Native Buzz!

  • Post published:04/03/2011
  • Post comments:4 Comments

Butterfly gardening is becoming very popular. Schools are having their students plant butterfly gardens, and adults can find more than a dozen books devoted to gardening in a way that will attract butterflies to their landscape. Butterfly gardening could just as well go by another name, pollinator gardening.  Everyone knows that bees are pollinators, but butterflies along with many other creatures like wasps and bats are important pollinators. Planting a butterfly garden helps support pollinators. Most of us…

The Three Sisters Sanctuary

Richard Richardson turned his grief over the passings of his brother and daughter into a magical garden that is now open to the public.  The Three Sisters Sanctuary, right next to Richardson's business Good Time Stoves in Goshen, has been in the making for 18 years. The story of the garden is now told on its own website, along with information about events like concerts and plays, and how you can hold your own event in this amazing…

Berkshire Botanical Garden – Jewel of the Berkshires

  • Post published:08/21/2010
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 The Berkshire Botanical Garden is one of the jewels of the Berkshires. This summer it is sparkling more than ever. In addition to the regular plantings of trees, shrubs, perennials and vegetables, the Garden is hosting several special exhibits this year. I was particularly taken with the display of garden sheds. Five fantasies consisting of standard pre-fab garden sheds are arranged around the Garden grounds. Naturally I was delighted with the Garden Blogger’s Retreat designed by Michael…

Emily Dickinson at the NYBG

  • Post published:05/22/2010
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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…

The Week That Was

  • Post published:05/10/2010
  • Post comments:1 Comment

It was quite a week, with two New York days, visiting parks, and the New York Botanical Garden's Emily Dickinson Exhibit. (See my earlier posts) I came home to my own show - the Sargent Crab in the mucky Sunken Garden is in full bloom. So far it has been able to hold on to it's leaves and flowers but ever since I got home late Wednesday the winds have been blowing, and the temperature has been dropping.…

Two Tobaccos

  • Post published:05/07/2010
  • Post comments:6 Comments

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…

Ohhhh – Look at that!

  • Post published:05/04/2010
  • Post comments:9 Comments

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. 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…

Mark Your Calendars

  • Post published:04/09/2010
  • Post comments:1 Comment

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…

KIKU at NYBG

  • Post published:11/11/2009
  • Post comments:6 Comments

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. 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.…

Roses in November

  • Post published:11/09/2009
  • Post comments:4 Comments

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. I got to spend the afternoon with Peter Kukielski, the Curator of the Rose Garden, who arrived  in New York from Atlanta…