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.
“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.
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.
In this week of Thanksgiving I realize again how grateful I am for gardens. In this world of war, wild weather, and wandering refugees it is hard to see solutions to such complex problems. Yet at this very moment I am lucky enough to be able to step outside my home and walk in my garden. I have a place to sit with the people I love, where I can see the sky and be warmed by the sun. Delighted by wild canaries flying through the view, a light breeze rustles the leaves on the olive trees, and a wind chime plays a trio of notes. I have clean water for my plants and for my family.
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)
The Blithewold, Mansion sits surrounded by woodlands and a grand lawn looking out on an ocean view. Established in 1895 the last surviving family member lived in the home until 1976. These old estate gardens change over the years but some specific elements remain to help you see what was there. The word Blithewold means “happy woodlands” and so trees were an important part of the landscape. A 90 yr. old Sequoia is doing very well.
Retired Botany Professor Lawrence Kingston is called in to examine the authenticity of a sapphire blue rose growing in Alex & Kate’s English garden. Then a mystery begins without the blood & gore of so many mystery tales but with intrigue surrounding the ins and out of the rose industry, including gardening practices, vividly rainy days, strong tea and beautiful gardens. Antony Elgin is a gardener, award winning rosarian and producer of a series of best selling garden videos. Originally from England he lives in California where his “pint-sized garden was awarded Garden Design magazine’s Golden Trowel Award.” His English Garden Mystery series with Dr. Lawrence Kingston sleuthing his way through the plants and plotting includes six titles, the latest, The Alcatraz Rose includes action in San Francisco. These books are highly entertaining for a gardener as the horticulture insights are delivered along with a good story. Other titles in the series I’m eager to try include, The Water Lily Cross, Gardens of Secrets Past, The Lost Gardens, The Trail of the Wild Rose. If you are a fan of PBS’s Rosemary & Thyme mystery series you will enjoy these books.
Visiting gardens I see so many beautiful plants growing from the ground, on the vine, the bush, the stem. Yet gardeners have a bit of a competitive streak and when fair time rolls around the very best of the garden is picked, cleaned, and shined to taken to the fair. The Bethlehem, CT fair had some great garden specimens on display.
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.
There are truly special days when I wander into a garden and it is perfect and it was just such a day at Untermyer Park. It is a walled garden, the size of a football field. Persian gardens inspired the creation of this walled space with its four quadrants defined by low water ways. Classical Greek columns and a Temple to the sky are part of the white stone framework of the space. In 1922 it was described as “America’s Most Spectacular Garden.” Now as a public park of NYC it underwent a revitalization beginning in 2011. This year’s planting worked with a limited palate of plants with black foliage, deep purple, lavenders, chartreuse and spots of yellow. The plants were elephant ears, sweet potato vine, verbenas, anemones, and hostas. Mid September, put the plants at a peak of growth. Enjoy the photos and if you are ever in Yonkers, NY, do stop and be dazzled!
