Some of the most familiar plants in the garden originated in Southeast Asia. Azaleas, rhododendrons, hostas, wisterias, lilies, day lilies, camellias and viburnums, to name a few, have made us feel so much at home that our world, ironically, would feel alien without them.
Many of these plants have cousins native to North America, but it is the trove of Asian plants that directly, or indirectly through hybridizing, have come to define our gardens: the showy flowering evergreen azaleas of April, the saucer magnolias of March and the summer blossoms of the hydrangea and crape myrtle.
Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the southern provinces of China west to Tibet, as well as Bhutan and Nepal, drew 19th- and early-20th-century plant collectors from the West who found in these regions a horticultural Shangri-La. The ice age glaciers that erased much of the flora of Europe and North America were blocked by the Himalayas and other mountain ranges.
The result? “The number of plant species within the boundaries of China is 10 times the plant species we have in North America,” says Dan Hinkley, whose five-acre garden In Indianola overlooking the Sound has, it is fair to say, its share of these treasures.
Hinkley, 55, has spent two decades retracing the steps of such legendary plant explorers as Robert Fortune (1812-80), Jean Marie Delavay (1834-95), Armand David (1826-1900), Ernest “Chinese” Wilson (1876-1930) and George Forrest (1873-1932).
Hinkley’s work may take decades more to flower in Western gardens, but the tradition, the impulse to brighten our lives with fantastic Asian plants, persists.
Hinkley typically goes for 12-week stints in two or three countries, but during the seed-ripening months, September through December. He only sees how they bloom back in his garden, sometimes years later.
Hinkley took the seed of a climbing hydrangea, named Schizophragma integrifolium variety fauriei, whose blooms are only now fully unfurling for Hinkley for the first time.
Hinkley said Wilson described this Taiwanese plant as “the most beautiful of the deciduous flowering vines from Asia.”
Hinkley also collected the seed of a mystery tree in central Japan, and it finally flowered to reveal itself as something called Pterostyrax corymbosa, a fairly ornamental tree, but if it were a fish, you might throw it back.
“In some ways it was a much more exciting plant when you didn’t know what it was for all those years,” he says. “It’s like an unwrapped Christmas gift, and then you open it and it’s knitted mittens.”
A decade ago, Hinkley wrote a book titled “The Explorer’s Garden: Rare and Unusual Perennials,” which describes the novel herbaceous plants he collected in his travels.
A month ago, he published a sequel, “The Explorer’s Garden: Shrubs and Vines From the Four Corners of the World.” As the subtitle suggests, it also includes woody plants from other countries, namely India, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Costa Rica and South Africa.
Not every plant in the wild is a good candidate for the garden; quite the contrary. “Novelty is one of the least important things to look at when you’re bringing plants into cultivation,” he says.
Monrovia, a major wholesale grower based in Azusa, Calif., has partnered with Hinkley to produce a series plant selections under Hinkley’s name. The nursery launched seven plants this year, distributed mostly in the Pacific Northwest. You can go to www.monrovia.com to order a catalog.
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