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!...   Continue Reading

Commitment to Beauty, Lincoln’s Sunken Garden

The road trip has long held a certain mystique in the stories of summer travels.  Driving across the US is a narrative of many movies, novels and personal nostalgia.  You might see a corn palace in South Dakota, the largest ball of twine in Cawker, KS, or if you are really lucky a community point of pride in Lincoln, Nebraska, their Sunken Garden.   This garden was built by the local community employing men in need of work in the early 1930’s.  The land once used by children for sledding in the winter and for a garbage dump in the summer was donated by two local families for the city project.  A natural low spot was shaped into a terraced amphitheater designed for trees, shrubs and thousands of plants.   It has generated admiration from the surrounding communities. When it opened it created such a response to its beauty that communities nearby Lincoln sent representatives to view the garden and to obtain plant lists so local gardeners could attempt to replicate some of the beauty in their own gardens.   The setting is a sunken 1.5 acre lot at the corner of 27th & Capital Parkway. Visitors walk down from street level into a network of paths winding past beds of flowers, and ponds with waterfalls.  The design of the garden is changed each year based on a theme chosen to direct the plantings. “Garden themes have included Tropicalismo, Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’, Hachimaki – a stylized Japanese headband, ‘Power of the Peacock’, ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Solar Flair’.” (Lincoln Parks & Recreation) From the theme to the design layout this is a composition of plants intended to paint a picture.  The plants are chosen to thrive in the Nebraska summer heat and rain.   The summer I visited the inspiration was a symphonic orchestration.  The design represented the four movements of a classical symphony, the fast allegro, the slow largo, the minute medium paced and returning to allegro.  The results were a rhythmic spacing of plants placed to move the viewer emotionally and physically as you walk from bed to bed. On a cool, overcast August morning I walked into a symphony of intense colors. Rhythmic plantings of chartreuse, silver, and purple foliage with blooms in shades of pink, burgundy, and white filled the hillside beds. There are a large number of tropical plants, such as cannas, bananas, and elephant ear which can handle the wet soil in the bowl shape of the garden.  Begonias, sweet potato vines petunias, dusty miller, vinca, lantana and coleus all are chosen to complete the color palette.   Several mothers strolled through with their children.  Sheer joy was on their little faces as they ran from flower to flower sticking their noses into blooms to smell the fragrance,  then rushing to the lily ponds full of koi, bending over to look eye to eye at the gold fish.  Everything was exciting in this beautiful place. A busy damsel fly elicited a shriek of surprise as it flew among the papyrus, lotus, lilies and horsetail reeds.   A large group of sorority sisters posed for group photos, their colorful clothes complementing the flowers. The garden is the site of hundreds of photos for seniors, family reunions, weddings and happy travelers every year.   Gardens bring people together. It struck me that in the center of the country a community made a commitment to create beauty simply for all people to enjoy. It is a statement for public good in a world which seems so continually conflicted and angry.  The garden is managed by the City of Lincoln Parks and Recreation department but it relies on passionate community of gardeners to volunteer for a series of work sessions to keep the garden beautiful.  In mid-May there is the “Wake up the Beds” event.  Here the work involves turning the soil, adding amendments and summer planting.  The event draws as many as 125 volunteers of all ages to help plant the 30,000 annuals.  Many volunteers are Master Gardeners and others just budding gardeners. The excitement of creating such beauty is not limited to this one day as the gardeners return throughout the season to see how their plants are doing. There is ownership and pride in what has been created. Garden Gab is a weekly Tuesday and Thursday meet up to touch up and spruce up the plants during the growing season.  The city garden staff provide gardening lessons the volunteers can apply in their own flower beds. The first Saturday of November is the  “Put the Beds to Bed” event and  the spent annuals are pulled, beds composted and planting of bulbs for the spring. The garden season ends and winter arrives, yet the promise of spring brings a display of favorites with tulips and daffodils.   This is an outstandingly beautiful garden.  Driving cross country shows us a beautiful landscape of great variety.  Finding gardens along the way is the best possible road trip....   Continue Reading

Flowers among the red rocks, Kanab, Utah

Kanab, Utah has red rocks, pink sand dunes and high cliffs.  There is so much to look at in the great landscape of the area one doesn’t think to look for gardens.  Yet in the city park the beauty of flowers is enhanced by the red rocks and a stretch of green grass enjoyed by visitors and residents alike....   Continue Reading

70 Years a Gardener, Cactus Garden, Lotusland, CA

When I first moved to Phoenix, AZ I purchased a package of saguaro cactus seeds from the gift shop of the Desert Botanical Garden.  As a transplanted Midwesterner I was eager to grow these curious and fascinating plants.  Reality gradually set in – the seeds didn’t survive and I’ve not considered growing cactus from seeds since.  This was not the case for Merritt “Sigs” Dunlap, also a transplant, from the Midwest to California.  An engineer by training he clearly like figuring things out, and his after work focus was growing cactus, especially from seed....   Continue Reading

Madame Ganna Walska’s Lotusland

In the wonderland that is California, Madame Ganna Walska’s Lotusland is as Walska herself put it: “out of this world.”

Ganna Walska was a fascinating, exotically beautiful opera singer. Born in Poland in 1887, her mother died when she was only nine, she lived with relatives until she fled Poland for Russia.  By age 20 she had married a Russian Count. She began singing opera to gain the attention of another very wealthy Russian.  She created her stage name “Ganna” a Russian form of Hannah, added “Walska” for her love of waltzing, and Madame came as a title given to known opera singers and actresses of the time.  The first half of her life was devoted to her singing, her marriages, (six in total), a career which included her very own theatre in Paris, her own special scent and a spiritual quest for personal fulfillment.  Men pursued her and her many marriages added to her fortunes....   Continue Reading

The Caring of the Green. . A Love Story

The Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island in Washington State is a unique public green space, often referred to as both a garden and an arboretum. The word reserve is defined as a tract of land set aside for special use. The 150 acre sanctuary is not a place of formal flower gardens, but it is a garden created by an exceptional couple who lived in a French country-style house overlooking Puget Sound. Surrounded by forested lands, they worked to discover a way to arrange the plants to create a place where “one can come for a walk in the woods.”...   Continue Reading

Zest for Life

Sitting on a Paris bench in May I was enjoying a view of the Eiffel Tower.  The beds of the park had been freshly dug exposing the rich dark soil and I knew colorful summer plants would be arriving soon.  An elderly woman came walking through the grass pulling her shopping cart. She stopped at the flower bed. In the bright light of day she removed her red trowel and a plastic shopping bag. Bending over she began carefully filling the bag with fresh soil....   Continue Reading