TIPS FROM KIP: Color and Texture of Ornamental Grasses

Zebra grass

Because of their versatility, ornamental grasses are frequently used as fillers, borders or background plantings. Their adaptability and beauty make them perfect companions to flowering plants and woody ornamentals. You’ll see their splendor and diversity in the Norton gardens, where we display several types of ornamental grasses, including fountain grass, Mexican feather grass, and zebra grass. In autumn, these plants turn with the leaves, providing even more autumn color.

If you think you might enjoy the contrasting texture and color of ornamental grasses in your landscape, I recommend the following varieties that we grow:

1) Fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum), an upright mound-forming plant, grows two to three-feet tall and equally as wide. Its fine-textured foliage and greenish-white flower spikes appear in mid- to late summer and mature to golden brown and coppery purple hues in fall.

2) Zebra grass (Miscanthus sinensis 'zebrinus') forms an arching clump with blades bearing distinctive yellow and green bands. In late summer, flowers of silvery white plumes rise above the foliage. Zebra grass tolerates some shade, but performs best in full sun.

3) As one of the few black-leafed plants in existence, black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens') requires partial shade to hold its unique coloring. The clumping perennial provides an evergreen groundcover and produces flower spikes of pink, white, or blue clusters followed by black fruit in summer. The attractive, strap-like foliage contrasts nicely with lighter-colored plants as demonstrated in the Upper Shade Garden at the Norton.

4) The fluffy, buff-colored plumes of Hamlin fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hamlin’) provide another contrasting backdrop for perennial beds. This low-maintenance ornamental grass prefers full sun and requires good drainage. You’ll see its arching clumps of blades turn a golden-rust color in fall along the back of the museum.

Kip Dehart, Landscape Director

OUT IN THE GARDENS: Year-round Color with Japanese Maples

Many gardeners consider Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) as the most graceful of all maples. We certainly love the ones that accent our Norton gardens.

Japanese maples offer a brilliant show of red in spring and summer, but save their best for fall, with stunning displays of bright scarlet, orange, gold, and purple. Varieties grow from two to thirty-five feet, and produce many leaf colors, textures, and forms—from palm-like to feathery.

Shapes vary from weeping to upright to spreading. In winter, several cultivars produce colorful bark and undulating stems and trunks. These shapely, elegant trees not only produce a spectacular show as a focal point for a bed or portion of a garden, but also look great in masses all year.

Here are a few of the 30+ varieties of Japanese maples we grow in the Norton gardens:

Bloodgood: This excellent, easy-to-grow cultivar is the standard by which all red maples are measured. Its reddish-purple summer leaves turn a striking crimson in fall.

Emperor I: Also easy to grow, Emperor I holds its red color well into summer.

Tamukeyama: Considered the best red lace-leaf for the South, Tamukeyama maintains its red color throughout the year, ending with the most brilliant scarlet fall color.

Yurihime Sport: This small-leaf, green variety is a hardy dwarf maple considered as one of the best for container culture.

With more than 700 cultivars, Japanese maples offer a tremendous assortment of color, size, shape, and texture. Come to the Norton gardens to see this four-season beauty and its year-round symphony of color.

Kristi Kohl, Staff Researcher

Tamukeyama

 

 

FEATURED ARTWORK IN THE COLLECTION: Niagara Falls by "America's Painter of Autumn" Jasper Cropsey

While serving as an apprentice to an architect, the young Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900) discovered engravings of the landscapes of the French painter Claude Lorrain, which he began to imitate. When he launched his own career as a painter, he fell under the influence of Thomas Cole and transcendentalist philosophy, becoming one of the artists of the Hudson River School. He was particularly famous for his fall scenes and known as “America’s painter of autumn” in both the United States and England. Although Niagara Falls is not specifically one of his autumnal paintings, it shares their vivid palette and sense of liveliness.

Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

QUERIES FOR KRISTI

How did 16th century Dutch artist Meyndert Hobbema achieve endless variations of the color green in his painting Forest Scene?

Forest Scene (1662), Rodin Gallery

Hobbema probably used two types of green pigment called verdigris and malachite. In ancient times, verdigris was made in vineyards when previously heated strips of copper were buried for several weeks in drums of marc (the stems, skins, and pulpy residue from grapes), or placed in kilns to speed up the chemical process. A green deposit that formed on the copper strips was collected, dried, and packaged in little leather bags to sell commercially.

Unfortunately, the pigment didn’t resist moisture and air well, and could ruin or blacken other colors placed beside or above it. Yet it has survived on some frescoes in Pompeii and it was extremely popular during the Middle Ages when monks used it in illuminated manuscripts. The introduction of oil painting was the beginning of the end for verdigris. Painters continued to experiment with it until it was banned after chrome green emerged in the 19th century. Like so many of the traditional pigments, verdigris was highly toxic when either inhaled or ingested.

Hobbema surely used the other popular green, malachite, a vibrantly colored stone composed of a basic carbonate of natural copper. Egyptians were using malachite as pigment in tomb decorations and on papyrus illustrations by the 3rd millennium B.C. It wasn’t only used for painting pictures; when mixed with animal fat, it was Cleopatra’s favorite eye shadow.

The Romans abandoned it, however, in favor of green earth pigments because of its cost. (It remains expensive today, wholesaling for more than $120 for three ounces.) Irish monks reclaimed it during the medieval period for their illuminated manuscripts, but it remained a difficult pigment, unstable and prone to altering other colors. Like verdigris, it was largely abandoned in the 19th century in favor of chrome green.

If you have an art-related question you would like answered in a future newsletter, you may submit your question by going to the Norton website at www.rwnaf.org.

 

DID YOU KNOW?

Bernardino Ramazzini, a Venetian physician in the late 17th century, recorded:

Painters are attacked by various ailments such as palsy of the limbs, cachexia, blackened teeth, unhealthy
complexions, melancholia and loss of the sense of smell. It very seldom happens that painters look florid or healthy . . . [the most immediate cause is] the materials of the colors they handle and smell constantly, such as red lead,cinnabar [which contained mercury], white lead . . . and the numerous pigments made of various mineral substances . . . Moreover, painters when at work wear dirty clothes smeared with paint, so that their mouths and noses inevitably breathe tainted air . . .

Those are some very dark effects indeed. Engravings by the Italian artist Giovanni Piranesi on display at the Norton are based on images he saw while in a fever dream during an illness. When he recovered, he recorded those mental scenes.

Giovanni Batista Piranesi, The Prisons: An Immense Interior, Piranesi Corridor

He wasn’t the only artist whose vision of the world changed dramatically as the result of an illness. For a brief time, Piranesi’s roommate, with whom he shared a studio, was a popular and profitable portrait painter from Spain. Francisco Goya was enjoying a successful if not particularly remarkable career when suddenly he succumbed to a mysterious and nearly fatal illness. It brought on dizziness, mental confusion, convulsions, coma, and paralysis of his right side. He also suffered from impaired balance, hearing and speech, as well as a relentless ringing in his ears, partial blindness, and, eventually, total deafness. For months, Goya was unable to work, and friends feared for his life. When he finally crawled back from the brink of death, he remained permanently deaf and obsessed with humanity’s darker nature. His paintings became powerful indictments of human foolishness, greed, and cruelty.

For the next two centuries, scholars and historians debated the change that came over “Paco” Goya and turned him from a society painter into a dark-hearted genius. Some blamed syphilis, but in 1972, Dr. William Niederland published an article identifying the most likely culprit: his paint, especially one particular pigment known as lead white.

Lead white is essentially carbonate of lead, derived from lead exposed to acetic acid. It had been used since ancient times when painters created it by exposing slivers of lead to a compound of vinegar and animal dung. The dung provided the carbon dioxide and heat necessary for the process. It was the most commonly used pigment throughout both European and Asian history. Renaissance painters typically coated the entire canvas with it in order to produce a sense of light behind the scene they were creating. They even discovered that, if heated, it produced a permanent yellow color they called “king’s yellow,” which was also very popular.

Unfortunately, both were also highly toxic. Neiderland estimated that, through inhalation alone, not to mention the chance of licking or biting a toxic finger, Goya was exposed to two to three times as much lead as most painters, virtually all of whom were chronically lead poisoned.

Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

WORTH THE TRIP: Ideas for Arts Education in Washington, D.C.

Emily Meyers, Director of Education, recently had the opportunity to visit some art spots in our nation's capital. She had a wonderful meeting with John Abodeely, the Manager of Arts Education at Americans for the Arts. He shared information and materials about the nation's leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America. Emily and John concurred on the extreme importance of art in the lives of children and the many ways it positively influences youngsters.

A visit to VSA arts (formerly Very Special Arts) and a meeting with Jim Modrick, VP of Affiliate and Education Services, was another highlight of Emily's trip. VSA arts is an international, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing educational opportunities in the arts for children and adults with disabilities. Jim shared some wonderful information and resource materials with Emily.

A trip to Washington, DC would not be complete without a stroll by the White House and some time at the National Gallery of Art! It was exciting to view the Mary Cassatt artwork on display and compare it with the Norton’s own Mother and Daughter Both Wearing Large Hats on display in the American Art History Gallery. One of Emily's favorite spots was the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. She is pictured below with Claes Oldenburg's Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999).

Emily feels her visits to Americans for the Arts, VSA arts, and the National Gallery of Art were definitely “worth the trip”! She came back with many inspiring ideas for the Norton’s education program. There are so many lovely places to view exquisite pieces of art, and those of us living in or near Shreveport are very fortunate to have such a place right here and free access to the incredible collection at the R.W. Norton Art Gallery.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1999, National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden	Entrance to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.