Some answers to questions people always seem to ask
Such as ....'Why? Why do you grow all of this junk?)
My name is Matt Mattus, and I live and garden in central Massachusetts, about an hour west of Boston, smack in the middle of the state (and the snow belt). I live in the house and garden on the land that has been in my family for about 100 years and my grandfather built the house so every plant, tree, rock and structure has a history. It’s the sort of garden where when I dig for potatoes, I sometimes find a Mr. Potato Head body circa 1955 from my oldest brother, or a marble from the 1920’s that was my uncle or my dads. I can tell you who planted every tree, and when, which is weird when most are over 70 years old, but nice in a way.
I live in this silly, quirky, messy old house with my partner of 25 years, Joe, 3 Irish Terriers (Fergus, Margaret and Lydia), 6 Chinese pheasants, a tortoise named Doppler, an African Grey Parrot named Kojo, a white dove named Figaro and about 200 fancy show pigeons of various types and 14 Indian Runner Ducks for eggs. (I know, Joe is an animal hoarder, but then again, I hoard plants).
Where do you grow all of your plants?
I am very lucky to have a glass greenhouse that I built about ten years ago. I modeled it after Logee’s greenhouses in Danielson Ct (not as big) but it is 33 feet long and 30 feet wide, and 16 feet tall. I have it built over my part of our vegetable garden, which obviously, had been a cultivated vegetable garden for about 9o years so that I could plant trees like Acacia’s and Camellias in the ground. I heat it with propane and positioned it by looking in the yard on the winter solstice, to see where the sunniest part was on the shortest day of the year.
Outdoors, I grow everything else on 2.5 acres, that again, was landscaped in 1920 my by fathers brothers (a couple of them were landscape designers). The gardens pre-WW2, were formal (sounds fancy, but actually this is a very residential neighborhood). There were rose gardens, a cement goldfish pond and fountain, a round golf putting green, a badminton court and a basketball court. All of that is gone now, and I am left with 100 foot spruces, white pines and other tall trees, which leaves me with more of a garden restoration than a garden design project on my hand.
Is this your full-time job?
Hardly! I am the Director of Visual Development for a Hasbro, in a group called HasLAB, a high concept development group, so as you can imagine, finding time for anything else (like vacations or to relax) is just about impossible. My background is graphic design, and I am the author of the book BEYOND TREND- How to Innovate In An Over-Designed World, published by HOW Magazine and FandWMedia. I am also a frequent speaker at many design and trend conferences, and a judge for design annuals like the HOW Magazine International Design Annual.
So, how do you find time for all of this?
Really?
I don’t know, I just do it (and most of the time, I feel that I really don’t do it very well, since I rush things). But if I was honest, I guess I would say that finding time for anything you are passionate about shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. Since, if you really love doing something and if you are obsessed about it, you will find time. I sometimes blog first thing in the morning when I wake up (at 4:30 AM), I photograph things in the evenings in the summer, and on the weekends. I guess that I grow so much, that even in one weekend, I can get enough images for a weeks worth of posts.
I don’t know, I just do it (and most of the time, I feel that I really don’t do it very well, since I rush things). But if I was honest, I guess I would say that finding time for anything you are passionate about shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. Since, if you really love doing something and if you are obsessed about it, you will find time. I sometimes blog first thing in the morning when I wake up (at 4:30 AM), I photograph things in the evenings in the summer, and on the weekends. I guess that I grow so much, that even in one weekend, I can get enough images for a weeks worth of posts.
How long have you been gardening?
I remember two things. First, my parents were gardeners, although not at the level I was, but I was really fortunate to be raised in a family in the 1960’s and 1970’s that spent much of their time gardening, or picking wild mushrooms, wild blueberries and nuts. Our vegetable garden was huge, and my mom canned just about everything in crazy amounts (clearly, I inherited her obsessiveness). I can remember many hot, humid summer nights, after she came home from her job as an accountant, to bushels of green beans all spilled out onto the kitchen floor onto a white tarp, and we would all clean them, as she canned them late into the night.
What about your plants? DO you really grow everything?
Unless I am visiting a garden, most of my posts are of plants that I grow. This is important to me, for garden writers often write about plants that they never have actually grown themselves, which I never understood.
I make it a point to grow more than one species, and I particularly like to try and find numerous species of one genus to grow from seed, so that I can share all of the subtle differences between the genus.
I would say that I treat my plant collections like museum collections, ‘installing’ installations in my sand beds, which may focus on a theme, or to show numerous species. I am always looking for rare seed from expeditions, or traveling myself to places like the Alps, South America or Asia for new species or for influence.
I have grown from periods when I was passionate about Daylilies and Hosta 20 years ago, to today, where I grow many South African Bulbs and Chilean plants. At any one time, I probably collect 10 to 15 genus, and after 5 or so years, I move on to new ones, to keep discovering new things. But, I must grow them to perfection otherwise; I feel that I could not accurately write about them.
How do you take all of those photos? Are you a professional photographer?
I am not a photographer, hardly! But I have directed many professional photoshoots for my job as an art director for years, so yeah, I guess I have an eye. It helps to know how stylists work in NY, and how to compose a shot. Just don’t ask me to tell you the F-stop or lens that I use!
I use a Nikon D200 and a D300 with many lenses. I sometimes use a tripod, and sometimes not. I always use natural light.
How do you know so much about plants?
I am not an expert, but I guess I do know alot which comes through experience, after all, I have been gardening most of my life, being passionate about the garden and plant collecting even as a young child. SInce I am 50, it's safe to say that I have been gardening for about 44 years. So, for as long as I can remember, I was collecting and growing most everything I could find. As well as reading and researching anything that I can find about the particular plants I was obsessed with at the moment.
I started exhibiting in our horticultural society exhibitions while still in elementary school competing against adults in many classes. By the time I was in high school, I was already breeding daylilies and hosta, and planning to major in Botany in college. I never felt that it was helpful to become a "master gardener' since it wasn't as if I just started growing plants as a young adult, by my late teens, I was already specializing in alpines, saxifrages, gentians and other more challenging genus.
I started exhibiting in our horticultural society exhibitions while still in elementary school competing against adults in many classes. By the time I was in high school, I was already breeding daylilies and hosta, and planning to major in Botany in college. I never felt that it was helpful to become a "master gardener' since it wasn't as if I just started growing plants as a young adult, by my late teens, I was already specializing in alpines, saxifrages, gentians and other more challenging genus.
One key event in my life offered me a rare chance to apprentice for a few summers at a local estate that was designed by famed architect Fletcher Steele. The private garden owned by Robert and Helen Stoddard local industrialists who also were passionate plantspeople, taught me more than any school or university ever could. I worked at the estate for 3 summers in the late 1970's, caring for extensive collections of alpines, daphne, roses and specialized plantings for primula and rare shrubs. In the greenhouse, I learned to propagate tropicals, force bulbs to be brought into the home for the plant windows in late winter, and to cultivate rare South African bulbs.
If I was lucky, I would get to ride in the family helicopter often helping Mr Stoddard unload exotic taxidermy specimens that he shot while on safari in Africa or in Alaska ( someone had to do it) ( many of the specimens at our Science Museum in Boston came from his trips collecting). It was a rare look into a completely different world for me. The Stoddard's eventually left their endowment to create the Tower Hill Botanic Garden, which was the new home for the Worcester County Horticultural Society.
If I was lucky, I would get to ride in the family helicopter often helping Mr Stoddard unload exotic taxidermy specimens that he shot while on safari in Africa or in Alaska ( someone had to do it) ( many of the specimens at our Science Museum in Boston came from his trips collecting). It was a rare look into a completely different world for me. The Stoddard's eventually left their endowment to create the Tower Hill Botanic Garden, which was the new home for the Worcester County Horticultural Society.
Did you go to school for this?
Not really. I did attend Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMASS for one semester, which I found not very challenging, so I begged my parents to let me go to Unity College in Maine where I could major in Environmental Science and eventually, go to Cornell, where I hoped to become an Ornithologist (birds). But, Cornell never Happened. I graduated from Unity with a degree in Environmental Science, and decided to go to Hawaii where I graduated at the University with another degree, this time in Fine Arts and Art History. My dad's artistic side came through.
