ELIZABETH WHITE
I have a soft spot for all kinds of gardeners, but especially for women who were pioneers in the field. If I could host an imaginary garden party for some of those green-fingered females, I would include Ellen Willmott, a rich, twentieth century Englishwoman who cultivated plants and gardens to the point of bankruptcy; Napoleon’s consort, Empress Josephine, who had even more money, even more plants and even bigger debts and Vida Sackville West, who wrote so beautifully about the denizens of her own garden and those of others. Madame Pompadour, eighteenth century French courtesan and flower lover, would be in attendance, as would Sarah Elizabeth Backhouse, breeder of daffodils in the early twentieth century. Naturally I would also invite Beatrix Jones Farrand, Ellen Biddle Shipman and Marian Cruger Coffin, stars in the male-dominated firmament of landscape architecture and garden design in the first two thirds of the twentieth century.
My guest list would undoubtedly get so long that I would bankrupt myself buying punch and finger sandwiches.
I would also make a point of inviting Elizabeth Coleman White (1871-1954), entrepreneur, horticulturist, farmer, native plant collector and mother of New Jersey’s commercial blueberry business. Not long ago, I visited her home, Suningive, which still stands in the heart of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.
Elizabeth White was a Quaker–one of a long line of Society of Friends’ members who played pivotal roles in American and English horticulture. She was born thirty years after her grandfather, James A. Fenwick, purchased over four hundred acres of swampy, degraded land in the Pine Barrens. By the time of her birth, her father, J.J. White, had turned Fenwick’s small scale cranberry farming operation into a major enterprise, encompassing over 3,000 acres. The little village of Whitesbog, near Browns Mills, was the self sufficient hub of the cranberry business, with a general store, worker housing, storage and processing facilities and a schoolhouse. After graduating from Quaker schools in Philadelphia, Elizabeth, the oldest of White’s four daughters, went to work in the family business. By the time she was forty, she had succeeded her father as proprietor of the cranberry operation and established herself as a leader among New Jersey cranberry producers. Instead of having a mid-life crisis, she had a mid-life renaissance, reaching out to a noted botanist with an offer to underwrite and collaborate on research and breeding efforts to develop a commercially viable strain of the wild highbush blueberries that grew in southern New Jersey.
Ms. White paid local Pine Barrens natives, known as “Pineys,” top dollar to locate the best wild blueberry bushes. These were planted in test beds at Whitesbog and cross bred until stable varieties were developed. One of those varieties, ‘Ruble’, was the progenitor of blueberry cultivars that are still in widespread commercial use.
The blueberry bushes were cultivated alongside the cranberry bogs and succeeded as a commercial crop. Other farmers soon began raising the berries, leading Elizabeth White to found the first New Jersey blueberry growers’ cooperative. Today, sixty years after her death and one hundred years after the first blueberry crop, New Jersey ranks second in the nation in production of cultivated blueberries.
While she was running her agricultural enterprises, Elizabeth White also nurtured an interest in native plants, especially those that grew in the highly acidic, boggy soil of the Pine Barrens. She had a special interest in hollies and heathers, some of which still grow at Whitesbog. She also grew uncommon species like swamp magnolia, sand myrtle and Pine Barrens gentian in her garden at Suningive and took every opportunity to spread the native plant gospel by way of local and national articles and radio appearances. In her early eighties, she established a native plant nursery, “Holly Haven,” close to Whitesbog. Though it did not survive long after her death, the nursery shipped hundreds of hollies and other plants to native plant aficionados, thereby increasing cultivation and awareness of acid-living species.
Cranberries still grow on part of the Whitesbog property, which is now owned by the State of New Jersey as part of the Brendan Byrne State Forest. A non-profit organization, the Whitesbog Preservation Trust, which is headquartered at Suningive, is in the process of restoring the little village and replanting Ms. White’s native species in her garden and elsewhere on the site. Whitesbog’s buildings have been stabilized and the General Store on the property is open on weekends. As spring progresses, the native wildflowers, blueberry bushes, azaleas and magnolias will burst into bloom. In late June, Whitesbog will hold its annual Blueberry Festival, which draws hundreds of visitors. Some of them will even be greeted by a costumed interpreter in the guise of Elizabeth White, whose spirit and inspiration still resonate in the Pine Barrens and beyond.
For more information about Elizabeth White and Whitesbog, go to www.whitesbog.org.