Category: Garden Articles

Memorable Gardens 2015

“We are perishing from want of wonder and not from want of wonders, GK Chesterton”

During 2015 I visited nearly 100 gardens in a dozen states and every garden delighted me. Reflecting on my garden adventures I have looked through the photos and notes of my travels and found a few I want to share with you.  While the gardens I write about here are all unique and worthy of a visit for so many reasons when you go there will be something new and interesting to see.  Here is the most memorable moment discovered just when I wandered through the garden. ...   Continue Reading

Celebrating the Light

Desert Botanical Garden

LAS NOCHES DE LAS LUMINARIAS

As we approach the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, we turn on our lights with little thought. It gets dark and we need light to complete our daily tasks. Yet in December, light becomes a part of our celebrations. Hanukkah is a festival of lights, Christmas trees are lit as a gathering place for the festivities of the season, the Luminaries of the Southwest light the pathway for the worshippers to find their way to the Christmas Miracle....   Continue Reading

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

When I was 10 years old I read a novel about two student nurses spending a summer at an adventure camp in Maine.  I read about the blue ocean water, the sun sparkling on the ripples lapping the craggy shoreline. I saw the bright blue skies with white puffy clouds floating overhead.  I could smell the pine trees and hear the loons calling in the night.  I don’t remember what happened to the girls at camp, but I remembered those images of a state so far away. Oh so many years later it was all as I pictured it when I arrived in Maine this summer.  Maine has a magnificent color scheme of blue ocean, green trees, and white puffy clouds against an endless blue sky.  Yet even with so much natural beauty all around, in 1991 a small group of residents came together to promote the idea of building a botanical garden for Maine. They believed a garden would “protect, preserve and enhance the botanical heritage and natural landscape of coastal Maine for people of all ages through horticulture, education and research.” (Mission statement, website)...   Continue Reading

Blooms Upon the Water

Monet wrote of his pond at Giverny,

“It took me a long time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pure pleasure of it and I grew them without thinking of painting them…And then, all of a sudden, I had the revelation of the enchantment of my pond. I took up my palette. Since then I’ve had no other model.”Monet’s Water Lilies, Vivian Russell...   Continue Reading

A Castle, Flowers & Vegetables

Hatley Castle, on the grounds of Hatley Park Royal Roads University in Colwood, Vancouver Island, BC

Once upon a time on a beautiful summers’ day my fantasy of walking in a perfect garden came true. I entered an Italian style garden through a wisteria covered stone loggia (covered corridor).   Pink roses climbed the loggia columns adding a bright color accent. A lawn formed a promenade to walk through the garden, with flower beds symmetrical in both color and shape surrounding the lawn. In each corner of the lawn stood a large floral urn. Boxwood hedges shaped the lines of the garden. A stone wall provided pattern and texture behind the flowers....   Continue Reading

An American Garden

Bartram’s — An American Garden

Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love, and for the men who gathered there to lay out the foundations of our democracy.  This is where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution written. What many people don’t realize is that Philadelphia also claims to be America’s garden capital, boasting 30 public gardens within 30 miles of Philly. ...   Continue Reading

Killdeer, Killdeer, Henry Schmeider Arboretum

There is always a chance of a surprise encounter when wandering into a garden.  Today we explored the Henry Schmeider Arboretum, which encompasses the entire campus of Delaware Valley University.  The iris and peony garden was blooming and hidden among the flowers on bare ground a killdeer sat on a nest. Alert and protective she called out her name onomatopoeically.  Her mate returned the call, both on alert and then she stood up!Under her were four eggs, spotted, camouflaged and like small rocks they seemed to set directly on the ground unprotected.  The mother flew off to fake an injury to draw me away from the nest. Calling out and flapping her wings she wanted us to follow her.  She wanted us to move away from the eggs. We backed away and  she quickly returned to the nest.  All seemed well.  In just three weeks the babies will hatch. Remarkably they break out of the shell able to see and forage quickly after. ...   Continue Reading

Welcoming Children in the Garden

Wandering into a garden one lovely summer day I was greeted with a sign “No Picnicking, No Pets, No Bicycles, No feeding the wildlife.”  Beyond the gate was cool shade, colorful flowers, falling water, birds singing in the trees, rabbits, ducks, and squirrels on a carpet of lush lawn. I found no one in the garden but the gardeners.  I’m fine with policies about expected behavior, yet a greeting like this kicks the kid in all of us out of a garden....   Continue Reading