The Chelsea Flower Show on a Rainy Wednesday – Part 2 – The Exhibits & Great Pavilion

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Janet

My last blog took a tour around some of the big gardens at Chelsea 2024, but of course there is much more to the show. Lining the avenues throughout the grounds are booths of varying sizes showcasing art, clothing, garden furnishings, tools, pots and planters, house plants, etc. while inside the Great Pavilion are nurseries and plant societies, floral designers and ecological/scientific displays. Let’s start with the spectacular floral acronym for the Royal Horticultural Society, as interpreted in UK-grown peonies by the upscale floral designer Pinstripes & Peonies.

Here is a small bit of the letter “S”. Imagine how much work it took to condition all those peonies and then insert them into the matrix using “eco-friendly principles”….. which I assume must mean floral-oasis-free, though I wasn’t able to confirm that.

Artists have long been a part of Chelsea, which is now in its 111^th year. The best show off their works in small gardens, like Scots sculptor James Parker below. who chose rodgersia, Siberian iris and foxglove to complement his stacked slate and bronze pinecone sculptures.

David Harber Sculpture was nestled in a leafy setting as well.

The Clancy Workshop took a more lighthearted approach at Chelsea. Architect/artist Mike Clancy positions his sculptures, like these animals, between art and architecture using traditional and digital techniques.

I’ve taken the odd stroll through Harrod’s in London but I wasn’t aware there is also Harrod Horticultural – unrelated to the department store, but obviously benefiting at the show from the similarity in names. Its horticultural line is an offshoot of its business as a long-time supplier of sport goalposts – including to the Olympics!

Garden buildings come in all shapes and sizes in England, and those displayed by Scotts of Shrapston, celebrating its 60^th anniversary, seemed quite modest.

But it was the lovely landscaping around their shed that I loved featuring Siberian iris and an unusual umbellifer, Baltic parsley (Cenolothium denudatum).

At Garden Art Plus Limited, this 18^th century French limestone trough with lion’s paws feet and mossy patina could be had for the trifling sum of £12,500.

Solus Decor started in “a humble single car garage in 1998” in Vancouver, B.C. where they now have an 18,000 sq ft location, and expanded to four locations worldwide from which they export to 35 countries. They make fire pits, fire tables and fire bowls, and if those get too… fiery…

…. they also have compact water fountains.

As the rain increased, it was a pleasure to wander into the Great Pavilion where Pheasant Acre Plants were showing off their gladioli.

Barbados Horticultural Society displayed fabulous floral designs featuring warm-coloured tropical plants.

Moore & Moore Plants are woodland specialists and their exhibit was a lush celebration of ferns and flowering shade-lovers.

I was enchanted with the stunning display of plant treasures by Kevock Garden Plants of Scotland, including many beautiful meconopsis species….

….. such as the rare, red M. staintonii.

Look at all those primulas!

The display was designed by Monica Wylie and I asked her to pose for me for this blog.

And what a serendipitous delight to find my Seattle ‘horty’ friend Sue Nevler and her husband Steve Gatti admiring the Kevock exhibit. After hugs and introductions all round, Sue & I posed with Kevock’s owner David Rankin – with Himalayan poppies posing above us! We were heading on to Tuscany to see our youngest son and Sue and Steve were heading to Malta, then France.

Grow just two things, but grow them very well. That could be the motto of Blackmore & Langdon’s, with their luscious begonias and delphiniums. And I swear I made the identical photo 32 years ago, when I was last at the Chelsea!

The Botanic Nursery in Wiltshire holds the National Collection of foxgloves, and it shows.

This delicate foxglove is Digitalis ‘Apple Blossom’.

W.S. Warmenhoven displayed a trove of Amaryllis and Alliums in the pavilion. A family company established in the Netherlands in 1885, they grow 55 varieties of allium, something like a million bulbs in their fields and greenhouses. There, they sell the blooms as cut flowers at the Dutch Flower Auction and harvest the bulbs for their bulb business.

I’ve never grown Allium schubertii with its big, low-growing, starry globes, but I liked ‘Arctic Snow’.

Allium macleanii is a parent of ‘Globemaster’ and I was delighted to photograph it. I wish I could source this one in Canada, because I find the other parent, A. cristophii or star-of-Persia attracts bees but ‘Globemaster’ doesn’t, presumably sterile and also not a big nectar producer. One of my reasons for growing alliums is their great attraction to bees.

Peter Beales Roses featured a tribute to the 200^th anniversary of the Royal Navy Liveboat Institution (RNLI) in their exhibit, incorporating a small inshore lifeboat.and a splash of their commemorative apricot floribunda rose 200^th With Courage at right.

Not to be outdone, Harkness Roses introduced their ‘Chelsea Pensioner’ rose, which I asked this Pensioner to pose beside. For every bush sold, Harkness donates £2.50 to the care of the Chelsea Pensioners and their home.

Jacques Amand had two side-by-side exhibits displaying a large range of perennials, bulbs and small trees – and they won two Chelsea Gold Medals for their efforts.

Caley Brothers sells edible and medicinal mushrooms and wanted their Chelsea display “to inspire visitors to get growing their own delicious mushrooms through a series of easy to grow projects. Regardless of space, budget or season,” they say they have a mushroom project to suit every gardener – and have written their own book called “Project Mushroom”.

Hampshire Carnivorous Plants is the UK’s largest grower of carnivorous plants. They had a colourful display featuring loads of pitcher plants (Sarracenia spp.) and maidenhair ferns and a Jurassic dinosaur. They also sell nepenthes, Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) and sundews (Drosera); the latter at least, have been traced to the Jurassic Age.

What insect could resist the alluring pitchers of Sarracenia ‘Juthatip Soper’?

We played along, not very convincingly, since we all know dinosaurs are herbivores, right?

Driftwood Bonsai had a handsome display along the wall of the pavilion.

On the far wall, Kelnan Plants featured a lush display of South African natives, included many Resionaceae species.

As we were leaving to head to a pub lunch, I spied a visitor preparing to try on a garment at Original Fibres. It produces 100% European wool and linen clothing for men – I loved their springy planter design.

And I confess, I sneaked a photo of what might be the most beautiful garment I saw at the Chelsea on this rainy May Wednesday. But a little online detective work let me know that, sadly, I need to upgrade my shopping experience to Dolce & Gabbana. Because who wouldn’t want to stay dry under raindrops on spectacular wisteria blossoms?

And that’s a Chelsea wrap. I missed about one-third of the show, thanks to Mother Nature, jet lag and basic energy level, but I had a truly wonderful morning and sparked a little horticultural fire in my younger menfolk! Stay tuned for future blogs on the Chelsea Physic Garden, the Garden Museum and the fabulous Moat in Bloom at London Bridge.

Raindrops

Posted on February 2, 2020 by Janet

Have I told you lately that I love you? Oh, never mind. That’s a different Van Morrison song. Just thought I’d throw it in here, for all the folks who’ve patiently travelled this #mysongscapes road with me thus far. And it’s not a ‘Van the Man’ song today like my last two blogs, but an older guy who’s no longer with us. We’ll get to him later. In the meantime, can we talk about rain? As in….

Soon-it’s-gonna-rain-I-can-feel-it

Raindrops-keep-falling-on-my-head

Here-comes-the-rain-again

Rain… Feel it on my fingertips

Someone left the cake out in the rain

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Let’s talk about rain and photography! Because depending on how you look at rain, your glass is either half-empty or half-full. And I’m definitely in the latter camp, as you can see by my smiling face as I stride down the High Line under my umbrella. (Thanks to my photographer pal Ginny Weiler for the photo.)

Unless it’s pouring down (and I’ve been in some of those rains carrying three cameras in a big garden far from shelter), an overcast sky and drizzle is far easier to deal with than the bright sunshine of mid-day. Look at the beautiful Magnolia ashei I photographed that May day on the High Line….

….. and the prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) beside the rain-spattered sign….

….. and the pretty heuchera leaf turned over under raindrops to show its lovely purple reverse.

Apart from the gentle light for photography, in a place like the High Line there are far fewer visitors when it’s drizzling.

When I visit Vancouver, I make sure I take an umbrella to photograph plants at my two favourite haunts, the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Van Dusen Botanical Garden. In fact, the wettest I’ve ever been in was at UBC on May 29, 2013 – and the raindrops in the pond below just got more serious as I moved through the garden.

But when I’ve got the day booked for plant photography, I hate to give up because of a little downpour…..

…. especially when the Himalayan poppies, below, are in perfect bloom in the David Lam Asian Garden. The raindrops just add to the enchantment – and I have never sprayed a blossom with water to make it more “picturesque”, when nature does it for me for free! (By the way, I wrote a blog on the exquisite David Lam garden in May.)

The redvein enkianthus (E. campanulatus) looked lovely in the drizzle……

….. and across Marine Drive, the Garry Oak Meadow was gorgeous that rainy day. Imagine how terrible this tapestry would have looked in full sun!

In UBC’s herb garden, bees were still foraging on the Angelica archangelica, despite the weather.

The downward-facing flowers of Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum) acted like umbrellas for this bumble bee, though her fur-like hairs were beginning to mat down in the rain.

Though it hails from the hot, dry Drakensberg Range in South Africa, the Moraea robusta in UBC’s wonderful rock garden wore its sunshine yellow with raindrops that day.

A few weeks later in early June, I was back at my “home garden”, the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG) on a rainy June morning with no one else around. Though the paving stones were wet on the Westview Terrace where the Indigofera kirolowii was in full flower….

….. and at the entrance to the Floral Hall Courtyard where the Bowman’s root (Porteranthus trifoliatus previously Gillenia) was a cloud of white…..

…..my raindrop close-ups from that day, like the Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’, below, were lovely.

Peonies were just opening that day in June, too…..

…. and the lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) wore its many rain-spattered, folded capes.

Even the eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) sported its raindrops nicely.

Though I’m usually alone at the TBG on a rainy day, I occasionally catch sight of a pretty umbrella held by another intrepid garden visitor.

On June 8, 2015, I visited the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington Ontario with a group of fellow bloggers. We drove there through a massive rainstorm, so when we arrived at the famous Iris Collection….

….. all the bearded irises were delightfully adorned with raindrops. This is ‘Florentine Silk’.

There were so many, I wanted to capture them in one gorgeous photographic memory.

In Manhattan one hot, humid August afternoon, I braved an uptown subway train with no air-conditioning and waited out a thunderstorm and all the people running out of the beautiful Conservatory Garden at Central Park so I could be almost all alone there.

But it didn’t take long for a few people with umbrellas to return to enjoy the spectacular, Lynden Miller-designed borders. I blogged about that August afternoon in the garden.

When I visited Monet’s garden at Giverny in France in April 2008, a spring shower meant the other visitors carried their umbrellas over his famous Japanese bridge on the lily pond…..

…. but all the flowers enjoyed the rain. I blogged about the spring lessons from Giverny as well.

The majority of my rainy photo shoots were in spring, as you might expect “when April showers bring May flowers”. But May has its share of rainy flowers too. This was on May 5, 2014 at the Horticultural Centre of the Pacific just outside Victoria, B.C. Bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) and Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’ looked enchanting to me…..

…. and the trumpets of the little gentians were laden with raindrops.

The skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) was happy to be in its preferred damp state that day.

And of course spring at Vancouver’s wonderful Van Dusen Botanical Garden means there will be lots of west coast rain to make the various Himalayan poppies (Meconopsis)….

….. in the Himalayan Dell just that much lovelier.

While staying with friends in Sun Valley, Idaho in September 2016, we took a walk through a wild meadow just as big rainclouds appeared behind the mountains.

Though we didn’t make it home before getting soaked, I was happy to have had my camera with me to capture the intricacy of the rain drops on the meadow grass seedheads. (And I will refrain from mentioning the irony of rain in Sun Valley….)

More recently, if you read my massive blog about Botanizing Greece with Liberto in November 2019, you might recall the day we stopped at a serpentine outcrop near Smokovo in the pouring rain…..

….. to look for tiny Crocus cancellatus subsp. mazziaricus, which we did find, but they were as soaked as I was.

We also found our first Sternbergia lutea that morning, but they refused to open in the inclement weather (which is an obvious evolutionary adaptation to keep the reproductive parts dry).

A few redbud (Cercis siliquastrum) flowers still hung on to the trees and they did look pretty in the rain….

….. as did the wild flowers in the meadow (even as my shoes were squishing in the grasses).

In the fall of 2015, I visited Costa Rica with my hiking group. Though we did manage some hiking, that particular one-week period had more rain than the Osa Peninsula had seen in the entire rainy season. I blogged about my time at El Remanso Lodge, but here’s a little video of what real rain is like in a tropical rainforest…..

In my own Ontario gardens, as you might expect, my camera is never far away when the rain stops. At the cottage on Lake Muskoka one June, I found my wild lupines spangled with raindrops…..

…. and the palmate leaves with their small hairs seemed to trap perfect raindrops like mercury quicksilver.

When a big rainstorm hits the cottage on a summer day, it’s often so spectacular in its onset that I grab my camera and set it to video. Have a look (and try to pick up the distant thunder in the first few seconds) ……

At home in Toronto, rainy May days are welcomed because summer is often hot and dry and our urban tree canopy needs all the help it can get. Especially lovely are spring bulbs – this is Tulipa ‘Ballade’, one of my favourites…

….. and this is ‘Angelique’ looking like ballerina tutus hung on a line to dry.

A few years ago, I stood under my umbrella photographing my grandson Oliver doing a little jaunt on the stepping-stone path through the spring bulbs in my front yard while rain poured down and thunder boomed in the distance. Doesn’t he look proud of himself? I snapped a still photo at the end.

But since this is #mysongscapes, we do need a song to finish up this blog, so let’s take a rainy day tour of my entire Toronto garden, as I found it under my umbrella on June 24, 2018. And we’ll be serenaded by Dee Clark with his famous Raindrops song from 1961.

*******

This is the tenth blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading, have a look at the others beginning with

Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans

And please do feel free to leave a comment below. I love to read them.

Venice in the Rain

Posted on October 30, 2018 by Janet

Poor Venice. I saw the news about this week’s catastrophic acqua alta event that brought heavy rains and record-breaking high tide water into parts of the city. Tourists carried their suitcases above the flooded squares and shopkeepers used buckets to bail out water in the fourth worst flooding event ever, with 150 cm (5 feet) in places. The worst flooding in November 1966 brought 193 cm (6.3 feet) of water to vulnerable places. Autumn, of course, is also when it rains in Italy and Venice has no way to drain away rain or tidal water, which conspires with waves in the wind-swept lagoon to create disastrous conditions quickly. We were in Venice in November eight years ago when the famous acqua alta sirens awoke us before dawn in our pretty room….

… with the lace-curtained windows……

… at the lovely and convenient Hotel Flora.

But that year, the flooding was manageable, and even a little thrilling. We were given rubber boots by the hotel and proceeded to walk around the city.

We visited Piazza San Marco, the venerable St. Mark’s Square, where the 15^th century Doge’s Palace or Palazzo Ducal…..

….and St. Mark’s Basilica merely looked beautiful reflected in the water in the square.

Pigeons and seagulls fought at the edges of the water for the crumbs thrown their way.

Nearby, Venetians and tourists walked purposefully along tables set up above the water beneath St. Mark’s Basilica….

…. as unconcerned as if they were strolling down Madison Avenue or the Champs Elysee.

The tables are simply part of the tourist experience in Venice and easy to negotiate, as long as you don’t overindulge in grappa or Chianti with your lunch.

If you climb the Campanile…….

…. which is a 1912 reproduction of the 16th century original on this spot where Galileo…..

…. on August 21, 1609, showed the Doge of Venice his new spyglass, a refractor telescope which was….

….. a grandfather of these modern binoculars…….

….. which provide a wonderful view of the city over the domes of the basilica.

From the campanile, you can see where Venice meets the lagoon shore…..

….. and how vulnerable the piazza is to acqua alta……

….. when the tide brings the sea right up onto the paving.

Even if it rains, you can still put on a colourful slicker and line up for a gondola…..

….. though the gondoliers never look very happy in the pouring rain….

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…. and squint up at the palazzos from under your umbrella.

But native Venetians take acqua alta in stride……

…. including the letter carrier, who finds high ground to keep the mail dry.

Here you can see the ravages this beautiful old palazzo has suffered as a result of its hundreds of years on this small canal.

Another great idea for a rainy day is to cross the Grand Canal on the Ponte dell’Accademia…..

….. and spend a few blissful, quiet hours in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, as I did, gazing up at the spectacular works of the Venetian School, including Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.

Walking through the city, you might find enchanting reflections in the acqua alta, like this one of the Fabbriche Viecchi di Rialto….

….as you make your way to the markets of the Rialto, to see the wonderful displays of vegetables……

…. and fish.

You can take a vaporetto down the Grand Canal…..

….. and give your camera a workout on the fabulous palazzos along the way….

…… or tootle over to the island of Giudecca where you can pause to look back at the stunning view of the city before……

….. finding a pew to sit and reflect on the grandeur of Andrea Palladio’s magnificent, 16^th century Il Redentore.

The outdoor caffès in the piazzas in Venice may be empty on acqua alta days……

….. but provided it’s not a catastrophic event like 2018 or 1966, you can always tie on some garbage bags and find something wonderful to do!

I did an entire blog about spending the day looking at beautiful blown glass on the island of Murano.

Go window-shopping at a luscious Fortuny shop…..

…… try a little marzipan…..

….. or put up your umbrella and search out the best gelato ever! Try to stay dry. But do visit Venice, the most wondrous city ever. Ciao.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Posted on May 16, 2018 by Janet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Engelmann’s daisy (Engelmannia peristenia).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Night on Doubtful Sound

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Janet

Our 9^th touring day on the American Horticultural Society’s ‘Gardens, Wine & Wilderness’ tour saw us leave Queenstown and drive south on Highway 6 along Lake Wakatipu.

We were heading to Fiordland National Park, 173 km (107 miles) and just over 2 hours away.

A few bus window impressions of the countryside along the route included a colourful way to protect tree seedlings alongside matagouri or ‘wild Irishman’ shrubs (Discaria toumatou) …..

…… and native cabbage trees (Cordyline australis) along the shore of Wakatipu.

Crossing from Otago into Southland, there were farms with hay bales in ubiquitous plastic wrappers…..

…. and lots and lots of sheep.

We had a brief stop in little Mossburn, which bills itself as the “deer capital of New Zealand”. Not native deer, of course, since New Zealand doesn’t have any. They were Eurasian red deer (Cervus elaphus) imported originally by colonists in the 19^thcentury, then escaped into the wild and now farmed or hunted for venison (as is wapiti or American elk). In fact, Fiordland National Park, where we were headed, encourages sport hunting of deer, wild pigs, elk and chamois since they compete with native birds for certain trees and plants.

We ate our picnic lunch at the Fiordland Cruise Dock on Lake Manapōuri, where I photographed this complicated explanation to the hydro-electric project at the west end of the lake that is considered to be the birthplace of New Zealand’s environmental awareness. For it was in 1970 that 10-percent of New Zealanders signed the Save Manapōuri petition, drawn up to counter a plan conceived over the previous two decades to create a power plant that would require the flooding of both Lake Manapōuri and nearby Lake Te Anau by raising the water by up to 30 metres (100 feet), thus flooding the lake’s islands completely and drowning the beech shoreline. When the government resisted the protestors, owing to a pledge mandated in 1963 to develop an aluminum smelter with hydro-power from the plant, it was subsequently defeated in the 1972 election. The new Labour government formed the Guardians of Lake Manapōuri, Monowai and Te Anau to manage the lake levels sensitively, which they continue to do today. (Click on the photo below to see a larger version.)

We were thrilled to be heading out on Manapōuri, the first leg of our overnight cruise on Fiordland’s Doubtful Sound. The captain of the small boat that conveys passengers to the dock at Manapōuri Power Station did a nice job of talking about the lake…..

….. which you could choose to listen to, or head out on deck where the wind was amazing.

Fifty minutes later, we arrived at the jetty beside the water intake of the huge Manapōuri Power Station, below, which generates enough power for 618,000 average homes. Although it’s not evident here, there is a 178-metre (584-foot) drop from Lake Manapōuri to Doubtful Sound; it’s this gradient difference that made the site so attractive for hydro power. The massive machine hall, which was hollowed out of granite deep within the mountain is accessible via a 2 kilometre (1.2 mile) spiral tunnel that can be visited by tourists at certain times. To learn more about this monumental project, have a look at this short YouTube film.

A bus was waiting for us, and off we went on the 22 kilometre(13-mile) 40-minute journey across the Wilmot Pass on a gravel road that had been constructed between 1963 and 1965 to accommodate the trucks hauling large equipment from Doubtful Sound to the new power station.

Our bus driver was a bit of a stand-up (sit-down?) comic and we enjoyed his informative, witty commentary. After climbing the pass for a while, we arrived at a lookout that gave us a beautiful view of Doubtful Sound. Established in 1952 Fiordland National Park is huge: 12,607 square kilometres (4,868 square miles). Though there are other places to visit in the park, accepted wisdom is that a cruise here (given its isolation, only one tour company, Real Journeys does this overnight stay) is one of the best ways to experience this stunning part of the park.

Though a brief stop, it gave some of us a chance to do some fast botanizing. There was mountain ribbonwood (Hoheria glabrata)……

…… and koromiko or willow-leaf hebe (Hebe salicifolia/Veronica salicifolia).

Back on the bus, we descended to the dock in Deep Cove where the Fiordland Navigator, our cruise boat and hotel for the night, was awaiting us. I had just enough time to peek through the shrubbery on shore at Helena Falls, one of many near-vertical waterfalls in the sound.

….. before boarding the boat.

Then we were off, sailing in a northwest direction into Doubtful Sound. Forty kilometres (25 miles) long and 421 metres (1381 feet) deep at its deepest point, it’s technically a “fiord” carved by successive glaciers (the last being 18,000-28,000 years ago), not a “sound”, which is a river valley that has been flooded by the sea.

(Now, a small confession about the next images, in case anyone is knowledgeable about the specific order of the different parts of Doubtful Sound. It’s a good idea, when you bring 3 cameras and a cellphone with you, to make sure they’re ALL on local time. In my case, only my phone was hooked into real time in New Zealand. Enough said.)

Soon we were passing the near shore of Elizabeth Island, site of the Taipari Roa Marine Reserve. It was thrilling to see this dense ecosystem of rainforest plants. In parts of Fiordland National Park, rainfall can exceed 6000 mm (236 inches-20 feet) but Doubtful Sound generally receives one-third that amount.

The grass-like plant is Astelia (likely A. nervosa).

Here is the sign for the Marine Reserve. Covering 613 hectares (1514 acres), it features black and red corals and rare yellow sea sponges. A pod of bottlenose dolphins regularly visits, and as if on cue……..

….. we were alerted by an announcement from the Navigator’s captain that a mother and calf were swimming near the boat.

They were two of a community of around 56 dolphins (2008 figures), and their declining numbers have mandated Dolphin Protection Zones in Doubtful Sound. But chance encounters are fine. and our captain maintained his heading while the pair swam alongside. The next day, we saw a bigger pod of bottlenose dolphins in the sound, and I combined video of the mother and calf with that group in the following little film.

The natural history of Doubtful Sound was made exciting by Carol of Real Journeys, who told me she never tires of the spectacular sights here.

Look at this amazing ‘gneiss’ basement rock, whose little steps and fissures become the birthplace of a vertical rainforest.

I could photograph rock all day.
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Gazing back down the sound, I was captivated by the blue silhouettes of the mountains behind Deep Cove, including lofty Mount George.

The wind picked up as we neared the mouth of Doubtful Sound and the Tasman Sea. Here on the Nee Islets, we saw a colony of fur seals.

The seals rest during the day and dive at night for fish, sometimes as deep as 160 metres (525 feet). Here we see the rough Tasman Sea crashing into the rocks.

The sea was named for Dutch seafarer and explorer Abel Tasman, who also gave his name to Tasmania. In 1642, he became the first European to sight what he called Staten Landt at the northwest corner of the South Island. It was later renamed Nieuw Zeeland (New Holland) by a cartographer with the Dutch East India Company.

The next European to reach New Zealand’s shore was English sea captain and explorer James Cook. On March 14^th, 1770 Captain Cook wrote the following in his log after considering, then rejecting, the idea of navigating into the body of water that he would call Doubtful Harbour. “The land on each side the Entrance of this Harbour riseth almost perpendicular from the Sea to a very considerable Height; and this was the reason why I did not attempt to go in with the Ship, because I saw clearly that no winds could blow there but what was right in or right out, that is, Westerly or Easterly; and it certainly would have been highly imprudent in me to have put into a place where we could not have got out but with a wind that we have lately found to blow but one day in a Month. I mention this because there was some* on board that wanted me to harbour at any rate, without in the least Considering either the present or future Consequences.” (*The person to whom Cook was referring was the ship botanist Joseph Banks.)

I am a great fan of Captain James Cook. Why? A little personal aside that has to do with 18^th century explorers. As a young child, I lived on Pembroke Street in Victoria, British Columbia. HMS Pembroke was the name of the ship James Cook served on in 1758 during the British war against the French in Quebec. Victoria is on Vancouver Island, B.C., named for British sea captain and explorer George Vancouver, who charted the Pacific Northwest in 1791-92 aboard HMS Discovery (which had been under Cook’s command 12 years earlier). I caught my bus to school on Cook Street named for Captain Cook…..

…..who made three voyages to the southern hemisphere between 1768 and his murder in Hawaii in 1779 while captaining HMS Discovery. On that first voyage with Joseph Banks he did not linger long off the coast. But on his second voyage (1772-75) on the Resolution – which included midshipman George Vancouver, above – he explored and charted Dusky Sound (36 miles south of Doubtful Sound) from March to May, 1773, while repairing his ship, botanizing and engaging peacefully with local Māori. And my school was on Humboldt Street, named for yet another explorer, the great German botanist Alexander von Humboldt, 1769-1859.

We turned away from the Tasman Sea and made our way back down Doubtful Sound, sailing alongside immense mountain walls cloaked with trees, shrubs, ferns and mosses.

Look at these fabulous southern rāta trees (Metrosideros umbellata) with their red flowers.

We saw more rātas dotting the slopes on the sound, which also feature tree ferns (Cyathea smithii).

One of the fun features of the Real Journeys overnight cruise is the chance to get into a kayak or small tender to explore one of the quiet arms of Doubtful Sound.

I elected the tender…..

….. but you can see the massive scale of the setting compared to the kayaks.

Up close, we could see the epiphytic moss hanging from trees……

….. and the terrestrial mosses on the rock. Throughout the sound, it is mosses that give the rock faces a foothold for the ferns (like the crown ferns, Blechnum discolor, below) and seed plants that come later.

But even when the rocky mountainsides become fully covered in plants, the weight of that biomass at the steepest angles combined with heavy rainfall or snowload often results in “tree avalanches” that cascade down the slopes, leaving the rock exposed once again.

And of course the rock face itself often fissures and……

…… giant rock falls to the fiord shore as well, where it will gradually erode.

With our little exploration finished, we reboarded the Fiordland Navigator where we enjoyed a lovely buffet dinner. (You can see images of the ship’s interior and staterooms in the previous link). With the ship at anchor in the arm, we turned in for the night and enjoyed the sound of rain when it began in early morning.

And what a morning! I felt like I’d awakened in a National Geographic magazine cover.

Cloud and mist shrouded the mountains and hanging valleys around us in the same primeval way it has bathed this temperate rainforest in moisture for thousands of years.

It felt magical, as if the towering rimu trees (Dacrydium cypressinum) and beeches had poked their crowns through the clouds to breathe….

…. After breakfast, I dressed in the raincoat I wore for the very first time in New Zealand……

…. so I could enjoy the weather.

I loved this thin waterfall splashing down behind the kātote (Cyathea smithii) tree ferns with their persistent frond stems.

We were nearing the end of our cruise but there was one more magical moment to come. The “Sound of Silence” has become something of an iconic experience aboard the Fiordland Navigator since “place of silence” is the English translation for the Māori word for Doubtful Sound, Patea. It was a magical few minutes, floating, boat engines turned off, with just the odd clang from the kitchen or someone’s packing noise in a neaby cabin to intrude on the sound of water lapping and birds calling on shore.. But it gives you a little sensation of the wonder of this primeval place of beauty and silence.

https://youtu.be/wJs_YvO4kes

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: rain

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