Plant a little history
Heirloom blooms restore fragrance to beauty
You’re rummaging in the attic, in great grandma’s steamer trunk, and you come upon a dusty old packet of garden balsam seeds. An heirloom!
This heirloom’s probably more valuable for the picture on the packet than for the seeds, which are likely to have lost their vitality. But you can get your hands on heirloom plants that will grow.
Plants that have been handed down for generations as saved seeds or pieces of stems or roots are called heirloom varieties, which preserve the plants’ particular qualities.
Colours of heirloom flowers, for example, often are soft and subdued, but the muted colours are often counterbalanced by bold fragrances and flavours. Modern sweet peas may sport flashy and abundant blooms, but they are almost scentless when compared with the Black Knight sweet peas, introduced in 1898.
Of course, bold scents or flavours are not for everyone. You might not like the spicy, tart flavour of a Spitzenburg apple. No matter: There are thousands of other heirloom apple varieties.
Variation from plant to plant
With a more casual growth habit than modern hybrids, heirlooms won’t give the ordered look of a brigade of soldiers when planted en masse. Plant-to-plant variations of heirloom flowers may be subtle, as in the almost uniform stand of blue flowers from a seed packet of Blue Boy bachelor’s buttons, a variety grown by Thomas Jefferson. Or the variations may be more dramatic, as in the occasional orange flower popping up among the reds from a packet of Gift zinnias, an heirloom variety from Russia. In some styles of garden, a blowsy look is preferred to rigid uniformity.
Heirloom plants don’t march in step like soldiers. Plants from a packet of Golden Bantam corn, a delectable variety dating back to 1902, ripen over the course of more than a week.
Heirloom availability
Most plants offered in garden centres and through the mail are not heirlooms and will never become one, not even in a hundred years.
Modern hybrid seeds are made by bringing together pollen and egg cells from two specially chosen parents. Unless you grow those parents and provide for pollination, you cannot perpetuate hybrid varieties.
Even if they’re not hybrids, many of today’s plants could not be passed along the generations because they are patented; it is illegal to propagate and distribute them.
Every year, fewer and fewer heirlooms are offered for sale. More money is to be made on hybrids and patented plants. They sell for more and appeal to a wider audience.
Some heirlooms are available from Heritage Harvest Seed (heritageharvestseed.com), The Cottage Gardener (cottagegardener.com) and Windmill Point Farm (windmillpointfarm.ca).
So plant some heirlooms and bring a bit of the past into your garden. Pass along some cuttings of your favourite old fruits, trees, shrubs, and perennials to neighbours and your children. Save some seeds of old varieties of vegetables and annual flowers, and pass them along, too. You never know when they might no longer be available commercially.