The route of the two giant beech trees on their wagons took them through downtown Oyster Bay and necessitated workmen to temporarily take down electrical and telephone lines to allow the huge trees to pass. Hattie was embarrassed by her sister-in-law’s excess and stayed behind to letter place cards with the other women. Edward and Mr. Abbott took Indigo along to witness the spectacle of the pair of sixty-foot trees inching through downtown Oyster Bay. People lined the street to stare at the odd procession. Indigo stood on the back of the buggy to get a better view. The slow progress of the wagons loaded with the trees gave Edward time enough to set up his camera to record the event.
Indigo was shocked at the sight: wrapped in canvas and big chains on the flat wagon was a great tree lying helpless, its leaves shocked limp, followed by its companion; the stain of damp earth like dark blood seeped through the canvas. As the procession inched past, Indigo heard low creaks and groans — not sounds of the wagons but from the trees. The Scottish gardener and Susan followed along behind the wagons in a buggy.
The actual unloading and planting of the two beech trees required another two hours after they arrived. Indigo watched with Edward and Mr. Abbott as the workmen attached chains and ropes to pulleys and the horses lifted the giant trees slowly off the wagons and set them in place. Susan joined them to express her concern the trees might not recover their vigor and appearance in time for the ball, but the Scottish gardener gave her a brisk nod that seemed to reassure her.
As soon as the trees were securely planted, Susan turned her attention to the blue garden itself; she invited Edward and Indigo to join her because she needed advice. The spring and early summer had been unusually dry, and the mainstay of blue gardens, the delphiniums, had suffered considerably and replacements must be found. The blue pansies and the violas were stunted, and the salvias, in so many hues of blue, were hardly better; besides, they were so common in blue gardens.
They followed her down the path to the outbuildings behind the house and gardens. Narcissus in July? Wisteria flowers in midsummer? Here was where it was all done; Susan opened the glass door and cold air rushed refreshingly against Indigo’s face. The Scottish gardener’s cold greenhouse was chilled with blocks of ice delivered three times a week; even the intensity of the light in the glass house was controlled, with muslin shrouds to affect the length of day so the big pots of wisteria, pruned into graceful trees, would bear cascades of sky blue and pure white blossoms for the Masque of the Blue Garden. Pots of blue irises, even big boxes of blue lilacs and blue rhododendrons, would adorn the ballroom, Susan explained.
Whites were as important as blues in the moonlight; on the night of the ball, pots of white wisteria and white bougainvillea would festoon the arches and gateways; cascades of pendulous white and blue wisteria would cover the long marble loggia completely. White lilacs and white azaleas would be scattered among the blue lilacs and blue rhododendrons for drama.
But what to plant in the flower beds around the lily pool? Every year Susan anguished over her choices: blue hydrangeas, blue campanulas, blue cornflowers, blue asters, blue lupines, and pale sky blue columbines were on her list of candidates. Weeks ago, the gardeners had planted every sort of blue-flowering plant imaginable, but now Susan must decide which plants would compose this year’s blue garden.
Surely Edward would help her choose; she wanted the blue garden to hold something new and visually exciting, but something resistant to heat as well. Edward and Indigo followed Susan into the adjoining glass house that was much warmer. Here the damp earth smell enclosed them and Indigo felt a thrill when she saw big baskets of orchids hanging from the ceiling structure. This glass house was much larger than the one in Riverside.
The orchids shared the space with the bedding plants for Susan’s new English landscape garden and, of course, this year’s bedding plants for the blue garden. The glass house delphiniums, the belladonna — both grandiflorum and the Chinese — were thriving in here, but outdoors their older siblings, transplanted weeks before, showed the ravages of drought and heat. The Anchusa azurea, or blue Asian bugloss, growing next to the delphiniums was far less demanding, though its blossoms not as long lived, but they had to last only one night — the night of the ball. Pale blue spiderworts thrived on the other side of the delphiniums, but they preferred cloudy weather and were planted only in case the summer turned wet and cool.
The blue flowers of the Gentiana were wonderful but they would never last in the heat. Edward chose the blue globe thistle and the blue datura for the background, with bluegrass planted with blue Gladiolus byzantius. Jacob’s ladder and blue balloon flowers went next to the blue Carpathian bellflowers. Of course, a veronica of deep blue must be planted with the myosotis; the forget-me-not and the blue Persian cornflowers should be edged with sapphire lobelia.
In low white marble planters near the coolness of the pool’s edge, Aconitum falconeri, blue monkshood, and rare blue primulas would be complemented with blue foxglove. For dramatic effect among the blue flowers, there were drifts or scatterings of white lilies and white foxgloves, white hollyhocks, and bushes of white lavender and white tree lupines. In the blue borders bushy white asters and phlox were planted with white artemisia and white Canterbury bells.
Susan took notes as Edward called out the flowers’ names, and Indigo examined them carefully. She wanted to remember each detail of the leaf and the stalk for all these plants and flowers so she could tell Sister Salt and Mama. She picked up seeds and saved them in scraps of paper with her nightgown and clothes in the valise so she could grow them when she went home.
The dampness steamed the glass but in the next room Indigo could see the tops of palm and banana trees. Dozens of bark fragments covered with jade green moss were planted with hanging orchids, and big pots of orchids lined the walks between the benches that held dozens of potted orchid plants. Edward stopped when he saw the two big Laelia cinnabarina, their fiery orange-red blossoms cascading from their hanging baskets. He felt unexpectedly moved by their magnificent beauty, and the sight of the blossoms overcame him with vivid memories of the fire and his accident. Although he helped collect nearly eight hundred plants, he returned from Brazil without a single specimen of the cinnabarina for himself; the storm and the salt water saw to that.
“Expensive specimens,” Susan said when she saw him pause to examine the cinnabarina.
“Yes, expensive,” Edward murmured, and wondered if these two cinnabarina were specimens he helped to collect. The humidity of the orchid room suddenly made Edward feel unwell. He looked anxiously at the glass house door.
Once they were outside the glass house, Edward stopped to look back at the workmen digging up old path stones in the ruin of the circular garden of herbs. Edward thought Susan was foolish, so he said nothing; only now had the Italian gardens reached their full maturity to reveal the vision of the architect, yet the gardens were being destroyed. His sister might transplant great trees all she wanted, but she would not see her new English gardens reach their maturity unless she lived to be quite old.