Hellstrip progress

       

There is progress on the hellstrip! I dug up, added compost, planted divisions, and then added black mulch to a curvy shape within the hell strip. 

The eventual plan is to add some large pavers or bricks along the road side, for people to get in and out of their cars without having to step into the garden. I'd also like to add a "pad" of pavers to the area where I have to put my garbage cans for garbage day. I'd also like to add a row of lavender alongside the sidewalk to match the lavender on the other side that is there already. I planted many grasses of varying heights from divisions. I'd like to plant some other tall, "wispy" plants - salvias, Russian sage, and the like.

Once I find all the tags, I'll be able to list what I bought for here, and do my best of identifying what divisions I planted.

I didn't do everything at once because I didn't want to spend too much money on it right now. The plants are all divisions from other parts of the garden. I did buy a few new plants, and mulch. I'm trying my best to not plant things too close to each other -- one of my many faults.

The hellstrip history, in brief, is that it had a horse chestnut tree that died from within. The city cut it down after it spent my first eight years here dying. Then it took them another 3.5 years to grind out the stump. Once the stump was ground out, and another tree planted, THEN I could start spending time & treasure on the strip.

The "grass" in the strip is the worst mix of weeds and bare spots you can imagine. The soil is extremely compacted. The grass is more a collection of weeds. Some really dense clover offers the most green to one area.

From the office window. You can see the lavender strip on this side of the sidewalk. I'd like to match that with the hellstrip side. I added the course of bricks as a divider between my neighbor's portion of the hellstrip (upper left). Not really liking that. I may take them out and just let the bed end there.

The "before."

Garden tour by GObike Buffalo

Looking for a great way to see gardens? Sign up for the National Garden Festival's City Garden Tour by Bicycle! Coordinated by the people that know bike touring, GObike Buffalo, we'll start off in Delaware park and see many city gardens with a stop for lunch (box lunch included in tour cost) served in a community garden. It's only 3 hours and you'll also get a good view of what Buffalo is doing to make our streets more friendly to bicycles -- new bike paths, bike lanes, "sharrows" (street markings reminding card rivers that they're sharing the road), bike parking and more.

It's also going on at the same weekend the Ride for Roswell is happening. This should have all of Buffalo out riding bikes, with one of local bike enthusiasts' busiest weekends.

Sunday, June 23, 10am-1 pm, $30 includes lunch!

I don't know what gardens we'll be hitting up, but it should be fun. Find out more and register here.

Is it perverse to paint a plant?

 

Who sees a plant and says, "Oooh, I must paint that!"? While out scouring what's in store a the garden stores this early in the season, I came across these poor painted plants. I mean, if someone asked me if I wanted to paint plants, I'd break out some acrylics and stretch a canvas. Some person has the responsibility of hand painting or airbrushing paint onto these succulents. 

I cannot imagine a plant is at its best when it can't do its photosynthesis thing. Isn't this suffocating them?

Didn't nature make them perfectly beautiful and functional to begin with? Didn't it take tens of thousands of years of adapting to get to where they are today? If bright colors were good for them, wouldn't they have evolved that way?

I wanted to buy them all and take them home and give them a good scrubbing and then set them free.

But I held back. I didn't want anyone to see me buying painted plants. I do have a reputation to uphold.

Favorite garden channels

One garden feature I've added is a couple "channels" around a brick paver patio where I've removed a course of bricks and planted stuff in the channel it creates. Above I did last year. I took the bricks out and added a row of violets which were in another part of the garden and getting invasive. That's another benefit of planting in a small confined space like this -- no unmanageable spreading. The blue violets happen to go well with the blue-ish outdoor carpet. The flowers won't last long, but the bushty green leaves soften the patio edges quite nicely.

Another channel I've been watching is the one around my raised-bed vegetable potager. It is planted with strawberries. I think the variety of strawberries I have here are kinda' big for the space. They're sort of hard to see in this photo below, but they're more sparse, than bushy, like the violets and don't "mound" as nicely. They are directly beneath a knee-high dwarf apple tree espalier that I'm training to become a living "fence" around the potager garden - an idea I stole from Monet's garden in Giverny.

What a difference a week makes

The spring garden's been busy!

Buffalo's Japanese Garden cherry trees in bloom

Took a walk with my daughter over to the Delaware Park Japanese Garden here in Buffalo on Tuesday. Caught the evening light on the forest of cherry trees at the height of their bloom. It was stunning. The Japanese Garden sits on Mirror Lake in Delaware Park behind the Buffalo History Museum (the only building built permanent from the 1901 Pan American Exhibition where President McKinley was assassinated). Delaware Park itself was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park in NYC, Boston's Emerald Necklace and Washington DC's U.S. Capitol Grounds, among others.

The Japanese Garden has cherry trees that come from the trees in Washington, DC, which were a gift in 1912 from the people of Japan. The Buffalo trees are still young --  the oldest tree is only about 10 years old. In 2012, 20 more were planted to match the 20 that were already there.

The Garden is a popular spot for wedding pictures. We had our wedding party pictures taken here. The Japanese Garden is also a stop on Garden Walk Buffalo -- complete with docents -- each year.

The Japanese garden itself was a gesture of friendship from Buffalo's sister city, Kanazawa Japan. The garden was modeled on Kenrokuen Garden in Kanazawa, one of the most famous gardens in Japan. The garden was conceived in 1970, construction started in 1971 and it was completed in 1974. the original design contained over 1,000 plantings, nearly 20 globe-type lights, three small islands connected to the mainland by bridges.

Six Buffalo gardens in national magazine (again)

The "Little Red House" on Bryant Street.

Six gardens from Garden Walk Buffalo are featured in the nationally-distributed, June 2013 issue of Backyard Solutions magazine, published byHarris Publications of New York City.

Editor Barbara Ballinger has been a great advocate for Garden Walk Buffalo after having attended the Walk in 2011. She has published dozens of Buffalo's in the magazine in the past. The gardens in this year's issue are:

• The Costa Schroeder garden at 322 Bryant Street
• The Jungels garden at 745 West Delavan Avenue
• 125 Windsor Street
• The Gamin James Garden at 42 Orton Place
• The Fink Garden at 24 Park Street
• The Halloran Garden at 279 Richmond

All the photos were graciously provided by Don Zinteck, of Photographics 2.
The magazine can be purchased wherever garden magazines can be found this time of year. I bought mine at Walgreens on Delaware Avenue. Generally they can be found in bookstores, Home Depot and Lowes.

Spring's a buddin'!

Spring's a buddin'! Finally. I did a walk about with the camera in hand yesterday throughout my entire spread (about 30x120 feet).

Garden Walk Buffalo in New York Times

The New York Times publishes a list of great home & garden tours that will take place over the summer each spring. Last year, as good as the list was -- they hadn't listed Garden Walk Buffalo.

That's not the end of the world, we still get 60,000+ visitors and get plenty of publicity. But I found it hard to believe that a garden writer would sit down to list garden tours throughout the country and miss the largest one in the U.S., covered in national gardening magazines -- and in their own state!

This year Garden Walk Buffalo is on the list - in the "North of New York City" portion of the list. We'll take what we can get.

You can visit the New York Times list here. It's a good list. Make sure you visit the slide show. The above Buffalo garden is on the list of great homes and gardens. Photo is by Don Zinteck, of Photographics 2. This is one of the more popular gardens on our tour. It's a tour de force!

Buffalo area garden in Garden Gate magazine

This great Buffalo area garden takes up a double page spread in this month's Garden Gate magazine. Of course, this is Garden Gate, so they don't identify where the house is, or who the gardeners are -- or even the zone the garden is in! Rest assured it's a beautiful garden. It is the Coyne DiNezza garden.

It has been featured in the pages of Garden Gate before, with comments from the garden owners -- and even made the cover! Here it is chosen to illustrate the article about choosing shrubs for front yard gardens. The symmetry of the garden above is amazing! It's a great home and I love the unique "rolled-edged" roof.

Huffington Post has a garden section

Has anyone seen this yet? It's pretty hidden within Huffington Post. you really have to go looking for it to find it. It seems as though Huffington post is in the process of merging their content with the content of AOL owned "magazine-style" websites.

If you go to Huffington Post's Home Page, click on "All Sections" in the menu bar, then click on "Home." Then, under the menu bar, there will be a list of feature sections - "Gardening" is about halfway down the list. Or, just visit here.

Grab a shovel and plant some shit

I'm not a big vegetable garden guy. I have one, but it's not designed for real production -- mostly to supply early-season lettuce end-of-season tomatoes for BLTs, but THIS guy, Ron Finley, speaks my language. Where he produces food, we in Buffalo produce tourists.

A garden, whether vegetable or flower, can transform a property through beautification and owner pride. It does the same to a street, block, a neighborhood, and a city. Ron just happens to be helping humanity as he does it. And he gets strawberries.

Grab a shovel and plant some shit.

The Dole Plantation, Wahiawa, Hawaii

On our recent trip to Hawaii, we took time out to visit the Dole Plantation. It's a Dole-centric manufactured tourist destination like you would expect -- shops, restaurants, gardens, a maze, and a small train ride (The Pineapple Express!) through the pineapple fields. The plantation is the actual site of Mr. Dole's first roadside fruit stand.

The gardens were nice - with areas featuring bromeliads, hibiscus, ti leaf plants, leis, natives and more. The gardens were not extensive, but a nice walk through. Took about a half hour. There are audio wands for those who want more in-depth on the history and traditions of the locals.

The miniature train ride was nice in that we actually got out into the fields (while being in the shade) and a prerecorded track explained the beginnings of Dole, a bit about the agriculture and history of the area and a fair amount about pineapples themselves. Did you know that pineapples are not native to Hawaii? The two-mile tour is slow paced and if you have young ones, they might enjoy it. I think they could use a Pineapple Express Rock n' Roll Roller Coaster/Splash Ride-- a little bit tour and a few upside down loop-di-loops for fun. But I assume they know their demographic better than I do.

The lush doorways of Sayulita Mexico

 

Spent last week in Sayulita, Mexico, about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico's Pacific coast. This was our third trip there to visit friends that have built a home on the step hills just blocks from the town's center (last few photos).

Didn't get garden tours this year -- the start of the dry season. But what they think of as dry, we still think of as lush, being April in Buffalo where we're excited just to see a little green poking up from the ground.

The doorways of some of the homes are more lushly planted than some of our gardens. These show how welcoming Mexican homes can be.

The first award of the week

 

It's been so hectic the last few weeks I've had little time to reflect on an award I won last Friday night–the Ad Club of Buffalo's David I. Levy Award to recognize outstanding achievement and service in the communications industry. It goes to an individual that has amassed a distinguished record of achievement over an extended period of time, which includes contributions to his/her company, the industry and the community.

Back when I was president of this organization's previous incarnation, and helping to run the award show, I used to think this was the award for the establishment suits–the old folks that were influencers and stalwarts in the advertising and publishing industries -- ad agency founders, publishers, media executives. Either I've become one of those, or broke the mold, not sure which.

National Garden Festival wins International Garden Tourism Award

The National Garden Festival, an organization I helped to co-found, has won the International Garden Tourism Promotion of the Year at the Garden Tourism Conference, held in Toronto, Canada on March 19, 2013.

Sally Cunningham, director of the National Garden Festival (beautiful in blue); Ed Healy, VP of Marketing for Visit Buffalo Niagara (in the nice tie, above); and myself (with all the gray, above) accepted the award on behalf of the Festival's organizers and volunteers.

Cited as the reason the National Garden Festival was singled out for this award, Michel Gauthier, chair of the Garden Tourism Conference, declared, "The six-week long garden promotion is an outstanding demonstration of what can happen when you bring together all the garden energy of a community with the tourism energy of the same community. This unique promotion has put Buffalo on the map like no other promotion. The National Garden Festival intends to build upon the very real excitement, publicity, and visibility created by Garden Walk Buffalo, "America's best event of its kind." This multi week festival expands the opportunities for garden tourists to visit Buffalo beyond Garden Walk weekend and builds on America's growing obsession with all things green. Congratulations!"

The most beautiful tree on earth

You can argue that fact of course. What's beautiful to me may not be to you, but these Rainbow Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus deglupta) have bark that is stunningly beautiful. Enough to stop you in your tracks and take a closer look. You know, like Charlize Theron.

The Byodo-In Temple, Oahu, HI

The Byodo-In Temple is a non-practicing Buddhist temple in a Hawaiian cemetery, built in 1968, and commemorates the 100th anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. It's a smaller-scale replica of a 950-year-old temple in Uji, Japan. And, like the original temple, it is built without a single nail.

The TV series Hawaii Five-O and Magnum, P.I. featured episodes where the temple is incorporated into the plot. The temple and its gardens also appeared in an episode of the ABC series Lost, "House of the Rising Sun" in season one as the home of Sun's father. You can even have your wedding here if you wish.

Waimea Valley, Oahu, HI

Waimea Valley is an historic botanical park with hiking trails, a waterfall swim area, Polynesian historical cultural center, arboretum, botanical garden, nature preserve, and bird sanctuary that also has the requisite restaurant and gift shop. It's on the North Shore of Oahu, right across from the beautiful beach on Wiamea Bay.

Waimea is Hawaiian for
"reddish brown water," which you have
in spades if your island is formed from
volcanoes that leave behind soil rich in iron.

We weren't sure what to expect, we visited because we were headed to the North Shore in Search of beaches and saw hat there was a hike in a nature center nearby and decided to go. It really wasn't a "hike." It was more of a walk through a park - paved main roads, groomed paths, stone stairs and bridges large and small.

It's a pretty park with areas divided into plant types (bromiliads, hibiscus, begonia, ginger and helicona and more) but also had areas by Pacific region (Hawaii, Guam, Sri Lanka, Central and South American, Madagascar, Galapagos Islands and more), as well as areas defined by plant use (medicinal, food, fruit/nut/spice gardens). Plants and areas are well-marked. One point made well is that the Hawaiian Islands are home to more than its native plants -- plants come from those other areas of Guam, Central and South America, Madagascar and more. Did you know that not even the pineapple is native to Hawaii?

It was a good week.

It started off in Hawaii -- always the start to a good week.

Next I was informed that the National Garden Festival, of which I co-founded, and help to organize, is to receive a tourism award.

I was asked to write a blurb for the back cover of a book on garden tourism.

Three "Hearts in the Gardens" posters were purchased online and mailed out to Sacramento,  Montana and another locally.

Next week I'm going to NYC for a garden tourism "press junket" with Sally Cunningham, we have appointments, so far, with Traditional Home and This Old House magazines.

I was notified I am to receive an advertising industry award, a major award akin to a lifetime achievement award "...to recognize outstanding achievement and service in the communications industry with a record of achievement over an extended period of time, which includes contributions to the industry and the community."

I'm busier work-wise than I've ever been, working on an annual report, a university viewbook, corporate standards manuals, ad campaigns for home developers, corporate branding project for a CPA firm, multiple museum exhibition programs, newsletters, invitations, direct marketing postcards, two logos and more. This first quarter of 2013 I may invoice more than my first year of employment.

And then last night I went to see the stage musical of Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

It was a very good week.