Fay Gerber's Dogwoods

Almost three years ago, on a hot summer's day, I had an appointment to meet Fay Gerber in her Emerald garden at 10.00am. I'd been helping Fay for a couple of hours here and there for some months. I could see vehicles near the house when I arrived, a team of plumbers was finishing a new roof job and putting up new spouting. Fay lives in Melbourne and it wasn't unusual for there to be some work or other happening when she came to stay at Emerald for a few days, the house being perhaps seventy years old, maybe more. It had been recently painted and was well kept.
Fay was no where to be seen as I pulled up. The plumbers were making plenty of noise banging, drilling and cutting. I spoke to the boss who said the last time he saw Fay, not long ago, she was on the ride on mower so I walked slowly from the house looking for her, hearing no mower engine. A short time later I saw her bright blue shirt and wide straw hat as she sat on the grass in the shade of a large tree rhododendron, the mower beside her. She was facing away from me and motionless as if in deep meditation.
Fay, a delightful lady about 80, had retained her wit and charm, and was still attractive despite her advancing years. I had known her for over 20 years, and whilst it might be an unusual place for an 80 yo lady to sit on a hot day, she is slightly eccentric, so I was not surprised or alarmed. As well as gardening, her hobbies are wood sculpture and jewellery making, and she is well read and articulate.
"Are you alright Fay", I called out as I approached her from behind, not wanting to give her a fright by being too close when she became aware of me.
"Hello Carey, yes, I'm fine, I'm having a little rest. I fell off the mower, it almost tipped over and my leg is painful. Could you lift me a little so I can move it?"
She told me how to lift her by putting my arms under her armpits from behind. She winced as she moved then asked me to let her sit again, saying she was sure the pain would ease shortly.
We sat on the grass and she told me her girls musn't hear how this happenned or they'd stop her mowing. She described how the mower tipped up and explained she was lucky it didn't end up on top of her. She loved that old mower. It'd been playing up, a few times she'd asked me to start it for her when I was there, and once to get it into the back of her Camry wagon to take to a repair man.
After a while Fay decided we should get her into the house, the back door of which was some forty metres away. I lifted her again, and with her leaning against me, we inched our way to the house, not an easy thing side by side as we had to manage a narrow path with stone edges and some steps. She didn't want to get assistance from the plumbers, thinking there was not really a way for them to help and wanting as little fuss as possible.
Once inside we had a cup of tea and talked about my impending holiday to Peru. She rang her daughter and explained she'd had a fall. Before I left she insisted that she pay me for my time, although I'd done no gardening. I rang her a few days later to see how she was. She was in hospital with a fractured femur, a hairline fracture, but serious nonetheless.

I haven't seen Fay since. She is fit and well. We spoke on the phone recently, mainly about me doing a restorative prune on her precious 'Captain Rawes' reticulata camellia. One of her daughters and her husband comes to Emerald to mow the grass and do gardening, but I often think of her, especially in the spring when I pick dogwood blossom there, or anywhere for that matter. We have two rows of flowering white dogwood at the farm, and there are three nice trees at home, which came originally from Fay's garden. Her father's old trees had low branches that touched the ground some distance from their trunk, and here, kept moist by the their own autumn leaves, these branches had 'layered', that is, developed roots and thus starting a new young tree as it sprouted vigourous new shoots above where it rooted. Fay called these 'suckers'. She wanted these 'suckers' removed, and we potted them into big pots and planted out two rows at the farm twelve months later, nearly twenty years ago.
I first met Fay back in the 1980's, when our livelihood came mainly from growing herbs and supplying restaurants. I was always short of rosemary, one of the more popular restaurant lines, and one of our pickers told me about a row in a propery in Mary St. One Sunday, I saw a lady in the garden as I drove past and stopped and introduced myself, asking if it might be possible for me to pick some rosemary. I picked rosemary there regularly and we became friends. She asked me did I know anyone who would do some gardening for her. From then on, Rick, Max, and Dirk, who all worked at our farm at some time, did gardening work for Fay when they were seeking odd jobs. When Dirk left us after 10 years, aged 25, to study environmental science as a mature age student, Fay leant him the money to buy his books. He's now a supervisor for Melbourne Water.
Fay's property in Emerald is an acre or two on the edge of the main commercial precinct. Surrounded by mature trees, it's tucked away. People driving past on the main road wouldn't realise there's a piece of Emerald history sitting there untouched by the rampant progress of recent decades. Sometimes when I'm there picking in the solitude I feel I've walked back in time. Twisted and gnarled magnolias line the drive, and mature conifers, oaks, dogwoods and rhodies provide the feeling of seclusion and contrasting rich greenery. The only give away is the the traffic noise from the road.
Fays father planted most of the trees. His name was Carter, a passionate gardener well known for his propogation of yew trees. This of course sixty or more years ago, some wonderful old yew trees still thrive. Self sown baby yews come up all about where no mowing is done, and several of these thrive at our house, given to us by Fay in a winter some years ago.
My friend Doug Twaits, who died some years ago aged 86, knew Mr. Carter, and Fay when she was a girl. He told me once that the old pine tree on the lower corner of the property was there in the 1920's, large enough even then for his family to picnic under on hot summer days when they came up from Melbourne. When I go to the garden in late October to pick dogwood, that variety flowering two weeks after the other cornus florida trees purchased from nurseries, I always look at the old pine and have a mental picture of Doug as a boy with his family picnicking there. That's how Fay's garden affects me.

It took me a while getting to it, but my tree of the week is the flowering dogwood. Why choose February to talk about flowering dogwoods? The other day I was scratching around on hands and knees cutting and painting blackberry plants with roundup in the wild scrubby area behind the beehives and I came across two young self sown dogwoods. It made me happy. I've collected fruit from the dogwoods many times and tried to grow them from seed, never having success. I layer a few every other year by pinning the branch down and tossing some dirt on it. As well as the beautiful blossom we also use our dogwood trees for autumn foliage, the colour ranging from yellow to orange through to deep red.

Cornus florida-- American Boxwood, a native of USA, it's adaptable to most soils and positions, and is frost resistant but drought tender. a deciduous tree it grows to a height of 10 metres witha spread of 3m. The leaves are opposite, ovate-acuminate, short petioled, 10cm long, dark green above and pale green on the undersurface; the flowers are small and white or greenish yellow, occurring in terminal clusters and surrounde by large white or pink bracts; the fruitare brilliant, glossy red berries.
Propogation is by seed, cuttings, layering or grafting. The Delaware Indians boiled the inner bark of the tree, using the tea to reduce fevers. (Encyclopaedia Botanica).

If I was doing a list of my favourite people, Fay Gerber would be high on it.