If you are visiting downtown Seattle board the monorail and ride directly to the Space Needle, the most iconic image of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. The 74 acre Seattle Park is a prime destination with many attractions to choose from. The Pacific Science Center is designed to inspire budding scientists of all ages, the 3D IMAX theatre is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the National Parks, the Music Center plays the history of rock and roll and the International musical fountain invites you in for a splash.
Category: Garden Articles
Vander Veer Botanical Park & Conservatory, Davenport IA
Reporting from Iowa
This just in, Iowa has beautiful gardens and parks, with grand trees, roses, hostas, and lakes. Despite the frenzy of Iowa’s political caucuses happy people are ice skating on the lagoon in Vander Veer Botanical Park and Conservatory in Davenport.
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.
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.
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)
Garden of Art & Flowers- Feature
This article appears in the September 2015 issue of Phoenix Home & Garden. It features our home garden. The copyright access to the photos expired, so I’ve added a gallery of similar images at the end. Hope you enjoy the tour.
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
Composition of Cactus
“To many people, a cactus is the tall, spiny plant that they have seen in films of the Wild West.” (Miles Anderson, Cactus & Succulent Guide)
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.
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.