Monthly Archives: May 2018

Blossom Party 2018 at the Toronto Botanical Garden

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It was another perfect spring day for this year’s edition of the Blossom Party, one of the TBG’s major fundraising events.  Its lovely new name (it was formerly called the Woman to Woman Party) makes it more welcoming for all the men who like to attend this happy party, and I saw quite a few in the crowd yesterday.

But it’s also about friendship and celebrating spring and the gardening season after a long, cold winter. There were friends at tables on the Westview Terrace….

…..and TBG supporters like Jim Mosher of Landscape Plus Ltd., a Blossom Party sponsor, here with family members of his company…..

….. and Mary Gore, centre, with members of her accounting firm. She owns one of Toronto’s finest gardens out in the Beaches.

There were friends at tables in the tent…..

…. and friends in deep conversation under the warm sun (but fortunately not the blazing-hot sun of the day before!)……

…. and friends checking out the TBG’s Edibles Garden, still planted with spring bulbs (hello Janet & Patsy!).

I found Kathy Dembroski, founding patron of the Blossom Party Committee, at a table with her friends.

You might know her name from the TBG’s principal building.  This is what generosity in Toronto looks like, as I saw it after a lecture late one night! Thanks to George and Kathy, as always.

And speaking of sponsorship, flowery hats off to TD Wealth for providing the major sponsorship for this lovely event!

Some of my own garden writing pals were wearing their finest. This is Aldona Satterthwaite, who was the editor of Canadian Gardening Magazine for eight years, before becoming the TBG’s Executive Director for three years. She’s now happily retired and travelling the world and enjoying her garden and grandbabies.

Garden writers Tara Nolan and Sonia Day found a spot in the shade to trade stories. And Sonia later won the Monica van Maris Green Professionals Woman of Influence Award from Landscape Ontario!

I handed my camera to the TBG’s beautiful head gardener Sandra Pella (thanks Sandra!), to capture a moment with some of my long-time garden friends and colleagues. At left is Susan Dyer, a wonderful gardener and part of a dynamic TBG support team with husband Geoffrey, former chair of the garden’s board of directors. (They were also good friends with the late Christopher Lloyd, and Geoffrey Dyer set up the charitable trust for Great Dixter Garden in East Sussex, UK). Next is Bayla Gross, with whom I helped organize out-of-city garden tours for the old Civic Garden Centre (the TBG’s predecessor). In fabulous yellow is urban planner Lindsay Dale-Harris, former board member of the Civic Garden Centre and chief fundraiser a decade ago for the development of the new Toronto Botanical Garden. Then there’s a very warm garden blogger with a floral hat that’s drooping, but still quite perfumed. To my left is artist Susanne Drinkwater. Beside her is former Ryerson University School of Landscape Architecture professor Sue Macaulay.

I found horticultural gurus Owen Reeves and the TBG’s own Paul Zammit chatting under a Japanese maple.

It was the Blossom Party – so NATURALLY there were flowers, not just in the lovely gardens, where willowleaf amsonia, lilacs and alliums were putting on a show….

…. but all over the party venue. This was the spectacular mannequin under the marquee, courtesy of Fleurs de Villes.

And this was a lovely windowbox display inside the new-this-year Spa Room.

Of course, there were flowers in the main tent, at the bar…..

…. and at each table, courtesy of a dozen of the city’s most fabulous floral designers.  Here are just a few; it would be hard for me to pick a favourite, but peonies are perfect for this time of year…..

….. and more peonies (what great vases!)…..

….. and chic calla lilies…

…… and luscious ranunculus with lily-of-the-valley and freesias (this was my fave.)

There were dancing ‘flowers’ in the garden as well, featuring a trio from Hit & Run Dance Productions, from left Järvi Raudsepp, Minami Suzuki and Elizabeth Gagnon.

To the envy of many of us with feet squeezed into high heels, they took to the water channel on the Westview Terrace barefoot to perform one ballet…..

…. and greeted visitors as they arrived, along with fetching aerial artist Jamie Holmes.

Here’s a taste of some of their performance:

Are you thirsty yet?  We could have a glass of rosé….

…. or we could sip one of the hottest-coolest new drinks, a botanical treat whose eponymous…uh, pea-forward… garden won a Gold Award at this years’s Chelsea Flower Show. Meet Seedlip, which, though it’s non-alcoholic, would certainly make a nice pairing with gin, in my humble opinion. And since I’ve had the good fortune of sampling this fizzy herbal on two occasions this week (the first time featured an opened pea pod as garnish), I can tell you it’s a unique and delicious treat.

As always, the food was delicious and showed off the talents of some of Toronto’s finest caterers.  These little crudité flowerpots were courtesy of Yorkshire Pudding Catering (who might make the best wedding cake I’ve ever tasted, anywhere….)  The veggies are ‘planted’ in edible soil over green-goddess dip. Very gardenesque!

10tation Event Catering offered yummy bowls of vegan salad.

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Encore Catering served up these delicate, mouthwatering morsels, “salmon poke taro taco”.

And Daniel et Daniel sweetened our palates with delectable desserts…

…. along with Eatertainment, who crafted these vegan chocolate terrariums with “edible soil”, sponge toffee and raspberries.

New this year in the Garden Hall was the Spa, with Murale providing make-up…..

…. and soothing hand massages.

Mindham Jewelry was there, too, and party-goers were seen trying on some of the bijoux.  And isn’t that fascinator wonderful?

Yes, let’s face it. The Blossom Party is all about THE HATS! There were tall confections in yellow tulle….

…. and magnificent magenta with feathers!

I saw pussy willows…..

…. and scads of blossoms…..

…. and loads of pollinators.

Bees were well-represented….

…. as were butterflies!

TBG Executive Director Harry Jongerden, with Lorna McKay at left, was wearing his expansion hardhat!

Because, if you don’t know by now, the TBG is about to embark upon a massive expansion that will see it go from 4 to 35 acres and encompass Edwards Gardens.

Back to the party!  There were baseball caps attached to floral balloons….

…. and hats that went perfectly with flowery frocks….

…including some that highlighted passionate purple….

….and azure-blue (hello Marjorie!)….

…..and shimmering white.

So many blossoms – fascinators, hats, dresses – what a lovely time of year in Toronto!

A few of us tried our hands at ‘fresh flower flourishes’. I compared notes with Barbara Fleming of the Garden Club of Toronto, who favoured roses, geraniums and hydrangea leaves….

…. while I wove a hat-band of Meyer dwarf lilacs and lily-of-the-valley from my garden for my own flowery chapeau.  (For a how-to from 2016, read my lily-of-the-valley hat blog.)

CBC reporter Tashauna Reid was on hand to emcee.

Harry Jongerden made a few, brief comments and the Monica van Maris Green Professionals Woman of Influence Award co-sponsored by Landscape Ontario Horticultural Trades Association and Toronto Botanical Garden was presented to Sonia Day.

Then it was time for the winners of the hat competition, judged by some of Toronto’s most fashionable femmes. Sylvie Hatch was runner-up, with her perfectly accessorized, veiled, yellow-and-black chapeau.

And the top prize? It went to vivacious Tenny Nigoghossian, left, one of Toronto’s powerhouse fundraisers – pictured here with the TBG’s own powerhouse fundraiser, Claudia Zuccato Ria.  Tenny told me she found her dramatic, bejeweled headpiece at an end-of-season costume sale at Canadian Stage Company Ltd., when she was Executive Director of Advancement there. “It was sitting unwanted on a table, going for $5 or $10, and no one wanted it. So I bought it.”  It appears Tenny, who was sparkling all the way down to her stilettos (which was noted by the judges), knew a very good thing when she saw it.

There were a pair of great door prizes – a trip to the Arctic, courtesy of Adventure Canada (I’ve been on one of their spectacular cruises through Nunavut and Greenland, lucky winner!), and one that included air fare and accommodation to see the gardens of Pennsylvania, including gorgeous Chanticleer Garden in Wayne (here’s my double blog on that stunning garden, my very favourite public garden in the United States).

So ended another lovely Blossom Party, all proceeds going to benefit the good work of the Toronto Botanical Garden.  May it thrive and grow for generations to come!

Mirador – Steel, Limestone & Design Panache in Austin

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On my recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Austin, Texas, we saw a variety of private gardens ranging from tiny, crammed-with-blossoms cottage gardens surrounding modest bungalows to expansive gardens framing large, modern homes. One that impressed me for its seamless architectural integration of house and landscape was Mirador. Both the house (designed by Jim Larue) and garden (by landscape architect Curt Arnette of Sitio Design) were finished in 2013 and are a beacon of fresh contemporary style in a neighbourhood of traditional, Mediterranean-style homes. It’s also the best example I’ve seen of using rusty Corten (COR-TEN®) weathering steel in all kinds of inventive ways in the garden. But if you read my blog on the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center which we’d visited earlier that morning, you’ll know that a lot (3 inches!) of rain had fallen by the time we trooped down the driveway to Mirador in our dripping ponchos.  My first view was of a soaked wildflower meadow spangled with blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella) arrayed in front of massive Corten planters curved against the edge of the property and filled with agaves and yuccas.

As the rain subsided, the homeowner was able to put away her umbrella and chat with us. Though she grew up on a Nebraska farm, she’s lived in Austin for 35 years and taught herself all about gardening here.  In planning the new garden, she had a wish list, much of it inspired by her travels.  “Curt and I worked really well together, so I would tell him things I wanted incorporated and he magically made it happen.”  Given that the property is downhill from the next-door neighbour, one of the challenges had been poor drainage in heavy rains, thus a deteriorating rock retaining wall built by previous owners of the property……

…… was replaced by tiered, curved Corten steel planters filled with drought-tolerant succulents. This was the view from the end of the planters closest to the house.

Look at those knife-edge steel walls. Corten, of course, is not “just” steel, but created with specific alloys that create the weathered look, while simultaneously slowing the weathering. Historically, the trademark for COR-TEN® steel was granted to the United States Steel Corporation in 1933, but it is now made by many companies.  Note all the gravel here for drainage, and the Texas native silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) making a great groundcover under the agaves and beaked yuccas (Y. rostrata).

To the left of the sloping driveway was a stately, little grove of bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), a Texas native. The meadow-like turf here and throughout the property is native Habiturf lawn (buffalo grass-blue grama-curly mesquite), developed at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

Further down the driveway, a long limestone planter filled with statuesque century plants (Agave americana) lined the wall of the garage.  In front is a geometric planting of muhly grass just emerging in spring from last year’s hummocks.

I’m sure those agaves would have liked a little less moisture than the monsoon that had befallen them that morning.

Fortunately, the rain slowed as we got our bearings, for this was a garden to be explored carefully – even though it felt a little wrong to wander in dark clouds and drizzle through a succulent-rich garden clearly designed for sunshine. The view below is past a guest house/studio on the left with an enclosed courtyard garden, garage on the right, towards the house with all its complex and interesting roof angles.

That Corten is so perfect here, with the pale Texas limestone and stucco palette of the house and other buildings.  The tree is Texas cedar elm (Ulmus crassifolia).

Below is an airy gate leading into the courtyard garden.

The gardens are an interesting mix of natural and formal, like this little boxwood allée.  I loved the steel wall doubling as a planter…..

…… with the wood-and-stainless-steel bench in front.  That long flower spike comes from the Texas native giant false yucca (Hesperaloe funifera).

Before we go into the courtyard, let’s walk up to the front door, past this fabulous whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia) and the casacading Palmer’s sedum (S. palmeri), its little yellow flowers nodding their soaked heads after the rain.

Look at those lovely slabs of cream limestone.  Notice that we’re still going downhill, via that small step (and it’s still raining a little). Later, we’ll see that the back of the house descends even further.

Now let’s step into the courtyard and head down the Corten-edged gravel stairs. The plants here are firecracker plants (Russellia equisetiformis), with tiny, tubular red flowers sure to attract the hummingbirds the homeowner wanted to invite into her garden.

Inside the courtyard garden, the Nebraska farm girl seems to have found the perfect marriage of abundant vegetable garden and French potager.  “My garden is mostly for my family and me to enjoy: vegetable picking with grandkids, sharing organic veggies with my daughter,” she says.

In early May, the Swiss chard looked healthy, along with self-seeding larkspur and violas. And probably the prettiest tomato cages I’ve ever seen (more Corten!)…

There are roses in the potager, too. As the homeowner says: “I wanted to have some cutting flowers and vegetables mixed in with roses. I never thought I would enjoy roses, but have fallen in love with antique roses”. She specified many for their fragrance. “Stopping to smell the roses is really a good thing.”  Though we missed the antique roses by about two weeks, there were still a few ‘Knock Out’ roses in bloom, below.

Looking in the other direction, the elegant, concrete water feature here reflects the sky (and I’m sure it brings lots of birds as well.) There’s phlomis and catmint here; the little multi-stemmed tree is Texas persimmon (Diospyros texana).  Beside it is an architectural scrim of horsetails (Equisetum hyemale)…..


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…. cleverly trapped in an enclosed space. (If you’ve grown horsetails, you’ll know why).

The courtyard garden has its own comfy chairs.

As I looked towards the back of the property, I caught a lovely, long rain chain doing exactly what it was meant to do, then directing the rain into appreciative bamboo below.

I hurried out of the potager area past the pineapple guava…..

….. and the pretty glass ornaments……

…..down behind the house to find the swimming pool – a welcome oasis in hot Austin summers – and an appropriate interpretation of an infinity edge…..

….. with its Corten walls.

Isn’t this sweet? Blackeyed susans from the garden.

The hot tub was nearby…..

….. and featured more beaked yuccas (Y. rostrata) against the rough-cut limestone of the house wall here.

The view from the hot tub is all green (there’s a greenbelt adjacent to the neighbourhood here), which is perfect, since Mirador means a viewpoint or vantage point in Spanish.

Alas, as our time here was running out, I missed seeing the al fresco dining area with its fig-topped arbor, but other bloggers like Gerhard Bock of Succulents and More managed to photograph it. (Be sure to have a look at his lovely blog.)  At ground level below the pool area, I found a long limestone planter filled with self-seeding larkspur and corn poppies and the blackberries the homeowner loves picking with her little grandson.

Looking out onto the meadow that she seeded with Habiturf and native wildflowers like Mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera)…..

…. I could only imagine what it must have looked like weeks earlier, before the Texas paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa) here started setting seed. (A few weeks later, she  said, “And of course now the meadow is abloom with wildflowers!”)

And look! A peach tree in the meadow.

I circled around the other side of the house where a large but friendly-looking gorilla (inspired by the homeowner’s trip to Rwanda) kept watch over the sandbox her grandkids use.

A little further was a small, intimate garden with a pair of lightweight, cement-look, resin chairs, dark cannas and more succulents.

This side of Mirador abuts the high ground next door.. When a storm a few years back dumped 13 inches of rain in one night, “massive amounts of water coming off the neighbor’s yard” necessitated a drainage solution. Thus was the stream bed garden conceived, channeling rainwater safely away from the house.

The rain had stopped and I would gladly have waited for the sky to lighten to capture more images here, but sadly it was time to go. (To appreciate Mirador in its summery glory, be sure to visit Fling co-organizer Pam Penick’s lovely 2014 blog.)  I was so delighted to have had the chance to visit this remarkable Austin garden: a beautiful marriage of modern architecture, skillful landscape design and ecologically-sensitive gardening.

Design With Tulips Like the (Soon-to-be-Much Bigger) Toronto Botanical Garden

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In the past week, a few tidbits of information came across my desk. One was that the National Garden Bureau declared 2018 to be “The Year of the Tulip”. Well…. yawn. I tend to be a bit jaded on “The Year of”…. anything. I suppose it’s my nature to be cynical (ha!), but sometimes these public relation campaigns seem to be more about pumping sales (see those “Buy Now” links in the NGB’s right hand column? they lead to a Pennsylvania bulb dealer) than recognizing a true standout plant – or, as they say at the National Garden Bureau, a “bulb crop”.  Anyway, it is spring, and I love tulips (that’s my front garden last spring from a previous blog, below), so okay, I’ll dial back my cynicism. YAY tulips! It’s your year! Party like it’s 1999!

The other tidbit that crossed my desk was a press release from the Toronto Botanical Garden, below.

This was BIG NEWS and more than 3 years in the making, thanks to the inspiration and impetus from Executive Director Harry Jongerden and the design and consulting skills of Forrec Ltd., W. Gary Smith and Lord Cultural Resources. From the initial meeting I attended in January 2015, when the TBG unveiled its “Integrated Conceptual Proposals”, to the three community input meetings hosted by the TBG and its consultants and landscape architects and the City of Toronto, below, to May 2018’s announcement, it represents a massive leap for our little jewel of a botanical garden.

My sincere wish is that this brave new parks/not-for-profit partnership gets all the financial resources it needs to create a magnificent, world-class garden in the fourth largest metropolitan city in North America!

So, given how prone I am to dubiously connecting one thing with another – and given that it IS spring – here  are some fabulous ideas for tulips courtesy of the Toronto Botanical Garden and my 10-year archive of photos there, since the year it renamed itself and gave us so much inspiration on its 4 acres, soon to be 35 acres!

Plant them with daffodils!

This should be obvious, but it’s amazing that more people don’t interplant and underplant tulips with daffodils. The TBG is all over this idea, and here are some of the prettiest examples, starting with tiny daffodils (I’m going to guess ‘Tête à Tête‘) under the Darwin Hybrid tulip ‘World Peace’.

What about Tulipa ‘Orange Emperor’ with Narcissus ‘Thalia’?

If you like butterfly or split corona daffodils, try Narcissus ‘Printal’ with ‘Orange Emperor’.

Speaking of the Fosteriana tulip ‘Orange Emperor’, it plays a big spring role at the TBG. Here it is at the start of the Piet Oudolf-designed Entry Border with Narcissus ‘Professor Einstein’. So sturdy!

And this charming duo is Tulipa ‘Tom Pouce’ and Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’.

Plant them with grape hyacinths & real hyacinths!

If you’ve been to Holland’s Keukenhof Gardens in springtime, you’ll be familiar with those “rivers of blue” grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum). You can do that in your own garden, you know.  When you’re planting your tulips, give them little rivers or lakes or even puddles of blue companions, like this.  The light pink tulip here is ‘Ollioules’, the purple is ‘Passionale’, and the double narcissus is ‘Cheerfulness’.

Years ago, I found this duo at the TBG: Tulipa saxatilis ‘Lilac Wonder’ and Muscari armeniacum. Nice, right?

And look at this sumptuous vignette: Tulipa ‘Fire Queen’ with blue grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum and the emerging chartreuse foliage of golden tansy (Tanacetum vulgare ‘Isla Gold’).

I wish I had a name for the early tulip planted under the ‘Crimson Queen’ Japanese maple with its deep-red emerging leaves, below. But given that it’s interplanted with early-season hyacinths, it’s bound to be a single early tulip like ‘Couleur Cardinal’.

This little species tulip T. turkestanica seems right at home with fragrant hyacinths….

….as does the species T. humilis var. violacea.

Plant them with summer snowflake!

I don’t see a lot of summer snowflake (Leucojum aestivum) – which, despite its name, blooms in mid-spring, not summer – used in gardens, but it can be very pretty as a tulip companion. Here is L. aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’ with ‘Daydream’…..

…. and in a more shaded position enhancing Tulipa sylvestris, the woodland tulip.

Pair them with emerging shrubs!

Why waste the drama of dark-leaved shrubs like Weigela ‘Wine & Roses’, when you can surround it with Tulipa ‘Queen of Night’? The peach tulip here is ‘Menton’, the white is ‘White Triumphator’.

Fothergilla gardenii is a spring-flowering native northeastern shrub that’s wonderful in combination with mid to late-season tulips. Here it is at Toronto Botanical Garden this spring.

Don’t forget that colourful coniferous shrubs can pair up nicely with tulips, like Tulipa ‘Purple Dream’ with the lime-gold foliage of dwarf golden arborvitae (Platycladus orientalis ‘Aurea Nana’).

Combine them with spring-flowering perennials!

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Then there’s Bergenia or ‘pigsqueak’ (why? I don’t know). This cultivar is ‘Eden’s Dark Margin’ and it’s been paired with Tulipa ‘Ice Stick’ and a dusky purple hellebore.

As an aside to ‘Ice Stick’, I found this little Kaufmanniana hybrid to be quite attractive to bees at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

The amsonias flower early and look great with late tulips. This is Amsonia orientalis with a white-edged tulip I believe is the triumph tulip ‘Kung Fu’ and the blowsy double early tulip ‘Monte Orange’.

And I love this serene combination of blue Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) with Tulipa ‘Spring Green’.

…. and variegated Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum x hybridum ‘Striatum’) with Tulipa ‘Exotic Emperor’.

Cushion spurge (Euphorbia polychroma) is one of the earliest perennials and combines nicely with tulips of all colours. Shown below is pink ‘Ollioules’.

Combine them with Ornamental Grasses!

I adored this soft Tulipa ‘Silverstream’ and Carex combo from 2009, and some of those, variegated, colour-variable tulips still pop up, though the carex is long gone. But that’s the funny thing with carex. The brown New Zealand species like C. buchananii and C. comans often look pretty much the same in spring even when they’ve died in winter, so they make good tulip companions.

This is Deschampsia caespitosa with the burgundy-yellow, late tulip ‘Gavota’ and dark ‘Queen of Night’.  I think this is stunning.

And you can weave tulips like a colourful river through grasses, as was done with these double-flowered tulips ‘Pink Star’ and ‘Monte Orange’ through emerging Calamagrostis brachytricha.

Fill their dance cards with pretty cousins!

Sometimes, certain tulips just seem to go well together, and the TBG has created some lovely combinations over the years. This pair is tulip royalty ‘Fire Queen’ and ‘Pretty Princess’.

In the same bed along Lawrence Avenue is a delicate pairing of purple Tulipa ‘Rem’s Favourite’ with pink ‘Playgirl‘.

Those romantic hues are used to lovely effect in Nature’s Garden, in the combination below of the triumph tulip ‘Synaeada Blue’ with two luscious parrot tulips, ‘Negrita Parrot’ and ‘Pink Vision’.

Playing a double striped against a single striped with similar colouring works with the double late tulip ‘Cartouche’ and the triumph tulip ‘Carnaval de Rio’ (aka ‘Canada 150’).

I thought this was a very clever combination of fringed tulips, with one colour reversing the other. The red is ‘Flamenco’; the yellow is ‘Davenport’.

And sometimes you have a tulip so beautiful, like luminous, yellow ‘Akebono’ (a double sport of the Darwin Hybrid ‘Jewel of Spring’), below, that anything looks good with it, including ‘Orange Emperor’ and ‘Purple Dream’.

You can riff on a cultivar name and get pretty combinations, like ‘Apricot Delight’ with ‘Apricot Impression‘ (both Darwin Hybrids).

I am very fond of pink and yellow combinations in spring, and this vignette from 2016 was one of my favourites: ‘Rosy Delight’, ‘Design Impression’, ‘Jenny’ and yellow ‘West Point’. (It should be noted that spring weather will often accelerate certain tulip types or delay others, and what combines one spring might be sequential the following spring – the luck of the draw.)

I may be a subtle meadow girl the rest of the year, but I don’t mind a boisterous spring garden party. How about this double-flowered tulip duo: yellow-orange-red ‘Sun Lover’ and ‘Double Negrita’?

Or this sunny party act: ‘Fire Wings‘and the late double ‘Sundowner’, with its changing sunset hues.

In truth, I love all tulips. After 5 months of winter, we all want a little party of colour, I think, and tulips offer an easy way to celebrate. Here’s a multicolour party, courtesy of the TBG.

Many of these tulips are in plantings donated by my friends Mary Fisher (the Mary Fisher Spring Garden near the shop) and Bob & Anne Fisher and other family members (the Ruby Fisher garden) near the fence in the Oudolf entry border.  Hurray to them!  And, on that cheerful note, I’d like to raise a glass – a tulip glass with a long stem – to Sandra Pella and Paul Zammit and the gardening staff of the Toronto Botanical Garden on its lovely tulip displays. And also a toast to Harry Jongerden and a much-expanded garden with a much-expanded vision (and hopefully, a much-expanded gardening staff)!

Finally, I would like to send out a little shout to the woman who supplies many of the Toronto Botanical Garden’s spring bulbs, my friend Caroline de Vries. If you’re Canadian and looking to buy excellent-quality bulbs at a very good price, check out Caroline’s company  https://flowerbulbsrus.com/.  It’s where I buy my bulbs!

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

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One of my gardening life goals has been to travel to Austin, Texas in April to see the bluebonnets in flower, those much photographed sheets of azure-blue carpeting the ground in parts of west Texas. A few weeks ago, I managed one of those goals – to travel to Austin – and I had a tiny whiff of the other – those bluebonnets – when I joined almost a hundred other garden bloggers at our annual Fling, during which we tour around public and private gardens and nurseries to get a flavour of the best horticulture and design from each host city.  The list of gardens included the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in southwest Austin.  The Center, of course, was the dream of Claudia Taylor Johnson, aka “Lady Bird” (1912-2007), one she fulfilled after returning home to Austin from Washington DC when her role as First Lady with President Lyndon Baines Johnson ended in 1969.

But even before LBJ assumed the presidency in 1963, following John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Lady Bird had proved herself a capable businesswoman, using her own family inheritance to buy a few small radio and television stations that later parlayed her $41,000 investment to $150 million. But during her time in the nation’s capital, “beautification” was her passion, and by that she didn’t just mean gussying up outdoor spaces with pretty flowers, but thinking hard about improving the aesthetics of the roads and highways so many Americans spent hours driving on and through each day. She also advocated for the preservation of national parks. In Washington itself, Lady Bird, with the help of philanthropist Laurence Rockefeller, launched a project called Society for a More Beautiful National Capital; it resulted in a significant planting program for the capital: dogwoods, oaks, crape myrtles, and more cherry blossoms for the Washington Monument area, below.

More importantly, in October 1965, the federal Highways Beautification Act (proposed by LBJ but known unofficially as Lady Bird’s Bill) was passed, effectively controlling the proliferation of large billboards, lighting, junkyards and other eyesores and advocating wildflower planting along the nation’s highways.  In an appreciation column after her 2007 death, the Washington Post said of Lady Bird’s influence on her husband’s presidency: “It was but one of 150 environmental laws, including the landmark Clean Air Act, enacted with her vigorous support during the Johnson administration from 1963 to 1969. She was a patron saint to the National Park Service.”  But for Texans, her landmark contribution was the co-founding, with actress Helen Hayes, of the National Wildflower Research Center in 1982. Its first 60-acre site was in East Austin, but its popularity with the public dictated a 1995 move to the current site in southwest Austin, now expanded to 279 acres. In 1998 it was renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and was incorporated into the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. It now fulfils its mandate of promoting and conserving Texas native wildflowers, grasses, trees and shrubs and acting as the largest online database of North American native plants (it actually managed to snag the online URL www.wildflower.org) while providing a lovely venue for conferences, weddings and other social events.

And here I was, ready to explore its 9 acres of cultivated gardens. (In actual fact, I had signed up for an early morning photo seminar, but the weather forecast was dire so I made the decision to photograph outdoors before the rain started.)

I began in the courtyard near the Central Complex buildings, where a little “hillcountry spring” irrigates the plants.

I walked around the buildings in the central complex, noting the big muhly grass (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri) and a pretty pink-and-white cultivar of autumn sage (Salvia greggii ‘Teresa’) that the center itself propagates and sells, on behalf of its discoverer, David Steinbrunner, to raise funds.

I passed the Color Garden, created in memory of Leslie Turpin, by his son Ian Turpin and daughter-in-law Lucy Baines Johnson Turpin.

Purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) and blackeyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta) reminded me of my own Ontario meadow garden. I would give anything to be there when those standing cypress (Ipomopsis rubra) in the background sent up their bright-red flowers!

This was the Edible Garden. Did you know that mealycup sage (S. farinacea) and evening primroses (Oenothera speciosa) are edible?

Walking past drifts of blue and white mealycup sage made me appreciate anew that little annual workhorse cultivar ‘Victoria Blue’. It became so popular, we grew a little bored with it, but I don’t recall it ever having quite so commanding a presence as these tall sages.

Strolling through the gardens outside the auditorium, I caught a glimpse of the audio-visual screen and felt momentarily guilty at being outside – but I could already hear thunder rumbling in the distance.

The central complex buildings all have adjoining gardens of native wildflowers, so you don’t have to wander far afield to see beauty.

There was lots of colour here in the Nectar Garden, where Prairie verbena (Glandularia bipinnatifida) was looking lovely.

I took the Savanna Meadow Trail leading to the 5-acre $5.3 million Luci & Ian Family Garden donated by Ian Turpin and Lady Bird’s daughter, Luci Baines Johnson Turpin.

This was a useful reminder to visitors to stay on the pathways.

Native wildflowers have been used in designed areas adjacent to the Play Lawn in the Family Garden.

This pretty combination of Texas yellowstar (Lindheimera texana) and mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea) caught my eye. Love those yellows and blues together!

This is Engelmann’s daisy (Engelmannia peristenia).

And this is Engelmann’s prickly-pear (Opuntia engelmannii), below. Both of these plants were named for the German-born botanist and doctor Georg Engelmann, who emigrated to Baltimore in 1832, eventually setting up a medical practice in St. Louis with his young German wife and doing his botanizing on vacations from his practice.  He was despondent after her death in 1879, when he was approached by Charles Sargent of Boston’s Arnold Arboretum to accompany him on a trip to the Pacific coast, where, at the age of 70, he collected the plants that now bear his name.

This gorgeous flower is Texas rock rose or swamp mallow (Pavonia lasiopetala).

I did find a few bedraggled bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis), but the big show had happened in March and early April.

There were scattered Texas Indian paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa) around, too. Though I had a nicer photo of this plant, I included the one below because it illustrates a peculiarity of this species and all members of the genus. Their specialized roots, called “haustoria”, wander below ground until they touch the roots of neighbouring plants, often grasses, whose roots they then penetrate to secure nutrients and water. Members of the hemiparasitic family Orobanchaceae, paintbrushes do photosynthesize themselves, but they use this method to augment their own metabolisms.

The prime host plant for Texas Indian paintbrush, not surprisingly, is nitrogen-fixing Texas bluebonnet, a partnership beautifully illustrated in the photo of Lady Bird Johnson below.

I think blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella) was the most abundant wildflower I saw in my 4 days in Austin, with highway edges spangled red and yellow like this.

The sign below highlights the center’s focus on education and ecology. A savanna, of course, is a grassy plain studded here and there with the occasional tree, but here, the savanna is managed with prescribed burns to control the incursion of too many woody species.

Stud 100 Spray is an effective topical solution for delaying early cialis 40 mg ejaculation. The Acupuncture in Long Island, are always ready to give you the driving knowledge under the parents’ canadian pharmacy sildenafil participation. There is a strong relationship amid weight problems order generic viagra http://deeprootsmag.org/2013/02/19/bipartisan-consensus/ in addition to the the most important starting point involving kind the second adult onset diabetes utilizing the nation’s related insulin resistance. As humans give them out through perspiration, try that shop now purchase generic viagra they are subconsciously detected by nose, brain and nervous system. I was excited to find sprawling antelope horn (Asclepias asperula), just one of Texas’s thirty-six native milkweeds – a fine feast for monarchs winging their way north from their wintering grounds in Mexico.

Some wildflowers I knew, like Mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera), below…..

….. but most I didn’t, such as silverleaf nightshade (Solanum elaeagnifolium)…..

….. and Texas prairie parsley (Polytaenia texana).

It was fun to see white sage (Artemisa ludoviciana) growing with big muhly and prickly-pear, since so many gardeners are familiar with the cultivar ‘Silver King’.

I was unaware, when I walked into the Family Garden, that it had been designed by my friend W. Gary Smith with TBG Partners. An artist and landscape architect who has remained firmly in touch with his inner child and the world of make-believe, Gary created a magical space here in Austin. First off, I noticed the massive windmill……

…. which I suppose is intended to demonstrate wind power, provided the kids work hard enough on the equipment to generate the energy needed to turn the blades!

I was happy to see red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) flowering here, because it had been the star of the Red Hills Desert Garden in St. George, Utah, which I’d visited and photographed a few days earlier. Shockingly (for a plant photographer), I had never even seen a hesperaloe before Utah and Texas, only to find it was one of the most common plants in the Austin gardens we visited!

Look how lovely those flowers are – and a lure for hummingbirds and butterflies, too.

The Robb Family Pavilion offers a bit of shade so kids can engage in crafts or picnic out of the hot Texas sun.

There’s a Dinosaur Creek here with “footprints” of actual dinosaurs whose fossil remains have been found in the region.

Nature’s Spiral features colourful walls (with tiles recycled from a dump) enclosing a spiral path that teaches children about the spiral shapes found in nature, including Fibonacci sequences!

The Stumpery is made from fallen cedar trees and is perfect for climbing.

The Giant Birds’ Nests were fashioned from grapevines and grasses.

And, as if preordained, it was right after exploring the birds’ nests that I heard my first Carolina wren singing in the forest, soon to be followed by the familiar song of a cardinal.  Have a listen…..

The Karst Bridge reminds visitors that the center’s savanna sits on a karst landscape featuring porous limestone through which water percolates and is transported miles away.

Now I came to smaller scale gardens designed to inspire visitors to grow native plants on their own properties. This was the Tallgrass Meadow in the Ann and O.J. Weber Pollinator Habitat Garden, featuring lots of Texas parsley.

A nearby trellis featured the tropical-looking flowers of vigorous crossvine (Bignonia capreolata), which can be found climbing trees in damp pine woods in east Texas.

Thunder was closing in and a few raindrops had begun as I walked quickly into the Theme Gardens, 23 beds all surrounded by a low limestone wall, each demonstrating varieties and uses of plants for “weekend gardeners”. There is a fiber & dye garden, a night-bloomers-for-moonlight garden, a deer-resistant garden, a hummingbird garden (which would surely include red yucca, below, a hummer favourite!)….

…..and dry gardens featuring plants like this handsome agave ……

…. and cane cholla (Cylindropuntia imbricata var. imbricata).

I loved these big tank planters filled with autumn sage (Salvia greggii).

I could have stayed in the theme gardens for hours, but the rain was approaching and I made a dash back to the gift shop and Visitor’s Center. Moments later, the skies opened and we were treated to a Texas rainstorm – and not the 5-minute cloudburst typical of an eastern thunderstorm. No, no. This one went on long enough that our shoes and pant legs below our rain ponchos got sopping-wet and stayed soaked for the entire day!  So, as a final memory of Lady Bird Johnson’s wonderful Wildflower Center, here’s a little taste of a true Texas gully-washer, with a serenade by the late Dee Clark.

A few days after visiting the center, I walked down Congress Avenue and stood on the bridge overlooking what used to be called Town Lake (a man-made reservoir in the Colorado River), but was renamed Lady Bird Lake following Lady Bird Johnson’s death in 2007.  She had worked hard to beautify the lake and create a recreational trail system around its shoreline.

I will let Lady Bird Johnson sign off on today’s blog: “My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth. I wanted future generations to be able to savor what I had all my life”.

A Spring Stroll Through Denver Botanic Gardens

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I’m taking a little break from my New Zealand blog marathon (just a few gardens left, and I’ll get to them later) to jaunt on down to the high plains of Colorado and take you on a spring stroll through Denver Botanic Gardens. I was there about 10 days ago en route to Utah and then Texas, and it was a tulip extravaganza. The garden made sure everyone driving along York street got a colourful eyeful……

….. and they were planted in sunset colours at the entrance.

Going in, we were impressed by the towering specimens of coral tower-of-jewels (Echium wildpretii), a show-stopper if there ever was one!

The honey bees were enjoying it too (all echiums are great pollinator plants).

We made a beeline (haha) for the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory. This is what it looks like from the far side of DBG’s outdoor UMB Bank Amphitheatre (aka best-ever-hill-rolling-for-little-kids-spot).

And this is what that roof looks like inside.

I climbed to the top to see the queen’s wreath (Petrea volubilis), which was happy in the heat and humidity.

Every time I go into a tropical glasshouse, I discover something new and fun – like this variegated clown fig (Ficus aspera ‘Parcelii’).

But it was a beautiful spring Saturday and I was eager to see the outdoor gardens, so we went past yet another little colony of Star Trek-like towers-of-jewel….

….. into Shady Lane, where people were enjoying all the different crabapples in bloom.

If they paid attention, they’d have gleaned lots of lessons in woodland underplanting, like this yellow Tulipa tarda with Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla)….

….. and red-flowered barrenwort (Epimedium x rubrum) with windflowers (Anemone blanda).

Walking on, we came to the brand-new (2016) Steppe Garden. What an undertaking this was, but a perfect choice for Denver, which sits in the high foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains!  In the Central Asian Steppe, below, I loved the combination of the Fritillaria pallidiflora, native to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, Iris bucharica and Tulipa greigii.

The bumble bee below was gathering lots of pollen from the fritillaria.

Isn’t this water feature fabulous?

And look, a sweet little Iberis taurica, from Turkey, peeking out from the stacked limestone of the fountain.

I can hardly wait to come back next June (yes, my annual Garden Bloggers’ Fling is happening in mid-June 2019 right here in Denver!) to see the North American Steppe with all its native penstemons.

Water runs throughout DBG in the form of canals, formal pools, waterfalls and freeform ponds. It reflects the blue of the sky and is the perfect place to exhibit large sculpture, like Frank Swanson’s ‘Reflections’. And yes, that little girl seeing her reflection did have parents nearby watching.

Springtime at a botanical garden, before the perennials emerge and shrubs and trees leaf out – but when the crowds begin to arrive – is dependent on the early show of tulips, daffodils, tulips and other spring bulbs. When I was in the Annuals Garden & Pavilion, visitors all had their cameras and phones out…..

……to record the brilliant display of tulips and other bulbs….

……. in the area that will later feature an annuals display.

On the margins, there were also spring-blooming perennials, like this sumptuous combination of blue Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) with purple violas.

The Ann Montague Iris & Daylily Garden was getting ready to strut its stuff. How wonderful this garden would be in late spring and early summer!

DBG’s theme gardens are very specific, which is great if you have a particular craving to see, for example, a good selection of plants in the Dwarf Conifer Garden, below.

While other botanical gardens might feature flowering bulbs in spring, DBG has flowering cacti! Not sure of the identity of the sweet thing below, with Bell’s Twinpod (Physaria bellii) in the Desert Wash Garden.

Apart from the plants of the steppe, Denver Botanic Gardens is renowned for its meandering Rock Alpine Garden.  Those purplish pools are….

…. lovely blue wooly speedwell (Veronica pectinata).

Spring adonis (A. vernalis) was lighting up the gravel, too!

A little background here: I visited DBG for the first time in 2006, and through an interesting set of circumstances my husband and I were toured around by DBG’s current Senior Curator and Director of Outreach Panayoti Kelaidis (since that bio, he’s co-authored a book titled Steppes: The Plants and Ecology of the World’s Semi-Arid Regions, Timber Press, 2015). For 90 minutes, Panayoti whisked us from one garden to another, waxing poetic on each theme and heaping praise on the talented staff who worked there.  Subsequently we met each other as plant geeks on Facebook; then in January he was the American Horticultural Society host on the New Zealand garden tour on which my husband and I visited all the fabulous gardens I’ve been blogging about for the past few months. This is Panayoti and me heading into a small boat to explore the reaches of Fiordland’s spectacular Doubtful Sound.

Back to the Alpine Rock Garden…. The wonderful Crevice Garden, below, is the work of Mike Kintgen.

You aren’t tied to a specific time or location, as you canadian pharmacy cialis would be with a local course. get cialis overnight The risks of male impotence increase with the age or may last for a very long time, until an individual goes for medical treatment. If we see that visit over here buy generic cialis the price of it, we see it is so cheap. Oats- It can help you being a good lover in the bed. online pharmacy viagra Look at the rich colour of this winter heath (Erica carnea ‘Vivellii’).

I loved this pretty combination of Bergenia ciliata and Scilla forbesii.

The plants below are growing in “limestone cliffs” habitat.

I found this gorgeous Paeonia mascula at the edges of the Alpine Rock Garden.

And there are one or two troughs in this area as well, with tiny treasures for the most avid alpine fans.

In the shade of the Cactus & Succulent House, I found a few fritillaries, including Fritillaria acmopetala.

At the very edge of the rock gardens was a stand of western river birch (Betula occidentalis), a tree I didn’t know at all and was happy to discover.

The Gates Montane Garden contains plants that you might see in Colorado’s mountain habitats, especially in the Bear Creek Canyon where the late Charles C. Gates (to whom the garden is dedicated) once resided, like the mountain alders (Alnus incana ssp. tenuifolia) below.

And here I found wax currant (Ribes cereum) with its dainty, white flowers.

As if knowing that a montane garden is the perfect place for a Colorado native, this cottontail rabbit was busy munching grasses.

Just beyond was a perfect view of the eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) casting a reflection on the pond in the Shofu-En Japanese Garden.

There is nothing like looking through a redbud.

Walking around the pond, I came to a spot that looked out on the exquisitely-pruned pines in the Japanese garden.

Next up was a garden that would be a treat to visit in summer, the Laura Smith Porter Plains Garden, honouring the woman who in the 1800s came as a child in a covered wagon to Denver City.  There were some interesting succulents, but prairie flowers were still weeks away. That frieze is very interesting. It’s called The Story of a Pikes Peaker and was carved in 1925 by Robert Garrison for the Midland Savings Bank.  Romanesque in style, it is decidedly western in theme and, though it might be considered insensitive some 90 years later with its one-sided version of the battles between “Pikes Peak or Bust” pioneers and native Americans, it is certainly impressive and lends a stately frontier air to this little piece of the grassy plains.

Back in the central part of the garden, there was more water and a waterfall. Do you see that little American toad?

It was doing a frog-kick.

And I couldn’t help but video the chorus of toads in this pool (I think it’s the Monet Pool.) Listen…..

Circling around the pool, we came to Le Potager. Though the rhubarb was looking fine and the lettuce under its protective mesh (mmm…. bunnies…) was ready for salads, most of the planting here was still to be done.

The Sacred Earth Garden was just waking up, but it features plants traditionally used by the more than twenty Native American tribes of the Colorado Plateau, which includes parts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

I found Texas madrone (Arbutus xalapensis) with its pretty white flowers in the Dryland Mesa Garden here……

Flanking the pool on the side of the conservatory, I discovered the Plant Select Demonstration Garden, featuring plants especially chosen, grown and marketed as ideal for low-water areas with extremes of winter and summer temperatures. The program, now 21 years old, was launched with the help of Panayoti Kelaidis. You can hear him talking about plants like the ice plant below Delosperma ‘P001S’, aka Fire Spinner, in this video.

This little Plant Select native Clematis hirsutissima var. scottii or Scott’s Sugarbowls caught my eye.

Doing a wide swing and heading back into the garden, we walked over to the Science Pyramid, below, but time was running out.

We gazed up the length of the El Pomar Waterway. In a month or so, those containers will be filled with succulents and ornamental grasses will swish along the canal.

At The Ellipse in Honor of Nancy Schotters, the gardeners had done a splendid job of matching up tulips in the shape and colours of the Dale Chihuly sculpture in the centre of the pool.

We passed by the Schlessmann Plaza…..

…. and the water wall at the York Street end of the El Pomar Waterway.

The O’Fallon Perennial Walk was just waking up, the perennials poking out of the ground, …….

….. but my memories of it in June from my 2006 visit, below, will help you understand how gorgeous this will be later.

Since we had started our day in Toronto at 4:30 in the morning, I was too tired to head across York Street to visit the Children’s Garden and opted to return to the hotel before dinner (and a next-morning flight to Utah). But that omission (and all those gardens that feature summer plants) will be remedied in June 2019, when I return to Denver Botanic Gardens with my Garden Blogger friends!