GardenDesignOnline

Happenings March 1-15 2006

March 1-5  72nd Minneapolis Home & Garden Show, Minneapolis, MN
Convention Center, exhibits on Lighthouse Living, 12 Magical Gardens & More

March 2-5 Nashville Lawn & Garden Show , Nashville, TN
Tennessee State Fair Grounds

March 3-4 , Winter Conference, Ecological Landscaping Assn, Marlborough, MA
Royal Plaza Hotel & Conference Center

March 3-5 Arkansas Flower & Garden Show, Little Rock, AR
15th Annual Show, Statehouse Convention Center

March 3-5 Palm Beach Tropical Flower Show, Lake Worth, FL
Bryant Park

March 5-12  Philadelphia Flower Show, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Convention Center "Enchanted Spring .. A Tribute to Mother Nature."
Water, Wind, Kites, the world's largest plant sculpture, and much more.

March 11-19 New England Spring Flower Show, Boston, MA
Bayside Expo Center, "Welcome Home! Celebrating Our Great New England Landscape"

March 11-19 Chicago Flower & Garden Show, Chicago, IL
"Escape From Winter," Navy Pier

March 12 Wisteria Festival, Sierra Madre, CA

March 13, The Sanctified Landscape , New York, NY
Lecture, 6:30PM, NY Historical Society, 170 Central Park West
Author David Schuyler on the influence of Andrew Jackson Downing & Frederick Law Olmsted  Info (718) 817-8747

March 13, Tropical Paradise with Summer Bulbs, Del Mar, CA.
Lecture, 6PM, Surfside Race Place, Del Mar Fairgrounds
Brent Heath of Brent & Becky's Bulbs of Gloucester, VA.

March 15-19 San Francisco Flower & Gdn Show, San Francisco, CA
Cow Palace, Spring Garden Festival

March 15-17 World Floral Expo  2006, Miami, FL
Sheraton Miami Mart Hotel & Convention Center

NYC Garden Antiques

Get ready for the first of the big garden antiques shows this year -- this one in NYC.  It's the Gramercy Garden & Antiques Show, March 3-5 at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave at 26th.  From botanical prints to containers, to benches and fountains, you'll find it all here.  Fair Trade Inc of Shelburne Falls, MA will have a pair of 19th century teak columns from India; The Elemental Garden of Woodbury, CT is bringing an arts & crafts 3-piece lantern; The Red Horse Antiques of Bridgewater VT features an early 19th century child's chair; and Trellis & Trugs from Winnetka, IL will have a Coalbrookdale cast iron bench and an early 20th century French cast stone fountain.

(photo: Stella Shows)

Invasive Plants Conference

More than 200 professionals committed to the eradication of noxious weeds will gather in Washington DC next week (Feb 26-March 3) to highlight the economic and environmental threats posed by invasive plants.  Participants in the 7th annual National Invasive Weed Awareness Week will contact members of Congress, showcase new strategies to control invasive plants and discuss the formation of Cooperative Weed Management Areas throughout the country.  Nelroy Jackson, chair of the Invasive Weed Awareness Coalition, said "Because weeds know no borders, we must set aside our own organizational boundaries and work together to address problems collaboratively." 

A Gardening Obsession

James Raimes is one of those very rare gardeners: a person with unconditional devotion to his landscape, season after season and year after year.  He calls it an obsession, and he has written a very charming, inspirational story about learning the ins and outs of design and planting.

Nine acres is a lot of garden, but Raimes is undeterred.  He makes list after list, creates entries into the woods, opens vistas, and re-arranges,  re-arranges, and re-arranges plants. He deals with deer and groundhogs, tolerating both, and shares his predicaments, his aches and pains, his successes and failures.  "I have recently been preoccupied with seeing what I can do," he writes, "with the groundcover garden on the slope of our east woods."  He looks to the writings of Gertrude Jekyll (Wood and Garden); Russell Page (Education of a Gardener) and Henry Mitchell (The Essential Earthman) for inspiration.  He concludes, as we all should, that anyone, however ordinary, who has chosen to work with plants is simply searching for Paradise.

(click on image to purchase book)   

Urban Tree of the Year

It's not always easy to find a good looking tree that'll tolerate city conditions.  This year's top candidate, chosen by the Society of Municipal Arborists, is the Kentucky  Coffee Tree (Gymnocladus dioicus), one of my all-time favorites as well.

Nina Bassuk of Cornell University's Urban Horticulture Institute said it transforms from an "ugly duckling" into a "gorgeous, well-balanced, strongly branched tree at 5-inch caliper and beyond." She also noted it's "wonderful yellow fall color."

Bill Lawrence, the retired manager of Forestry & Horticulture for the city of Ann Arbor, MI, said the tree requires very little maintenance and it's "quite striking in winter" because of the "gothic appearance of its limb structure."

The tree has lovely, dark green compound leaves that take on a bluish tinge in summer. The large seed pods ripen in October, but hang on the tree through winter.  Early settlers in Kentucky used the seeds as a substitute for coffee, hence the name.  Kentucky Coffee Tree gets about 60-75 feet tall and 40 feet wide at maturity.  It grows best in rich, moist soil in full but is adaptable to many conditions.

(drawing: USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database/Britton, N.L.and A. Brown,1913. Illustrated flora of the northern states and Canada. Vol.2: 340)

Resist the Temptation

Design Tip

It's that time of year again.  Mailboxes are filling with garden catalogues, nurseries are gearing up for the onslaught of new plants, and homeowners (in parts of the country) are waiting for the ground to thaw and the snow to disappear so they can finally get at the garden.  Designers, too, covet new and exotic plants, want a shrub that nobody in the neighborhood has, crave the latest trendy perennial.  But resist, resist, resist the temptation to order or buy things first and figure out later where you're going to put them.

(photo: Nat'l Agricultural Library, ARS, USDA)

Rose Tips from the Experts

OK, so how to make those roses last a little longer? Researchers at the University of Florida have figured out how to extend a rose's life on the way to the retailer so that what you get is a rose (left, 'Lovepeace') that's likely to look good at least three more days.  Terril Nell of the UF Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences , says "keeping flowers cold as they move from field to the florist is critical." Nell and his researchers (right) are also working on techniques to extend the life of carnations, lilies, gerbera, chrysanthemums and alstromeria. 

One of the big rose problems is so-called "bent neck," -- and who hasn't seen that -- when the stem bends just below the bloom and the flower fails to open fully.  Nell says that problem has been reduced by "improved handling procedures ... and better rose varieties."   To extend  the life  of a rose, Nell recommends looking for freshly-cut stems when you buy, re-cutting them once you get them home, using a commercial flower food, and placing the roses in a clean vase in a cool place that's out of direct sunlight. That'll keep the roses, if not love, alive.

(photos: AAS; Kristen Bartlett/University of Florida)

Decks, Fences & Arsenic

It's a good thing that pressure-treated lumber for residential use was phased out in 2003.  A new scientific study concludes that arsenic from lumber treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA) will continue to leach into soil and landfills for decades to come.  That's one reason I've been advising clients in years past to switch to cedar (as in the deck, left) or other woods for decks, fences, and other garden structures.

Researchers at the University of Miami, the University of Florida and Florida International University studied leaching of arsenic from actual decks into the soil and into a simulated landfill.  Their results, published in the current online issue of Environmental Science & Technology, showed that arsenic levels were 100 times greater in water runoff from a deck constructed of CCA-treated lumber. Helena Solo-Gabriele, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Miami, said only small fractions of arsenic leach out in a given year, but that the impact over time can be quite significant. 

Golden Hedges

I've never understood why a lot of people don't seem to like forsythias.  A considerable number of my garden design clients, despite my protests, have ruled out any use of forsythias.  Not only are these sturdy shrubs a great herald of spring; for effect, they're simply unbeatable as a hedge, particularly when planted against evergreens.  Monrovia Nursery has introduced a new one for spring (Forsythia x intermedia 'KolGold', or Magical Gold Forsythia) which should be available in garden centers.  If it lives up to its promise of deep gold individual blooms the size of quarters, it'll make a truly stunning hedge.  It has a strong upright growth habit, flowers from the base of each branch to the tip, and reaches a size of 4 to 5 feet.  Zones 5-9, Full Sun. And if you're in DC, check out the forsythias at Dumbarton Oaks (right) -- you might change your mind about them.

(photo: Monrovia, Jane Berger)

More Green Space

The USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has signed an agreement with the state of Maryland, the Patuxent Research Refuge the US Army's Fort Meade , and the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center to preserve a 25,660 acre acre natural area near Washington, DC.  The spotted salamander pictured left is just one example of many diverse flora and fauna living in the vast ecological preserve.

The preservation area includes 3270 acres of forest and 3230 acres of wetlands sometimes called the 'green lungs' of Washington because the trees emit so much oxygen.  (And some people in this town need it to help clear their brains!).

The state of Maryland designated the forest area a historic research area some time ago, and researchers used it to develop national and international techniques for counting the bird population.

(photo: ARS)