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A Public Garden Gem

Cleveland Botanical Garden

Don't quite know I missed visiting Cleveland in the past, but it's surely worth going for one reason alone, and that's to visit the botanical garden. It's just down the road from the art museum, Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra), the natural history museum and the Cleveland Clinic. 

This is a smallish garden, just ten acres, but it's absolutely  packed with myriad elements -- each in itself a stunning jewel.  Our visit to the garden was in mid-October, and the classic rose garden (above) was still in bloom.  Once home just to hybrid teas, it's now dedicated to the latest trends in rose gardening.  You'll encounter every type of rose you can imagine, and although the garden is at its peak in June, it's charm is evident any time of year.

The Hershey Children's Garden not only features a tree house, but also a worm bin, a sizeable pond crossed by decks above the water, fountains, plants to touch, a cave, an herb garden, and even a clubhouse with a green roof, shown here. It's also the first public children's garden in the state of Ohio -- and definitely a place to put on your family vacation list.

A Garden Walk on the Wild Side

Matthaei Botanical Garden

Next time you're in the vicinity of Ann Arbor, Michigan, make sure to plan time for a visit to Matthaei.  It's unlike any other botanical garden that I've ever seen.  Matthaei itself is one of the largest botanical gardens in the country  -- over 300 acres -- and together with the University of Michigan's other botanical site, The Nichols Arboretum, in all there are more than 700 acres of gardens, nature trails, greenhouses, research areas and other spaces.

I visited Matthaei in mid October, and caught the last gasp of its spectacular fall glory.  Unfortunately, I missed the 10 thousand square foot conservatory housing desert, tropical, and warm temperature plants, which is closed on Mondays, but the extensive outside areas are open to visitors year-round.

There are four nature trails ranging in length from half a mile to nearly two miles. They take you over creeks and past ponds, through glacial terrain and old farmlands, mature woods and wetlands, all incredibly untouched, natural, and wild.  On the Yellow Trail, you'll encounter a flood plain, a kame (a small glacial hill), and even a restored demonstration prairie.

The Sam Graham trail takes you through a floodplain forest and a Tamarack swamp and an oak savannah.  Along the way, you'll notice some 22 separate native trees.

There's even one trail that's accessible to wheel chairs and strollers, so anyone -- from the disabled to very small children -- can enjoy the pure nature displays at this garden.

But aside from the natural wonders of this landscape, Matthaei also has numerous display gardens more formal in nature.  The Gateway Garden is planted with wild species and modern selections of ornamentals that originated in the Americas. Many of them are old-fashioned annuals that are planted out each year in May -- cosmos, morning glories, four-o'clocks and many more.

There's a perennial garden filled with plants that do best in the midwest region, and a knot garden filled with herbs used in cooking and which are the basis of many pharmaceuticals.

There's also a wildflower garden, a display of ground covers, and even a "deconstructed" landscape by John Hollowell & Associates Landscape Architects. It features a wall set into the landscape at ground level, which is surrounded by deer- and drought-resistant plants.

While in Ann Arbor, you can also take a trip to the Nichols Arboretum.  It's closer to the main university campus, on the banks of the Huron River.  It also has nature trails and picnic areas, plus a magnificent magnolia collection and one of the world's largest peony gardens with more than 230 different cultivars.  Back in my student days at U of M, we knew Nichols not so much for its plants. On many weekends with deep snowfalls, we borrowed huge metal serving trays from the cafeteria and hiked down to Nichols and its wondrous hills for long evenings of sledding and merriment. 

Pocket Parks of NYC

In case you missed it, you might want to clip or save the article on small NYC parks that was in last Sunday's New York Times.  One of the parks profiled is one of my all-time favorites, Paley Park, pictured here.  And you can read the article about it that I posted a couple of years ago here.

Paley is on 53rd between 5th & Madison Avenues, and it's just a short hop to Greenacre Park, on East 51st between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.  And like Paley, it's a great place for lunch.

The Times article outlines several others --

• 1251 Ave. of the Americas (49th-50th)
• Sony Plaza (E. 55-56 between 5th & Madison)
• Sutton Place Parks (E. end of 57th & other streets)
• Tudor City Greens (above E. 42nd, between 1st & 2nd)
• Worldwide Plaza (W. 49th-50th between 8th & 9th)
• And link to the Times slide show of the spaces here.

Keep a list of these on your I-pod or whatever -- good places to sit and rest while walking around the city, without having to hike up to Central Park.

And a couple of other small parks of note:

• 520 Madison (opposite 12 E. 53rd):  This plaza has a piece of the Berlin Wall. The side with graffiti faced West Berlin; the plain concrete side faced east.
• 535 Madison @ 54th St, NE corner -- note the waterfall from across the street.
• Community Gardens -- 6th St. and Avenue B

And have fun.

A Garden of Mystery & Mysticism

Innisfree
Whichever way you turn, this garden enriches the soul, calms the mind, and nourishes the spirit.  It's the wind through the trees, the babble of water, the sun shining through a fountain-jet of mist, the huge, stately rocks placed meticulously throughout the landscape.

Innisfree is the masterpiece of the late American painter Walter Beck, and his wife, Marion.  Marion was the daughter of 19th-century iron magnate Wellington Burt, and she inherited 950 acres, including a lake, forests and valleys in Millbrook, NY. The couple visited Europe for gardening inspiration and found it in London: a Chinese scroll by 8th century poet and painter Wang Wei. 

Beck decided to re-create at Innisfree what he saw in the paintings.  He called them "cup gardens" -- individual scenes composed of boulders, plantings, and water set into the natural landscape. 

Beck started work at Innisfree in the 1930's.  In 1938 he met landscape architect Lester Collins, and that was the beginning of their long collaboration on the garden.

The Original Glass House

Lyndhurst
What a surprise to discover this gem on a very early morning stroll during the APLD conference in Tarrytown, NY. We came upon this vista as we emerged from a woodsy path, chasing away several deer in the process.  The greenhouse pictured here -- now just a shell -- was the first metal-framed glass house manufactured in the United States, by the Lord & Burnham Co. of Irvington, NY in 1881.  Its construction was considered a turning point in American greenhouse manufacturing.

The greenhouse is on the Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown.  Now a National Trust property, the estate was the former home of NYC mayor William Paulding, merchant George Merritt and railroad magnate Jay Gould.  In the late 1830's Paulding hired architect Alexander Jackson Davis to design the gothic-style mansion, which was located on a site overlooking the Hudson River in a park-like setting reminiscent of the English landscape style. 

The original landscape for the property was designed by Andrew Jackson Downing, considered one of the founders of the landscape architecture profession in the United States.  Downing planted a lot of the original trees on the property, including many old lindens -- hence the name Lyndhurst.

An original greenhouse on the property burned to the ground in 1880, shortly after Jay Gould bought the property, and he had it re-built by Lord & Burnham in its present form.

Chicago Botanic Dwarf Conifer Garden

The Chicago Botanic Garden's Dwarf Conifer Garden is now open again after its closure last fall for a major renovation. The new garden design, by Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, features a new staircase entry sequence, with pocket planting beds and new terrace overlooks that offer stunning views of the surrounding gardens. 

Walls of evergreens enclose the garden, while "windows" allow visitors to look out to the Japanese Garden, the Great Basin, and other areas below.  Stone troughs contain miniature conifers, and rock outcroppings are placed throughout the site.  The collection includes more than 150 different kinds of dwarf conifers, and it's considered one of the best in the United States. 

Many of the garden's mature specimens were relocated and placed in the new garden to emphasize shape and color -- globes, pyramids, and columnar specimens in blues, golds, emerald greens, and chartreuse.

Some of the rare species in the collection include one of the largest weeping Norway spruces in the Midwest; a thread-leaf false cypress that is 30 years old; and a Horstmann's Silberlocke Korean fir. These plants stayed in their original locations, and the garden was designed around them.

(photos: Robin Carson © Chicago Botanic Garden)

A Rare Garden Film

Film Previews Open This Week --
"A Man Named Pearl"

Pearl Fryar has a love of plants, an eye for the unusual, and a fierce determination to succeed.  The son of a sharecropper, he was born in rural North Carolina in 1939.  He lived in New York City and Atlanta before he and his wife decided to move to Bishopville, South Carolina in 1976 to be closer to family.  The Fryars looked at a house for sale in an all-white neighborhood -- and, as the story goes, they were notified they were not welcome in that part of town because "black people don't keep up their yards."  So the Fryars bought property in the "black" part of town, and Pearl began his quest to win Bishopville's "Yard of the Month" award.

One day, he cut up a holly that was in his front yard, and the rest is history.  After a 12-hour shift in the soda can factory where he worked, Pearl would work until late in the night, under street lights and spotlights, fashioning topiaries from plants discarded by local nurseries. He finally achieved his goal to win the town's top yard award in the early 1980's.

Pearl's abstract topiaries now fill more than three acres of his property and attract more than five thousand visitors a year. Pearl has also worked as an artist-in-residence at Coker College, near Bishopville, to teach students there how to create works of art in the garden.

The Garden Conservancy is working to ensure the preservation of the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, and Pearl is the subject of a new documentary film by Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson, to be released nationwide by Shadow Distribution.

Pre-release previews:

May 23  Washington DC (Avalon Theater)
            Santa Fe, NM (The Screen)
June 13-16    Detroit MI (Detroit Institute of Arts)

OPENING:

July 18    New York City (Angelika Film Center)
July 25    Encino, CA (Laemmle Town Center)
             Irvine, CA (Regal Westpark
             Laguna Niguel, CA (Regency Laguna Niguel)
             Los Angeles, CA (Laemmle One Colorado)
Aug 1     Pleasantville, NY (Jacob Burns Film Center)
            Seattle, WA (SIFF Cinema)

(image: Shadow Distribution -- click to enlarge)
   

Energy-saving Greenhouse

The Cleveland Botanical Garden and Kent State University's Liquid Crystal Institute (LCI) have unveiled a new research project to explore the use of liquid crystal panels to create energy-efficient greenhouses.  Two 8x10' greenhouses have been constructed at the botanical garden -- one with plain glass panels and the other with liquid crystal panels. Over the next several years, researchers will compare plant growth, temperature, light levels, and energy used in each greenhouse.

The Cleveland Botanical Garden's executive director, Natalie Ronayne, says the basic goal is "to design a smart greenhouse."  She explained that the liquid crystal panels can regulate the amount of sunlight reaching plants inside.  The LCD greenhouse has a photo receptor inside that can be programmed for specific plants, according to the amount of light they need. "If you program it to have a certain amount of light and it's a cloudy day, the windows will never become foggy -- they will stay fully on to attract and absorb as much light as possible from the spectrum," said Ronayne. "If it's really sunny and it's a hot day ... the windows will automatically dim to control the shading."

The experimental greenhouses house a variety of plants -- tomatoes, peppers, petunias, lilies, orchids, and more. Ronayne said the experiment will last for at least two years -- to measure plant growth, monitor energy bills, and test the durability of the LCD windows.

The hope is that by controlling the amount of light coming into the greenhouse, costs for heating and cooling major greenhouses will be reduced. 

Desert Botanical Garden Facelift

New Cactus & Succulent Galleries

The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix has opened two stunning, modern galleries to house its spectacular collections of three thousand cacti and two thousand succulents.  Award-winning landscape architect Steve Martino designed the 28-feet tall, arching structures that sit atop bold red concrete piers, with steel mesh ceilings to protect the tenderest plants.

Martino, known for his modern southwestern landscapes that complement the desert topography, told the Arizona Republic newspaper that the new galleries are akin to a "Tinkertoy set." As the tallest structures in the garden, "they're going to be a landmark," he said.

The new Sybil B. Harrington galleries replace the garden's aging aluminum lath structures that housed the two collections.  Some of the cacti, including the 22 foot tall Stenocereus montanus, had outgrown their old home, but they fit perfectly under their new steel canopies.   Most of the existing plants were moved to greenhouses during construction, but a few that were too large to move were left in place while the new structures were built around them.

Plantings were designed by Baltimore-based landscape architect and horticulturist Scott Scarfone, who grouped plants according to color and texture to dramatize their sculptural qualities.

The new galleries are part of a campaign launched in 2006 to expand the garden's educational goals and research initiatives.  The garden's overall plan is for a series of museum quality outdoor exhibits to showcase the garden's unsurpassed collection of desert plants from all over the world.

(images: Adam Rodriguez, Desert Botanical Garden)

75th Virginia Garden Week

Historic Garden Week April 19-27

The idea was born at Monticello back in 1927, during a flower show that raised a whopping $7000 to save Thomas Jefferson's surviving old trees.  Two years later, the Garden Club of Virginia invited friends to visit some of the state's historic houses and gardens over 11 days. A guidebook with maps described the history of each property, and the event was a huge success, raising 14 thousand dollars for the club's restoration projects.

Garden Week has been produced every year since, with only one interruption, during World War II. According to Garden Week's Executive Director, Suzanne Munson, tours in the event's first years focused on manor houses and gardens dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries. "Today," she said, "we have a wonderful mixture of old and new on tours across the state ... the April 25th event on the Middle Peninsula presents an architectural time line of homes in Middlesex County dating from the 17th to the early 21st century."

Munson added that this year's tour in Hampton features houses that have never been on public tour, and events in Richmond "showcase properties that have undergone significant transformations since their last appearance on Garden Week."