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March 29, 2006
Buds!
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Pleasurable anticipation is one of the great joys of spring. Fat juicy buds with the promise of blooms to come are everywhere this week. The magnolias particularly are ready to pop. Maple trees appear to be in bud- but they are actullay blooming. Experts say that the female flower has a more intense color than the male....so this tree must be all girl.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2006
Ladies' Border
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Most of New York Botanical Garden is still more or less asleep, with fattening buds but not many flowers to report. But the Ladies' Border Ladies' Borderis a stunning exception. Thanks to a very protected southern exposure, which generates its own microclimate, the 260-foot-long garden bed is dedicated to growing unusual half-hardy plants that can survive our Northern winters. First designed in 1933 by the great Ellen Biddle Shipman, the garden was re-designed in 2002 by public garden designer par excellence Lynden Miller. It manages to offer year-round interest, but the early spring display is particularly successful. Look for some of our favorites that are blooming right now: a large and spectacular Prunus mume, several varieties of Hamamelis (witch hazel),viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn,' edgeworthia chrysantha, and viburnum farreri.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2006
Dale Chihuly
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It appears that the Dale Chihuly traveling road show is coming to the New York Botanical Garden. The Washington State based glass sculptor, in the words of his web site, "deserves credit for establishing the blown glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art." Recently he has worked with several botanical gardens to create elaborate installation pieces within the gardens. Chihuly's colorful, complex, multipart sculpture is strongly influenced by natural forms and works particularly well in the context of tropical or exotic gardens. There have been Chihuly installations at Kew, in Chicago, and in Atlanta. Right now his work is being featured at the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Coral Gables, Florida.
There is a lot of Dale Chihuly at the Fairchild. Some of it works, expecially the writhing forms in the tropical pavilions, and the huge glass spikes in the dry desert displays. Some of it doesn't--a series of turquoise ice cubes floating in a pond. According to the Chihuly web site, the installation at NYBG is scheduled for June 24th to October 29th, 2006. We can't wait to see what's in store for that venerable institution in the Bronx.
Link: www.Chihuly.com
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2006
Catalogs
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By now, we at Citygardenguide have an impressive collection of plant catalogs, they have been arriving since Christmas and we have been perusing them for almost that long. But have we ordered anything yet? No! We are still trying to winnow our list to a reasonable length. Our eyes are always bigger than our garden. There is also the problem of design vs. desire. We desire every bizarre, beautiful or rare introduction we read about- but our gardens really call for design with more restraint, discipline and control.
Over the years we have come to rely on a handful of catalogs whose offerings are so appealing year after year that we can't resist them. For the most part they represent smaller specialty nurseries. Often they use delicate line drawings instead of expensive photos to illustrate their offerings. And they all have chatty informative essays about garden doings that make you feel that you are part of their larger gardening family. It's not uncommon to get a handwritten note with your order if there has been some problem or substitution. Most of these nurseries have extensive online catalogs as well. But we would rather crawl into bed with a pencil and an old-fashioned paper catalog than fall asleep over our PowerBooks.
These are our favorite Catalogs:
Digging Dog Nursery
P.O. Box 471
Albion, CA 95401
www.avantgardensne.com
Its annuals and tender perennial sections are really exceptional. Especially useful for creating unusual combinations for pots.
High Country Gardens
2902 Rufina Street
Santa Fe, NM 87507-2929
www.songsparrow.com
Song Sparrow doesn't have the cozy charm of some of the more artisanal nurseries, but it has an excellent selection of plants, all grown in Wisconsin so they are reliably hardy here. It also has a world famous peony breeding program and a vast selection of peonies.
Heronswood Nursery
7530 NE 288th Street
Kingston WA 98346
www.SingingSpringsNursery.com
This nursery has a fabulous collection of tender (here) salvias, and a pretty fine range of those uncommon tender plants that are so fashionable now. This is the kind of nursery where they will send you an extra plant if they don’t think the one you ordered looks healthy enough.
Roslyn Nursery, Inc.
211 Burrs Lane
Dix Hills, NY 11746
www.forestfarm.com
If by any chance you can’t find what you need at Roslyn, go to Forest Farm. Its catalog is substantial and encyclopedic. Its further away (Oregon vs. Long Island), but we have always had very good service from them, and you can generally find the obscure variety of whatever that you are looking for.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2006
City Trees
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Most of the year, we walk past the great trees in our city parks without much sense of their shape and structure. But in fact winter is the best time to really see and admire our trees, before their leaves obscure their shape--like this elegant, vase-shaped elm on the east side of the Great Lawn.The European beech has massive silver branches, that are almost entirely invisible when the tree is in leaf. Other than shape, look at the bark of trees--the mottled light-brown-and-tan bark of the sycamore stands out against the dark trunks of most other trees; the peeling bark of the kousa dogwoods and Heritage birches create interesting, multi-colored trunks. An excellent guide to all our city trees can be found in almost any bookstore: Edward Sibley Barnard's New York City Trees: A Field Guide for the Metropolitan Area.. Get yourselves a copy and go out for a walk on a mild end-of-winter day.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)