GardenDesignOnline

Happenings August 2015

Selected Events Around the Country:

thru November 1: Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden Life, Bronx, NY
NY Botanical Garden 718-817-8700

Garden Dialogues - various locations and dates in U.S.
Landscape architects discuss their projects on site.  The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
August 8 & Aug 22: Denver & Aspen. 202-483-0553

August 1-2 Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours: WA, IL, NY, CA
WA: Olympia; IL: Chicago's Western Suburbs; NY: Tompkins Cty; CA: Mendocino Cty
August 6, Restoring the Natural Landscape: A Case Study, Spencertown, NY
9AM-2PM, workshop, Berkshire Botanical Garden, 413-298-3926
August 8, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours: MA, NY
MA: Marblehead; NY: Westchester Cty

August 14, The Planted Landscape: Concept to Chaos, Glencoe, IL
9AM-4PM, Symposium, Chicago Botanic Garden, 847-835-5440
August 15, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours: NY, CT
NY: Columbia, Dutchess Counties; CT: Fairfield Cty

August 18, Guiding the Rain: Aesthetically & Ecologically, Leominster, MA
9AM-11AM, workshop,  Ecological Landscape Alliance, 617-436-5838
August 21-22, Speaking of Gardening Symposium, Asheville, NC
8:30AM-4:30PM, North Carolina Arboretum, 828-665-2492
August 22-23, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours: NJ, WA
NJ: Essex Cty; WA: South Sound Area

August 23, Simple Steps toward Sustainable Landscapes, San Marino, CA
2PM, Lecture, The Huntington, 626-405-2100
August 27-29, Farwest Show, Portland, OR
Landscape trade show, Oregon Convention Center
August 29-30, Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours: OR, CT, NY
OR: Portland; CT: Litchfield Cty; NY: Orange Cty

LOOKAHEAD:

Sept 10, Landscape Lecture: Richard Haag, Boston, MA
7PM, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 617-278-5156
Sept 11-15, Field Study: Native Plant Communities, Cornwall, NY
9AM-5PM Daily, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700
Sept 18, Native Plant Summit, Bronx, NY
9AM-3PM, NY Botanical Garden, 718-817-8700
Sept 18-21, Gardenwriters Annual Symposium, Pasadena, CA

Oct 5-8, Cities Alive Annual  Green Roof & Wall Conference, NY, NY
Oct 8-12, APLD International Design Conference, Washington DC
Nov 6-9, ASLA Annual Meeting & Expo, Chicago, IL

Nov 12, Landscape Lecture: Walter Hood, Boston, MA
7PM, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 617-278-5156

 

Summer Hiatus

ON VACATION ... for a few weeks ... enjoy your summer ... and please browse back articles.

In the Magazines July 2015

Garden Design Summer 2015
*A Texas Hill Country native landscape by Studio Outside of Dallas
*A wild and windswept garden on Washington state's San Juan Island by LA Rich Haag

photo courtesy Garden Design - click to enlarge

A classic masterpiece designed by the late Dan Kiley ... "Patterns," the Brandywine Valley, Delaware home of former Governor Pete du Pont. Plantings at the 25-year old garden are now overseen by renowned plantsman David Culp of Sunny Border Nurseries.

Photos by Roger Foley.

 

photo: Claire Takacs, courtesy Garden Design

Design Solution:

Designer Lauren Hall-Behrens of Lilyvilla Gardens in Portland, OR, clears out overgrown plants and uses texture and color to bring together her Pan-Asian-Tropical garden.

 

And:
*Tough plants for garden edges
*Dan Hinkley on the attributes of Agapanthus
*Meadows by John Greenlee
*Nine Backyard Getaways

Better Homes & Gardens July
*For a family in LA, designer Jamie Durie creates a series of outdoor rooms, from pergola-covered dining area to living room, open-air office, vertical veg garden and more.
*A failing drainage system is transformed into a rain garden that will take any deluge.
*A small Chicago backyard is turned into a garden oasis by landscape architect René Grassman Huynssens

Fine Gardening July-Aug
*Hot colors for a hot summer
*Plants that will tolerate wet conditions
*Butterfly bush plant trials - which ones perform best, which ones are least invasive
*A garden with peak performance in midsummer

Horticulture July-August
*Editing the garden for better design
*Replacing the lawn with flowers
*Flowering vines that won't eat the yard
*Gardening lessons from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

 

The American Gardener July-August
*Easy Garden Updates
*America's Wild Roses
*Plants with Fragrant Foliage
*Beatrix Farrand's garden at Garland Farm in Bar Harbor

 

 

Books: Garden Beach Reads

I've had this book for years, and now it's been re-issued by the New York Review of Books.   The author, of course, is Katherine S. White, long-time fiction editor for The New Yorker, and it contains a number of gardening-related columns that she wrote for that magazine.  In her book, Onward and Upward in the Garden (New York Review of Books Classics, 2015), White reviewed gardening titles and plant catalogues, and in the process educated and entertained tens of thousands of dedicated gardeners. As White notes in an early essay, "The Burpee people go for ruffles in anything.  To me a ruffled petunia is occasionally a delight but a ruffled snapdragon is an abomination."

Great reading.

 

All of us in the gardening and design business, of course, have great respect for the men and women who bring us wondrous new plants every year.  And in Visions of Loveliness: Great Flower Breeders of the Past (Ohio University Press, 2015), horticultural historian Judith M. Taylor introduces us to those who've had such an illustrious impact on our careers.  Some names you'll find familiar -- Louis Van Houtte, Karl Foerster, Luther Burbank, W. Atlee Burpee -- but others will be new to you.  And you'll find them more than fascinating.  As Taylor reports, "Foerster allowed his cultuvars to be formed by pollination.  The witty Irish garden writer Helen Dillon commented that each morning he would march through his trial grounds, followed by a terrified garden boy, and smash any plant with inferior flowers into oblivion."

In addition to bios of some of the great breeders, Taylor also has some chapters on specific plants, such as hydrangea, camellia, roses, peonies, lilac -- and the top breeders of each genus.   Perfect to dip into on lazy afternoons.

And finally, Peter Crane, former director of Kew Gardens in Britain, has written a lovely book on the 250-million year history of the ginkgo tree. Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot (Yale University Press, 2015).

It's a captivating biography of this tree, loved by many, hated by others for its foul-smelling fruits.  It once flourished throughout the Northern Hemisphere, then waxed and waned at different times due to climate change and competition with other plants.  About a thousand years, ago, the plant was brought in to Chinese temple gardens from the wild ... it spread from there to Korea and Japan ... and eventually, horticulturists brought it back again to Europe and North America.  Crane also notes the tree's cultural and historical significance, its medicinal and nutritional values, and of course its use as one of the most popular street trees because of its great tolerance of urban conditions.

Plants: Great New Blueberry

Sure takes a long time to bring on a new plant ... this new winter-hardy 'Nocturne' blueberry was nearly 20 years in the making.  It was developed by scientists at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service in one of their satellite locations in Chatsworth, New Jersey.

The plant is self-pollinating and bears about 12 pounds of fruit per plant and its winter hardiness is similar to northern highbush blueberry cultivars.

Plant geneticist Mark Ehlenfeldt made the original cross between a mixed species hybrid (US 874) and Premier, a commercial rabbiteye blueberry.  Ehlenfeldt says the new variety is intended to be "a specialty market plant for homeowner, landscape, and ornamental use."  While the fruit is black, unripe berries are red and orange, so the plant has much potential for attractive landscape use.  'Nocturne' is expected to be available to growers within a year or two ... wish it were much sooner.