by Liz Smitten, Certified Master Gardener

Originally printed in Lubbock Memorial Arboretum Newsletter, May, 2006

Over thirty years ago, on a month-long visit to England, we drove to Sissinghurst, the legendary garden created by Vita Sackville-West and her husband. It was a soft, sunny August morning, and looking down on the entire garden from the vantage point of the tower, a magical kingdom was spread out before us, the colors blending like a Medieval tapestry, but with no unicorn in sight. From this vantage point it was easy to see how the various specialty gardens both within and outside the old walls had been laid out, and to decide which paths we would take that day, and which would be deferred for another visit.

Of all the wonderful plants and garden designs I saw that August, two images have stayed with me – the breathtaking view from the tower, and my first sight of the remnants of the original Norman moat wall sheltering an ancient Cotinus coggyria, or smoke tree, in full bloom, lifting its wispy, buff-pink panicles to the heavens. Over the years I have seen that tree so many times – in my memory, in gardening books about this fabled landscape; during other trips to England; and, as a younger and smaller version, tucked in a corner of my own garden in Lubbock.

For, once upon a time, in the dead of winter, as the stack of garden catalogs on my coffee table grew daily, on the back pages of one of the catalogs, I discovered, below the words “BUY ANY PLANT ON THIS PAGE FOR ONLY $2!”, a photo labeled ‘pink smoke tree’, which I knew as the beautiful Cotinus coggyria of Sissinghurst. I immediately completed the order blank, wrote a check in which the shipping charges were more than the cost of the tree, and happily awaited delivery. Ten days later a waxed mailing container about the size of a paper towel tube arrived, with a twelve inch stick wrapped in newspapers too damp to read (which is one of my idiosyncratic pleasures when plants arrive by mail). There were no planting directions, no indication of growth at either end of the stick, no discernible leaf nodes, not a sign to let me know which end was up, in short, nothing to denote that this might be a living plant. But I had paid $2 (plus shipping), and I am nothing if not thrifty, so I found a clean wallpaper trough, half filled it with potting soil, gently laid the twig horizontally in the tray, covered it with more potting soil, gave it a drink of water, carried the tray to the garage where I would periodically water it as the soil dried out, and waited for a miracle.

Shortly before Easter that year I brushed the soil back from the tray, and, as is the way in fairy tales, one end of the twig had sprouted roots. I chose a corner of the back garden next to the fence (the closest structure I have to a moat wall), and planted my tree. At my annual Easter brunch I announced that I had a Cotinus coggyria tree just like the one at Sissinghurst and proudly, amidst much good-natured laughter, pointed out what was now six inches of bare twig sticking up from the earth. For the first four years, every Easter my friends teased as they asked to see my smoke tree, which was slowly growing by a couple of inches a year, and if Easter was late enough, might have a leaf or two showing. By the time my tree was ten years old, it had begun to grow in earnest, was as high as the fence, had soft burgundy new foliage, smoky panicles in August and September, and the orangy-copper late fall foliage for which the species is noted.
And so, in the best tradition of miracles, happy endings, and fairy tales, my Cotinus coggyria, which is now 19 years old and 18 feet tall, serves as a lovely remembrance in honor of Vita and the vision of her smoke tree by the moat in the magic gardens of Sissinghurst.