Polly Hill died.

Horticulturist Polly Hill Dies at Age 100

By JULIA WELLS

Polly Hill, the pioneering horticulturist whose internationally acclaimed work raising trees and shrubs from seed began 50 years ago on a former sheep farm in North Tisbury, died Wednesday morning at Cokesbury Village, her home in Hockessin, Del. She had turned 100 in January.


An amateur scientist, botanist and plant geneticist, Polly Hill’s work rocked the horticulture world by shattering the notion of zonal gardening, which is based on the premise that certain plants grow only in certain climates. Today the 70-acre former North Tisbury farm that was her laboratory for more than 40 years is the Polly Hill Arboretum, where nearly 2,000 plants and trees are displayed around large meadows punctuated by rambling 18th century stone walls. The collection includes camellias and towering magnolias which no one knew could grow north of the Mason-Dixon line, a nationally recognized collection of Stewartia trees, and hardy hollies, conifers, viburnums and rhododendrons. Over the years Polly introduced more than 100 species, including 22 North Tisbury azaleas — low-growing, late blooming, hardy plants, all named after her children and grandchildren.


The arboretum, which is open to the public, was permanently preserved in 1997 through a generous gift from the late Dr. David Smith of West Tisbury.


“Here is a woman who at 50 years old . . . . began as an experimenter. She is a researcher and she is a risk-taker. If you want to start over again, Polly is the model,” Dr. Smith told the Gazette in an interview in 1997.


“I hope that some of the foreign plants I have had so much pleasure in growing will take hold in the Island soil and become permanent Vineyarders,” Polly wrote in a 1964 article in Horticulture Magazine.


And indeed they did.


Mary Louisa Butcher was born on Jan. 30, 1907, the daughter of Howard Butcher Jr. and Margaret Keen Butcher of Ardmore, Pa. Known as Polly from childhood, she attended the Phoebe Anna Thorne Open-Air School for Girls of Bryn Mawr College, where the classrooms had roofs but no walls. In the winter the girls bundled up with mittens and sleeping bags. She later graduated from the Agnes Irwin School and Vassar College, where she majored in music and briefly considered a career as a composer. After college she worked for a year in Tokyo, Japan, teaching English and field hockey at a girls’ college. She also studied traditional flower arrangement.


In 1931 a friend introduced her to Dr. Julian Hill, an organic chemist and a member of the team that had discovered nylon at DuPont. His sojourn in Japan had begun as a child when his father was buying railroad ties for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. Julian and Polly married in 1932. They settled in Wilmington, Del., the headquarters for DuPont, and had three children.


When her children were growing up Polly planted a World War II victory garden at a community garden site a mile away from her home. She commuted to her garden on a bicycle, her youngest child stationed behind her in a wooden box fastened onto the bike.


After the war she studied botany and horticulture at the University of Delaware and at Longwood, a well-known public garden near Wilmington.


In 1957 she and her husband took ownership of Barnard’s Inn Farm, formerly the Smith sheep farm in North Tisbury, where Polly’s family had summered since 1927. Polly began to develop 20 acres of fields into a garden specializing in trees and shrubs. Her mission was to evaluate the best plants and trees to grow on the Vineyard — all from seed. Her husband’s work took him around the world and Polly traveled with him, collecting seeds that she later used in her experiments. She grew most of her specimens in a small outdoor nursery and gave them no attention during the cold season. Seedlings that survived passed the first test as plants suitable for the Vineyard. She studied her trees and shrubs closely for desirable characteristics, selecting the best and later introducing many to the horticulture world.


She never sold her seeds, but instead gave them away, sending them in the mail to horticulturists around the globe.


Later she created what became known famously as her playpen, a planting area the length of a football field surrounded by a deer fence ten feet high. The garden contains her signature North Tisbury azaleas, many of them grown from Japanese seeds.


Known for riding around her property in a bright yellow golf cart, Polly was smart and task-oriented and brooked no nonsense, especially when it came to professional standards in the horticultural world. In a 1998 interview in the Gazette on the eve of the opening of the arboretum, she aimed pointed remarks at professionals who visit gardens with an eye toward taking home a few cuttings.


“People should know that it’s now public, but it doesn’t mean that people own the plants. The plants belong to the arboretum and they have rules. If you are interested in cuttings or pieces, please put it in writing,” she said.


Writing things down was another one of her trademarks. She kept detailed and meticulous records over the years, chronicling her successes — and also her failures. She had enormous patience for her specimens. One of her rare plants, a rhododendron grown from wild seed that she had gathered on the Delmarva Peninsula, took 29 years to bloom.


“What we are seeing in its most native form, she has done genetic engineering. She has stressed the genetic system to render its full potential,” Dr. Smith told the Gazette in the 1997 interview.


This was Polly’s motto for watering: “Every day for a week, every week for a month and every month for a year. Then they’re on their own.”


Her methods were widely chronicled in an array of respected horticulture journals over a period of decades.


Her husband Dr. Julian W. Hill died in 1996 at the age of 91.


A year later Dr. Smith and Polly formed an unusual conservation alliance that allowed the arboretum to be protected permanently as a nonprofit center for horticultural research and education. For the next seven years Polly continued to live in residential quarters on the property known as the cow barn in the summer months, still maintaining daily records of blooming and fruiting plants. She retired at the age of 97.


Dr. Smith, a distinguished scientist in his own right who helped develop a vaccine against childhood meningitis in the 1980s, died in 1999.


This winter while Polly celebrated her 100th birthday at her home in Delaware, at her arboretum on the Vineyard a greenhouse — something she never had — was unveiled in her name. “Polly always had a real optimism for the future. When you decide to plant a tree, you have to be optimistic. You are looking to give something to a future generation,” said arboretum executive director Tim Boland.


At the time of her death this week, daffodils, magnolias, cherry trees and winter hazel were all in bloom at the arboretum, surrounded by greening fields.


She is survived by her daughter Louisa Spottswood Coughlin of Philadelphia, Pa., two sons, Joseph J. Hill of Radnor, Pa., and Jefferson B. Hill of Washington, D.C.; two grandsons, three granddaughters and three great-grandchildren; a brother, Keen Butcher of Philadelphia, and many descendants of her other three brothers and sisters who predeceased her.


A memorial celebration of her life will be held in Cokesbury Village in Hockessin, Del. at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 5. Another celebration will be held on the Vineyard in the summer at a date to be announced.


Donations may be made to the Polly Hill Arboretum Endowment Fund, P.O. Box 561, West Tisbury, MA 02575.

Many Things Have Happened

We got a 10 week old puppy from Barbara and Nick Seamon of Black Sheep fame. Her name is Galatea Stella DuBois (Kowalski seemed a bit too unwieldy). I brought her home this weekend. She enjoys shredding newspapers. Perhaps I should have asked if she came with free cupcakes.

I went to Daniel Hall's dinner and reading last week. The room was packed and the thundering vents drowned out his voice a little but it was wonderful to listen to. At a place in a poem he writes 'like a pair of broken thumbs' and I watched as my entire row flexed their fingers convulsively.

I won the American Poets Prize. I defend my thesis on Thursday. I read for the Glascock on Friday. On Saturday I will have comments on my poetry from W.D. Snodgrass. Oh, it's quite a week.

I am trying to make more time to read.

And so it begins.

Supreme Court upholds late-term abortion ban

Story Highlights
• 5-4 ruling could open door to revisiting Roe v. Wade
• Justice Kennedy: Law does not violate constitutional right to abortion
• New justices Alito, Roberts provided solid conservative majority to uphold ban
• Federal law has never gone into effect pending court rulings
By Bill Mears
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a law that banned a type of late-term abortion, a ruling that could portend enormous social, legal and political implications for the divisive issue.

The sharply divided 5-4 ruling could prove historic. It sends a possible signal of the court's willingness, under Chief Justice John Roberts, to someday revisit the basic right to abortion guaranteed in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.

At issue is the constitutionality of a federal law banning a rarely performed type of abortion carried out in the middle-to-late second trimester.

The legal sticking point was that the law lacked a "health exception" for a woman who might suffer serious medical complications, something the justices have said in the past is necessary when considering abortion restrictions.

In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, the key swing vote in these divided appeals, said the federal law "does not have the effect of imposing an unconstitutional burden on the abortion right." He was joined by his fellow conservatives, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Roberts.
Sole woman on bench reads bitter dissent

In a bitter dissent read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on the high court, said the majority's opinion "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away a right declared again and again by this court, and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."

She called the ruling "alarming" and noted the conservative majority "tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases" by doctor's groups, including gyncecologists.

The Justice Department and abortion rights groups have offered differing views of the legislation's impact on women's overall second trimester access to the procedure, and whether the procedure is ever medically necessary.

This was the first time the high court had heard a major abortion case in six years, and since then, its makeup has changed, with Roberts and Alito now on board.

Their presence on the bench provided the solid conservative majority needed to allow the federal ban to go into effect, with Kennedy providing the key fifth vote for a majority.

Alito replaced Sandra Day O'Connor, a key abortion rights supporter over her quarter century on the bench.

Doctors call this type of late-term abortion an "intact dilation and evacuation." Abortion foes term it a "partial-birth abortion."

Three federal appeals courts had ruled against the government, saying the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is unconstitutional because it does not provide a "health exception" for pregnant women facing a medical emergency. The outcome of this latest challenge before the court's new ideological makeup could turn on the legal weight given past rulings on the health exception.

In states where such exceptions are allowed, the lists of possible health risks include severe blood loss, damage to vital organs and loss of fertility. Court briefs noted pregnant women having the procedure most often have their health threatened by cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure or risk of stroke. Doctors are given the discretion to recommend when the late-term procedure should be performed.

The federal law has never gone into effect, pending the outcome of nearly three years of legal appeals.

Specifically, the ban encompasses what doctors call "intact dilation and evacuation" (also known as IDX), which Congress in its legislation termed inhumane.

It is a rarely used second-trimester procedure, designed to reduce complications to the woman. More common is "dilation and evacuation" (D&E), used in 95 percent of pre-viability second-trimester abortions, according to Planned Parenthood. Both are generally performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.

A major part of the legal dispute was whether the federal ban also includes the relatively more common "standard D&E abortions." The government contends the law does not, and is sufficiently narrow not to place an "undue burden" on a woman's reproductive choices.

Raw numbers were also at the heart of the debate, because the two sides disagreed on how often the procedure is performed. Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Justice Department's top lawyer before the court, suggested it is rarely performed, and that other medical options are available, so banning it would therefore not be a real barrier to women.

Abortions rights supporters say "intact" abortions are a medically accepted pre-viability, second-trimester procedure.

Since the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, some states have tried to place restrictions and exceptions on access to the procedure, prompting a string of high court "clarifications" on the issue over the years.

London Calling

On weeks like this, when it rains for days and days, I miss London. There the sky was so steeled and heavy but despite the stereotype, it almost never rained. Not like this steady, 3 day pour that has the worms out on the pavement. The water has almost dissolved the dead squirrel that was almost perfect except for its mashed in skull, which has been out on the crosswalk in front of Valentine for a while now.

I am determined to have it be warm. I cannot help but think of how this time last year I was in Paris for a month, with my orange and purple lilies from the market on the table. It was warm and I wore skirts and a light jacket, and it was sunny almost every day. I was alone and lonely, but it was the best loneliness I've ever experience, I think. I went for walks by the river, bought books of poetry and earrings.

And then back to London, with the dirty buzz of the East End and those marvelous, marvelous people. I learned where to buy good garam masala and how to make a killer curry. Papaya was the cheapest fruit. I will never forget them, all of our nights, reading when we felt like reading, becoming experts at cooking pasta because it was 49p from the shop around the corner, one pound red beer from the school pub, which I can find nowhere else. (Cider, beer, topped off with red currant syrup?) In our Literary Criticism class, reading Lucky Jim, Prof. Pritchard asked us if we'd ever known Dixon's predicament of having too much beer. Yes. Yes, I do.

Steingarten for President

'This time I was not 100 percent apoplectic, because it seems pretty clear that trans fats are really bad for us. On the other hand, what about pie? I do get extremely upset when I think about pie. Isn't a ban on trans fats the functional equivalent of a ban on piecrust and thus upon pie itself? Pie is the key to a contented life. I simply cannot manage without pie.'

-Jeffrey Steingarten

Onward and Upward

I've finally made a blog. Well, to be truthful, I've made several in the past, but they have been abandoned and lost to the nebulous inter-web. I enjoy blogs, mostly due to the fact that I love reading about the lives of strangers (don't hate, you know you love it too). It's a part of our culture, some genre unique to these generations. But mostly I do this out of some need to compartmentalize my life. I turned 22 a couple of weeks ago, and found myself no further along than I had felt the year before, celebrating 21 with some of the best people I've ever known, in one of the best places I've ever lived in. The years are blending together. Maybe if I record more of the days, I can slow myself down.