With a poem by Barbara Browne
Ah, forsythia. It’s brief season is coming to a close here in Western New York, but over the past couple weeks I think I have seen every kind of use or misuse of the plant. Many awful little meatballs or boxes in rows can be viewed in both city and suburbs. It’s sad to see the yellow flowers trying to assert their presence along the perfectly pruned sticks. They’re programmed to fail.
I’ve also seen some lovely unpruned bushes in parks and individual gardens. The plant looks best to me when it’s at its wildest, but it also seems there is a middle ground. The shrub at the top of this post is likely pruned as are the row of shrubs above, but no so much that the flowers can’t take center stage (that time is a bit past in the second image) and the fountain-like form is still visible.
….
Here’s what Barbara offers, in honor of a month devoted to poetry as well as one of early spring’s most common flowering shrubs:
“For the Forsythia”
O brassy, unruly forsythia!
I gotta sympathize wythia
Suburban plots where you do dwell
Like unkempt exuberance not so well
The tidiers sharpen up their shears
Afraid their yard is in arrears
Pruned into submission, a real hack job!
Now you’re a dumpy blob, cube, or SpongeBob!
So wonderfully wayward in your natural state!
Your trimmed, tamed fate makes me irate
Diminished and disfigured is your floral display
Causing much aesthetic outrage and dismay.
Forsooth, let forsythia do its thing:
For it’s the gold, bold free spirit of spring!
Musician/poet Barbara Browne lives and gardens in suburban Philadelphia, where she is in the first year of the Barnes Arboretum Horticulture Certificate Program.
I have seen a glorious display of “free range” forsythia in the center divider along the eastern end US 280, which goes around Woecester, MA. Not sure if it’s still there, as I haven’t been that way in several years.
As a child I thought the shrub was known as “For-Cynthia” because it was blooming in early spring when we took my baby sister Cynthia to church for her christening. I’ve always loved its cheerful yellow blooms, whether at the end of a long Buffalo winter, or here in ever cloudy and grey Western PA.
I thought about forsythia’s after reading Ben’s post and almost wrote a comment. Maybe they get a bad rap from gardeners because they’re usually placed wrong in too small spots and then need to be pruned but pruning can only do so much. Not the plant’s fault. Maybe the color yellow is too closely similar to dandelion flowers. In the end, they’re both pollinators. I was admiring an unpruned one the other day, their flowers are bigger than I thought. Thumb sized. My friend said the flowers are edible. Now that I’m no longer in maintenance, I have a newfound admiration.
PS: I once saw a forsythia pruned to a conical shape. Budget Chief Joseph, I called it.
Bracing myself for negative responses, but l hate forsythia. Forsoothia, more like. That screaming schoolbus yellow is my least favorite harbinger of spring. And unfortunately the previous owners of our house apparently luuuuved forsythia. Wonder how hard they are to dig up. Or maybe l’ll prune them into a schoolbus shape. Uggghhh.
I too detest forsythia having grown up (otherwise happily) on a small suburban yard with lots of butchered forsythia. It was economical, easy to propagate and made a hedge between properties. At the neighbor’s we enjoyed playing underneath a sprawling one left au naturel. My late mother delighted in forcing forsythia and even had silk sprays of it on her front door. Yuck! None of this deterred me from a 50+ year career in horticulture but there is no forsythia on my half acre.
Love the poem
I have one leftover bush from a previous owner. I found that there are two ways for it to look good. Either let it go wild, or do as I did yesterday and every year, right after flowering, cut it completely to the ground. I let it send up 6 to 8 strong stalks that reach 6 to 8 feet and wave in the wind. They are beautiful in the spring while in bloom and don’t look bad as they regrow each year. It keeps it size manageable too.
Love the poem and love unpruned Forsyntia
How fortuitious! My gardening partner and I were driving to and from a job we had and I kept complaining about the horrible pruning I was seeing on the forsythia we passed. I’ve been shaping my forsythia into long floating fronds for 30 years, lifting the canopy, and planting beneath it. It’s like a big yellow umbrella! I wish it bloomed longer. I didn’t know anyone else’s nose was put out of joint by this mistreatment I am forced to witness.
Thank you!
Now please write a post about people who prune Azaleas into hedges and bun shapes. That makes me want to scream and shout!