So I’ve been playing around with planting succulents in some antique store finds to make them real focal points in the house now that winter is coming and my darlings can’t stay outside any longer. I am also planning to give some of these as gifts for the holidays. Wouldn’t these also make classy centerpieces when grouped on a table at a formal dinner or wedding recption?
Wouldn’t you know it…today is National Public Garden Day! It’s a great excuse to visit some great displays of horticulture, including those at Longwood Gardens. The photos below were taken in Longwood’s Palm House, which happens to be where I was working today. There are many reasons why public gardens merit admiration and a journey to experience them. However, I think my top reason for enjoying the public garden environment is that these gardens often transport you to places that might otherwise be far away, such as a tropical forest or a Japanese tea house.
What’s your favorite public garden and what are some of the reasons you enjoy visiting?
Sketch is a lovely little gift from my friend, Erica A.
Just a little celebratory note that this blog quietly turned “1″ the other day. How time flies when you’re in gardening bliss! Be sure to browse the archives to see how it has evolved over the last 365 days. And thanks for following along on my gardening adventures!
What a great weekend I just had – two days of new and invigorating gardening experiences. On Saturday, I took on the role of teaching assistant for a wonderful Longwood continuing education class on making living wreaths with succulents. Ginny Levvy led the class and proved she’s a woman with a great deal of know-how and a quirky wit. I really enjoyed interacting with the students and seeing yet another method for making a living wreath. The process we used for this class was much more manageable for the home gardener than the one I’ve participated in to create the huge wreaths used in Longwood’s holiday display.
On Sunday, I turned over a new garden plot, this one in a start-up community garden I recently helped launch in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia. This plot is much smaller than my existing garden (only 10′ x 5′), but it will be mine for as long as I’d like (versus having to give up my garden here at Longwood next spring when I graduate). After removing the existing sod and digging out any large rocks or debris (old wrench and bolts, anyone?), the plots were tilled and amended with mushroom compost. There are 28 plots in this somewhat compact community garden, and I’m quickly getting to know many neighbors. Once the plants start growing, I’m sure we’ll all become even closer with regular produce swaps from our postage stamp plots.
I’ve decided to dedicate my small space to growing an assortment of edible perennials that will hopefully have a long and productive, yet low-maintenance, life in this little garden. On the list so far are a compact high-bush blueberry, a lingonberry, a gooseberry, a red currant, a couple rhubarb plants, and a few delphiniums to attract beneficial insects and pollinators.
Spring seems to finally be knocking at our door here in Pennsylvania. The weather has been consistently above freezing and there’s that distinctive smell in the air. As the new growing season settles in, I got a few questions from a friend about how to go about starting a garden in her back yard. It made me realize that there are many approaches and mine has changed since becoming a professional horticulturist. I put together the following list of steps to take for anyone who’s brand new to gardening on a piece of land that’s never been gardened before. While these 10 steps are best applied to a garden being created from scratch, several of them are good to repeat with an established garden once in awhile.
I’ve just returned from a great little workshop hosted at the fabulous historical Wyck Garden on the topic of applying permaculture principles to the urban landscape. Led by Phil Forsyth, director of the Philadelphia Orchard Project, participants got a great tutorial on how to put permaculture to use in Philadelphia neighborhoods. Many of those in attendance were already practicing sustainability in their gardens and found the principles overlap quite a bit with permaculture.
Today was the first significant snow accumulation of 2009, putting three fluffy inches on the ground. My garden was no doubt appreciative of the blanket, considering the temperatures have been in the teens and twenties as of late. It was nice to see the quintessential winter scene across the field where my garden lays, backlit by a stunning winter sunset.
With snowy weather outside comes an itch to cultivate something green inside. I started to force bulbs last week and they are already showing some tender leaves as they perch beneath my south-facing window.
I attended a wreath-making workshop this week and learned how to build fresh wreaths from scratch. I’ve decorated plenty of fresh and fake wreaths over the years, but never constructed one from the frame up. I picked up the technique quickly and easily and look forward to making many more in addition to the two I created during the workshop. Pictured is the one I made of blue spruce and juniper and then decorated with magnolia leaves, dried celosia, gold balls and a simple loop of gold ribbon for hanging.
Another recent activity related to the holidays was a visit to Winterthur to see their Christmas displays. Rather than decorating their gardens in the same extravagant manner as Longwood, Winterthur’s staff focuses on decorating their massive mansion-turned-museum with detailed domestic holiday scenes. Here are a few snap shots.
Pulmonaria ‘Majeste’
At my house in Philadelphia, which we bought this past spring, there is front “yard” that’s really just a rather steep bank with a Cornus alternafolia and large old maple tree casting dense shade onto what is currently a rampant stand of weeds and daylilies. I’ve been debating what to do with it for months now, everything from cutting down the trees to ripping all the herbaceous plants out and just putting in ivy (sad, but true). Thankfully, David Culp came to my rescue. His class on shade perennials has inspired me in so many ways, including giving me a tremendous palette of plants from which to choose in my rehab of this bank of shade. The plants I’ve got in my plans now include:
Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ for its beautiful silver foliage
Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae for its evergreen funky foliage
Gillenia trifoliate, a native plant, for its fall color and prolific summer flowers
Hakonechloa macra as an elegant variegated ground cover with fall color
Hosta sieboldiana ‘Elegans’ for its glamorous blue-green foliage and tolerance of dry
Matteuccia struthiopteris (Ostrich Fern) for vertical drama and edible emerging fronds
Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ for its four season interest and purple blades
Paeonia obovata for its peony flowers (but not fragrant) and jester’s hat seed pods
Pulmonaria ‘Majeste’ for its fascinating solid silvery gray foliage and late spring flowers
Tiarella wherryi for its bottlebrush white flowers in spring
Tricyrtis hirta ‘Alba’ for its white fairy-cap flowers in the fall
The plants in thoughtfully planned sweeps should create an artful combination of blue-silver-gray textures and punctuations of color and extra details in every season.
Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’
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