Oldfields, like any other historic house, poses an interesting dilemma in pest control because the property was not originally created to protect and preserve an important museum collection from the elements.  Because of this, the museum must remain diligent in pest management at Oldfields.  Luckily for the IMA (and any museum!), there is an entire field called Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, that provides resources and systematic methods for controlling pests.  As part of the museum’s overall IPM program, Pat Kelley of Insects Limited Inc. makes monthly visits to each of the museum’s buildings, including Oldfields.  Check out this blast-from-the-past blog post to learn about the types of resources Insects Limited provides for museums locally and globally.  I’ve now had the opportunity to accompany Pat on multiple visits to Oldfields.

On these trips we clean up areas where insects tend to gather and check traps for any activity. After years of these visits, obvious patterns in pest activity have begun to emerge.

During the more active months of January and February a pile of ladybird beetles is not an uncommon sight, particularly in sunny window wells.

The quantities of pests found in Oldfields are not surprising and have remained under control, thanks to these preventative measures.  Ladybird beetles (known colloquially as lady bugs, but don’t call them that if you want to stay friends with an entomologist or a conservator) are by far the most prevalent pest at Oldfields. They tend to gather in and around windows, primarily in the southernmost rooms of the house.  The typical pattern of insect activity begins in late October or early November when insects enter through cracks and gaps around doors, windows, and the roof line. The insects fill wall voids and attic spaces where they hibernate over the winter.  They then emerge in the first warm days of January and February in an attempt to return outdoors. When they find themselves inside the home instead of outside they accumulate near the windows and die. These insects are predominately ladybird beetles, but also include some boxelder beetles, pine seed bugs, and cluster flies.  Ladybird beetles themselves do not pose a major threat to the house or objects.

The danger is that the ladybird beetles become a food source for dermestid beetle larvae, which feed on textiles and other vulnerable natural materials such as leather, silk, or fur.  It’s important that the ladybird beetles are swept up and removed from the house so that dermestid larvae do not become a problem. So far the objects have remained safe from dermestids, but this requires consistent monitoring.

This chart provides a visual representation of pest activity at Oldfields from September through April, the typical months of the cycle described above. The chart, which combines information from the last three years of IPM monitoring, illustrates the types of pests present in each month and the location where they were found on each floor.  The colors represent a generalized quantity of pests found, with gray illustrating one pest, yellow around a dozen, orange around one hundred, and red representing hundreds of insects found.  This shows that ladybird beetles are in fact the most prominent pest at Oldfields and illustrates their rising quantities as the winter progresses. Another important point is the location of the pests, which tend to remain in the same rooms each month. There are many rooms where pests are never a problem, while areas like the library and southwest end of the house see a predictable level of activity from year to year.

Another component of Pat’s role at the IMA is to identify any insects that are found in the museum.  Staff at the museum take IPM very seriously, which helps to prevent any issues from occurring.  If an insect is found, it’s placed in a sealed bag and given to a conservator, who then passes it on to Pat for identification in the lab at Insects Limited.  Bugs are something that a lot of people don’t talk about in everyday life, but museum people do!  The staff knows that when you find an insect in a museum, you certainly can’t ignore it (or scream and run away) like you might at home.  It’s important to get past the “Ew! Gross!” mentality and simply protect the collection. Perhaps now, if you happen to hear someone in the museum field throw out the phrase “IPM” and act like they know something you don’t, you can respond, “Oh? How are the ladybird beetles this year?”

Some may have noticed a bit of a commotion going on over by Garden Terrace the last couple weeks. That’s because the IMA has received a very generous contribution allowing us to begin work on the complete rehabilitation of the Four Seasons Garden.

This is a project we have discussed doing for many years. It is the last large chunk of the Oldfields landscape awaiting restoration.  With its completion in the spring of 2011 we will have one of the most intact Country Place Era estates anywhere in the country. The first picture shows one of the four statues in the garden representing the four seasons that gives the garden its name. That and the fact it is heavy on the evergreens I suppose.

You will be amazed at how quickly this is all taking place. Most of the work is being done in-house by our own Horticulture and Grounds crews along with Horticulture volunteers.

The overgrown and misshapen yews are history. Drain lines are being installed, to be followed by a new irrigation system. The drain lines were added because many of the old yews died from excessive soil moisture. Despite a good deal of digging when removing the old plants there was no evidence as to why this wet condition existed.

The troublesome circular pool, which never drained well, was reduced to rubble.

An outside contractor is creating a new, deeper pool.

This new one will be recirculating, and will have a skimmer box to trap debris. It’ll also have four small jets along its edge as the original once had, to provide some refreshing sounds and keep the water cleaner.

The marble bench at the garden’s west end is also being refurbished and we plan to put back a small sundial which once graced the south entrance (does anyone have a photograph of the original sundial?).

Anne Bruce Haldeman of Louisville designed this garden for the Lillys back in 1939, when their Recreation Building (now Garden Terrace) was being built.  It was refurbished by the Indianapolis Garden Club as a group project back in the 1960’s. Forty years later the garden was badly overgrown once again.  While we will utilize much of Halderman’s original design, we’ll make some modifications to make it more useable and attractive for our many garden patrons.  All changes will be carefully documented, just as we did in the Rapp Family Ravine Garden some 11 years ago.

As of today many of the new yews have already been planted.

Plumbing and electrical work will continue for another month or more.  The boxwoods should arrive next week so replanting of the shrubs will be nearly complete this fall. Some deciduous shrubs and herbaceous plants will go in come spring. It should look glorious for our celebration of Oldfields’ centennial in 2012.

I mentioned last time I thought fall color would go fast. But as often happens nature is messing with me again. Our plants here have held on to their beauty pretty good. You can still come and revel in the glory of autumn. I mean it. Get yourself over here.

So back in March as the snow began to recede I would regularly peer out into the drab naked trees with great anticipation of watching them green up and return  to the former glory of last summer.  As luck would have it someone shared this link with me around the same time.  It’s the Timelapse group on vimeo and there are some breathtaking videos created via time lapse photography

Here is one example that blew my mind.

This all got me thinking.  What if I stuck a camera facing out of our window for a month and took a photo every half hour?   Well, sounded like there was only one way to find out.   So here is 1 month of spring as taken every half hour, condensed into 23 seconds.

Watch as the gardens go green.

I am not a big fan of winter as those of you who are regular readers know. But I do appreciate it. I like snow for instance, when it is not on the roads. I wouldn’t mind it on the roads if there were fewer other drivers sharing those roads. And this winter hasn’t really been all that bad. Colder than normal but not bitter. Plenty of snow but not the 50 inches my friend Avonell got in one week in Maryland. Gray days but enough sunny ones in between that you don’t forget what that heat-making yellow orb in the sky is. Not bad.

The heavy wet snow of a couple weeks back did create some problems with our junipers in front of the Lilly House. The narrow Juniperus virginiana ‘Hillspire’ just couldn’t handle that much weight on them. Two of them went pretty much flat.

What do you do? Get the snow load off, push them back up, and tie them in place. Will they recover? Hopefully. But the root ball raised up pretty high on one.

They are near the end of their landscape lifetime having grown to the point they are near the eaves of the house. The plants are getting out of scale. We need a couple years ideally for their replacements growing in the nursery to reach their proper size. If the replacements are too short they look just as ridiculous as the originals being too tall.

Switch grass ( Panicum virgatum)is one of our best native grasses for the landscape. Most years they stay upright all winter even with snow, rain, and wind. Not so much this year. Here’s some of the ‘Dallas Blues’ along 38th street.

Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ ( feather reed grass) is one of the best landscape grasses period. I like its narrow upright form demonstrated by only a few of the plants in this bed inside the 38th street entrance.

But something interesting that happened in that same snow involved the hydrangeas, in particular H. paniculata and arborescens. I thought the dried flower heads would collect so much snow they would break off. Not true. Here is H. paniculata ‘Tardiva’ followed by H. arborescens ssp. radiata ‘Samantha’, both still holding their heads high.

Hardscapes look good in snow as a rule. Here the beautiful stonework of the Overlook is accented with a layer of soft white.

And these three containers on the Overlook patio make me think of store-bought cupcakes with a heavy layer of frosting or a collection of pies with a thick layer of fluffy meringue (everything goes back to food it seems).

This bright spot in the Northeast Border Garden is my favorite twig dogwood, Cornus sanguiniea ‘Midwinter Fire. I’m not bothered by winter at all when viewing something this beautiful.

So enjoy these winter days as best you can. They don’t actually last forever. We horticulturists and gardeners know spring will return and once again we will be flat out busy with our plants from dawn to dusk.

Happy New Year! 2010 is shaping up to be a year filled with greatness. As I’ve been working on all of the marketing plans over the last few months, I’ve gotten really fired up about the new year at the IMA. Here are some of the things that I’m most looking forward to (in no particular order):

1. So You Think You Can Blog? – Want to write for the IMA? We’re taking applications now. Deadline is January 15. Check it out.
2. @imamuseum – Yep, we’re on Twitter. We’re starting out slow, but I guarantee there will be some exciting stuff along the way. Around here, it’s all an experiment, so you never know what you’ll find if you follow us.
3. IMA-produced Content Starring YOU – From the makers of ArtBabble, TAP: Sacred Spain, and all things cool at the IMA, comes completely in-house produced television and radio advertising. And the best part – we want you to be in them. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a call for participation in IMA-produced spots.
4. The launch of the new IMA Web site (coming soon!) – The IMA’s brilliant Web team has been working on this for a long time. It’s gonna be amazing!
5. Touch of Evil introduced by Peter Bogdanovich – I love old movies. I adore Orson Welles. Mark this on your calendar as  date night at The Toby.
6. Oldfields Picnics – When the weather gets warm this spring and the flowers begin to bloom on Oldfields estate, I’m looking forward to grabbing lunch at Nourish Café and heading to a bench for a mini break during the work day. I may even take the bocce ball set that I keep in my office and challenge a few passersby (true story).
7. Summer Nights – The schedule is still top secret, but I’ve seen the proposed movies, and let me tell you, this might be the best summer yet.
8. Body Unbound: Contemporary Couture from the IMA’s Collection – I love the IMA’s Textile and Fashion Arts Collection. This exhibition will feature some beautiful, sexy, and iconic pieces created from 1960-2007. Jean-Paul Gaultier and Gianni Versace? Yes, please!
9. 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park – We’ve been working and talking about it for years and now it is only 6 months away. Mark your calendar for June 20 when 100 Acres will open to the public. I’m pretty sure this is going to blow you away.
10. Unexpected Discoveries in the Galleries – Every time I go into the galleries, I discover something new. This is partly due to the fact that the collections often rotate on display and partly due to the fact that every day I have a different perspective that helps me to see new things. Whatever the reason, I’ll be spending a lot of time in the permanent collection in 2010 searching for new favorites.

Ooooo, the blog is getting a little too deep and self-consciously artsy.

Who said something about art being either plagiarism or genius?  In the horticulture trade, one of the first things a gardener learns is to borrow and adapt what others do. A good gardener  gives proper credit when told, “That is a nice plant combination.”  So, John Teramoto, Marty Krause, Annette Schlagenhauff (am I forgetting anyone?) – thank you for the exhibit Lay of the Land.

The exhibit combining Asian and Western art prints and poetry, set me to thinking about how often images in the galleries, or music and poetry cause me to recall some beautiful place I’ve experienced.  Nice memories and feelings …. trying to capture the bliss of the moment.

So as Autumn brings another season to a close, I offer some images and poems, with apologies to the artists,  that reminded this gardener of the promise and beauty of Spring as compensation for labors…

Work
The corn is baking in blue smoke,
Pickled tomato is piled ready on my plate,
And the chrysocolla of a young cedar branch is close.
Yet the breakfast that should be calm and enjoyable
makes me uneasy.
I’m worried about the manure I threw yesterday
From the horsecart and left on the slope.
Kenji Miyazawa 1896-1933

Manure and compost on vegetable garden at Oldfields

“Peasants Going to Work, by Jean F. Millet (IMA 40.65)”

============================================

Ah. It is spring,
Great spring it is now.
Great, great spring.
Ah, great –
Matsuo Basho 1644-1694

Apple blossom in April 2009, Gene and Rosemary Tanner Orchard, Oldfields at the IMA. Photograph by Sue Arnold

Check out the IMA’s searchable database of the art collection any time.

Check out the flowers, and maybe some leftover
manure,  dawn to dusk on our 152 acres, or right where you live.

Lilly House at the IMA

Interior view of Lilly House

The Miller House and Garden crept into my awareness at some time while Oldfields had my full attention.  I don’t remember when I first learned of it, but I remember distinctly two things about the impression I had.  It was an extraordinarily beautiful and important property, and it was difficult to gain access to it.  Visiting lecturers or groups might sometimes make requests to see the property, but it was rare that we could accommodate them.  The Miller House and Garden seemed remote and mysterious.  In the meantime, I still had plenty to occupy me with Oldfields.  I rarely thought about the home in Columbus.

When I first saw the Miller House and Garden in April of 2007, the situation was entirely different from seeing Oldfields in 2000.  The Lilly family had been gone from Oldfields for over 30 years, during which the IMA changed and adapted its use of the house, the interiors drifting away from their domestic appearance all the while.  By 2000, it conveyed little impression of being a home.  By contrast, Mrs. Miller was still living in her home when I visited for the first time.  Having been the Millers’ home for almost exactly 50 years at that time, it possessed all the communicative power that came from being the undisturbed repository of family possessions.  A sizeable group made the visit that day, so the conditions for viewing were less than ideal.  Even with the distractions of people milling about and chattering, the house’s impact was striking.  Striking for the qualities of light and space, for the luxurious materials modestly used, for the kinds of objects in the house, but perhaps most of all for the owners’ personalities that the objects hinted at.

At Miller House, looking over floor plans

The landscape, designed by Dan Kiley, was another revelation.   Nothing I had seen prepared me for it, for its beautifully direct use of formal design elements – line, mass, and color – and for its elegant contrasts between the most basic of landscape elements:  light and shade, stone and turf, enclosure and openness, higher and lower elevation, close and distant perspectives.

Miller House in Columbus, IN

Two years later, I am still processing my response the property.  I’m not sure how much the property is continuing to reveal itself to me and how much may be due to a growing ability to apprehend and appreciate.  Now we are planning for the approach we will take to interpret the Miller House and Garden.  Once again, an experience to savor.

It’s always a bit of a mad dash to do the change-outs. As soon as that is done the dahlias and other summer blooming bulbs need to get in the ground and then we just wait for the 80+ degree temperatures (though I prefer 72 with a gentle breeze).

In my areas it was not a great spring for pansies. I think perhaps it was a bit too wet. They just refused to grow much so never filled in completely and produced fewer blooms. From a distance they looked fine. Up close they looked puny. The little birds that have nested in the pansies around the Sutphin Fountain for the last two years never even bothered to show up this year.

Everything else Spring-inclined had a good season – perennials, shrubs, trees, bulbs. Sorry about those little tulips in the Formal garden Patty. Damn squirrels. The white fringetree, Chionanthus virginicus, looked great this week.

This is why they are called white fringetree.

Not sure what they will be by the week-end with all the rain. This native makes a great small tree with year round interest – flowers now followed by bold leaves that turn yellow in the fall, then a nice shape to the branching structure for winter. These in the Southwest Border Garden are part of the original plantings at Oldfields.

Also looking great this week was the double-file viburnum, Viburnum plicatum forma tomentosum. This plant has great horizontal branching all the more evident when in full bloom.

I think it could be pruned into a super patio tree. You can see how the double row of blossoms, accompanied by a double row of leaves and followed by a double row of berries gave it the name double-file.

The double flowered form of this plant is the Japanese snowball viburnum or Viburnum plicatum forma plicatum. It was one of those rare instances where the sterile form of the plant was found first so when they found the fertile form the species already had a name so… I can’t go into the explanation right now. I also won’t go into the details of the difference between forma, variety, and subspecies today. But all the same there will be a test next Thursday so you better look it up on your own.

We will be hosting the Region III meeting of the Garden Writers Association (GWA) this Friday and Saturday with tours here, plus Garfield Park and local private gardens. Our publication Seasons won a Silver Award of Achievement for Overall Product – Newsletter  which makes us eligible for the Gold Award for Best Product to be given at the national GWA meeting in September. Our very own Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, IMA Horticulture Society director and the Hoosier Gardener, is a National Director of GWA.  I’m sure you have read her articles in the Indy Star and many know she is editor of Indiana Living Green magazine.

Speaking of green, have you checked out Isabella Rosellini and Green Porno on the Sundance channel? The beautiful and funny Isabella presented first rate scientific information on the sex lives of insects last season and this season is covering marine animals. I absolutely love the costumes and sets. Incredible. And Isabella. What can I say? Maybe she will do the plants next? Come on Isabella, let’s do it.

Stone Mason, courtesy of old-picture.com

This fall the folks in Horticulture, led by Geoff Von Burg, proved once again they know more than plants by completing two important hardscape projects. The first came about when The Toby was renovated and the handicap emergency egress ramp had to be added into the existing landscape.  This left a 2-3 foot grade change along the path. To prevent erosion and save as many trees as possible a beautiful stacked limestone wall was installed. This project required Geoff’s considerable skills and the handy work of several other garden staff to cut and lay the stone.  The area will be planted in the spring and will make a nice transition between the building and the gardens.

The second project was in the historic Oldfields area of the IMA. When the Border Gardens were installed nearly 80 years ago the trees and shrubs were small and there was plenty of sun light thus allowing grass paths. As the gardens have matured the now large trees cast great amounts of shade – wonderful for strolling the gardens in summer but terrible for growing grass. Add to this mix some drainage problems and thankfully more foot traffic because of more visitors and things get worse. In the Southwest Border Garden some stones had been put in over 15 years ago. These were removed, a new sand base put down, and the stone re-laid. At the same time we extended the area covered by stone so nearly half the path is now paved.

Geoff's stone wall handywork

Lovely stone pathway

Where to get stone in this time of tight budgets? Do the green thing and recycle and reuse. The area on the backside of the museum known as Hilltop has been a depository for excess stone from past building expansions or construction projects. With an edict from above to get this area cleaned up it gave us a chance to use the limestone that once was clad to the outside of the building.  These large 3’x 6’slabs of limestone were cut done to various sizes and used for the path and the wall. We will also be improving paths in the Northeast Border Garden. Its paths are bluestone but again we are incorporating the reuse of materials when possible.

If you get a chance to wander the gardens take a look at the upgrades. It might even inspire you to add or improve an existing hardscape element to your garden. And you thought you would never use those pavers you pulled out of the neighbor’s trash. Here’s a little tribute to all those that helped on these two projects.

Their reasoning was sound. At the time, country estates were all the rage among wealthy Americans, who yearned to escape the noise and pollution of the cities—noise and pollution often created by the very manufacturing plants that had made them wealthy in the first place. And Landon and Boyd’s property at the intersection of Michigan and Maple Roads was both remote enough to qualify as countryside, yet near enough to the city to make commuting easy. (The Interurban rail line ran past on the western edge of the property.) Maple Road, which we know today as 38th St., ended at the White River—there was no bridge at that time.

While Boyd subdivided his half of the property into parcels fit for multiple mini-estates, Landon turned his half into a single estate he dubbed Oldfields. (At the time, wheat fields surrounded the property, which itself had been partially used as farmland before Landon and Boyd bought it.) The two partners then incorporated their new development as an actual town, which they named Woodstock, the same name they gave to the country club they created on the other side of Maple Road (now 38th St.) as an inducement to prospective residents. The Town of Woodstock, as the community was formally known, took awhile to develop; by the time Landon and Boyd moved into their newly built mansions, only one other person had done the same—Dr. Lafayette Page. Most of the other lots remained undeveloped until the 1940s and early ‘50s—at its peak, the town consisted of only nine houses.

In 1932, J.K. Lilly, Jr. bought Oldfields from Landon and extensively remodeled the mansion. Six years later, he built a separate residence called Newfield for his son J.K. Lilly III and his new wife, as well as building a recreation building known as The Playhouse, which had indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a tennis court.

By all accounts, in its heyday the town was a lively place to live, with town meetings and annual Christmas party taking place at Boyd’s former residence, which his daughter Helen and her husband, Judge William Higgins occupied. But the town came to an end in the early 1960s, when J.K. Lilly, Jr. started buying out his neighbors, offering much more than market prices to convince them to sell. Lilly then tore down all of the houses he bought, expanding his estate to encompass the entire Landon-Boyd property.

With one exception. In 1942, Dr. Wayne and Dorothy Ritter bought half a lot from Judge Higgins (who owned two lots in addition to the one his home was on) and built a two-story brick house facing 38th Street. When Lilly began buying the houses in Woodstock, the Ritters refused to sell. Today their former residence is the only Woodstock home left standing aside from the Lilly house and Newfield.

Speaking of which, after the IMA moved to the former Lilly estate—erecting its first building, Krannert Pavilion, on the site of the Boyd-Higgins home—Newfield housed the Museum Alliance’s Better Than New Shop (which closed in 2007), while The Playhouse became the Garden on the Green restaurant. Today, Newfield awaits its next incarnation, while the former recreation building is home to the Horticultural Society’s library. Ironically, the most lasting aspect of the former Town of Woodstock is the country club with which it shared a name—it’s still across the street, as it has been since Landon and Boyd were developing their town on the outskirts of town.

You can learn much more about what happened before and since the IMA’s move to Oldfields when Every Way Possible, a newly published history of the Museum, hits the shelves of The IMA Store in December in celebration of the IMA’s 125th anniversary.