A Visit to Longwood Gardens

Posted on September 28, 2023 by Janet

Last week, for four days – including the weekend that Tropical Storm Ophelia decided to make her wet and windy appearance – I visited “America’s Garden Capital”, gardens of the Philadelphia region, along with almost 100 fellow garden bloggers. We call this annual adventure the Garden Bloggers’ Fling and it is all that: tours, fun, friendship (and no classes). It began with a visit to fabulous Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, and a rare behind-the-scenes tour of the high-tech production facility, courtesy of Longwood’s Conservatory Manager – and the one-man organizing committee for this Fling – Karl Gercens III. He shepherded us around a large greenhouse…..

….. showing us what seemed to be acres of chrysanthemums being readied for Longwood’s annual Chrysanthemum Festival, Sept. 30-Nov. 12 this year. Some of the rare cultivars originated in Japan 45 years ago and are propagated to keep them available for use each autumn.

Karl told us about the pruning and training techniques that prepare the mums for show-time….

…. and we watched a gardener patiently training mums into Christmas tree shapes.

These looked like octopuses to me, but I believe they’re called mum cascades and are ultimately suspended from above in the Conservatory. This greenhouse featured blinds that enable the gardeners to control the light/dark balance needed for the plants’ physiological photoperiod, in order to have them all bloom on time.

Michelle demonstrated the high-tech overhead trolley line that moves hanging baskets around the greenhouse to facilitate watering, fertilizing and correct light exposure.

Pierre du Pont was very fond of citrus trees and grew them in the Conservatory in a section then called the Orangery. So espaliered citrus trees have become part of Longwood’s tradition.

Then it was outside to a talk by the gardener of the aquatic plants occupying temporary pools while major construction takes place around their regular pools. Prominent was Victoria amazonica with its platter-shaped leaves, the largest floating leaves in the plant kingdom, famous for supporting small children in Victorian-era conservatory photos.

Native to the Amazon Basin, their vascular architecture creates a stiffness that enables the big leaves to float in large networks, maximizing photosynthesis. The spines deter hungry herbivores.

Waterlilies had been assembled in pretty aquatic arrangements.

Then it was into the Visitor Center for a presentation on “Longwood Reimagined: A New Garden Experience”. It began with the garden’s mission statement….

…..the legacy of Pierre Samuel du Pont (1870-1954), great-great-grandson of the founder of the chemical company DuPont, who purchased what was then a 202-acre arboretum and farm from the Peirce family in 1906. Today, Longwood ranges over 1,077 acres (436 hectares) and welcomes 1.6 million visitors yearly.

We saw artist renderings of the new football-field-sized greenhouse taking shape near the Conservatory. Opening in fall 2024, the $245 million 17-acre Reimagining project features, in Longwood’s words: “Stunning new buildings, wondrous new indoor and outdoor gardens, surprising new guest experiences, and much more await. We’re expanding our grounds, connecting them from east to west in a beautiful, unified journey of lush, formal gardens to open meadows to winding paths to breathtaking Brandywine Valley vistas.”

Next up was a visit to the beautiful Flower Garden, beginning with this lovely mauve-and-plum container design on a patio designed in the 1970s by the renowned California landscape architect Thomas Church.

The 600-foot-long Flower Garden walk is gorgeous in September, with annuals at their peak. It was Longwood’s very first garden, designed by Pierre S. du Pont who described it as “the old-fashioned plan of straight walks and box borders at the edge of the flower beds”, using colourful plants chosen with the help of his wife Alice, now memorialized in Mandevilla ‘Alice du Pont’.

Combinations are fine-tuned to hit just the right colour note, like this Persian shield (Strobilanthes dyerianus) surrounded by globe amaranath (Gomphrena globosa ‘Ping Pong Purple‘).

The fuzzy, pink flowers of Bolivian sage (Salvia oxyphora) were attracting lots of bees.

I loved this soft combination of peach zinnias and bronze carex grass.

Stairs led down to Pierre du Pont’s “Compartment Gardens”, including the 1908 Square Fountain surrounded by luscious coleus and begonia plants, among others. The stunning chartreuse coleus is Flame Thrower™ Salsa Verde.

Though the peony garden was out-of-season, there were a few pretty combinations for late summer, like the pink Japanese anemone with Ageratum houstonianum, below.

Handsome aquamarine urns punctuated this long foliage border, backed by a tall arborvitae hedge.

I hurried up from the Flower Garden past the Peirce-DuPont House (1730) towards the Meadow, but stopped under a native franklinia tree (F. alatamaha) to admire the few remaining blossoms. Many of Longwood’s towering trees are part of a rich arboretum, established in the late 18^th century by the sons of William Peirce, who acquired 402 acres in 1700 from agents of William Penn (1644-1718). Penn was an English-born Quaker who made treaties with the region’s Lenape Native Americans in order to develop the property he acquired from King Charles II, eventually naming it Pennsylvania. In 1682, the first Pennsylvania General Assembly was held. Penn would later found Philadelphia. As for franklinia, it was discovered growing on the Alatamaha River in 1765 by John and William Bartram; the latter collected seed a decade later and named the tree for his father’s friend, Benjamin Franklin.

Then it was down the gently curving boardwalk through Peirce’s Woods….

…. to the native plant meadow featuring late summer goldenrod, white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima), and asters, as well as the seedheads of wild beebalm and Joe Pye weed. (I turned on my Merlin app here to identify the gray catbirds calling in the trees nearby).

In the shade, orange touch-me-not (Impatiens capensis) was attracting bumble bees.

Now it was time to visit the 4.5 acre (1.8 hectare) Conservatory (1919), with its fine collection of 4,600 tropicals, orchids, desert and Mediterranean plants and trees, featured in 17 theme gardens, many containing fountains or pools.

I loved these Siam tulips (Curcuma alismatifolia)….

….. and this striking combination of Caladium ‘Carolyn Whorton’ with orange Bouvardia ternifolia.

Pink anthuriums (‘Anthewuch’) and variegated sansevierias were growing amongst cycads.

This pool featured a waterfall.

And this one had fountains seemingly emerging from ferns.

Potted tree ferns (Cyathea cooperi) occupy handsome Versailles tubs in the Fern Floor hall, all reflected in the shallow water. However, when events are held in this hall the water is drained.

Windowboxes containing Aechmea fasciata flank the Fern Floor.

The Acacia Passage, below, is such a perfect setting, I had to wait for a professional photographer to finish a shoot with an engaged couple. The trees forming the lacy arch are cinnamon wattle (Acacia leprosa).

A vast expanse of emerald-green lawn stretches across a large hall in the Conservatory.

Early-blooming cultivars of chrysanthemum were celebrating the onset of autumn here.

It’s always fun to find a handsome-looking bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia reginae) to photograph.

In the West Conservatory Complex, in what was originally a space to grow fruit trees and in the 1950s the Geographic Garden, California landscape architect Isabelle Greene created the Silver Garden in 1987, featuring plants from Mediterranean and desert climates. Its sinuous, curving lines were a departure from the formal, geometric style of the rest of the conservatory.

How soft and restful this garden is, and how evocative of a natural landscape.

Several Agave victoriae-reginae, the Queen Victoria agave, punctuate a silvery carpet.

Of all the agaves, Agave parryi is my favourite photo subject.

Karl said that this is not the best time of year for orchids, but the Orchid House was resplendent nonetheless.

Laeliocattleya Roitelet-‘Paradis’ is a 1949 introduction from the French orchid nursery Vacherot and Lecoufle. Isn’t she stunning?

Gombrassiltonia Mervyn Grant ‘Talisman Cove’ is a three-way cross between Gomesa x Brassia x Miltonia. Orchid hybrid names are a world unto themselves!

Our Longwood visit culminated with a spectacular Illuminated Fountain show.

Because it is very special to watch the fountains dance – as indeed it is very special to visit Longwood itself – I will leave you with this taste of the music of Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ from my YouTube channel.

A Spring Stroll Through Denver Botanic Gardens

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Janet

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.

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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!

Oamaru Public Gardens

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Janet

It’s a measure of the depth of the gardening tradition in New Zealand that one of the most charming gardens I visited during our 3-week tour was not even on our itinerary. It just happened to be behind a pair of iron gates a few of us spotted along the road as we drove into the town of Oamaru, less than a 90-minute drive north of Dunedin, en route to our 2-night stay at Aoraki Mount Cook.

As the bus pulled into the Oamaru town centre with its boutiques and art galleries, a handful of us doubled back the 3 or 4 blocks to the entrance of the Oamaru Public Gardens. A map was posted showing the features of the garden, arrayed like a long strip of green between residential neighbourhoods. The water meandering throughout is the Oamaru Creek, which charges various ponds and spills down splashing rills and small waterfalls.

We began to walk along the road, conscious of our limited time to visit. Look at these gorgeous hydrangeas with agapanthus and dahlias.

I must admit I was a little worried when I saw the Craig Fountain and its surrounding beds, below, which looked a little Victorian ‘bedding-out’ for my informal taste. But the thing is the gardens are Victorian. They were established in 1876 on 13.7 hectares (34 acres) set aside as public reserve, thus making them one of the oldest public gardens in New Zealand (Dunedin, Christchurch and Auckland are older).

We walked under this arch, which led to the famous ‘Wonderland’ statue which, of course, I missed.

But I loved what I found a little further along: this verdant scene with tree ferns, hydrangeas, Japanese maples and a small waterfall and pond.

A view of the water feature.

More hydrangeas.

We walked on and came upon the Display House. Enchanting!

The bromeliads, begonias, ferns and other hothouse plants were grown to perfection.

Look at these beautiful vrieseas.

The aviary featured an assortment of fancy birds. (I tried “Polly want a cracker?” in my best Kiwi accent, but no dice.)

I believe this was Mirror Lake (or possibly “top pond”)…. there is so little pictorial guidance of the features of the garden on the web.

We wandered through the Native Plants garden. So strong is the native plant ethos in New Zealand that in 2015 one of the unused glasshouses at Oamaru Public Gardens was loaned to native plant enthusiasts as a permanent propagation nursery for endemic natives.

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We saw New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) and one of the many native sedges.

There were strange plants I needed help from my Plant Idents group on Facebook to identify, like New Zealand myrtle (Lophomyrtus bullata), or what the Māori call ramama….

…. and one we thought likely to be snow totara (Podocarpus nivalis).

A shady path led to the fabulous Fernery. (I included this little section in my previous blog on New Zealand ferns.)

We walked through quickly. enjoying the allure of the towering tree ferns.

Then it was on to the large Chinese Garden where the impressive ceramic entrance mural was done by Christine Black. There is a lovely story online of how, thanks to the persistence of a woman named Yvonne Cox, both the mural and the garden itself came to be here in 1988 as “a symbol of the friendship between Oamaru and the large Chinese community in the Waitaki district, most of them descendants of the Central Otago gold miners”.

There’s a handsome water feature…….

…… and numerous Chinese shrubs and trees, like Gingko biloba…..

….and, of course, a zig-zag bridge to keep the evil spirits away.

We left the Chinese garden via another nod to Asia, the red Japanese bridge overlooking the Oamaru Creek.

The morning was marching and it was time to head back to the bus to continue our journey to Aoraki Mount Cook. We strolled towards the entrance past more spectacular mophead hydrangeas…..

….. and Acanthus hungaricus, which grows as well in New Zealand as in cold Canada.

And we chatted for a minute with one of the gardeners, who cheerfully answered a question or two for me. Beautiful gardens like Oamaru (which was free to enter, like Dunedin Botanic Garden and all the civic public gardens we visited in New Zealand) are crafted and sustained in equal parts by good design; healthy, interesting plants; and hard work. So here’s to Matthew Simpson, a “real Kiwi” as he put it, and all the dedicated employees of public gardens in New Zealand and throughout the world. Thumbs up to you all!

Dunedin Botanic Garden

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Janet

After travelling on the 10^th day of our American Horticultural Society “Gardens, Wine & Wilderness Tour” from Lake Manapouri and Doubtful Sound to Dunedin in Otago on the east coast of the South Island, a 3-1/2 hour journey of 291 kilometres (182 miles)……

…. we arrived in the city late in the afternoon. Our route took us past the Dunedin Railway Station. Built in the Edwardian Baroque style in 1906, it provided train service for a city that had been founded 58 years earlier by the Free Church of Scotland. In fact Dunedin is the old Gaelic name for Edinburgh, and it was the Scots who were the first colonists, though the Māori had already occupied the land for some 700 years. It was a big whaling port in its early days, then the Otago Gold Rush of the 1860s led to its rapid expansion.

Where we had slept in a stateroom aboard a boat on Doubtful Sound in Fiordland the night before, tonight we would be sleeping in a rather lovely room at the Distinction Dunedin Hotel. What made it extra-special was the fact that the room was equipped with a clothes washer and dryer. If you’ve travelled for any length of time on a bus tour, you’ll know how welcome that would be.

Feeling a little tired after the drive, we ordered up a light room-service dinner of cheese plate & salad, and cracked a bottle of Marlborough Chardonnay.

The next morning, we headed out to Dunedin Botanic Garden….

…..where we were met in the parking lot for an orientation by Alan Matchett (left), Garden Team Leader/Curator and Collection Curator, Dylan Norfield.

Opened in 1863, it is New Zealand’s first botanic garden. It occupies 30.4 hectares (75 acres) on a property that slopes from native Lovelock Bush, the New Zealand Native Plant Collection, Geographic Collection and Rhododendron Dell at the top down a hillside through the Southern African Garden and Mediterranean Terrace and Rock Garden – all considered the Upper Garden – to the Lower Garden where you find Herbaceous Borders, a Knot Garden, Glasshouses, the Clive Lister Garden, the Rose Garden, Theme Borders and a Water Garden. The main gates open to an intersection of three of Dunedin’s main streets.

We set off behind Alan and Dylan for a tour that was sadly much too short to see all the features of this wonderful garden.

The Native Plant Collection is vast, and includes traditional borders…..

….. featuring grasses and shrubs and with some of the country’s native tree ferns, like Dicksonia fibrosa, with its persistent frond ‘skirts’. (For more on NZ ferns, have a look at my previous post.)

There were cultivars and hybrids of natives here, like silver-leafed Brachyglottis ‘Otari Cloud’….

….. and the lovely variegated Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Irene Patterson’. Unlike the UK and the mild west coast, pittosporums are not much seen in northeast North America. I wish I’d had time to search out many more.

In the shadier sections, the New Zealand rock lily or renga renga (Arthropodium cirratum) was in flower…….

…… and bush flax (Astelia fragrans) was already in fruit.

We toured a fascinating Alpine Scree. On an island so dominated by the rugged Southern Alps (it is estimated that one-third of New Zealand’s flora exists in the alpine zone), it’s interesting to see plants adapted to the gravelly slopes of mountains…..

…..like giant Spaniard (Aciphylla scott-thomsonii), below. Though often called Spaniard grass or speargrass, the spiky Aciphyllas are actually umbellifers, members of Apiaceae that flower in November. The flowers in my closeup below have withered and blackened.

Here’s a vigorous clump of Marlborough rock daisy (Pachystegia insignis).

In the Geographic Collections, we noted South American plants like evergreen Luma apiculata from the Central Andes between Chile and Argentina…

….and Lomandra longifolia from Australia.

We made a brief stop at the Rhododendron Dell, which forms a large part of the 4-hectare (10-acre) Woodland Garden. Naturally, as we visited in summer, nothing was in flower, but I can only imagine what these massive ‘Halopeanum’ rhodos would have looked like in November.

Descending, we made our way through the large Southern African Garden.

There were beautiful king proteas here (P. cynaroides).

….. and masses of the dwarf Agapanthus ‘Streamline’.

How spectacular is this eye-popping planting of Crassula coccinea, native to the fynbos of the Western Cape?

With time running out, I raced through the Mediterranean Garden, with its formal pool…..

….. and balustrade overlook, with the hills of Dunedin in the distance. But I knew I’d be coming back here today after another tour stop to spend lots of time retracing my steps to really explore the place!

In the Lower Garden, there was a Knot Garden patterned on the one in the Shakespeare Garden at Stratford-on-Avon.

And in classic public garden style, there was a stunning herbaceous border that I viewed from one end……

….. to the other.

Look at these lovely combinations: alstroemerias and bright pink phlox with Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’…..
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….. and salmon achillea with old-fashioned Shasta daisies…..

….. and unusual (for me) Lobelia tupa with Phlox paniculata……

…… and soft pink achillea with chocolate cosmos (C. atrosanguineus). Isn’t this fabulous?

There were loads of bumble bees foraging on the alstroemerias……

….. and on the lovely blue bog sage (Salvia uliginosa).

And just to add a little design intelligence to all that floriferous brilliance, the garden also features a number of “colour borders”, including yellow…..

….. and red….

….. and violet, featuring Lythrum virgatum, Monarda fistulosa and Agastache foeniculum.

I was impressed by the massive size of this English oak (Quercus ruber) – aka the ‘Royal Oak’ – which was planted in 1863 to commemorate the marriage of the Prince of Wales and the Danish Princess Alexandra. The children in the playground seemed unmoved that they were frolicking atop the roots of a piece of Dunedin’s colonial history.

For sheer elegance, I loved the Clive Lister Garden – and also the story behind it, below. What a wonderful way to enrich a public space, especially one that has meant much to you during your life.

Look at this view of grasses and many native plants from one side of the bridge in the Clive Lister Garden……

….. and the other side, featuring hostas, Japanese maples and other shade plants.

The garden is full of textural plants…..

….. and those with attractive, coloured foliage.

Flowering seems less important than good foliage in the Clive Lister Garden, but there were some lovely surprises, like this ligularia-montbretia combination.

This is the shimmering Astelia chathamica ‘Silver Spear’, which we’re starting to see in N. American gardens.

Alas, our time at the fabulous Dunedin Botanic Garden had drawn to an end without me seeing the glasshouses, water garden, theme gardens, rose gardens or fully exploring the native and geographic collections in the Upper Garden we’d walked through so quickly. So I trotted out to the bus reluctantly and vowed to come back by taxi later in the day.

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

When I returned, clouds were gathering in the sky so I hurried to the Winter Garden Glasshouse. At its opening in 1908, it was said to be the first public conservatory in Australasia. It has three wings; the west wing contains a good cactus collection.

Tropicals find a warm, humid home in the central Tropical House.

And the east wing contains the sub-tropical collection, with plants like the lovely Vireya rhododendron, below.

It started to sprinkle as I left and eyed the Rose Garden – very nice, I’m sure, but I wanted to get back to the Upper Garden.

I decided to buy an ice cream in the visitor’s centre to see if the shower might abate, but it continued. So I headed quickly over Lindsay Creek to the Rock Garden…..

….. eyeing these spectacular red-hot pokers (Kniphofia sp.) as I walked. The climate here in Dunedin seems perfect for these South African natives.

The rock garden is stunning, and one could spend a half day just here examining all its lovelies, like…….

….. strange-looking Raoulia apicinigra, one of the “mat daisy” clan, …..

….. and Dierama pendulum, fairy bells. But the rain had now intensified and having given my umbrella and raincoat to my husband to take back to the hotel (“Nah, I won’t need it.”), I found a plastic bag to partially cover my hat and tucked my phone under my shirt to keep it dry. My cameras were now back in the camera bag as the heavens opened and the rain poured down.

One last shot, of a butterfly lily (Gladiolus papilio) that was as soaked as I was, and out I ran, down the steps and past the now deserted herbaceous borders to a bus shelter outside the gates, where I waited in the monsoon for 20 minutes to flag down a passing cab.

As sad as I was not to have had more time to spend at Dunedin Botanic Garden, I was so very grateful that I’d had the opportunity to see it at all.

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Love botanic gardens? You might be interested in my blogs on New York Botanical Garden, Idaho Botanical Garden, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, UBC Botanical Garden and Toronto Botanical Garden’s fabulous containers and Piet Oudolf border. In South Africa, there is the mighty Kirstenbosch, the Harold Porter National Botanic Gardens and Durban Botanic Garden. And outside London, Kew Gardens in autumn.

Sarasota’s Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Posted on December 23, 2017 by Janet

My last blog of the year is a botanical taste of early winter in a warm climate, specifically the climate of southwest Florida. Come with me on a tour of the beautiful Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (MSBG) on Sarasota Bay, a garden I’ve been privileged to visit in December twice in the past few years. Ready? Let’s start on the Flower Walk outside the garden. That’s right, “outside the garden”. In the spirit of generosity and community-mindedness, there are beautiful plants and great design ideas everywhere on South Palm Avenue, including the parking lot exits – like this firespike (Odontonema sp.)….

….and a brilliant Aechmea representing Selby’s deep collection of bromeliads…..

….and on the fence ouside the garden are a spectacular garlic vine (Cydista aequinoctialis)……..

….which deserves its own closeup….

…. and luscious chalice vine (Solandra longiflora)…..

….and butterfly vine (Stigmaphyllon ciliatum) with a visiting hover fly.

I’m surprised on the flower walk to see so many honey bees nectaring on blossoms, including these ones on Bulbine frutescens, left, and nectar-robbing on Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis), right.

But later, when I return to my car, I spot the feral beehive up in a live oak tree. Though it shows signs of having been plugged in the past, the clever bees have clearly overcome that obstacle.

Marie Selby’s entrance is overhung by these native live oaks (Quercus virginiana) draped with epiphytic Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) – which is not a moss, but a flowering plant, a bromeliad. This familiar relationship of tree and epiphytic bromeliad is also emblematic of the botanical garden’s mandate to conserve, collect and display epiphytic plants, not just from Florida, but throughout the tropics.

The courtyard outside the entrance, with its traveller’s palms and little fountains, offers a lovely spot to rest – and a true enticement to enter. For it’s on the wall near the entrance where a display of plants hints at the garden’s origins.

All the plants mounted on the wall, below are epiphytes or “air plants”, for which the garden has enjoyed worldwide renown for more than 40 years.

It isn’t long before visitors discover a little about Marie Selby (1885-1971), the Sarasota garden club member and widow of oilman Bill Selby (Selby Oil & Gas) who, through the family foundation, deeded her home and grounds as well as adjacent properties bounded by Sarasota Bay and Hudson Bayou to create a botanical garden “for the enjoyment of the general public.” The dilemma for those charged with determining a theme for the garden back in the early 1970s was what kind of garden it should be. Fortunately, they were advised to specialize in a class of plants that no other public garden had focused on: epiphytes from the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Also known as “air plants” these species — mostly orchids, bromeliads and ferns — grow on a host, usually a tree, but occasionally a wall or fence or rooftop which affords them support and more sunlight than would be available to them at ground level in the rainforest.

The part of the garden that hosts the lion’s share of epiphytes is just a stone’s throw from the entrance: the Tropical Conservatory. Here, visitors are treated to rarities collected by MSBG’s botanists since the garden’s inception. Let’s go past the serene Buddha…..

and take a stroll inside.

There is so much to see here, all to the soundtrack of jungle birds and dripping water. Below is the pendulous orchid Coelogyne rochussennii from Singapore and other parts of southeast Asia.

Orchids and bromeliads are put on display as they come into bloom, then moved into the garden’s greenhouses to rest. Below is Miltassia Shelob ‘Tolkien’.

There are rare carnivorous plants, like Nepenthes truncata, below….

…and more ordinary plants, like Cryptanthus ‘Pink Star’, below.

I loved this “São Paulo air plant”, Tillandsia araujei, named for the Arauje River in Brazil.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the jewels of the conservatory is by taking a virtual tour via my little musical video, below.

Ready to head outside? Let’s go through the little bonsai exhibit.

MSBG isn’t just about conserving and displaying epiphytes; there are several other groups of plants represented in strong collections here, such as cycads from all over the world. Apart from Florida’s common, native coontie (Zamia floridana), there are rare cycads like this endangered Microcycas calocoma from a small area in west Cuba…

…..and a young Lepidozamia peroffskyana from eastern Australia. In time, this cycad will reach a height of 12 feet (4 metres) or more.

If you have questions about plants in the garden, there are strategically-placed, knowledgeable volunteers to help answer them.

The Fern Garden is a cool, shady oasis on a warm December day.

It contains majestic ferns, like Cyathea cooperi from New Zealand, above, and ferns that don’t really look like ferns, such as Doryopteris ludens from peninsular Malaysia.

In the shadows of the fernery is bridal veil (Clerodendrum wallichii) from India.

Moving clockwise through the garden, we come to the Bamboo Pavilion with its impressive, towering giant bamboo (Dendrocalamus giganteus), at right below – planted by Marie Selby herself.

Many other bamboos grow here, like the still uncommon Chinese Bambusa emeiensis ‘Flavidorivens”.

In December, the Koi Pond with its waterfall is decorated for the holidays.Overhanging the pool are trees draped with epiphytes.

If you want to grab a snack before touring the rest of the garden, it’s a good time to visit the nearby Selby House Cafe. I love the decor, which features photos of the Selby Collection and antique botanical prints of rare orchids.

The Ann Goldstein Children’s Rainforest Garden aims to educate as it entertains young visitors.

The Children’s Garden forms part of the Banyan Grove. Here kids are literally up in the treetops learning about the rainforest….

….playing on wonderful structures….

….and being occupied with fun activities related to the environment.

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The Cactus and Succulent Garden is not terribly big….

….but it features a few interesting Florida species, like Consolea corallicola.

As you walk south on the pathway through the garden towards Sarasota Bay, you can see the Hudson Bayou off to your left.

When I was at MSBG three years ago, I photographed a large, native gumbo-limbo tree (Bursera simaruba).

Sadly, for the tree, but luckily, for Marie Selby, it was the only casualty of Hurricane Irma this September.

The Steinwachs Famiy Mangrove Walkway brings visitors close to what makes Marie Selby Botanical Gardens so special: its location overlooking Sarasota Bay. That bridge is the John Ringling Causeway, named for Sarasota resident and Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus founder John Ringling (John and his wife Mable were as wealthy as their contemporaries, the Selbys) and it connects Sarasotans to the barrier islands St. Armand’s Key (with its high end shops) and Lido Key.

From the boardwalk, visitors walk through the natural mangrove swamps that form a vital ecosystem at Selby and along coastal areas in Florida. This is red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), with its distinctive prop roots; it is one of three species native to the area. Sadly, in many parts of Florida, mangrove swamps have been removed to make way for resorts.

Walking under the Florida strangler fig (Ficus aurea) near the mangroves, we can look up and see spectacular, epiphytic birds nest ferns (Platycerium bifurcatum).

The Palm Garden (Arecaceae) features another of Marie Selby BG’s deep collections….

…with palms from many parts of the world, but especially Florida palms like Acoelorrhaphe wrightii, which is native to the tip of Florida and the Everglades.

For the most part, the garden’s collections are well labelled, and the warmth of the labels often attracts brown anoles (Anolis sagrei); this one lost its tail in a fight. Cherry palm is in the MSBG’s Coastal Palm collection.

As you continue along the path, you find many native plant in the next part of the garden, appropriately called Native Florida, including the lignum-vitae (Guaiacum sanctum) tree. Though I photographed the colourful fruit, its wood (lignum-vitae means wood of life) is considered the most dense of any species, and its hardness made it ideal historically for mortars-and-pestles and clock bearings.

Heading northwest, we come to the native shore plants along Sarasota Bay. Here we find shell mound or erect pricklypear (Opuntia stricta), which gets its name from its propensity to grow atop shell-laden dunes of coastal areas in the southeast U.S.

Planting saltmarsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) was a vital part of the 1997 shoreline restoration that occurred after MSBG acquired the Payne mansion, with its turfgrass lawn and exotic palm trees. The idea is that the cordgrass gradually traps debris and silt, forming hummocks that become land that supports the spread of the cordgrass and shore outwards.

The Tidal Lagoon at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is where the salty Atlantic ocean interacts with the shore.

Amongst the natives here is gulf muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris).

The brackish water of the lagoon has yielded a surprising colony of dotleaf waterlily (Nymphaea ampla), whose native territory seems to have migrated from Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

Here is an individual blossom. If I magnify this, I can just see the black spots on the sepals that gives this species its common name.

Nearby is a representative sample of “Florida subtropical hardwood hammock”. For ecologically-minded visitors, this section and the adjacent lagoon will be the most interesting part of MSBG, for they represent the natural ecosystem of wild Florida, at a time when it was still untouched by rampaging land-clearing, agriculture and urban development of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Circling back towards the entrance, we come to the Christy Payne Mansion, featuring the Jean & Alfred Goldstein Exhibition Series. Though the guide tells me I’ve just missed a wonderful autumn orchid show, I’m delighted to see the display in the little gallery…..

……for it contains a few vials from MCBG’s large spirit collection, the second largest in the world after Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London. Here are orchids looking eerily beautiful in a window.

And as I’ve just finished reading Andrea Wulf’s fabulous biography The Invention of Nature – Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, I’m excited to see on the gallery wall an antique print of his Naturgemälde, the painting he made of volcanic Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador, which he climbed in 1802 and whose vegetation he mapped according to elevation. He was the first to understand the topographic and geographic nature of plant communities, and his books were the basis of our understanding of ecology.

Bromeliads, of course, are a huge focus at MSBG….

…..and this ‘plant fountain’ filled with them is enchanting.

The big leaves of this neoregelia are a favourite haunt for the anoles….

….as are the bright-coloured flowers. This anole seems camouflaged in the aechmea.

This is Portea alatisepala ‘Wally Berg’, named for the Sarasota collector who was renowned for passion for collecting bromeliads.

This is Billbergia amoena.

We’ll take a fast run through the flower-filled Butterfly Garden…..

….. where a monarch rests on native dayflower (Commelina erecta).

And, finally, the Tropical Fruit Garden gives Sarasotans creative ideas about which fruit trees and vines they can grow outdoors. Here are just a few of the fruits & plant parts I photographed.

#1 is banana; #2 is kumquat; #3 is starfruit; #4 is coffee; #5 is loquat; #6 is sugar cane; and #7 is ‘Purple Possum’ passion fruit.

My last stop on the way back to the parking lot is to knock on the door of the botanist’s office to say hello to my Facebook friend, MSBG botanist and ecologist Shawn McCourt. Originally from Northern Ireland, he is fortunate to be working at the garden as it launches a 10-year, $67-million upgrade that will move plants out of the flood zone, reorganize the 15-acre garden for better flow, transform the sprawling parking lot into green technology buildings and a 5-story parking garage featuring a living wall.

It is an exciting prospect for this wonderful tropical garden, and I hope to return some winter soon to see how things are proceeding! In the meantime, may your Christmas be a merry one, and your new year filled with all things green!

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If you want to read more of my blogs on tropical and sub-tropical gardens, you might want to take a look at Lotusland in Montecito,California, Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria, CA and some wonderful gardens in South Africa: renowned Kirstenbosch, Durban Botanic Garden, lush Makaranga, the Harold Porter National Botanical Garden, and fabulous Babylonstoren.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: conservatory

A Visit to Longwood Gardens

A Spring Stroll Through Denver Botanic Gardens

Oamaru Public Gardens

Dunedin Botanic Garden

Sarasota’s Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

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