New Friends and Their Blogs

Here is part of the crowd of 70 garden bloggers  at the Buffalo Botanical Garden. I was familiar with the blogs of some of these gardeners like Frances (lower left) of Fairegarden, and Susan (center in blue with hat) of Sustainable Gardening Blog, and Helen (in white under the camera) of Toronto Gardens.  Susan is one of the Garden Ranters; she and I worked briefly for an Australian organic gardening website Organic Gardener which made us virtual colleagues! Frances has beautifully photographed gardens in Tennesee, and Helen knows what it is like to garden in a harsh climate.

So I knew some of the garden blogs written by those who showed up for the third annual garden bloggers meet-up in Buffalo at the beginning of the month, but it is a whole other thing to actually meet and get to know those gardeners – and then read their blogs. I may not have been to their gardens (yet) but I do have a richer sense of their personalities and their tastes and passions.

I met lots of bloggers whose blogs I did not know – but I do know now. I have added several of these to my own blogroll, the list of inks to blogs in the right column.  There was a professional discussion at one point about the purpose or desirability of having a blogroll. Most of us thought they were helpful and necessary. I use my own blogroll as an easy way to visit my favorite blogs when I am putting up my post, and I use other people’s blogs as a recommendation. If I like a blog, I figure I will like their favorite blogs as well. I’ve added several new blogs to my blogroll.

I spent a day on the bus with Mary of My Northern Garden. She is the editor of Northern Garden Magazine, and freelance writer. I was interested in how Minnessota gardens differ in challenges from New England gardens. She was generous with information about gardening, and about blogging. She gave out copies of the magazine (beautiful!) which is a publication of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society.

Jean gardens in Louisiana, but her blog, Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog has useful information for all of us. Also it turns out her brother lives in the same area near Houston, Sienna Plantation, as my daughter!  Jean is also a garden coach and she gave me advice about that skill.

Cindy, one energetic lady, is   also from Texas. Her Corner of Katy is also near my daughter. When we visited we went to the immense Katy Mall and shopped. My husband got ‘cowboy shirts’ and a hat to wear in our field. I’m very interested in Texas gardens these days, but no matter where a person gardens, there is some advice that is good for all of us. Besides, our blogs are also about community and family – which are of interest to us all.

We have friends in Sacramento so I was happy to meet Leslie who is Growing a Garden in Davis.  Now I can keep an eye on what Leslie is doing –  and what my garden friends in Sacramento are likely to be doing.   I’ve added these and a few others to my blogroll, but if you’d like to check out blogs of others I met in Buffalo you can logon to the Buffa10 website which has links to them all, and links to recent posts – with great photos – about our garden tours in Buffalo. You will meet some great people.

Reluctantly leaving Mike Shadrack's hosta and daylily gardens

Emily Dickinson at the NYBG

A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King,

But God be with the Clown–

Who ponders this tremendous scene–

This whole Experiment in Green–

As if it were his own!

Emily Dickinson

Spring madness was in the air when I trekked to the New York Botanical Garden for the special exhibit Emily Dickinson’s Garden: Poetry in Flowers. Two rooms of the stunning Enid E. Haupt Conservatory were given over to interpretations of the gardens and Dickinson’s home, The Homestead, in Amherst.

While many of us have a vision of a slight, white clad woman quietly writing odd verses in her bedroom, seeing no one, Emily Dickinson’s early years were quite ordinary. She did not become reclusive until she was in her thirties. Her father was a prominent citizen of the town who served as treasurer of Amherst College for decades, as well as a state legislator and as a member of the U.S. Congress. The household was busy and engaged in the social life of the town.

Born in 1830 Emily, and her sister Lavinia, attended school at the Amherst Academy, and later attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Throughout her girlhood she suffered from health problems, and it was poor health that ended her attendance at Mount Holyoke after only a year.

In spite of her poor health, the family deaths that occurred while she was young, and the view of the Amherst cemetery from the Homestead’s windows, her life was not drenched in sorrow. Emily grew up in a busy family, in a handsome pale yellow house, amid flower and vegetable gardens and once declared, “I was reared in a garden, you know.”

In fact she studied botany, and when she was only 11 she began putting together an herbarium that ultimately included 400 plants, each labeled and identified with its proper Latin name. A beautiful facsimile of this herbarium was created and published by Belknap Press of Harvard University; the original resides in Harvard’s Houghton Library.

Dickinson gardened all her life, caring for roses, lilacs, tulips, zinnias, foxgloves, sweet Williams and poppies as well as all the bulbs that bloom in the spring. When the family was prosperous enough a small conservatory (now gone) was added to the house. Plantings there included a fig tree and other tender and exotic plants.

All these and more are included in the lush plantings in the Conservatory. I was particularly taken with the recreation of the well traveled path between The Homestead and The Evergreens, the house her brother Austin built for his family next door. Of course the Conservatory staff has the skill to bring flowers from a whole season into bloom at the same time, peonies with roses, delphiniums with foxgloves, columbine with morning glories.

Set among the plantings are little placards with appropriate poems including all the creatures that visit the garden including birds, and bees. Only 18 of Dickinson’s poems were published during her lifetime. It is only after her death that her sister found the little booklets in a drawer – the more than 1700 poems her sister had written and organized.

One of the poems set among the flowers shows a more positive feeling about fame than I ever imagined she possessed.

“Fame is a bee.

It has a song –

It has a sting –

Ah, too, it has a wing.

That poem strikes me as wistful, a peek at Dickinson imagining a different world for herself if she had found fame. Yet another poem with its black cawing crow presents a very different picture of fame and its consequences.

“Fame is a fickle food

Upon a a shifting plate

Whose table once a

Guest but not

The second time is set

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the

Farmer’s corn

Men eat of it and die.”

Fame did come to Emily Dickinson, but not until many years after her death in 1886.  She is now considered a major American poet. The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. By R.W. Franklin have been published by the Belknap  Press of Harvard. The exhibit in the Conservatory gives an idea of the joys and inspiration Dickinson found in the garden.

Nearby the Conservatory is a Poetry Walk with 30 Poetry Boards featuring some of Dickinson’s poems about flowers and the garden.

Dickinson's garden included vegetables

A further exhibit is on display in the NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library Gallery will showcase items reveal the context of her life. It should be noted that Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum is a key member of the Curatorial Team that put this exhibit together.

The exhibit will continue at the NYBG until June 13. On Saturday, June 12 from 10am to 6 pm visitors are invited to read their own favorite Dickinson poems aloud, and on Sunday, Judith Farr, author of  The Gardens of Emily Dickinson will give a talk about Dickinson’s Eden” at 4 pm.

Even if you can’t nip down to the exhibit, we have the Emily Dickinson Museum in our own backyard, and there is a whole raft of beautiful and fascinating books about Emily, her garden, and an imagined life in the novel I Never Came to You in White, also by Judith Farr.

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One place to spruce up our own individual Edens, is the Bridge of Flowers Plant Sale next Saturday, May 22, from 9 am to noon at the Green at the corner of Main and Water   Streets. In addition to a wonderful selection of perennials, and annuals, the following vendors will be on hand: Nancy Dole Books; OESCO, Michael Naldrett’s photo notecards; Steve Earp’s pottery; and John Sendelbach’s garden art.

Between the Rows   May 16, 2010

I Love The City!

Battery Park City

While it is true that I visited New York City to explore parks like the one above,  and the New York Botanic Garden, I saw things I hadn’t expected.

Battery Park City

I didn’t know that the park that runs along the Hudson River with all its plantings and seating included a temple. At least it might be a temple but there is something chess – like about this arrangement as well. Odd and mysterious, although the gentlemen there eating?  meeting?  seemed right at home.

Battery Park City

These workers looked at home, too.  But there is more to the city than parks.

Soapology

There are pretty girls who will offer you a free two minute handwashing, or custom mix scent for you. At Soapology they have 40 floral fragrances and 20 other fragrances like caramel and tobacco to be combined as you wish for room spray, or hydrating lotion.

South West Restaurant restroom

I didn’t take the free fragrant handwashing at Soapology, but I did wash my hands after lunch. I’ve never seen such an amazing sink arrangement. I’m glad I don’t have to wash the stones.

Movie Making?

There are people making movies. Or something.  Oh, to be young  and cinematic in the city.

Jeff Koons Sculpture

Of course the city is full of public art works. I thought this was quite jolly.

William Cullen Bryant

This stature wasn’t quite so jolly, but Bryant Park behind the 42nd Street Library (where I was a patron at one time) is named for William Cullen Bryant who was born in Cummington, not very far from where I live now. Did you have to memorize his famous poem Thanatopsis when you were in high school? I’m afraid at that age I did not find preparing for death by the life I lived a compelling subject.

Two Tobaccos

Nicotiana

On Tuesday, my friend Le Flaneur and I went to the New York Botanic Garden in the Bronx to see the exhibit Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers. Two large rooms in the Enid Haupt Conservatory were given over to an interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s garden at The Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is only about 45 miles from us in Heath. There were wonderful plantings of the flowers that grew in her garden, some of which inspired her poetry. The exhibit will run until June 13. It has everything, flowers, veggies, poetry and history.

I didn’t see any poetry about red nicotiana, but I can understand why Emily and other gardeners plant it. In our climate we treat it as an annual, but the sweet fragrance is all the reason one needs to include this somewhat leggy, sprawly plant.  Nicotiana, sometimes called flowering tobacco, is related to the kind of tobacco that you smoke, but it is also a member of the Solanaceae family which means it is related to deadly nightshade, tomatoes and eggplant.

After spending happy hours at the Emily exhibit which included A Poetry Walk that included many of her poems inspired by the garden and the natural world, and a quick tour of the Rose Garden where a few roses were just beginning to bloom, we set off for Arthur Avenue just a few blocks away. Arthur Avenue is a kind of Little Italy – good food! One of the more exotic emporiums gave space to four cigar makers, rolling tobacco leaves into very nice cigars.  I guess this store figures after a wonderful meal, the men will want a good cigar – and they want to supply that too.

Tobacco is native to the New World and was smoked only on ceremonial occasions. When Europeans learned about tobacco they quickly decided that it  could be sold in their home countries and used recreationally in snuff, and for smoking.

I am not a smoker – and I prefer the sweet fragrance of flowering nicotiana.

Ohhhh – Look at that!

Ohhhhhh – Look at that! I cannot tell you how many times I uttered those words, and Le Flaneur listened patiently, turned and followed my pointing fingers at heucheras, sailboats, meat packing establishments, roof top restaurants and etc., etc., etc.

Battery Park NYC

We took the train into the city and set off to explore an array of Parks.  We began at Battery Park, South Ferry, where people can get ferries to Staten Island, or Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty. This area has all been refurbished since we left New York in 1979.  The plantings were big and varied, with spring bloomers, foliage in every shade of green and red, ferns, grasses, and shrubs. The weather was mild, although rain threatened all day, and people were enjoying the promenades along the Hudson River.

Where to go? Castle Clinton? or off to the Islands?

Guide books are available with information about plantings. For the website click here.

Wagner Park

School children were enjoying Wagner Park, the first of the Parks for Battery Park City. Plantings for this Park were designed by Lynden B. Miller who I heard speak about her book, Parks, Plants and People: Beautifying the Urban Landscape. She was the inspiration for this tour. We saw our first roses in bloom here.

The Hudson as Water Feature

These gardens between the Hudson River and the building of Battery Park City look right down at the  tidal river. With its tides and moods the river becomes an amazing water feature.

A luncheon view

We had lunch at the South West Restaurant. We watched the boats on the river, the joggers, bicyclists, moms with strollers, and workers taking their lunch hour picnics.

The Wintergarden

I expected a lavish conservatory to be inside the Wintergarden, but the large skylit lobby had only eight very tall palm trees – and a wonderful photography exhibit of the faces of our Elders, Clint Eastwood, Bishop Tutu, Vanessa Redgrave, Madeline Albright and many others.

Wisteria

We set off  to find The Highline and saw that parks aren’t the only place to see magnificent plants. These wisteria are amazing.

The High Line

We walked uptown and over to 14th Street and ascended to the new High Line Gardens built on the old elevated freight train tracks.  We walked along up to West 23rd Street. The High Line is still being built and planted and will continue up to 34th Street.

Bryant Park

The beauty of the Battery Park City Gardens was an unexpected pleasure. They were so beautiful and were being enjoyed by so many people, even on this less than lovely day. But Bryant Park, the park behind the 42nd St. Public Library, was the highlight of the day. The park was restored and renovated in 1986 and it is a treasure. Seating, drinks, and so much more.

Children's Wing of the Bryant Park Reading Room

A section of the park was designated as The Reading Room with a number of bookshelves filled with books and audio books, to be read and returned right there. If you aren’t reading those books you can’t sit in this area of the park.

Book Club Meeting!

Actually, I guess you were allowed to sit here, if you had read the books. A lively book club meeting was being held here.  Nearby were people playing chess and one gentleman was offering chess lessons.  This park is named for one of our great American poets, William Cullen Bryant. A statue of this poet who was born in Cummington, Mass, not far from us, watches over the gatherings in the park. I am sure he will be happy to know that tomorrow we will be celebrating Emily Dickinson at the New York Botanical Garden.

Mark Your Calendars

Tower Hill Daffodil Field

As the gardens green up and come into bloom special events are also popping up everywhere. Tower Hill Botanic Garden will have its Free Spring Open House on Sunday, April 11 from 10 to 5 pm. For the first time visitors will enter through the new Reception Gateway. Right now the famed field of 25,000 daffodils is in bloom. Read about my trip to Tower Hill last summer here.

Next weekend IKEBANA–the Japanese art of floral design–will be the focus of a flower show presented at Tower Hill Botanic Garden by the Boston Chapter of Ikebana International. The Show takes place Friday through Sunday of Patriot’s Day Weekend, April 16-18. The Show is included with regular Garden admission: $10 Adults, $7 Seniors, $5 Youth, and FREE for Tower Hill members and children under 6. Ikebana displays and the whole garden await. There is always something special going on at Tower Hill.

Nasami Farm and Sanctuary in Whately, the native plant nursery of the New England Wildflower Society, will open on weekends Thursday through Sunday, beginning Thursday, April 15. Hours are 10 am to 5 pm. At Nasami,  the New England Wild Flower Society is able to produce native plants suited to the region — its climate and character — on a scale that will make them available to all who wish to use native plants. In addition, Nasami is an ideal location to serve our membership in the Pioneer Valley and collaborate with the region’s nursery and landscaping industries.

Yoga for Gardeners.  Prepare yourself for the gardening season with Lindel Hart, Owner/Director of Hart Yoga, at Yoga for Gardeners, a workshop designed to help you learn ways to keep yourself healthy before, during and after gardening. This special event takes place on Saturday, April 24, 2010, from 9:00 – 11:00 AM at Hart Yoga, 1 Ashfield Street, Shelburne Falls, MA.

Yoga for Gardeners will focus on strengthening the core, opening the shoulders and hips, and protecting your knees and back. These are all areas that are used extensively in gardening. “A healthy, well-prepared body allows for a deeper enjoyment of the work that goes into creating and maintaining your garden,” Hart adds.

The cost of the workshop is $20. Prepayment and pre-registration is required, as space is limited. For more information or to pre-register, contact Lindel Hart at lindel@hartyoga.com or 413.768.9291.

Jeff, Gloria and Lisa

The gardeners at Trillium Workshops are offering a session on Sunday, April 25 from 1-4 pm. tThe hree-hour container planting workshop includes everything from container selection to maintenance. They’ll walk you through all the steps with a round-up of container options, a review of great container plants
(annuals, perennials, vegetables, and shrubs), design ideas, how to plant and maintain your containers throughout the season, and ideas for refreshingcontainers to keep them in bloom until the first frost. Hands on demonstrations, question and answer time AND a snack. The snacks that Gloria makes are fabulous!

Please reserve your space ($30)  by e-mailing us at trilliumworkshops@gmail.com

Lynden B. Miller

The annual Smith College Bulb Show at the Lyman Conservatory will begin with a free lecture by Lynden B. Miller (Smith ‘60) in the Carroll Room at the Campus Center at 7:30 pm on Friday, March 5.  Miller is a noted public garden designer and will be talking about her new book Parks, Plants and People: Beautifying the Urban Landscape.  She feels that “beautiful parks and gardens are essential urban oases with economic benefits and the power to transform the way people behave and feel about their cities.” After the lecture attendees can tour the Bulb Show.

Miller is currently director of the Conservatory Garden in Central Park which she rescued and restored, but “her work includes gardens for The Central Park Zoo, Bryant Park, The New York Botanical Garden, Madison Square Park and Wagner Park in Battery Park City as well as many smaller projects in all five boroughs and beyond.”  It is heartening to know that as we talk about ‘nature deficit’ in children, we are also coming to acknowledge that people of every age benefit from the beauty and calm of a garden, of natural green space.

In her book, and her work Miller shows us the importance of public gardens, and with luck, will give us new eyes to look at the public spaces in our own communities.

The Smith College Bulb Show runs from March 6 through Sunday, March 21 from 10 am to 4 pm every day. A $2 donation is suggested. In addition to the spectacular bloom there will be an exhibition, The Inner Beauty of Flowers, radiograph and Xray photographs of flowers, and an audio installation of music composed by Susan Hiller (‘61) titled What Every Gardener Knows playing in the Lyman Conservatory Palm House.

KIKU at NYBG

Kiku exhibit

I went to the NYBGfor the roses but I got chrysanthemums, kiku, too. This is the third and final year for this extraordinary exhibit of Japanese chrysanthemum art forms set up at the Enid Haupt Conservatory courtyards.

Kengai or cascade

I was familiar with this form, Kengai, because similar cascades are created for our local Smith College Chrysanthemum show. All season long a single chrysanthemum plant is trained through wire mesh, pinched and artfully pinched again to create this waterfall of bloom.

Ozukuri or One Thousand Blooms

There are not actually one thousand blooms in this Ozukuri form, but again, a single (yes, single1) plant is trained on a form and pinched so that over the course of 11 months this amazing form is created. Because the blooms are so heavy, at a certain point each blossom is provided with a support to hold it in place.

I took this photo in the greenhouse where it was easier to see the metal rods that made up the structural support and the little supports for each blossom.

Ogiku

The third and final form of chrysanthemum ’sculptures’ (I don’t know exactly what to call these forms) is ranks of tall chrysanthemums, each plant trained to a single stem and blossom and arranged in diagonal rows by height.

Those artful forms might have been the most spectacular elements of this exhibit, but they were not the whole. Almost every class of chrysanthemum was on display.

Shino-tsukuri

This particular chrysanthemum has three types of petals that change as the blossom matures to resemble ‘Driving Rain.’

Driving Rain is amazing, but I’m partial to the spider mums, and I think I might be able to grow these in my own garden.

Several Bonsai forests were on display as well.

The combination of rare scarlet Japanese maples with golden mums gave an idea of what a Japanese garden might look like at this time of the year.

After looking at so many different elements of the Japanese autumn garden I was particularly enchanted to see an arrangement to give an impressionistic view of the Japanese mountains with forests in their autumnal dress.  I was told that last year’s exhibit showed the mountains in snow – the snow being all white chrysanthemums.

I was lucky to see this exhibit which will not be held next year, but special exhibits are always a part of the NYBG year. Next is the annual Train Show, where electric trains run through a familiar city landscape, except that all the buildings are made of plant materials. If you are in the area this is not something you want to miss.

Roses in November

This red Austin rose is climbing the fence at the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden. It is just one of the more than 3000 roses growing in the newly designed garden with the goal of showing all visitors what roses can be grown in that climate without a lot of fuss.

Peter Kukielski, Curator

I got to spend the afternoon with Peter Kukielski, the Curator of the Rose Garden, who arrived  in New York from Atlanta three years ago, just when the garden needed reorganization and renovation. He is a charming and knowlegeable gardener with delightful tales about roses, hybridizers, and rose gardeners. His affection for the roses and the people who love them is palpable.

One change was moving all the Heritage Roses to the other side of the garden where there was sun fewer hours of the day. Peter wanted visitors to be embraced by bloom when they entered the garden, whether that was in May or October, and old fashioned roses only bloom once.  Now, on both sides of the main entrance are 14 foot deep beds filled with David Austin’s everblooming roses. I wasn’t good at keeping names straight as we toured, but this is a yellow Austin rose, still blooming in November.

Rainbow Knockout Standard

There are a few standard roses in the garden like this Rainbow Knockout. Peter said the Knockout roses are great disease resistant roses. In their ancestry is Carefree Beauty, one of the Buck Roses bred for hardiness. I can testify to the hardiness of Carefree Beauty and my Double Red Knockout. Knockout was chosen as a winner in 2000 by the All America Rose Selections (AARS) and now include a range of colors. They are easy to grow and care for.

Peter explained that new New York State regulations now make it illegal to use many of the sprays and insectides that have been required for healthy roses. Many roses have been removed from the garden and have been replaced with disease resistant varieties. They are also constantly being evaluated.

The climber New Dawn is a sport or mutation of the Dr. Van Fleet rose. Peter said that New Dawn can revert back after about 10 years. However, New Dawn mutated at one point resulting in this new pink climber, Awakening, which is more stable. It grows on the lovely gazebo in the center of the Rose Garden.

There were so many roses in bloom, and Peter Kukielski had so many stories that that I couldn’t keep them all dependably straight. but I can’t resist closing with this bouquet on a branch.  I will be posting more about the NYBG and the special KIKU exhibit of amazing Japanese chrysanthemums.