Letter from the Executive Director and Artist in Residence

Dear Randy,

Welcome to the first Garden newsletter of 2025, a year that didn't waste any time providing us with a range of weather offerings from record highs to a good freeze, and, as of today's forecast, another one on the way. The weather hasn't slowed us down, though; the Garden is awash in activity.

We're prepping and redesigning two beds near the office, one of which will be planted this spring with plants from the Sierra Madre Oriental, and the bed across from it will be planted with Asian plants. This pairing is apt as one of John and Carl Schoenfeld's missions was to introduce Mexican alternatives to the usual palette of Asian plants dominating the American landscape at the time. John considered these Mexican plants desirable "counterparts" to the Asian plants and he and Carl were responsible for introducing a significant number of these plants into horticulture in the U.S. As I've written before, many of these are now a part of our John Gaston Fairey Signature Plant Collection which we will be introducing and selling in earnest in a dedicated greenhouse later this spring.

We've also been ordering plants from nurseries with which John had relationships, with the intention of reintroducing some plants, especially in the Woodland Garden, that have died. This is part of a bigger effort to restore plants that have slowly disappeared from the Garden over the decades. You can read below about one of the institutional sources we're tapping for some of these plants and you'll get a sense of the importance of John and Carl's collection efforts in Mexico.

Board member and past board president, Wally Wilkins, has led this effort and I am delighted to announce that Wally has been named our new Director of Horticulture and Living Collections. Wally has been assuming these duties for some time but now it's official and we couldn't be happier as Wally has the education, the curiosity, and the institutional knowledge to excel at this position. 

Wally writes, ‘Stepping into the role of Director of Horticulture and Living Collections at The John Fairey Garden is both an honor and a continuation of a journey that began for me many years ago. Having served as a volunteer, docent, and board member, I have come to deeply appreciate not only the garden’s extraordinary plant collection but also the singular vision and dedication that shaped it. From the moment I first walked through the garden with John Fairey more than 25 years ago, I knew I wanted to be part of its Story.

Every day in the garden is a source of inspiration. John’s innovative design and the remarkable diversity of plants he collected over nearly three decades of exploration in Mexico makes this place truly unique. As I step into this new role, I am committed to honoring and preserving his legacy while ensuring that the garden continues to thrive. 

Looking ahead, I also hope to continue John’s spirit of exploration and experimentation by introducing new plant material, with a particular focus on ex-situ conservation for threatened woody plants. The John Fairey Garden has always been a place of discovery, and I am excited to contribute to its future.’

I could not be more excited to have Wally officially assume this key position and I look forward to continuing our working relationship on behalf of the Garden.

Warm regards,

Budding Out is One Month Away

The Budding Out Plant Sale & Festival is only one month away. Ashlyn has been diligently propagating plants for the sale, and we've been assembling a potent roster of other plant vendors and artisans. This year we've made an effort to bolster our presentation lineup and we're thrilled to offer eight different presentations this year with topics ranging from edible medicinal plants to the value of goat manure as fertilization. Additionally, we'll have information tents on the grounds covering a wide variety of garden-related information. For a listing of vendors and presenters, you may go to the Budding Out webpage.

A list of plants offered by TJFG Nursery is available here. Note that this list is subject to change and plants on this list may not be available on the day of the sale.



Please go to the events page on our website to pre-register



An Artist in the Garden

John Fairey spoke of the Garden as a living work of art and its own gallery. 'It, like all gardens,' he wrote, 'is a unique expression of the highest art form – one which utilizes all the senses in its creation, and satisfies them in presentation.' There are few contemporary artists more suited to the act of appreciating and representing all these senses than Mike Glier. We are honored to be hosting Mike in the Garden for a two week visit.

Mike is currently in an exhibition at the Burchfield Penny Art Center titled A Grammar of Animacy: Charles E. Burchfield and Mike Glier.

Burchfield precedes Mike by a few generations but, to quote the exhibition website, 'both (Burchfield and Glier) use an abstract visual language, derived from plein air observation, to describe an intimate and reciprocal relationship between the artists and their subject, the living world. They engage the full range of the senses, improvising with color, motif, and repetition to evoke abstract representations of sound, smell, and touch to describe the dynamic, multi-sensory experience of perception.' Mike's approach and sensitivity makes him the perfect artist to observe and describe John's garden of sensory delight.

Our mission is to "preserve, share, and advance the horticultural and artistic legacy of John Fairey." At times like these when there is activity in the Garden on both horticultural and artistic fronts, it feels like we're meaningfully engaged in fulfilling that mission, an obligation that is never complete but always worthy of the effort.

One of the first priorities of Wally's tenure is identifying, acquiring, and reestablishing historically significant plant taxa that have been lost due to storms, pests, and the many challenges of gardening in the tough climate of Southeast Texas. Prioritizing those wild-collected by John and Carl, we have already begun reconnecting with individuals and institutions that John worked with in the past to reacquire plants that share provenance with specimens that we have lost.

Here is a screenshot of the spreadsheet of plants in the living collection at The University of California, Berkeley, that came from John and Carl's wild collections in Mexico. Though unreadable at this scale, I include it to give a sense of the far reaching importance of their work.

Notes from John Fairey's Mexico plant collecting journals

Trip #74 - December 6, 1997 - January 2, 1997

On Saturday of December 6th, 1997, John and Carl began their 74th trip to Mexico, a journey that would take them to the Guanajato, Aguascalientes, Michoacan, and Jalisco, states that were relatively rarely destinations for their plant collections. (Over the course of their 107 trips to Mexico, John and Carl made 18 collections in Michoacan compared to 835 in Tamaulipas.)

One might imagine that all the seeds and cuttings from John and Carl's collecting efforts would have ended up in John’s garden, however, John and Carl regularly shared their collections with other collectors and institutions. As shown above, the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley currently has almost 100 plants in their collection that came from John and Carl.

Some of these plants that John and Carl collected are no longer in our Garden. With the cooperation of Andrew S. Doran, Director of Collections, University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, and other institutions, we are making an effort to replace them. 

On Monday, December 8th, there is an entry of a seed collection, the eighth of the day, describing a Liatris-like plant with large purple flowers and long lance like leaves." This plant was later identified as Acourtia rigida and it still lives in the UC Botanic Garden. We are looking forward to reintroducing it and others back to The John Fairey Garden.

photo by Kerry D. Woods



BARK

The John Fairey Garden Artist in Residence, Randy Twaddle, has been designing a book of photographs he's taken of tree bark found in the Garden. The book, titled BARK, will be self-published and available sometime this spring. The Closeups from the Garden section below contains previews from the book.

Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.



― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants