>> NARRATOR: A remarkable
Victorian garden blooms
on the rugged Isles of Shoals.
On Appledore Island,
in sharp contrast
to the rocky shore
and shrubby vegetation,
delicate poppies gracefully
twist in the ocean breezes.
>> "It seems strange
"to write a book about a little
garden only 50 feet long
"by 15 wide.
"But then, as a friend
pleasantly remarked to me,
"it extends upward, and what it
lacks in area
"is more than compensated by the
large joy that grows out of it,
"and its uplifting
and refreshment
of the spirit of man."
Celia Thaxter.
>> NARRATOR: The little garden
has more than 1,600 plants,
each flowering variety
placed in the same spot
year after year, according
to a plan published in 1894
by the famous poet and author
Celia Laighton Thaxter,
who grew up on tiny
White Island, where her father,
Thomas Laighton, became
lighthouse keeper in 1839.
>> "Ever since I could remember
anything, flowers have been
"like dear friends to me--
comforters, inspirers,
"powers to uplift and to cheer.
"A lonely child
"living on the lighthouse island
ten miles away
"from the mainland, every blade
of grass that sprang
"out of the ground,
every humblest weed,
was precious in my sight."
>> She grew up
in the Isles of Shoals
in a little lighthouse.
She married when she was young.
Her parents built this hotel,
which became very popular.
It was just one of the earliest
resort hotels in America.
And Celia spent
a lot of time there.
She had an unhappy marriage
and finally left her husband
to pursue her own life,
and she had a disabled son
who she had to devote
a lot of time to.
>> NARRATOR: With three children
and a large house to care for,
and far from
her beloved islands,
Celia began to express
her feelings through poetry.
"Landlocked," a poem
that described her longing
for the Isles of Shoals,
was published to great acclaim
in the Atlantic Monthly.
>> "Black lie the hills
"swiftly doth daylight flee
"And catching gleams
of sunset's dying smile
"Through the dusk land
for many a changing mile
"The river runneth
softly to the sea.
"O happy river,
could I follow thee!
"O yearning heart,
that never can be still!
"O wistful eyes that watch
the steadfast hill,
"Longing for level line
of solemn sea!
"Have patience; here are
flowers and songs of birds,
"Beauty and fragrance,
wealth of sound and sight,
"All summer's glory thine
from morn till night,
"And life too full of joy
for uttered words.
"Neither am I ungrateful;
but I dream deliciously
"how twilight falls to-night
over the glimmering water,
"how the light
dies blissfully away,
"until I seem
"to feel the wind,
sea-scented, on my cheek,
"To catch the sound
of dusky flapping sail
"And dip of oars, and voices
on the gale afar off,
"calling low--
my name they speak!
"O Earth!
"Thy summer song of joy may soar
ringing to heaven in triumph.
"I but crave the sad,
caressing murmur of the wave
That breaks in tender music
on the shore."
>> By then she had become
well known
because of James
and Annie Fields.
She had been part of their lives
for many years
and knew a lot of their friends.
>> NARRATOR: Celia was growing
a cutting garden,
using the flowers
to color her parlor.
Beginning at 5:00 in the
morning, she picked her flowers,
and then she arranged and
rearranged them in vases,
until she got
just the right effect.
>> Celia's garden was
her anchor, and it held her
to the island, but it was also
her tie to the shore,
in that it attracted other
artists to the island.
>> When Colonial Revival
was seeing the old styles
of garden go away,
industrialization had
come along,
big agriculture had come along,
and within a couple of decades
of their lives,
they saw agriculture move out
to the Midwest,
farm abandonment, railroads,
so they were looking
for this nostalgic view
of gardens from the past.
>> "As I work among my flowers,
I find myself talking to them,
"reasoning and remonstrating
with them, and adoring them
"as if they were human beings.
"Much laughter I provoke
among my friends by so doing,
"but that is of no consequence.
We are on such good terms,
my flowers and I."
Celia Thaxter.
>> She was inspired
by the flowers in her garden
for her poetry.
But she took it beyond writing
and began to paint
and found that she could
truly relax,
be comfortable, and express
herself through her painting.
>> As in all of our lives,
I think gardens enrich
our lives, they create a sense
of poetry in the landscape,
and she understood that
as a poet and as an artist.
It also came through
in her artwork.
We see in the collections
of Celia Thaxter pottery
that we have here,
and artwork that we have here,
that she was painting from some
of those simple heirloom flowers
that she had in her gardens.
>> She would paint flowers
from her garden
with botanical accuracy,
and she did this year round.
In the stormy cold winter,
she had visual images
of her beautiful garden,
and then would paint.
>> "While the music went on,
while the people went in and out
and talked and talked, I painted
on steadily, every minute."
>> Through her painting,
she knew Childe Hassam
and many other painters.
>> They made their gardens
a gathering place.
For Celia Thaxter,
the garden was one part
of salon life.
It's a way that she heightened
the pleasurable experience
of attending her salon.
>> "Opening out
on the long piazza,
"over the flower beds
"and extending almost
its whole length,
"runs the large, light,
airy room where a group
"of happy people gather to pass
"the swiftly flying summers
here at the Isles of Shoals.
"Year after year,
"a long procession
of charming people come and go
"within its doors,
"and the flowers that glow
for their delight
"seem to listen with them
"to the music that stirs
each blossom upon its stem.
"Often have I watched
the great red poppies
"drop their fiery petals
wavering solemnly
"to the floor, stricken
with the arrows
"of melodious sound
"from the matchless violin
answering to the touch
"of a master,
"or to the storm of rich
vibrations from the piano.
"What heavenly music has
resounded from those walls?
"What mornings and evenings
of pleasantness have flown by
in that room?"
>> It was just wonderful
being in her salon,
because a famous pianist
would be playing,
a violinist would be playing,
she would be painting,
there were these beautiful
flower arrangements all around.
>> "Near my own seat
in a sofa corner
"at one of the south windows
stands yet another small table,
"covered with a snow-white
linen cloth embroidered in silk
"as white and lustrous
as silver.
"On this are gathered
every day all the rarest
"and loveliest flowers
as they blossom,
"that I may touch them,
dwell on them,
"breathe their delightful
fragrance and adore them.
"Here are kept the daintiest
and most delicate of the vases,
"which may best set off
the flowers' loveliness,
"the smallest of the collection,
"for the table is only large
enough to hold a few.
"Mr. Paine has been playing
sonatas for me this morning,
"ending with the great
'Appassionata.'
"I say 'me,' for there's
no one else to listen.
"Sat on the yellow sofa,
I in my corner here,
"whence I can look out
to the sunlit, glowing garden
"through the openings
in the vines,
"on the breezy sparkling sea,
whereon the haze lies
"like the soft bloom on grapes.
And it makes everything
dreamy and beautiful."
>> Celia was motivated in part
by her financial situation,
and Celia found that she could
take a volume of her poetry,
which would sell for $1.25,
and add paintings,
and for each image
that she created on a page
of her own poetry book,
she could charge
an additional dollar.
>> She'd had quite an industry
going on the island.
She painted china, which was
a very genteel thing
for a lady to do, and she also
illustrated published books
of her poems
with little watercolors,
and some of those beautiful
books survive,
and she would sell those
to the guests in her parlor,
along with the paintings
by people like Childe Hassam
and others.
If you were lucky enough
to be invited into the parlor
to listen to the musicians and
to have the stimulating chat,
you also probably
had an opportunity
to buy a painting
and take it home with you.
He was an illustrator, which is
a frequent beginning point
for American artists
in the 19th century.
So as an illustrator,
and eventually
a very talented watercolorist,
he started to meet people
in the artistic community in
Boston, which was quite small.
And among the people he met
was Celia Thaxter,
sometime in the early '80s,
so he was only
about 20, 21 years old
when he met her.
>> The story is
that his name was
Frederick C. Hassam,
and then she convinced him
to change it
to Childe Hassam, that it would
be more dramatic
and more artistic.
>> As she did with many artists,
Celia inspired
the young Childe Hassam
to kind of
be absorbed in her garden
and in the beauties of nature
that she was
sort of experimenting with
on the grounds.
He was very interested
in the rocks of Appledore,
which had all kinds of
associations and meanings.
>> From the late 1800s
until World War II, there was
a proliferation
of garden writing.
And women were entering
the field and writing books,
autobiographical books,
about their own gardens.
>> "Year after year,
the island garden has grown
"in beauty and charm,
so that in response
"to the many entreaties
of strangers as well as friends
"who have said to me,
summer after summer,
"'Tell us how you do it--
write a book about it
"'and tell us how it is done,
that we may go also
"and do likewise'...
"I have written
this book at last.
"Truly, it contains the fruit
of much sweet and bitter
experience."
>> An Island Garden is just
a beautiful, beautiful book.
The illustrations are by
Childe Hassam, and her writing,
I think it's the best writing
that she did.
She didn't... it was
her last book,
and I think that she did not
quite finish it.
But she had become very friendly
with Sarah Orne Jewett,
who was Annie Fields' partner,
and Sarah Orne Jewett,
I think, finished the book
in the end for her.
>> Celia was completely
comfortable
in inviting Sarah's advice
on her book,
and there are at least four
letters that were written
through the time that Celia was
writing the book--
letters written to Sarah,
talking about Sarah's advice
and what Celia had been able
to do with it,
asking questions and guidance.
>> "To Sarah Orne Jewett,
Portsmouth.
"Thank you for your sweet letter
and all your kind suggestions.
"Dear, you have given me
a real helpful lift,
"because I've been doing
this work
"without a particle
of enthusiasm,
"in a most perfunctory manner
"from the bits of notes
I had made,
"and my mind has been
so saddened by deep shadows
"for many months.
"Somehow I had
no heart in it at all.
"I'm hoping when I go
to the Shoals presently
"to get some of the real flavor
of the place
"and the work into it.
"I was so happy when I wrote
the Shoals book.
"It wrote itself.
"But now the shadows are so
long, and it grows so lonesome
"on this earth, and there is
such a chill
where there used to be
such warmth and bliss."
Celia Thaxter.
>> Towards the end of Celia's
life, she was suffering, I know,
from what they called
a nervous disorder,
which I think was a common name
for women's diseases
in that time.
She was sometimes depressed,
she was very overweight,
so I think that she was
just ill, and nobody knew
exactly what it was.
>> NARRATOR: Ultimately,
the work was finished,
and the author and artist
produced a book
of lasting beauty.
It was to be Celia's last work.
Just three months
after the book's publication
in June 1894,
Celia Thaxter died at age 59.
She's buried on Appledore,
near her beloved garden.
>> She just died in her sleep,
and luckily,
Sarah Orne Jewett was there,
Childe Hassam, and several other
of her closest friends.
And the next morning they
covered her coffin with flowers,
and they carried her to
this very peaceful resting place
near her garden.
>> "The day was still and soft,
and the veiled sun was declining
"as the solemn procession,
bearing flowers,
"followed to the sacred place.
"At a respectful distance above
"stood a wide ring
of interested observers,
"but only those who knew her
and loved her best drew near.
"After all was done,
and the body was at rest
"upon the fragrant bed
prepared for it,
"the young flower bearers
brought their burdens
"to cover her.
"The bright, tear-stained faces
"of those who held up their arms
full of flowers
"to be heaped upon the spot
"until it became
a mound of blossoms,
"allied the scene in beauty
and simplicity
"to the solemn rites
of antiquity.
"It was indeed a poet's burial,
but it was far more than that.
"It was the celebration
of the passing
of a large and beneficent soul."
Annie Fields.
>> NARRATOR: With no one
to devote the hours needed
to maintain the garden as Celia
had, the garden declined,
much as did the business
of the Appledore House.
The end came in 1914
when fire destroyed the hotel,
Celia's cottage,
and the remains of her garden.
With no year-round residence
and just a few summer cottages,
Appledore was mostly abandoned,
an island of bushes
and poison ivy
presided over by several
thousand gulls.
And there it remained
until a curious Cornell
professor had an idea.
Dr. John M. Kingsbury
was seeking a place
to offer a summer
marine science program.
In order to create his program
on wild Appledore,
Kingsbury had to acquire boats
and build a wharf, roads,
dormitories, dining hall,
and a laboratory,
and provide electricity, fresh
water, and a sewage system.
>> The Shoals Marine Lab
is run jointly
by Cornell University and the
University of New Hampshire.
The primary mission of the lab
is to provide education
in the marine sciences
for undergraduates.
And money raised
by our garden tours
goes to support that mission.
>> NARRATOR:
Kingsbury became interested
in Celia Thaxter's book,
and the idea
of recreating her garden moved
from concept to reality.
>> I felt that it would be
useful to try to revive
Celia Thaxter's garden.
As a botanist, that was of
scientific interest to me.
As a gardener, it was of
considerable interest to me.
>> NARRATOR: Kingsbury cleared
the site of the original garden,
and using archival seeds
acquired from Cornell
plantations, by the late 1970s
he was able to plant,
as near as possible,
the same flowers that
Celia herself had nurtured
so painstakingly
a century earlier.
>> After we got
the garden planted,
people began
to find out about it.
We didn't publicize it at all,
but there was
a tremendous amount of interest
there as the word leaked out
that it had been
brought back to life.
>> And this was probably
in 1990.
And that's when
the tour started.
Every week, people would
go out on the Laighton.
>> The tours got started
in a very interesting way.
Dr. Heiser, a former director
of the Shoals Marine Laboratory,
was annoyed with
the people coming to see
this infamous garden,
and had the brilliant idea
that if he picked one day
that they could come,
instead of just showing up
willy-nilly,
and then charging them
an amount that he thought
was exorbitant,
they would certainly stop coming
and bothering him on his island
while he was teaching classes.
And it had the opposite effect,
and they're still coming
to this day.
It's become one
of our very best,
possibly our very best,
ambassadors
for the Shoals Marine Lab,
because it brings
so many people to see.
It's a goodwill
ambassador for us.
>> Walking up to the garden,
it seems very unassuming.
But once you walk into the
garden and look at the variety
of heritage plants
in the garden, and walk
through that arbor with
the holly growing on it
and you see the foundation
of the house in the background
and compare that to the pictures
that you see,
and you realize how much
you really are standing
in the middle of history.
>> NARRATOR: While Kingsbury
could oversee the garden,
the tasks of planting
and maintaining the flowers
through the season
required too much of his time.
Fortunately, a loyal group
of volunteers,
led by Virginia Chisholm of the
Rye Beach Driftwood Garden Club,
committed to weekly visits
to Appledore.
>> One day Ginny was
in the bookstore,
and the proprietor talked to her
about his interaction
with Dr. Kingsbury
from the Shoals Marine Lab
and asked her about her interest
in possibly taking on
yet another garden.
And Ginny,
whose husband, Bill Chisholm,
had been a birder
out on Appledore for many years,
decide maybe it was her turn
to get out to the Shoals
and get involved
in Celia's garden
in one way, shape, or form.
At that time,
little did she know
that for the next 25
or so years,
she would be the grand dame
of the garden.
My husband Mark and I went out
to the Shoals Marine Lab
about 12 years ago to an adult
and family ed course of theirs
entitled,
"A Garden is a Sea of Flowers."
After our experience
on the island at this course,
about a week later,
our telephone rang, and it was
Virginia Chisholm, the caretaker
at the time of Celia's garden.
And she said, "I'm getting old
and I need to pass
"my torch on
to some younger blood.
"Would you and your husband
be interested in coming back
to take care of this garden?"
And Mark and I replied,
"This dream has come true!
"Yes, of course, Ginny,
we would love to take care
of that garden for you."
>> The fact that I had been
going out to Appledore
since I was a very small boy...
it was my childhood playground.
So any opportunity for me
personally to be
on Appledore Island was enough.
>> In the winter, Ginny and I
and Mark got together
to talk about how,
over the years, and where,
she has procured the seeds from,
and the relationship
between Ginny and the
UNH greenhouse, who grows
the plants for Celia's garden.
>> What we're trying to do
is produce a plant
that's large enough to go
to the island,
but doesn't outgrow the 606
before it's ready to travel
out to the island.
So as you look at the bench,
it kind of matures-- things that
are started earlier and then
things that are started later,
so they'll be all
about the same size when they're
ready to go out to the island.
We do direct-seed a few things
that go directly into the pot
that don't transplant well,
so they go out as a unit,
rather than going out
in a six-pack.
>> NARRATOR: In early June,
led by Pam and Mark,
a group of volunteers
transfers the seedlings
from the greenhouse
to the dock at Portsmouth
for the trip to Appledore.
The flowers are planted
the next day in Celia's garden.
>> Bill Chisholm,
Ginny's husband,
who's a dear, dear, dear man,
his favorite bloom in the
garden, and one of mine also,
is the salpiglossis.
He liked it because
he liked to say,
"salpiglossis."
I like it because it's
very colorful and beautiful.
>> When I arrived in Rye, I
found out that Ginny Chisholm
was starting looking
for volunteers
to help with maintaining
and taking care of Celia
Thaxter's garden on Appledore.
And having been a fan
of Celia Thaxter's poetry
since my childhood,
I was very eager to get in
and join this happy group.
>> The single most asked-about
bloom in the garden, hands down,
100%, always, is the scabiosa
just inside the fence.
It's this dark,
almost a black, bloom.
>> "Yet still the summers come.
"The flowers bloom,
are gathered and adored,
"not without wistful thought
of the eyes that will see them
no more."
>> NARRATOR: Celia Thaxter's
star shown brightly
during her later years.
But it dimmed for decades
after her death.
With the recreation
of her garden,
the life of this remarkable
Victorian woman
once again commands
our attention.
>> "Often I hear people say,
"'How do you make your plants
flourish like this?'
"as they admire the little
flower patch
"I cultivate in summer,
"or the window gardens that
bloom for me in the winter.
"'I can never make my plants
blossom like this!
"What is your secret?'
"And I answer with one word--
love, for that includes all:
"the patience that endures
continual trial,
"the constancy that
makes perseverance possible,
"the power of foregoing ease
of mind and body to minister
"to the necessities
of the thing beloved,
"and the subtle bond
of sympathy, which is
as important, if not more so,
than all the rest."
Celia Thaxter.
Captioned by Media Access Group
at WGBH, access.wgbh.org