Garden Walk Buffalo wins travel & tourism award

Garden Walk Buffalo, the largest (and dare I say best!) garden tour in the country received an award from Visit Buffalo Niagara (VBN) as the "2011 Tourism Initiative of the Year" at the second annual Beacon Awards, honoring excellence in the Buffalo Niagara travel and tourism industry, with more than 400 tourism professionals in attendance.

Beacon Awards Luncheon presentation
at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center

The award was offered with the following comments from VBN:

"The Beacon Award for Outstanding Tourism Initiative of the Year goes to Garden Walk Buffalo.

In the summer of 1995, a group of volunteers from the Norwood/West Utica Neighborhood Association created the first Buffalo Garden Walk.
 
The main goal was to encourage neighborhood beautification and community pride.  What started as a stroll through 29 neighborhood gardens has grown to more than 370 gardens in 2011, making the event the largest of its kind in the country.

Admission is free and the work of organizing and managing the Walk is accomplished entirely by volunteers.
 
It’s important to note that Garden Walk President Jim Charlier, has personally overseen the tremendous growth of Garden Walk by employing a sophisticated combination of media relations, social media, e-newsletters and consumer advertising to create what has become one of the most highly regarded and attended horticulture events in the country. Garden Walk has also served as the inspiration for the National Garden Festival. Both events are helping Visit Buffalo Niagara tell a new story about our community and attract new visitors.

Congratulations, Jim, and the entire Garden Walk Buffalo Board as well as the homeowners and gardeners."

These are some of the people that make Garden Walk happen -
the Garden Walk committee - come volunteer
with this great group of ardent Buffalo supporters!

There was no speech other than the introduction above (thankfully!). I've been president or co-chair of the event for, going on, seven years. I accepted the award on behalf of the GW committee (dozens) and gardeners (hundreds) that have participated in Garden Walk over the last 18 years.

The travel and tourism industry impacts not just the economy and jobs but also the quality of life for area residents. Accommodations, attractions, restaurants, museums, parks...all are maintained by well-trained staff and very often assisted by dedicated volunteers.

Visit Buffalo Niagara implemented this recognition program in 2011 to honor those exemplary, front-line employees and volunteers...the National Travel and Tourism Beacon Awards. When visitors are greeted with great service, they are more likely to have a positive impression, share their perceptions with friends and are more likely to return in the future.

"Travel and tourism is one of Erie County's growth industries," said Dottie Gallagher-Cohen, president and CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara. "It creates more than $1.3 billion in direct spending, employs approximately 19,000 people, and provides more than $455 in tax relief to every household in Erie County."

The following also received awards at the May 10 ceremony in the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center:

• Tourism Executive of the Year: Drew Cerza, National Buffalo Wing Festival
• Tourism Volunteer of the Year: Linda Adams, Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Complex
• Buffalo Ambassador of the Year: National Preservation Conference Local Organizing Committee.
• Lodging Employee of the Year: Michael Hicks, Comfort Suites Downtown
• Lodging Manager of the Year: Kevin Hudson, Hyatt Regency Buffalo
• Lodging General Manager of the Year: Shelly Cieslak, Fairfield Inn and Suites
• Tourism Employee of the Year: Eric Guzdek, Northtown Center in Amherst

And here's more of this great planning group, making Buffalo
a better place to live and to visit. To these people, add almost 400 gardeners
willing to show off their gardens - and you've got a weekend!

In addition, NBC newscaster Tim Russert was recognized posthumously as the first inductee into the Buffalo Ambassador Hall of Fame. That award will now be commonly named, "The Tim Russert Award." The award was accepted on his behalf by his son, Luke Russert via a pre-recorded monologue.


The actual award, which I will hold onto for the time being, is very nice - a glass interpretation of the 1818 lighthouse on Buffalo's Lake Erie waterfront.

To see the complete list of Garden Walk Buffalo board members and committee members, visit here.

Two fountains, a tiny patio and a disco ball...

This was the weekend for small projects. And mowing dandelions.

I made a dozen or more hypertufa pots, semi-installed my homemade copper coral bell (huchera) fountain, semi-installed a fish head fountain, planted a few more huchera, planted up one of the hypertufa planters with a miniature flagstone patio and plants, and created a "disco" ball for the garden.

Before & After. I wanted to plant up a couple of the hypertufa planters for the Garden Art sale on June 24.
I took cuttings & dug up small-scaled plants from around the garden.

To this I'll add a champagne wire-cage set of chairs & table, onto the little flagstone patio. I usually end up making chairsfrom champagne tops, when urged, at parties for the host. I really have to start taking needle-nose pliers with me to parties.

I also did up another hypertufa planter with a more conventional planting.

I added the coral bell fountain to the coral bell bed that is in the works. I did buy three coral bells,
and have another three on order from the Botanical Gardens Great Plant Sale, which will be in next weekend.

You can see some of the hypertufa planters I've been making
in the background. I should have about three dozen to sell.

The huchera fountain amongst the heuchera. With the copper coloring it almost gets lost in there!
The grate at the bottom, which covers the water tub, will be covered with river rock.I see from this photo the fence background could use something to feature the fountain more. It's deadly as a backdrop.

The fish head fountain was set up this weekend too. This was a gift from a friends of ours (thanks Lulu!).
She sent it to us from San Antonio with no other info, hoping we'd have fun guessing what it is. It's a scupper!
It is intended to fancifully drain a water downspout (kinda like a cathedral gargoyle works).
I set it up as a fountain instead. I'd have had to re-route the downspouts and or gutters on the
house or garage, and then it would only work when it rained - when we wouldn't be able to enjoy it!
I have to find a better bucket for it to splash into.

Another view of the hypertufa "patio planter."

I stuffed a length of rope light into the glass ball
I was given as a gift (Thanks Al/Alex/Alexandra/Sandy).
Now I have to decide if I want to hang it or let it
sit and glow in the garden. Making it spin is probably a bit much I suppose.

A walk around Carmel, CA

If you told me I could live anywhere in the U.S., money being no object, I'd probably say Carmel California without hesitation. It is possibly the most charming community I've ever visited - storybook cottages and the gardens to match.

A Frank Lloyd Wright bowl planter.

There seems to be many more McMansions jamming their way between the pretty seaside cottages, but even those are of unique designs and made of stone, brick and sturdier finishes than you'd expect anywhere else. It's pretty exclusive, as you would expect - being almost part of Pebble Beach, the scenic 17-Mile Drive toll road, the toniest town in California, and with Clint Eastwood being your ex-mayor.

We visited Carmel about 20 years ago and were itching to get back, just to walk around the trendy shopping district of art studios, antique stores, restaurants, and design shops. We wanted to show our daughter (a Frank Lloyd Wright fan) the Wright beach house (shown above). And I wanted to photograph just some of the gardens. What I have here are not even the best of the residential front yard gardens we saw - these are just the gardens in a small square block of homes by the ocean.

Springtime around the spread

Seems like a while since I've shown my own garden progress, not that I've done much. My Senior Associate Assistant Garden Maintenance Engineer was out there in March, during the week that was 80° and she accomplished a lot of clean-up. I did get out this past weekend and got a little done. On top is the front yard, now, when it looks fresh and neat. It'll look like an uncontrolled jungle in another month.

Hypertufa hell

I am trying my hand at hypertufa so I have something else to sell at this Garden Art Sale coming up on June 24 at the Parkside Lodge in Delaware Park (during the Parkside Garden Tour).

It's the first time I've ever done this, but it's been on my list for a long time. I followed the directions I found on this blog here. It's quite easy, almost therapeutic. I started last weekend, I'll make more this weekend and then the following weekend - they take roughly three weeks to cure, and I have to leach the lime, add holes by drilling and "scruff up" the exteriors, so I want them all done three weeks before the Sale.

A new hosta -- the Mike Shadrack

It's not really mine. It was a birthday gift to my wife from the human Mike Shadrack. How many people get a plant named after them?

The hosta Mike Shadrack

The hybridizer, Bob Kuk from Kuk's Forest Nursery (a 2011 American Hosta Society Eunice Fisher Distinguished Hybridizer Merit Award recipient), created this variety in 2001 from the parents H. "Rock and Roll" and H. "Great Expectations." Seems about right. if you know the human Mike Shadrack.

The human Mike Shadrack pushing around his wife,
Kathy Guest Shadrack. Both authors of books on hostas.

It's described as "Medium green with a medium gold margin, extremely cupped and rugose on a vase-shaped clump." It's a moderate grower with a 9"x9" sized leaf and broadly ovate leaf shape that is slightly rippled -- with a dull leaf texture. The plant is considered large (30-35.99" tall) with scentless white blooms. It is in the Lilaceae family in the genus hosta, hardy to Zone 3b. And can be purchased from Hostas Direct.

Mike, and his wife Kathy are both authors of books on hostas. They live outside of Buffalo, NY, and travel the country in the "hosta speaking engagement circles." Yes, there are hosta speaking engagement circles. You can find out more about them on their own site, Smug Creek Gardens.

I have to find a special spot for this hosta, which we'll just call "Mike."

Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate park

Two weeks ago we were in San Fransisco visiting the sites and seeing the sights. One garden on my bucket list has always been the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. The five-acre site was originally created as a one-acre "Japanese village" exhibit for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition in 1894.

The garden(s) are exquisite. Expertly maintained, the garden views open up as you walk through, each section different from the next but all one manicured whole. There are visually busy areas of clipped trees, bamboo hedges, bright & brash colors - but also quiet wooded areas that seemed to glow and parts with more colors of green than you've probably ever seen.

Meandering paths lead up hills, across streams, over ponds, an arched drum bridge, pagodas, stone lanterns, stepping stone paths, native Japanese plants, serene koi ponds and a zen garden.

There's a real tea house restaurant, and an obligatory gift shop selling mostly tea-related items. I was homing for more garden-related merchandise.

Mexican garden art store visit

When in Mexico in February, we visited a garden store in Puerto Vallarta, near the airport. This store was always screaming to our friend Jay who drives by it every trip into Puerto Vallarta from his Sayulita vacation home. This store had TONS of items from huge outdoor dining table to house numbers and every wall hanging, sculpture, water fountain, bird cage, bar, chair, lantern, tile, jug, pot, basket, mirror, wind chime, lounge chair and table you can imagine. It seemed endless, like the warehouse from the last scene of the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie. For your viewing pleasure:

How not to approach selling at a garden art sale

I've gone and done it again. Signed up for something with little to no knowledge of what I'm doing. I signed up to participate, as a vendor in the upcoming Buffalo-style Garden Art Sale. I get a ten-by-ten booth to sell garden art, or garden-inspired products to rabid gardeners. It's being held during the Parkside Garden Tour, so we're sure to have a good-sized built-in crowd.

FOR SALE: Framed original watercolor painting

FOR SALE: Framed original watercolor painting by Susan Webb Tregay, used on the first color Garden Walk Buffalo in poster (2002). 

Partial proceeds of sale to benefit the National Garden Festival. Price of this beautiful painting (and small part of Buffalo's gardening history) is $850. If interested, email gardenwalkbufffalo@yahoo.com.

One of the signed 2002 Garden Walk Posters, and description, are attached to the back of the painting. Painting size is 29"h x 33"w. Framed size is 31"h x 37.5"w.

The Gardens of Alcatraz Island

 

I didn't expect much from a prison garden, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the gardens in and around San Francisco's former federal penitentiary, Alcatraz.

Alcatraz is called "The Rock" for good reason.
It's mostly rock and buildings.

The island, originally an uninhabitable pile of rocks, home to only birds, had barely anything more than scrub brush when roads were first blasted out of the rock in the 1850s. Then it was developed as an army military garrison leading up to the Civil War. The three officer's homes, at the time, had small gardens. And the common areas used plantings to visually break up the seemingly endless piles of cannon balls. Soil had to be brought there from the mainland for growing. One large lawn and garden was watered with reclaimed water from the cell house showers.

National Garden Festival Guides

Coming to you soon... These books are printed and we're looking for distribution sites, as well as being able to order them online through the National Garden Festival (NGF). They were available at Plantasia (the local garden & landscape show) and LOTS of books sold. Cost is $5, or $8 for two. Proceeds benefit the Garden Festival and offset the cost of the books.

The Open Gardens/NGF guide is a flip-over book - it's two, two books in one.

Garden related activity for when you're not gardening

Please visit Garden Walk Bufalo's new Facebook page which can be found here. Please click over and "Like" our page. Features you'll find there include:

And yet more Buffalo gardens in another magazine...

...and again, photos of my garden were in the mix. They're old photos - it doesn't look quite like this anymore. The top photo, where you see the Royal purple smoke tree, no longer has the tree. That's the spot I'll be adding my handmade copper heuchera fountain.

Can a garden tour change a city?

Last week, the Buffalo News published, in the Editorial Page, an article written by Randy Hohle, an assistant professor of sociology at D’Youville College. He is working on a research project titled “Rusty Gardens: Creativity, Civic Engagement and Urban Revitalization in the Rust Belt.” And this article was a brief bit about some of the information he has uncovered in the process of researching and interviewing gardeners and garden tour organizers from around the Buffalo Niagara region, as well as in other cities around the country. You can read his full editorial in the Buffalo News here.

Leaf magazine is out - and I'm in!

I was very honored to be asked by Rochelle Greayer and Susan Cohan to contribute a small bit to their wildly successful new (and free) online gardening magazine Leaf. When planning their section on international garden markets for this second issue, in the back of one of their minds, they recalled I had written posts (here and here) on Holland's Bloemenmarkt, a generations-old flower market located on permanently-moored barges in a canal in the heart of Amsterdam. You can read the article it on page 54.

A poem for a sunny spring Monday

I first heard this last Sunday in church, read by its author, as the second reading of the service. I'm not a big poetry fan, but when I heard the reading I thought it was funny, timely, genuine, and thoughtful.

She associates her daughter's name with flowers. That's nice. My daughter's named after a bottle of red and a bottle of white. That'll probably end in therapy for her, not a poem.

Then the poem was published in the Buffalo News yesterday. Does your newspaper still publish locally-written poetry? When I saw it there, I figure it was an omen that it should be a post - otherwise I'll keep running across it. So here it is.

Garden Walk Buffalo on Facebook

Please visit Garden Walk Bufalo's new Facebook page which can be found here. Please click over and "Like" our page. Features you'll find there include:

• Photo collections of different features of the Walk - titles like Mirrors in the Garden, Waterworks on the Walk, and Hellstrips. More collections will be added, over time, to keep you inspired for the other 363 days a year.
• 43 Great Garden Ideas found on Garden Walk you can do in your own garden
• Discount coupons and offers from our sponsors
• Up-to-the-minute links to what is being said and written, nationally (and internationally!), about Garden Walk Buffalo
• Garden Walk events - like our booths at Plantasia, Elmwood Festival of the Arts, our Spring Beautification Grants & Speaker event and more.
• Interact with other Garden Walk fans
• Find out more about gardens that you may want to visit for this year's Walk, or see those gardens that you can never quite get to!

GW, being a small non-profit, is always looking to extend its marketing reach into the social media realm because many GW gardeners and attendees are on Facebook and, well, it costs nothing! And Garden Walk is all about free!
Visit Facebook and "Like" our page and you'll get Garden Walk updates coming directly to you.

More Garden Walk gardens in national magazine - including mine!

Backyard Solutions magazine, a nationally distributed landscape & gardening magazine, features two Buffalo gardens with two-page spreads and gardener interviews and another garden (mine, shown at top!) to illustrate ways of making your backyard more private. The two featured gardens include:

February showers bring March flowers...

Like every other northeast garden, I'm about a month ahead. All these spring bloomers I don't worry so much about because they can handle a freeze or few. It's the buds on the trees and on the clematis I worry for. And, for the first time ever, I have blooms on my per tree espalier. I'm afraid I'll lose them to frost before a pollinator can get to them.

Local Garden Guru Sally Cunningham tells me that it may not be a good year for the gardens - the plants didn't get their long winter deep freeze with a nice snow covering - what they're genetically geared for. And I worry too about all the water they DIDN'T get. We had, reportedly, 35" of snow (and in the city here, I can't imagine we got any more than 15" this winter). Our normal amount is closer to 90". That means the plants are starting off the season with around 30% of their normal water!