Category Archives: Public Gardens

Los Angeles County Arboretum in January

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Since it is now January, I thought it would be fun to introduce you to a botanical garden I visited twice last January, three weeks apart and each time on a one-day Los Angeles stopover on our trip to and from New Zealand.  (When flying in winter, we try to build in a ‘bad weather safety net’ to make sure we arrive on time at a tour launch in a distant location.)  In all my visits to Los Angeles, I’d never been to the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, which is located in Arcadia, east of Pasadena, near the San Gabriel mountains. Using Uber, it was a $50 ride (about 50 minutes) from our airport hotel, but you can also reach it via the Metro Gold Line train, Arcadia stop, and bus from downtown L.A. (On my second visit, my husband elected to jump out at nearby Santa Anita Racetrack to take in some horse races).  Before you go, be sure to download the map, below (click to enlarge or go to their website and download an even larger version) so you don’t miss any of the gardens on this 127-acre property and historic site; even with two visits, I didn’t get to the greenhouse and some of the more remote features.

Prior to its opening as an arboretum in 1948, the garden was part of a tract of land that had originally been the territory of the indigenous Tongva people, the Gabrieliño. In September 1771, the Spanish colonists opened the Misión de San Gabriel Arcángel here, the fourth of an eventual twenty-one California missions. In 1821, Mexico (which had gained independence from Spain) began the process of selling all mission lands to rancheros. In 1838, a 13,319-acre parcel, Rancho Santa Anita, was deeded to naturalized Scottish immigrant John Reid and his Gabrieliño wife Victoria, who had  converted and become part of the mission.  Over the next century, the property was divided and changed hands many times, but its most colourful owner was definitely Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, the Ohio-born land speculator, gold mining investor and four-times-married womanizer (he survived two shootings from jilted paramours) who bought 8,500 acres of Rancho Santa Anita for $200,000 in 1875.  He soon built the Queen Anne style white cottage that sits beside Lake Baldwin to this day, where the photo below of him and family members was taken. After loaning money to a failing bank that later closed its doors, he cashed in the mortgages that had defaulted and bought most of the San Gabriel Valley, including what would become the towns of Arcadia, Monrovia and Baldwin Hills. And it was the horse-lover Baldwin who built the first Santa Anita Racetrack on his land; it opened in 1907 but it closed two years later when gambling was made illegal and later burned down. The racetrack clubhouse my husband visited while I toured the arboretum was built in 1934.

Early January

My principal reason for visiting the arboretum was the winter flowering of the aloes. I’d been to the succulent garden at The Huntington in late February in previous years, and so many aloes had finished flowering that I was determined to return to California to see the early winter bloom. So I quickly found the Aloe Trail in the African Garden.  The arboretum features over 180 different aloe species.

As I listened briefly to a botanist who was guiding a group around the collection, I noticed a northern mockingbird in Aloe marlothii, the large mountain aloe of South Africa. This aloe is easy to recognize because of its single stem and candelabra arrangement of several slanted- to horizontally-arranged dense racemes of tubular dark orange flowers.

There were beautiful aloes everywhere. Sadly, many were unlabelled, like the one below. But thanks to my friend Jim Bishop in San Diego, I have learned that this one is Aloe cameronii.

It wasn’t long before I saw one of the arboretum’s famous peacocks, wandering around one of the many South African cape aloes (A. ferox), which were at peak bloom.  The peacocks are the descendants of several pairs that Lucky Ellis imported from India in 1879; over the next century or so, they found the arboretum (and the surrounding residential neighbourhood!) much to their liking.

For a photographer, the lovely tilt-head aloe (A. speciosa) is always a joy to capture just as the flowers are opening.

Aloe vryheidensis bore lovely yellow and orange flowers.

If you love aloes, you could spend hours in this collection alone, which features over 180 different species!  The plants below were also unlabelled, but Jim Bishop tells me they are Aloe vanbalenii.

With its tall stems bearing the brown remnants of previous years’ foliage, Aloe candelabrum is a distinctive plant.  It has now been recognized as a separate species from A. ferox, with which it was previously grouped.

I was lured briefly beyond the aloe garden into the Madagascar collection, and a planting of several stunning, silver Bismarckia nobilis palms, my favourite palm species.

This is bismarckia’s fruit.

But there was still so much to see and my time was limited, since we were on an evening flight to New Zealand. So I carried on along the Aloe Trail past spiky orange sticks-on-fire (Euphorbia tirucalli) and the yellow daisies of grey-leaved euryops (E. pectinatus).

Look at this amazing display!

I stood for a while and watched a male Allen’s hummingbird (Sesalaphorus sasin) in the aloes turn his head, showing off the iridescent color transformation of his gorget feathers.  Then I headed on into the arboretum.

As an easterner, I’d never given much thought to “autumn colour” in California, especially in L.A. But I was pleasantly surprised by some species, given that this was January and at home our fall-coloured leaves had fallen long ago. This is the Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera).

And this is a wine connoisseur’s favourite tree, the cork oak (Quercus suber).

I walked past Baldwin Lake, named for the notorious Lucky, who had deepened it and created a retaining wall.  As the next photo of a posted garden sign reads, the lake was originally part of the local Raymond Fault, which branches from the major San Andreas Fault. It begins in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains and runs straight west under the town of Arcadia and the Santa Anita racetrack, later forming the hills of south Pasadena, then west to Dodger Stadium, the Hollywood Hills, the Santa Monica Mountains, Beverly Hills, Thousand Oaks, Malibu and out into the Pacific Ocean and the Channel Islands and beyond to where it stops. California’s geological history is dramatic; when I visit the state, I often forget that much of its built-up area lies over the north-south San Andreas Fault, whose last major earthquakes were the Loma Prieta in 1989 (Oakland) and the 1906 San Francisco quake and resulting fire.

The sign below asks for public support in restoring Baldwin Lake, following years of drought, mandatory water conservation measures and well-drilling from neighbouring cities. In 1991, the lake dried up completely and the fish had to be removed; the following season, the water table rose and the lake refilled.

Drought is a fact of life in California, one to which most native plants are well adapted, unlike the many water-dependent species in a botanical garden. So it was gratifying to come upon the Water Conservation Garden. I was interested in the plants chosen for this garden, especially Australian species like Grevillea and Maireana. It seems to me that this would be a great spot to focus on a large display of attractive, residential-scale landscapes using the most drought-tolerant of California plants – as an educational feature for visitors who are increasingly looking to enjoy gardens that require little water.

Given the time of year, the Grace Kallam Perennial Garden was mostly structure, with little in flower.

It would be fun to return to the perennial garden some spring (well, and the Huntington, too, of course!)

Nearby, I was enchanted by the myriad autumn colours of ‘Burgundy’ sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua). Presumably, leaf fall (abscission) is much delayed in such a mild climate, which accounts for these pretty leaves hanging on into winter.

Some outstanding specimens in the magnolia collection were already bursting into flower. This is Magnolia x soulangeana ‘Lilliputian’. There are over sixty magnolia species and cultivars in the garden.

Lavender was still in flower in The Herb Garden and it was charming to see…..

…..the formal knot garden here.  The herb garden was designed and laid out in 1955 by the Southern California unit of the Herb Society of America. It was renovated in the 1990s.

I cornered this bride and groom doing their wedding photography in the herb garden, and asked if they’d pose for a photo for my blog. Aren’t they fine looking?

Double-flowered apricot was resplendent in the herb garden.

I spied Lucky Baldwin’s Queen Anne’s cottage (once known as Baldwin’s Belvedere) behind a ginkgo tree, its leaves turning bright yellow.

The Citrus Grove was full of fruit. It was planted in 1961.

I breezed quickly through the Victorian Rose Garden, also installed in the late 1950s by the Herb Society, stopping to admire this yellow ‘Symphony’ shrub rose from David Austin Roses, whose renowned founder died in England just weeks ago at the age of 92.  This appreciation in The Guardian by my friend Victoria Summerley captures the man and his passion for roses.

As I walked along the road around Lake Baldwin, I passed a planting of prickly-pears (Opuntia ficus-indica). Sadly, there wasn’t enough time to head up to Tallac Knoll to see the plumeria grove there.

On my right was the Bamboo Collection.

Then I was standing across the lake looking directly at the Queen Anne Cottage through the boughs of a ‘Paulensis’ pink trumpet tree (Handroanthus impetiginosus).  This tree (formerly in the genus Tabebuia) was introduced to California via seed collected in the wild in ‘50s and ‘60s by hobbyist collectors like Dr. Samuel Ayyres, Jr., the local dermatologist, plant lover and later nursery owner who led the search for a site for the arboretum in the late 1940s. As it states in Dr. Ayres’s 1987 obituary, “The committee chose a 111-acre parcel in Arcadia where developer Elias J. (Lucky) Baldwin had once owned a ranch. The acreage had been purchased by Times publisher Harry Chandler, who intended to subdivide it. But Ayres persuaded Chandler to keep it off the market until he could find some financing. The state and county eventually purchased it for $320,000 and the Arboretum became a reality in 1948.”

Seedlings of the pink trumpet tree were planted in the arboretum in the 1970s; later, the cultivars ‘Pink Cloud’ and ‘Raspberry’ were developed here. The trumpet tree below sits near the entrance from the parking lot.

There were magnificent trees in this area, like this floss silk tree (Ceiba speciosa ‘Arcadia’), which seems to be a more rare yellow-flowered form of a tree that normally has pink blooms.

This Brazilian shaving brush tree (Pseudobombax grandiflorum) still had a few fluffy blossoms.

I took the path through the Cycad Collection, stopping to admire some impressive specimens.

The one below is Ceratozamia mexicana, aka “El Mirador”.

My last view from the garden was of the lovely San Gabriel Mountains.

*****

Then it was time to Uber back to LAX to check out of our hotel and catch our evening flight to Auckland launching a 3-week American Horticultural Society garden tour of the north and south islands of New Zealand. I wrote blogs about most of those gardens and natural sights in 2018. Here are a few of my favourites:

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I didn’t quite finish my blog reveries on the remaining gardens on New Zealand’s North Island, so stay tuned in 2019 for a few more!

*****

Late January

When we landed in Los Angeles at the end of our New Zealand trip on January 28th, we had almost a full day before departing L.A. for Toronto.  So, being a creature of extreme horticultural habit (and having already seen the lovely Getty Centre gardens), I elected to make a return Uber trip to Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden, with my husband getting out at Santa Anita racetrack. This time, I began by visiting the Celebration Garden, which features six different theme gardens. Once again, the peacocks were holding court, this one in the California Native Plant garden atop a fence near the red fruit of toyon (Hetermoles arbutifolia).  In the 1920s, this shrub had become so popular as a Christmas decoration in Los Angeles that the State of California passed a law prohibiting its picking without permission.

Honey bees foraged on the pink blossoms of lemonade berry (Rhus integrifolia), below.

Further along I watched a big, black California carpenter bee (Xylocopa californica) foraging in the flowers of Caesalpinia cacalaco ‘Smoothie’, from Mexico.

In another garden, the beautiful Himalayan Michelia doltsopa ‘Silver Cloud‘ was in flower and perfuming the area around it.

I wished I had time to keep walking to the Australia Garden, but I was curious to check on the aloes. So I headed back via the Desert Display Garden…..

….. which is full of succulent and cacti treasures. Love all the golden barrel cacti (Echinocactus grusonii)!

This is beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia). Agaves, by the way, all come from the New World and are native from South America up into desert regions of North America; they are in the family Asparagaceae. Aloes hail from the Old World – Africa, Madagascar, Middle East – and are now in the family Asphodelaceae.

As a photographer, it’s always fun to shoot a plant like resin spurge (Euphorbia resinifera).

Then I was back in the African Garden, where the long season of aloes was still impressive, with new species flowering and the ones I’d seen 3 weeks earlier now winding down. This is the attractive hybrid Aloe x principis, believed to be a natural cross between Aloe ferox and Aloe arborescens.

Dawe’s aloe (Aloe dawei), below, is native to the mountains of central and east Africa, including the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. This is the cultivar ‘Jacob’s Ladder’.

Aloe lineata is from South Africa.

The flowers of Aloe barbertoniae were just beginning to open.

Another big planting of an unidentified aloe.

Aloe rubroviolacea was attracting honey bees…..

…. as were the aging flowers of Aloe ferox.

I had more time now to visit the Madagascar Spiny Forest with its peculiar species.  This excellent article recounts the development of the garden, which opened in 2007.

The tall Pachypodium geayi raised its spined branches to the blue California sky, alongside tall Aloe vaombe and the spiny alluaudias. It’s easy to see the effects of evolutionary pressure here, when a diverse plant population on an African island evolves to feature protections – height or spines – against ancient animal herbivores, likely ancestors of native Madagascar lemurs.    

The Malagasy tree aloe (A. vaombe) hosted a perching hummingbird, which I think is a female Anna’s (Calypte anna).

The alluaudias – all six species are endemic to Madagascar – are among the most unusual plants in the garden, with their columns of small leaves and various spines. This is A. humbertii.

It was fun to see lavender scallops (Bryophyllum fedtschenkoi) in bloom, a succulent plant I know from the desert house at Toronto’s Allan Gardens.

One of the world’s most beautiful palms, Madagascar’s Bismarckia nobilis has pride of place in the collection, and I spent several minutes walking through the grove.

And, of course, there was a peacock peeking through the fronds – a fitting image to carry with me as I walked back to the entrance to meet my husband (he didn’t win at the horse races… imagine that!) and call our Uber to take us to LAX and our flight back home – and to winter. What a lovely break we’d had, in the southern hemisphere and here at the delightful Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden.

******

If you enjoyed this blog, you might like to read my blog on Lotusland in Santa Barbara.

Chicago Botanic Garden

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I was excited when I heard that the Garden Writers Association was meeting in Chicago this past summer. I hadn’t attended for a long time because of calendar conflicts, but this symposium was one I was determined to make. Why? The lectures would be good and it would be fun to see some old friends, but mostly it was an opportunity to see the Lurie Garden downtown and the Chicago Botanic Garden in their late summer glory. A glance at the tours being offered suggested that CBG would be a small part of a northern suburbs tour, so I decided I would take an entire day and Uber myself the 25 miles up to the garden north of the suburb of Glencoe. I shared the cost of the $50 (approximate) ride with another GWA member, arriving before 10 am. If you go, it’s a good idea to take a look at the comprehensive garden map online and upload the Smartphone App. Keep in mind that CBG is 385 acres, featuring 27 interesting, far-flung gardens and 9 islands set in 60 acres of lakes comprised of the Skokie River lagoons. Even with my 7-hour stay in August, I didn’t see all the gardens. It is also a spectacular resource for students of some of the most eminent contemporary landscape architects, including Dan Kiley, John Brookes and Oehme, van Sweden.

CBG offers free admission, but charges a fee for parking. Even in the Parking Lot, you can see that CBG’s gardeners pay close attention to colour, with signs referring in several places to relationships on the artist’s colour wheel.

I walked past the Visitor Center containing the restaurant (where I would dine with a local relative later) and marvelled at this…..

…… amazing planting, below, on the edge of one of the garden’s many water courses: the big red flowers of ‘Lord Baltimore’, a hardy swamp hibiscus hybrid, with wine-red Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium sp). Isn’t it beautiful?

The Crescent near the entrance is devoted to seasonal displays of spring bulbs and annuals set in concentric, crescent-shaped, boxwood-lined beds.  It was conceived by the renowned modernist landscape architect Dan Kiley in 2002, and installed posthumously.

Dan Kiley also conceived of the plan for the adjacent formal garden, The Esplanade, which is described as the garden’s “village green”.  Here is the view along its sculpted walkway back beneath the alleé of Commendation™ elms towards the entrance. As CBG says, “Kiley saw the Esplanade as an opportunity to create a great sense of place and arrival, offering visitors glimpses of vivid sweeps of color against the water and sky as they pass over the bridge outside the Visitor Center.” Following his death in 2004, the designs for both the Crescent and Esplanade were completed and installed by Kiley’s colleague Peter Morrow Meyer.

And here are the Esplanade’s lovely niches. You can see here the influence that André LeNôtre’s 17th century work at Versailles had on Kiley, who visited France while working as chief designer for the U.S. Army during WWII.

As CBG notes of the modernist ethos: “The tenets of modern landscape architecture continue to resonate: Keep it simple. Make it useful. Let the spaces flow. Strive to make connections. Dan Kiley was a master of these ideas.”  The Esplanade’s lake walk and water terrace offer visitors a unique opportunity to engage with the garden’s “deep ties to the water”.

Similarly, the three long water fountains and their line of splashing water plumes (very Versailles!) create music that draws visitors towards them.

The beautiful Gertrude Nielsen Heritage Garden, opened in 1982, was funded by the daughter of the man who invented the Nielsen Ratings for television.

Designed by Pittsburgh landscape architect Geoffrey Rausch, it pays tribute to the early tradition of botanic gardens with its circular, four-quadrant shape modelled after the earliest such garden, in Padua, Italy, the Orto Botanico di Padova (1545).  The central bed recalls a classic ‘physic garden’ and medicinal plants from around the world.

The garden is dedicated to Carl Linnaeus, who developed our modern system of binomial nomenclature to name plants, and whose statue, by Robert Berks, adorns the border in the background.

Canna lilies are just one of many aquatic plants represented in the three water gardens arrayed around the central bed.

Visitors are educated about taxonomy as they circle the garden.  For example, they learn that both snapdragons (light-yellow flowers halfway up the border) and…..

….. butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii ‘Pink Delight’) are both in the Scrophulariaceae or Figwort Family.  Late summer monarchs enjoy nectaring on butterfly bush.

Tender plants from the Bromeliaceae family are brought from greenhouses into the border, like this Aechmea ‘Yellow Berries’.

Or they might discover (via a sign in the border) that chaste-tree (Vitex agnus-castus ‘Lecompte’), below, has been moved by the naming authorities from Verbenaceae to Lamiaceae.  In this way, even beginning gardeners understand the complexity of the plant world.

I made a quick stop in the Buehler Enabling Garden, where various strategies are demonstrated for people with physical infirmities that prevent them from traditional gardening, or for gardeners who find it harder to follow the same methods as they age.  Raised beds, below, are one way to make gardening easier.

There are lots of beautiful planting ideas in the garden, all in delicious colour combinations, and many with perfume to create a sensory garden.  In the background you can see the Tool Shed, which features adaptive tools for gardeners.

I loved the violet, lilac and pale-blue tones in this combination.

Gardeners limited to tight spaces will find inspiration in the living wall vertical gardens and splashing water wall in the Buehler Garden.  (To learn much more about the Enabling Garden, download the .pdf at this American Public Gardens site.)

I was determined to spend lots of time at Evening Island so I hurried there via the interesting Water Gardens edging the Great Basin. That’s white-flowered bog bean (Menyanthes trifoliata) with red-stemmed thalia (Thalia geniculata var. ruminoides) out there near the duckies.

Standing quietly, I watched a ruby-throated hummingbird nectar on canna flowers. I believe this is a cultivar called ‘Intrigue’.

Although the water gardens were located near the meandering Serpentine Bridge to Evening Island…..

……. I went down the shore to the Arch Bridge.

Unsurprisingly, this sleek bridge with its overhanging weeping willows and waterlilies was inspired by Impressionist painter Claude Monet’s bridge at Giverny.

There are some wonderful gardens along the water here, filled with aquatic and marginal plants like pink-flowered swamp hibiscus (H. moscheutos) with sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), below…..

….. and a native North American duo with which I’m very familiar from fens and swamps here in Ontario: blue-flowered pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata) and pink water willow (Decodon verticillatus).

Then it was over the bridge and onto Evening Island itself. (I made a video of my tour of the island which you’ll find below, complete with birds chirping and kids laughing.)  Dedicated in 2002, the island was designed by Oehme van Sweden of Washington, D.C. whose founding principals James van Sweden and the late Wolfgang Oehme are renowned for articulating a garden style called the New American Landscape. From the OvS website, “The style is characterized by large swaths of grasses and layered masses of perennials that boldly celebrate the ephemeral through mystery, intrigue, and discovery.” After walking along a pathway from the bridge, I arrived at my favourite spot: a simple, linear garden arrayed along the Great Basin and featuring some of those bold plants. I took the steps down past yellow daylilies, blue Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and ‘Tardiva’ hydrangeas (H. paniculata).

Along the path was more Russian sage, threadleaf coreopsis, feather red grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) and ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium  purpureum ssp. maculatum) nearest the water.

Here you see the genius of James van Sweden and Wolfgang Oehme. These beautiful, low maintence plants, used in masses, are not just attractive to people and pollinators, they are designed to frame the view in the most beautiful way. Through the layers of perennials, grasses and waterlilies at the shore, visitors look across the Great Basin and see the formal gardens of the CBG, including the McGinley Pavilion where weddings and receptions are held.

From the path, I could look up at the Theodore C. Butz Memorial Carillon on a rise nearby. Its 48 bells ring out the hours throughout the day.  You can hear it in the video, too.  Bell concerts are also held here.

I took a quick peek into the stone-walled Nautilus terrace at a family waiting for their child to finish nature camp nearby.

Then I took the path around the island, stopping to admire the eye-popping hillside meadow of the white-flowered hardy hibiscus hybrid ‘Blue River II’, annual spider flower (Cleome hasslerana) and more Joe Pye weed.

I loved the random insertion of big sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) into this garden, Some birds were going to be very happy with all that seed!

Further along was a drift of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) with ‘Heavy Metal’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum) under ‘Whitespire’ birches (Betula populifolia), which are more disease- and insect-resistant than paper birches.

Though many native plants are used, the flower meadows on Evening Island are stylized with colourful combinations that have the advantage of being wildlife-friendly, like this pretty vignette of purple chaste-tree (Vitex agnus castus), annual orange Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia ‘Fiesta del Sol‘) and blue bog sage (Salvia uliginosa).

Check out the bee on the sage – and there were monarchs nectaring on the tithonia.

I found myself at the beautiful Trellis Bridge connecting Evening Island to the Lavin Plant Evaluation Garden.

Look at all that gorgeous, purple New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis) mixed with ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora)!

And this is a view of the bridge looking back at Evening Island.  I think this is my favourite of the three bridges.

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So it was back across the Trellis Bridge to Evening Island.  As I walked over the bridge I spotted this weed harvester, used to reduce the growth of various aquatic plants in the Great Basin, North Lake and elsewhere. The garden also has a zebra mussel problem in the lakes and waterways; these mollusks filter the water for the algae they eat, increasing its clarity and paving the way for even more aquatic weeds.

Back on Evening Island, I stopped at the outlook below to gaze out through another carefully-designed Oehme van Sweden view: under the sycamore and over the feather reed grass, utilized so perfectly here as a shimmery half-curtain framing the view of the water.

Then I came upon a native shrub we don’t see in Ontario, for some reason, though it is perfectly hardy for us: shining sumac (Rhus copallinum).

And that Evening Island video I promised?  Here it is…..

I left Evening Island and took a fast tour through the English Walled Garden, designed in 1990 by the late English John Brookes. When he updated it 20 years later, he called it a “mix of Sissinghurst, Great Dixter and a bit of Hidcote”. This is the formal garden….

…. and this is the lovely cottage garden with its mix of flowers and vegetables….

….. and a sunken garden with hexagonal pool.

I hurried back to the visitor center to meet a relative for lunch in the lovely Garden View Cafe.  Then it was on to the Native Plant Garden.  For me this is one of the most important gardens at CBG, especially as gardeners aim for more pollinator- and bird-friendly gardens using indigenous plants adapted to the climate and soil conditions.  In August this garden is filled with a profusion of Chicago area native forbs and grasses and divided broadly into three spaces, a prairie garden, a bird and butterfly garden, and a woodland garden for shade. As a prairie-lover, I focused on what was in bloom at this peak time of summer, like white flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata), tall compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) and a yellow daisy, possibly heliopsis or Rudbeckia subtomentosa.

You rarely see bright-red royal catchfly (Silene regia) in a garden but it’s a wonderful hummingbird and swallowtail butterfly lure. Here it is with prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya).

Part of the prairie section of the Native Plant Garden overlooks North Lake and Smith Fountain. This is a combination of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and showy tick trefoil (Desmodium canadense).

I loved the muscled bark of this old American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana) in the woodland garden.

I moved on to the Regenstein Fruit and Vegetable Garden whose horticulturist Lisa Hilgenberg I would have the pleasure of meeting the next evening at my GWA Symposium. Grapes cascaded over the long pergola….

….. and were nearing ripeness.

Naked ladies, aka resurrection lilies (Lycoris squamigera) popped up in several places in the garden, here with just one of a series of fruit tree espaliers in the background.

Sunflowers and corn are native North American food plants, along with squash, barely visible under the corn at rear.

Visitors can check out unusual offerings like okra, front.

What beautiful leafy crops!

Education is a principal mandate of CBG, and the Fruit and Vegetable Garden tool wall offers an excellent how-to primer.

Vegetables are planted everywhere, including in these beds terraced out over the water. Vegetable growing is part of the internship program of CBG’s Windy City Harvest Apprenticeship Program, which educates and employs 80-90 teens from low-income communities at four sites in the Chicago area. Through the program, vegetables grown here are sold to the CBG’s cafe.

Next up was the Graham Bulb Garden. As I gazed at the bees foraging on the wonderful ‘Millenium’ flowering onions (hybridized by my friend Mark McDonough), I thought how beautiful this garden must be in springtime after Chicago’s long winter, filled with tulips, daffodils and loads of tiny bulbs.

Nearby were some great color ideas, with explanations based on the artist’s color wheel. This happy melange of zinnias with dahlias and cannas represented analogous colours of red, orange and yellow.

Nearby was the Farwell Landscape Garden and I had a brief look at the Informal Herb Garden, below, but aware of the time I elected to keep going.

Though my knees were beginning to complain about all the walking I’d done, I made the decision to head out to the Dixon prairie. My walk paralleled the 22-acre Skokie River Corridor which introduced me to this little profile on Joan O’Shaughnessy, the lawyer-turned-ecologist in charge of the Skokie River Corridor and the nearby Dixon Prairie. If you’re interested in riparian and prairie ecology, you might enjoy this podcast with Joan.

The Suzanne Searle Dixon Prairie, opened in 1982, is named for a long-time Lake Forest resident who was so passionate about the Illinois prairie and its wetlands, that she made conservation and ecology a prime focus of her community activism and philanthropy (her great-grandfather founded G.D. Searle, a pharmaceutical company which invented the first birth control pill and aspartame, i.e. Nutra-Sweet.)  Though the Dixon Prairie occupies a 15-acre site that was never part of the iconic Illinois tallgrass prairie, it has nevertheless been painstakingly designed to represent 6 prairie ecotypes that exist in northeastern Illinois: 1) sand prairie; 2) gravel hill prairie; 3) bur oak savannah; 4) tallgrass prairie; 5) fen prairie; and 6) wet prairie.  (I got to all of them but the wet prairie.)  My first look was over cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) and moisture-loving obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) onto the lake separating the prairie from Evening Island in the background. CBG is proud of its lakes, and a sign nearby states that its 60 acres of lakes support native plants and largemouth bass, crappie, carp, bluegill as well as ducks, egrets, herons and cranes.

To be honest, without a guide it’s not easy to distinguish the different communities, but if there are bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa), you know that’s savannah, which features occasional trees in a sea of grasses and forbs.

I could discern the gravel hill prairie easily, because it jutted up above the flat prairie and was bereft of tall species, as these relics from the last ice age tend to be.  CBG achieved this rare habitat by adding a thick layer of gravel over topsoil.  Around the hill’s base in more mesic soil, I saw the long, dark-purple seedheads of leadplant (Amorpha canescens), spotted Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum), blackeyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta), the spiky balls of rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), pale-mauve obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana), the big basal leaves of prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) and the dancing flowers of gray-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata).

Visitors are introduced to the plants of a fen prairie, which features an abundance of groundwater…..

…. and supports prairie moisture-lovers like great blue lobelia (L. siphilitica) and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), a favourite larval food of the monarch butterfly.

Bumble bees were nectaring on pollinator-friendly culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).

The Dixon Prairie is vast and full of so many interesting plants, but much more understated than CBG’s Native Plant Garden, which seems extra-floriferous in comparison.

Here are nodding onion (Allium cernuum) and sweet blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa).

I loved all the educational signs, especially this one showing the complexity of the below-ground community and deep roots of prairie species.

Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) features abundantly in the August tallgrass prairie, along with the baby’s-breath-like flowers of flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata).

Switch grass (Panicum virgatum) is another mainstay of the tallgrass prairie.

It was time to leave but I stopped for a few minutes to watch a song sparrow foraging on the fruit of biennial gaura (G. biennis), one of those plants that many gardeners would likely pull out, given its tendency to look a little weedy. But that would deprive a lot of bees of nectar and birds like this one of food. These are the valuable lessons of the Dixon Prairie.

Despite the gusting wind, I made a little video to remember some of the sounds of my hour or so here on this special prairie.

Chicago Botanic Garden deserves at least a full day’s visit, but I certainly could have used at least four more hours. As it was, I missed the Aquatic Garden, the Bonsai Collection, the Children’s Growing Garden, the Japanese Garden, the Dwarf Conifer Garden and the greenhouses. I had seen a few of those on my previous visit a decade ago, but I do need to return to see them again.  As I walked back through the gardens to catch an Uber back to the city, I heard singing coming from the Krasberg Rose Garden.

The roses were looking lovely in August….. this is Love and Peace™…..

….. but my takeaway from the Rose Garden was the crowd of little children and parents listening to the singer giving a nature-oriented outdoor show, one of hundreds of annual events, programs and classes that make Chicago Botanic Garden not just a beautiful, leafy oasis in urban Illinois, but a vital part of the cultural community here too.

 

A September Visit to Bellevue Botanical Garden

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On our brief stop in Seattle in September, we paid a visit to Bellevue Botanical Garden. I had been to the garden years earlier and it was still enchanting — if only the weather had cooperated (she says, with a wink). For unlike most people who revel in a warm late summer day without a cloud on the horizon, photographers tend to gaze skyward hopefully for the chance of overcast – even a light sprinkle – because midday sunshine creates difficult, contrasty light in a garden. Nevertheless, that’s what we had and I was resigned walking in that I would be focusing on shadier spots in the garden.

This is a map of the garden, which I modified to show both the small keys and actual sections in one image. From their website a bit of history:  “The Bellevue Botanical Garden Society (BBGS) was founded in 1984, by Iris and Bob Jewett, with the idea to build and support a free public botanical garden for their local community. It came to fruition when Harriet and Cal Shorts generously donated their home and 7.5 acres to develop the Bellevue Botanical Garden (BBG). The Society was then incorporated in January 1986, as a non-profit organization. Beginning in 1992, and in partnership with the City of Bellevue, more than 45 acres has since been added to the Garden. Today, the 53-acre Bellevue Botanical Garden is a world-renowned community treasure for everyone to enjoy”.  

The entrance walkway features a unique in-ground rock fountain which feeds a rill that flows along the pathway.

Beyond is an interesting slatted wall fountain.

If you have a cellphone, you can use the Tap or Scan app for the garden.

The Fuchsia Garden has been maintained by Seattle’s Eastside Fuchsia Society since 1992. I could have spent a long time here shooting macros, but we had a big driving day ahead, so I satisfied myself with….

…. just one or two close-ups. This lovely blossom is ‘Delta’s Sarah’.

Then we were approaching the famous NPA (Northwest Perennial Alliance).Perennial Border, which is actually a series of parallel borders arrayed on a slope.  Though this is an older article, I appreciated reading about the history of the border. 

There are attractive benches throughout the garden…..

….. and interesting stacked stone sculptures (these ones in goldenrod about to flower.)

I wish I could show you the border as it should be seen, but in the harsh light I took very few photos.  There was an ebullient display of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), Verbena bonariensis and blue mist bush (Caryopteris x clandonensis).

And out of the sun, I liked the way V. bonariensis insinuated itself into this heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica).

Verbena bonariensis always attracts bumble bees, and since I do a lot of photography of bumble bees and all kinds of other native bees and honey bees, I stopped for a moment to watch a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) nectaring on the tiny flowers.

Gaura (Oenothera gaura) was a cloud of tiny flowers.

The purplish-blue spikes of anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) made a pretty pairing with the gaura.

Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Henry Eilers’ is one of the late season charmers among the myriad yellow daisies.

I loved the way false hemp (Datisca cannabina) created a living arch on a path behind towering pink Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum ‘Gateway’).

Ornamental grasses are featured abundantly in the perennial border.

Bulbs are also used in the perennial border, like this tropical ginger lily (Hedychium coccineum ‘Tara’).

And the border features shrubs and small trees like crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) ….

…. and hydrangeas, which were undergoing their beautiful late summer colour transformation.

Red-orange heleniums (H. autumnale) were attracting pollinators in one section of the border.


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In a shady section, below, I was charmed by this small vignette of hydrangea, brunnera and geranium……

…. and the azure-blue flowers of Gentiana asclepiadea cascaded over stairs between the parallel paths.

The cultivar name of this pure white toad lily (Tricyrtis hirta) is ‘Shirohohotogisu’, which means ‘white cuckoo’, a descriptive metaphor for the upswept petals.

On higher ground beside the lawn near the garden’s gift shop, I stood in the shade of the silk tree (Albizia julibrissin) and looked back at the borders below.

The silk tree was in full flower.

At the far end of the border, the Dahlia Display Garden maintained by the Puget Sound Dahlia Association was at its late summer best.

Who doesn’t love the brilliant colours of dahlias?

The bright sun on this dahlia suited the leafcutter bee just fine. (Bees love single-petalled dahlias!)

Even this southern green stink bug nymph looked fetching on an orange dahlia.

Since our schedule had us driving to the beaches of Oregon that day, we hurried out of the NPA Perennial Border area on a path through the forest. Here you’ll find the Native Discovery Garden. From the website: “The Native Discovery Garden, maintained by the East Lake Washington District of Garden Clubs and the Washington Native Plant Society, inspires visitors to look to the native plant palette when planning their home gardens. Adapted to the climate and conditions of the Pacific Northwest, native plants in urban landscapes can be ecologically sound, beautiful, and low maintenance. Adjacent to a natural wetland, this garden illustrates the many layers of plant life in the Northwest, from ground covers to trees. It serves as a transition from the gardens to the woodlands and forested lands to the south.” 

 

I stopped at a beautiful bench, sculpted from Washington state hexagonal columnar basalt by sculptor Barry Namm.

There were excited children watching the fish beneath the waterfall in the Shorts Groundcover Garden.

Water is used throughout Bellevue Botanical Garden, in inventive ways both natural and highly artificial.

I captured some of those water features in this short video.

To honor its ‘sister city’ relationship with Yao City near Osaka, Bellevue originally established the Yao Japanese Garden at Kelsey Creek Park.  In 1992, the garden was moved to the Bellevue Botanical Garden, where it opened two years later. This is the entrance gate.

Unlike many traditional Japanese gardens, there are lushly beautiful plantings here.

I loved this timber bridge.

But there are also the more traditional features of a Japanese garden.

We stopped briefly at the Tateuchi Viewing Pavilion, nestled under massive red cedars (Thuja plicata).  It was a gift from the Tateuchi Foundation, i.e. Atsuhiko Tateuchi and his wife, Ina Goodwin Tateuchi.

Then it was time to take the Tateuchi Loop Path to return to our car and drive south towards Oregon.

Flora & Friendship at Seattle’s Soest Garden

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What a pleasure it was for me to visit the University of Washington Botanic Garden’s (UWBG) Center for Urban Horticulture and the Soest Herbaceous Display Garden in Seattle earlier this month! Part of the fun was that I was meeting a little group of Facebook friends for a picnic – a bring-what-you-wish buffet among people who’ve “known” each other online for years, but answered my invite to meet “in the flesh” on the first leg of a 2-1/2 week circular driving vacation my husband and I embarked on from Vancouver throughout Washington and Oregon. (More on that later.)  But much of the pleasure came from exploring a garden where the fullness of late summer was on show everywhere, including these spectacular swamp hibiscus (Hibiscus moscheutos) adjacent to the parking area.

We wound our way past an impressive Hydrangea integrifolia (a new species for me) blanketing a building wall…..

…. down a path beside the library…..

…and arrived in a courtyard outside the NHS Hall. Here were colourful container displays of annuals and tropicals…..

…. and a lovely combination of ‘Rustic Orange’ coleus (Plectranthus scuttelarioides) with Begonia boliviensis.

I was drawn by the sound of water through the arches in the little Fragrance Garden (where we’d have our picnic later)…..

….toward the charming fountain at the center of the Soest Garden.

The Soest Garden is designed with eight beds radiating out from the central fountain and all divided by paths. This is what it looks like standing at the fountain and turning slowly to view the garden.

At the beginning of September, the garden was resplendent with ornamental grasses and late-flowering perennials. Here are some of the spectacular plants and combinations, beginning with beautiful ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ pineapple lily (Eucomis comosa) combined with Antonow’s honey bush (Melianthus major ‘Antonow’s Blue’).

The foliage on the honey bush is entrancing, isn’t it?

It was fun to see azure-blue Agapanthus inapertus.

I liked the dark-red colour echo going on with the Potentilla thurberi and the ‘Cheyenne’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum).

The beds have useful signs to identify some (not all) of the plants.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen largest masterwort (Astrantia maxima) before.

Northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) was one of several native grasses putting on a late-summer show..

Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) is always among the most graceful of edgers in any design.

In a garden full of often-rare plants, there were some familiar favourites, like Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’.

Persicaria ‘Painter’s Palette’ was paired with Phlox paniculata ‘Nora Leigh’. 

Long-blooming Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’ peeked out from a cloud of fall asters still in bud.

Here’s a fabulous Spanish grass I wish was hardy for us, giant feather grass (Stipa gigantea).

And here it is as background for hemp-agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum) and the newish white-flowered coreopsis Star Cluster, at front.

I’ve always liked the romantic late-summer combination of pink-flowered border sedums like ‘Autumn Joy’ with the soft blue flowers of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Little Spire’).

The shape of this bed is enhanced by the chartreuse foliage of Sedum ruprestre ‘Angelina’, which is itself enhanced by the soft shield fern (Polystichum setiferum ‘Divisilobum’) behind it.


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At the opposite end of the garden to that which I entered is the public entrance from the parking lot. Here visitors can see the donors who made this wondrous garden possible, the late Orin Soest and his wife Althea Soest. As the obituary for Orin Soest stated: “In 1990, he began a relationship that continues in perpetuity with the University of Washington and the Center for Urban Horticulture. In 1998, The Orin and Althea Soest Herbaceous Garden was dedicated and has been a cherished gift to the University and the community of Seattle for its educational and healing purposes.”

And here we see the overall layout of the Center for Urban Horticulture and the context of the display garden within it.

Grasses like variegated purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’) are airy enough to act as scrims or screens for plants behind them. I liked how the little flame lilies (Hesperantha coccinea) sparkle behind the molinia.

Here’s the purple moor grass from the far side of the bed.

And this fabulous big shrub is Himalayan honeysuckle (Leycesteria formosa).

Although the flowers had withered, angel’s fishing rod (Dierama pulcherrimum) still created an interesting effect in this bed.

One of my favourite images of the Soest garden was this luscious pairing of globe thistle (Echinops ritro) and ‘Gateway’ Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium maculatum). Even in the northeast, this is one combination we can carry off!

This is the view from the far end of the garden. What a lovely place for strolling slowly, absorbing the plant combinations and taking in details large and small.

I think this is a dry streambed in the South Slope below the garden, with a variety of heaths, heathers and drought-tolerant sedges like Carex buchananii.

The beautiful begonia (B. grandis ‘Heron’s Pirouette’) was collected in Japan in 1997 by Dan Hinkley (Heronswood) and is hardy to USDA Zone 6.

Circling around the garden, I came to some benches framed with ornamental grasses and containers of succulents.

I loved the way this tree aeonium (Aeonium arboreum var. atropurpureum) – in the container with blue chalk sticks (Senecio serpens) – echoed the flowers of the fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides).  Behind is tall toe toe grass (Cortaderia richardii) and yellow-flowered shrubby hare’s ear (Bupleurum fruticosum).

Finally I came to a generous stand of Fuchsia magellanica …..

….being explored for nectar by a honey bee.  It seemed like the perfect time to stop for lunch.

***************

For it was now time to meet my friends: Seattle photographer-writer-philosopher David Perry and his partner, UW School of Medicine Administrator Mary Pyper, (me in the centre), the Center for Urban Horticulture Elisabeth C. Miller Library’s  librarian-poet Rebecca Alexander,  and Sue Nevler, who has been trustee or board member for some of Seattle’s finest gardens, including this one.

We tucked into our picnic, made special with freshly-smoked salmon and all the trimmings from David and Mary…..

…… and an apple cake made by Rebecca’s partner, Carlo, from their own Akane apples.

There was a gift of dahlias from Sue’s garden, with a special ‘pollinator nosegay’ to honour my love of bees.

We took our plates to the Fragrance Garden, where scented lilies…..

…. and white summer phlox (P. paniculata ‘David’)…..

… and English roses perfumed the air.

It was a day for exploring a most charming garden – and bringing friendships made in cyberspace down to fruitful, late-summer earth.

Orange Punch!

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I’ve never understood the antipathy to orange in the garden that so many people seem to have. For me, orange is fun to pair with other hues, whether in a warm blend of citrus & sunset colours, like my deck pot at the lake one summer, below, with its nasturtiums, African daisies, zinnias and pelargoniums ….

….. or in classic combinations like orange and blue (complementary contrasts on the colour wheel), or orange and purple, as illustrated in a few combinations below. (Click for larger photo.)

I came upon a few great examples on my day at the Chicago Botanic Garden last week, One lovely planting on Evening Island paired Mexican daisy (Tithonia rotundifolia ‘Fiesta del Sol’) with blue bog sage (Salvia uliginosa).  I loved this duo!

These two are also wonderful pollinator plants, the tithonia attracting lots of butterflies, including monarchs….

….. and swallowtails, like the black swallowtail below.

And the bog sage is a fabulous lure for bees. While I stood there for a few minutes, I saw lots of honey bees and native bumble bees and carpenter bees, like the big one below.

Orange can even be a feature in wetlands or pond margins, as we see below on the shore of the Great Basin, with Canna ‘Intrigue’ and its ruby-throated hummingbird visitor.

Another CBG combo I liked was in the Circle Garden, with old-fashioned orange zinnias (Z. elegans) consorting with a lovely pale orange-yellow coleus splashed with red.  I couldn’t see a label, but it might be ‘Copper Splash’.

A few years back, I did an in-depth blog post exploring orange flowers, foliage and accessories for the garden. If you didn’t catch it, you can find it here.  Orange! What’s not to love?