or nine weeks to produce flowers after the final pinch. Nicholson fertilizes the plants every two weeks although he said the soil they use is pretty fertile.

"Fans are easier to train," Nicholson said. "You don't have to bend the stems down."

Kimonos and obis

This year's show has a dramatic entrance with a towering red Torii gate, constructed by Nicholson and the staff. Torii gates are used at the entrance of Shinto shrines to demarcate the line between the normal or profane outside world and the sacred or natural world of the shrine.

Smith's Torii gate dominates the island in the center of the first greenhouse. Tall exhibition or standard mums, each trained on a single stem, ranging in height from three to six feet, are placed at the base of the island. Behind the gate are three huge fan-shaped plants in lavender, gold and red with yellow centers. Pots of more traditional mums surround the fans and are displayed around the perimeter of the greenhouse.

In a second room, colorful kimonos are displayed on trellises. The central island contains dozens of standard mums, some of them taller than a person. To create the standard or exhibition mums, Nicholson pinches all side shoots to produce one enormous flower at the top of the six-foot-tall plants, a process called disbudding. The standards are in a wide range of colors and flower forms from huge incurved shapes to quills, spoons, spiders and pompons.

Along one side of this greenhouse are plants hybridized by Smith students in a biology class. Each of nearly 100 plants has a number, and visitors are urged to vote for their favorite. The winner will join the "Chrysanthemum Hall of Fame" at the college and be showcased in future displays.

The kimonos on display in the greenhouse are for sale, with prices ranging from $25 to $285. By the end of the first, most of them had "sold" signs.

"I got them from a dealer in Brooklyn, Kimono Lily," Nicholson said. "She does a lot of online sales but I wanted a chance to select ones that had a chrysanthemum motif." Nicholson also purchased several dramatic obis, the 14-foot-long wide sashes used by Japanese women to secure their kimonos.

The use of kimonos and obis in the greenhouse creates a link to the exhibition in the Church Exhibition Gallery, which is part of Lyman Conservatory. Here, kimonos are displayed on shoji screens lighted from within. In addition, the gallery includes lithographs and monoprints of chrysanthemums created in Dwight Pogue's print-making class a year ago.

"We turned the show into more of a festival," explained Zadik. "Celebrating Asian Culture in Flower, Fabric and Flavor" included a Japanese tea ceremony and a demonstration of creating Japanese bamboo baskets for tea last week.Smith is selling a special tea blend or tisane made of chrysanthemum flowers and roses created by Robert J. Heiss of Northampton, owner of Cooks Shop Here on King Street. "There's no tea in the blend," he said. "It's come out delicious." Tea from the blend was served at the opening night reception after Heiss and his wife, Mary Lou Heiss, gave a lecture on teas made from traditional Camellia sinensis and Chrysanthemum. Packets of the caffeine-free tisane are on sale for $7 each.

A word of caution: Staff members spray an insecticide on the plants in the Conservatory to deal with pests, including aphids, white flies and mealy bugs.

"You probably don't want to make tea out of these plants," Nicholson said.

Mum show hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. The festival is free and there is free parking on College Lane outside the greenhouse. Traffic is one-way from Elm Street during the show.

Cheryl B. Wilson can be reached at valleygardens@comcast.net.