Rosa setigera, otherwise known as the Cherokee rose or Prairie rose is the only climbing rose native to North America. Its range is from Canada to Texas, as far west as Nebraska and Kansas. I bought my plant at Nasami Farm in Whately last year. My rose collection was calling out for a native American rose. I was told that although this is listed as a climber most people let it just grow into a mounded tangle. I didn't really…
Netting the blueberries was the big garden task of the weekend. Between the heat, the thunderstorms, adventures with visiting grandson Tynan, picking raspberries and preparing to host the Heath Gourmet Club on Saturday night, this job kept getting postponed. Finally, on Sunday, with the sun shining and a deliciously cool breeze blowing, we set to. The berries are just starting to ripen here at the End of the Road, but the birds are starting to circle. We planted our blueberry…
In 1985 (could it be that long ago?) Elsa Bakalar, my Heath neighbor and friend, and I started writing an article about color in the garden for Horticulture magazine. One summer day in 1986 the brilliant photographer, and gardener, Garry Mottau arrived in Elsa's garden at dawn. That's when I learned about the importance and desirability of that early morning light for photography. I even got to hold a piece of shiny Thermax to throw some gentle light on Elsa's…
After days of talking to the 70 other bloggers who gathered in Buffalo for a preview of the Buffalo Garden Walk I have a whole new appreciation for Bloom Day, created and hosted by Carol (who I got to meet!) of May Dreams Gardens. For other mortals talk about the weather is banal chit chat, but for us bloggers, and all gardeners, it is shop talk. It is a topic filled with endless fascination - and we see…
One of the gardens on the Buffalo Garden Walk had many dahlias - familiar varieties in familiar colors. But this dahlia is a doozy! I'm going to have to research a source. Has anyone seen this in a catalog?
The first mirror in the garden I saw this past weekend was in one of the first gardens. I had already seen gardens with high brick walls that had 'windows' cut into them. When I glimpsed shining light in the wall in this garden I thought it was another windowed wall, which I thought was a charming idea. When I scrunched down to get a better idea, and a photo I realized I was looking at a mirror.…
We started off at the Erie Basin Trial Gardens for the All America Selections (AAS). The AAS helps gardeners by rating seed varieties so they can find some of the best flowers and vegetables to plant from seed. We all loved this brilliant red dahlia. Then it was off to the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens which has a fabulous glass conservatory, modeled after the one in Kew Gardens in England. This building opened in 1900. The Orchid…
We not only didn't reduce the plans for today's itinerary for the garden tours, we added a drive through the rain to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Park (designed long ago by Frederick Law Olmsted) to see who we would vote for in the Front Yard Garden Contest. The contest was set up by the National Buffalo Garden Festival and with support from the Olmsted Parks Conservancy. For more information about these totally renovated front yards and how…
Gardens can change overnight, as many people learned after the great May storm that took down so many large trees. Those who had treasured their trees for the serene shade they provided, and the cooling they often brought to the house, found themselves in a new situation that could not soon be remedied. Marty and Jan McGuane’s cool shady garden became a hot sunny garden less dramatically, but with the same result. “We had a beautiful and very…
I couldn't wait to start showing you Buffalo's gardens. Yesterday evening, on our way to meet one of our hosts, Elizabeth Licata of Garden Rant, we visited several urban gardens. This garden smelled heavenly with a single magnolia still in bloom and banks of lilies. I have pink lilies and bee balm in my garden too. We saw plants I do not have like this amazing echinacea glowing in the late afternoon sun. When we arrived at the…