Floriade is a annual Spring celebration of flowers, held in Commonwealth Park, Canberra, the Australian Capital. The month long celebration has been held for 27 years from mid Sept. to mid October. Over 1 million flowers are planted in the park and when the show opens this incredibly diverse community streams in with friends and family to inhale the fresh scent of spring weather. There is a huge ferris wheel designed to give riders a view of the patterned plantings and also a grand view of the city center. Carnival rides, seminars, lectures, musical performances of choirs, dancers, jugglers, are all part of the offerings. Yet in spring, flowers are the big show. Tulips, pansies, ranunculus, daffodils, hyacinths, flowering cabbages, iris are just some of the blossoms used in the designs. Parents pose their children in front of the beautiful colors struggling to get them to hold still and look at the camera. Then for just a moment realize as they look through the lens they are truly seeing the most beautiful elements of life, their children and nature’s glorious blooms. The park was filled with people, walking, pointing at the flowers, admiring the combinations of colors, eating ice cream, and talking as they experienced a beautiful day. Around lake Burley Griffin the deciduous trees are leafing out in bright green. An annual celebration of spring is a beautiful thing.
Category: Out & About
Brief impressions of garden visits
Chinese Friendship Garden
In September it is spring in Sydney Australia and when we walked into the 2.5 acre Chinese Friendship Garden for a moment I thought this will be the same as other Chinese gardens. There were the quite wonderful textured rocks and the bonsai collection in the entry but there was something more, the garden was a full of color! There were orange clivias, lining the paths, rhododendrons and azaleas in shades of pink, and ruffled white.
Roma Street Parkland
It is said that great cities have great parks and as I travel I see this proved true again and again. But I would add, great cities have citizens who realize the value of their parks and come to them to rest, relax, revive their spirits and reconnect to the important things in life. Here I saw a father pushing his son in a stroller. As he passed the mass single color plantings of pansies his little boy practiced identifying his colors, yellow, blue, green. The father praised the little guy and together they shared a simple moment made more beautiful in the garden.
Brisbane Botanic Gardens:
Sept 12 and it’s spring in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The Azaleas are in bloom in the Japanese Garden. The Water Dragons on the prowl since it is mating season. They slip out of the shrubbery and look about then suddenly rise up on all four feet, puff up their head and jut out their chin.
Sunflowers in Song
A single row of sunflowers is a delight in my garden! As the flowers fade and seeds form a flock of yellow canaries and some peach faced loved birds descended on the tasty seed heads. I heard them chatter, I heard their songs. They were everywhere in the garden.
Farm fields of flowers
Driving through the Willamette Valley, near Silverton, Oregon I saw a field of poppies being raised for seed. This wonderful agricultural area is known for fruit, wine, and more but I didn’t know there would be fields of flowers.What a crop! For me it was simply beautiful but for the farmer it was a business, a crop subject to the risks of weather and insects. I’m grateful for the farmers and I am delighted someone grows the flowers.
Leach Garden, Portland, OR
Every garden holds a surprise though sometimes you have to really look for it because it is out of sight, down a path and across the water. This is exactly where I found this stone cottage. John & Lilla Leach lived the summers here in the early 1930’s while their larger home was being built. Lilla was a Botanist, graduating in 1908 from the University of Oregon. She taught science classes in the local high school. John was a Pharmacist and both were highly active in local civic affairs. But their passion was to go out in the woods to explore the plants around them They were assisted in this adventure by their two burros, Pansy and Violet. “It was during these excursions that Lilla Leach discovered two previously unclassified genera of plants and more than a dozen species in her decades of work”(Leach garden website) Lilla was particularly interested in the native plants of Oregon. As a trained scientist she was attentive to the smallest details of the plant variations.
Van Dusen Garden, BC
The Alma Van Dusen perennial garden was in full bloom this July day.
The bed is a large oval shape with a path meandering through it. The highlight is the delphiniums which easily grew 8’ high. An unobtrusive bamboo frame helped hold these huge stalks upright. The flowers were in 3 shades of blue ranging from very dark to light.
WW Seymour Conservatory, Tacoma, WA
The W. W. Seymour Conservatory in Wright Park, Tacoma, WA is a glass wonder.
Conservatories are so important for protecting unique plants that won’t live in local climes. But the Seymour creates a seasonal floral display four times a year.
Carl S English Jr Botanical Garden,
Carl S English Jr Botanical Garden, on the ground of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Shipping channel locks designed by Hiram M Chittenden in 1906. I came to see the garden which has an especially unique origin. English came to the Army Corp of Engineer base in 1931 to work as a groundskeeper for the Army parade lawn. Carl & his wife were both botanists and loved plants. He wanted to plant things to create a garden around the parade ground, but there was no expectation to have a garden on the base and no money for plants. Still he and his wife would travel out to the local forest and around the area and collect seeds. Then he would grow the plant in a small container from seed. He began to transplant the small starts into the landscape. He then had more local seeds than he could grow so he began writing letters offering seed exchanges with other gardeners. He sent letters all around the world and exchanged seeds. He even obtained the seed for a dawn redwood, a native of the northwest but extinct there. He received a seed for the tree from China and he reintroduced the tree in Oregon. After 20 years the plants had grown into quite a lovely garden. It was the late 50’s and local garden clubs were admiring and helpful in the garden. College horticultural students came to study the over 500 plant species and 1500 varietals of plants Carl and his wife had added to the garden. The top brass of the Army Corp engineers came too but not to admire but to demand that the large lawn parade field be returned to its original state. Carl had clearly followed the “act first, ask permission later philosophy” in growing his garden. The grounds were cared for, but enriched and loved way beyond a plain lawn. Fortunately the beauty of the place and the community attachment to the garden allowed tempers to mellow and the garden continued to grow. When English retired in 1974 after 43 years in the job the garden stood as a masterpiece and is the only garden in all 195 army corp engineer locations. Guess the top brass stopped that nonsense!