ArtofGardening.org

The greeks like their oranges

2012-01-27T06:02:00.004-05:00

On our trip to Athens last year I took notice of the orange trees planted along public roadways. Not just in a few spots, but all over the city. Oranges were ripe and some were already on the ground. Oftentimes the orange trees were between sidewalk and building front or even sidewalk and road. Kinda cool to have an available snack at the ready any time they're ripe. Though with the minimal exhaust standards, not sure I'd find the oranges as tasty as rural, tropically-grown oranges.

The last photo below was taken over the fence at the new Acropolis Museum, just down the hill from the Parthenon. Inside the wall they were growing -- you guessed it -- orange trees. What museum grows and orchard?

Blyth's Song & Bird Gardens

2012-01-24T08:25:00.001-05:00

I've been on a lot of garden tours. More than the average Joe for sure. One of he most comprehensive and subtly fantastic residential gardens I've ever seen is on the KenTon Tour of gardens -- Blyth's Song 'N Bird Gardens in Tonawanda. Yes, it has an official name.

Located in a first-ring suburb, it's more city than suburb, but it's probably one of the larger lots - one half acre, all planted with meandering paths in a cottage garden style.

Vegetable gardens? Check. Cornfield? Check. Outbuildings & sheds? Check. Flower gardens? Check. Ponds? Check. Over-sized model trains? Check. Antique car? Check and mate!

It was a great garden to take in slowly just because there was so much to it. There are shade gardens, sun gardens, an orange and yellow garden, a huchera garden, grass paths, stone paths, gravel paths, and plank paths.

They participate in the KentTon garden tour, the National Garden Festival's Open Gardens, and have been generous enough to open their garden to bus tours. It just proves that graciousness and gardening go together like the three sisters -- corn, beans & squash.

If you get a chance to see this garden this coming year, it is worth the effort. It's located right on Delaware Road, it could not be easier to find.

A very full, but unassuming font yard. It's a narrow lot but VERY deep.

The urban cornfield.

Have you ever considered an antique car as garden ornament?

Just asking for some artist to paint it.

Meandering paths seem to go on forever.

My favorite garden feature -- a place for a nap.

Grass path and plank path intersection.

There are two trains this size. They don't run, they're just props.

In the back of the property, this pond sits in front of an old horse cart
and what looks like a blacksmith's shop.

A True Peace Garden

2012-01-22T09:39:00.000-05:00

Back in August we visited Cecilienhof Palace, an English Tudor-style palace in Potsdam, Germany, not far from Berlin. This is where the Potsdam Agreement was negotiated, in July of 1945, and signed by Stalin, Truman & Churchill to end WWII. The Potsdam agreement settled the reconstruction of Germany, defined the borders of the entire Theater of WWII, included Germany's demilitarization, reparations and persecution of war crimes. Had to look some of this this up -- high school world history is so far back in my history at this point.

The conference was held here because Berlin was a shambles. This Palace, as with most palaces and large homes in Potsdam, were not damaged in the war. This palace in particular was sort of abandoned because, when it was built in 1917, the English Tudor style, inspired by English manor homes, was all the rage. You can imagine that, as WWII ramped up, all things English were on the outs and all things Germanic ruled.

It was built by Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany for his son, Crown prince Wilhelm. Compared to other palaces in the area, it's sort of understated.

Today it's a hotel, as well as a museum, with a couple tidy gardens surrounding it. In July of 2007, it hosted the G8 Summit, adding to it's pedigree as a meeting place for world leaders. It sits along beautiful Jungferesee Lake. Photo at top show he garden outside the hotel wing of the building.

Th entrance to the Museum portion of
the building.

We'd not planned a trip here specifically, but it was part of a bike tour we took through Potsdam which had us visiting many palaces, parks and gardens. Glad we did though. Hoe often do you get to stand in the same rooms and walk the same gardens as Stalin, Truman and Churchill?

Looking more at home in an English country-side setting, the massive house, with it's mass broken up with outcroppings, a courtyard, rooflines and sections, looked more like an English village.

The garden outside the restaurant.

Umm... anyone seen the hostas?

2012-01-16T06:06:00.000-05:00

Seen at the Chelsea flower show. Can't quite imagine having this in my garden. To each his or her own.

Could Buffalo's biggest garden event happen in February?

2012-01-09T06:07:00.002-05:00

The National Garden Festival could really use your support this year to help promote all the garden tours in the area, Open Gardens on Thursdays and Fridays, garden themed bus tours, talks & seminars and the Front Yard Contest between landscapers -- a complete makeover of an city block. And we'll be announcing a new kickoff event this year that you will NOT want to miss.

Heart in the Gardens is in recognition of all the gardeners that open up their gardens, yards and homes in the 14 different garden tours that take place between June and August. Nearly 900 gracious, big-hearted gardeners toil endlessly in their gardens almost year round, spending hundreds of dollars (and more) to be part of a garden tour. Generous members of the Western New York State Landscape & Nurseryman's Association make over an entire neighborhood -- (33 homes so far) for FREE! These are the real hearts in gardens.

Buffalo's known nationwide among gardeners for Garden Walk Buffalo. The National Garden Festival brings attention to ALL Buffalo Niagara's gardening assets and brings in more tourists and national media to benefit Buffalo and shed that rustbelt/snowbelt image. Attending the Valentines Day Hearts in the Gardens Fundraiser is one way YOU can help that effort.

The National Garden Festival does all this at no, or low, costs, with volunteers -- your financial support is always appreciated. Come to our Valentine's Day Fundraiser for great food, wine, beer and a silent auction of garden-based gifts and more.

It'll be the hottest place in Buffalo in February!

A formal garden in an informal world

2012-01-07T05:54:00.001-05:00

Next year, if you have the chance, you've gotta' check out the KenTon Garden Tour (a first ring suburb of Buffalo). There are many great gardens on the tour -- including this formally laid out relatively new garden. It's hard to believe they fit this much structure, plant material and charm all in one small urban garden. The young couple living here were very proud of the garden AND the thought they put into it. I was very impressed.

The fairly unassuming driveway leads to to the hidden back yard garden.
The lattice fence dividers force and purposely placed pots force you to weave through to the back.

Looking back down the driveway to the road.

At the end of the driveway, this lattice "wall" stops you, forcing you to go to the right.
You can see the white garden shed beyond. More on that in a second...

And this is what you see to the right. Nice, huh? From this angle, it doesn't look too formal a layout.

As you stand directly behind the house, this is the view. Garden areas or
"rooms" are off to the left and right of this central path.

This shows the area behind the fence that was at the end of the driveway.

Looking back toward the driveway. Cripes. I need a backyard schematic for this garden!

The garden shed is a room with desk and daybed and french doors!

Behind the shed is this grilling/dining area.

And off the dining/grilling area, behind the garden shed is this compact potting area. Genius.

The dining area by the grill -- complete with topiary mural paintings.

Opposite the central path from the grill/dining area is a small sitting area with bench.

From any angle the garden looks lush and full and NOT formal.

Next year, I have to visit again to get more pictures looking back toward the house.

With anemones like these, who needs friends?

2012-01-05T06:28:00.002-05:00

Mid-November these anemone were still going strong. It took them a few years to establish themselves enough to get to this point. Now I have to move them. This is smack-dab exactly where I want to put my new water fountain (details here). Now I not only have to find a new spot, but may have to wait for them to re-establish themselves to get back to this size & loveliness. We're not spending time in the backyard in November, maybe I'll replant them in the front yard so they can be admired appropriately by the public.

Barking up the right River Birch tree

2012-01-03T06:21:00.002-05:00

I love my river birch tree. It's planted too close to the house (requiring diligent pruning), it's grown to almost completely shade my vegetable garden (requiring rethinking what vegetables get grown), it is in the way of the hot tub "mechanicals" (requiring contortionist-like skills for any hot tub repairs) and it drops friggin' leaves like it was made from them.

But how can you not like this bark?

A tropical garden in Zone 5

2011-12-31T06:03:00.002-05:00

This is another garden of which I can't get enough. Gardeners Brian & Gordon work tirelessly to keep this phenomenal garden going each year. More than 17 years after moving in, the small lawn of all grass can hardly be imagined in this urban garden with two ponds, meandering paths, sitting areas, arbors, hundreds of perennials, colorful annuals and tropicals -- capped off with a tiki bar.

Tall green hedges surround the Bird Avenue garden, steps from busy Elmwood Avenue, so from the street there's no telling what's behind "the green wall." The meandering paths don't give up much of the garden at all, which is divided into garden "rooms" -- each worth exploring on their own.

The combination of tropical plants, typical annuals and expected Zone 5 perennials makes for great color and texture combinations, not often seen in gardens this far north. Add to that the terracotta color of the house, the teal house trim, brick garage, green tiki bar and arbors, and creative and unusual planters and you get a colorful garden worthy of a painting (of which artists have painted). And there's not a single bad camera angle in the whole space.

There is no vantage point to see the garden in whole -- unless it's from their second-floor apartment. The bottom floor they rent out -- can you imagine having this garden out your front door as a renter?

This is probably the hardest partying garden in all of Buffalo. And that's saying a lot. Garden parties are frequent and intense from May through September in Buffalo. They've also had fundraising parties in their garden for an art museum and the National Garden Festival, on top of their seemingly weekly private parties.

They were also kind enough to host a happy hour (or so) for the 72 garden bloggers that came to Buffalo for the Garden Bloggers Meet-up in 2010. They weren't the least bit phased with having two buses of garden bloggers visiting. It was a "soft rain" that day, so not sure everyone got an ideal view of the garden, or the best photos. Drinks were good anyway.

This garden's also been on TV often, on Channel 7's AM Buffalo, as well as featured on Sally Cunningham's Sunday morning Channel 4 gardening segments. It can also be seen in Garden Walk Buffalo, the book and DVD, as well as many regional & national magazine articles over the years.

Brian is a collector of dahlias -- a collection worth bragging about. Gordon? He collects art, friends, and large tropical plants. So large in fact, he has some stored by the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens over winter. Their vegetable gardens are all grown in homemade container contraptions on the driveway, out of sight of the main garden.

Gordon's also on the Botanical Gardens Board and is a past Garden Walk Buffalo committee member, helping the group grow during its formative years.

I've told Gordon often that he should have a garden blog. There's a lot to share in their garden, let alone the tips, tricks and techniques they've both picked up over the years. Eventually.

They have so much plant material, they often sell cuttings, divisions and extras throughout the season. You won't find the garden on Garden Walk Buffalo (we have a strict policy of not selling items of any kind), but their garden still gets lots of visitors that weekend, just 'cause people are used to going there. And they generally have plants for sale.

Being the Garden Walk Buffalo president, I would only encourage folks to visit gardens actually on the Garden Walk map that last full weekend of July, but if you do stop by their garden, tell 'em I said hey.

A nicely tailored garden

2011-12-28T06:00:00.001-05:00

This was one of those gardens where I didn't know where to look first. It was filled with so many great ideas. It was on the KenTon garden tour here in Buffalo, sort of an older first-ring "suburb" of the city. It was one of the first gardens on the tour I visited. It was edited, manicured and tailor-made to how the owners use the yard. Not a lot of space, but a lot going on in it.

Like the sconces on the fence, with coordinated lights in the flower beds. This garden was part
of the nighttime KenTon Garden Tour, which, I'm told, devolved into a traveling party, as they are wont to do.

Great plant selection. Why, oh why, does my garden not look like this? It does in my head!
Not only is this the party patio, it's also the driveway.

Who says artwork has to hang indoors?

Some pot-on-pot action going on here. Nice idea.

Plants in pots big and small, artwork, pretty stained fence, hanging baskets. Doesn't make you miss a yard.

This is a family that REALLY uses their backyard.
To the right of this great pink display is a full bar/lounge area.

Great dining room buffet.

Outdoor dining room -- the white tubing across the front at the top
of the photo is a misting system. Yes, it gets hot in Buffalo.

The little red barn garden

2011-12-22T06:43:00.001-05:00

Another gem on the KenTon Garden Tour was this small lot dominated by this red barn shed. I especially like the cupola and weather vane on top. Nice touch.

The welcoming front garden was impressive on its own. It drew you in with the great plantings
but the narrow gateway and long path definitely let you know that you were entering a private space.

The border gardens were nicely laid out and punctuated with garden art.

Nice, right? Here the borders are river rock. Other spots in the garden had stacked stone,
still others had bricks. The patio was stamped concrete. They would seem like a mishmash
but seemed deliberate to define different themes or areas of the garden.

Nice place to sit and watch the cows come home to the barn each night.
Didn't see any cows, but still, a gin & tonic here would be nice.

Great plant selections height-wise.

This gardener knows how to place a plant. great plant-to-lawn ratio here.

Well done. I could take a lesson in garden editing form this gardener. Liking the domino effect of the brick border.

A painter's Garden

2011-12-20T06:31:00.001-05:00

On the KenTon Garden Tour this summer, I came across this unpretentious garden along the backside of a corner-lot house. It was an odd spot for a garden, sort of tucked between the neighbor's house and not really visible from the street well, or even the owner's windows. At first I thought it was a less-well-organized cutting garden. After talking to the owner, an artist, it is a garden grown specifically to paint. It had the same purpose as Monet's Garden in Giverny. Except without the acreage, budget and gardening staff.

My garden Christmas gift wish list

2011-12-17T06:23:00.007-05:00

A greenhouse made from Legos.

Okay, I've posted what cool, fun & funky garden items I've wanted for the past two years, 2010 (the year of the Venus Flytrap Chair) and 2009 (top of list, a gingko mobile). I haven't gotten a single item. I realize that I make the list too close to Christmas, usually the week before Christmas. This year, as a favor to you, I will be accepting Christmas gifts way in to March. I'm a realist, I know Lego greenhouses probably take some time to assemble.

Shovel birdhouses. Kills two birds with one... oh well, never mind.

A Woody Rug.

A trellis chair.

A hose cactus.

The perfect outdoor sink.

Land shark

A wearable Hummingbird feeder. This is totally awesome.

Spade stool

Artificial turf, no-mow pillows. No pitchfork bench with ax handles would be complete without them.

A lawn chair. Whoever thought this up is a genius.

Custom photo pots. It comes with your own photos on them. For me, I'd have to find a curly gray plant to be accurate.

Margaux at WNYBAC Last-Minute Panic Sale

2011-12-15T06:22:00.006-05:00

My daughter will be participating in the Western New York Book Arts Collaborative's (WNYBAC's) Last-Minute Holiday Marketplace this Friday (4-8pm) and Saturday (12-6pm) at WNYBAC (468 Washington Street at East Mohawk, Buffalo).

It's her first "professional" gig selling handmade glass bead jewelry, of her own design, as well as these nifty candle holders made from the tops of wine & liquor bottles.

Daddy bought a bottle cutter -- we had to do something with all Mommy's empties. Actually it was a family crafting project that took up the better part of a weekend.

(Christmas gift spoiler alert coming - stop reading here if you're normally on our gift list) These were the left over parts of making candles from the bases of the wine & liquor bottles. With all the bottle cutting, sanding, melting wax, and hot-glue-gunning decorations to the bottles, we ended up with 17, basically free, gifts that turned out rather well, if you ask us.

My daughter has sold her glass bead necklaces, bracelets and earrings at "KidBiz" in our local Elmwood-Bidwell Farmers' Market the past few years. KidBiz is a program of Buffalo State College's Small Business Development Center.

On Friday, they'll be displayed a bit better than this.

Her business name is The Wright Accessories. Her angle? Partial proceeds go to benefit Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Complex. So if you buy something from her, some of the cost will be donated. Her necklaces start at only $6. For this show, she'll have some garden/botanically-themed pieces for the first time.

Our friend Roxanne (Tuckamore Design) will be there selling her handcrafted fine art cards and original prints. Roxanne got a shout out on Garden Rant last week. Another friend, Carol (Crowbiz) will be there with her unique vintage book page & map prints and home decor.

The Last Minute Panic Holiday Sale is free and open to the public. Stop by after work on Friday, or Saturday afternoon to purchase handmade/self published/locally produced items. Perfect gifts for giving. Or keeping.

This Years Vendors:

Lily Pickford, Jewelry by Jan Nagle
Studio Hart - Jewelry & Dolls
Super Giant
Flomade Curiosities
Buffalo Heritage Unlimited
Tuckamore Design
Ani Hoover
Suzie Hoisington
Louder Space
Lisa Barker Photography
heARTS Students
Robot Kitten Designs
Amanda Maciuba
Give & Take Knits
Amy Greenan - Art & Handmade Books
Craftocalypse
Revelation Studios
Crude Crafts by Elizabeth Switzer
Donna Sturges Enamel Jewelry
Three Sisters Photography
Fly Rabbit Press
The Wright Accessories
Thea Kegler - DogWood & Tack
Hero Design Studio
Buffalo Media Works
Crowbiz - Vintage Style Prints & Décor
Devil Chicken Design
Tony Zanni - Type High

Urban Roots Garden Center Holiday Sale

2011-12-13T13:46:00.001-05:00

I'm on the marketing committee for the Urban Roots Community Garden Center. Urban Roots is the only cooperative garden center in the country (at least it was when they started a few years ago). There are 780+ members (I'm member 16).

The Marketing Committee meets just about once every two months and the half dozen or so of us try to find creative and thrifty ways to spend the small marketing budget we're given to work with each year. I won't tell you how small the marketing budget is, but it's safe to assume it is less than some of you spend in a garden center in a year. I'm used to marketing budgets in the tens of thousands and have worked on projects in the millions of dollars. Urban Roots is a unique challenge for me. I get to stretch some creative marketing muscles.

We're usually weighing the costs, the planning, and the timing of, mailed postcards, member appreciation days, couponing, and our largest expenditure, underwriting sponsorship of WBFO (our public radio station).

One committee member suggested we send out a newsletter -- as opposed to the expected postcard -- to the coop's members. We found a printer that could do newsletters, in just one color, for less than the cost of postcards (great find Laura!). The first newsletter was very well received. Many of the postcards sent in the past featured workshops, percentage discounts on single sales, encouraged new members, had coupons for $10 when you spend more than $75 or the like. Members liked that we were sharing information and news about the store, and getting a "personal" message from the best cooperative garden center manager of all time, Patti.

We also had always used mostly words to tell people to come into the store in winter for holiday and hostess gifts -- there's a wide selection of garden-themed gift items, houseplants & supplies, bird houses, garden art, books and tools. Being such a seasonal business, many don't consider shopping there when there's no plants in the yard.

This year, I suggested making the new newsletter a Gift Guide "catalog" of items with price points both high and low. The marketer in me wanted to throw visuals at the members that would not necessarily consider stopping in through the winter, show the range of items available year round, give gift suggestions, and let them know what they're in for price-wise. And it's a retail operation -- I wanted it to look retail -- like the big boys!

And because garden education is always important, there are educational, facts around the border of the pages. There's seasonal quick facts on Christmas trees, Poinsettias, houseplants, forced bulbs, Christmas cactus, and more.

Not only do they have some pretty cool gifts, but they also are offereing a "Living Tree Donation Program" - you purchase a locally-grown living tree -- keep it, or take it back to Urban Roots to care for and they'll donate it back to a local organization to be planted next spring. A deductible Christmas tree! There was also (already happened) a Miniature Boxwood Tree Workshop where you make & take a decorated tabletop Christmas decoration. And of course, we're still offering $10 gift certificates when you spend over $75 before Christmas -- and always pushing gift memberships.

I like helping Urban Roots because

it is a cooperative
it has a strong community surrounding and supporting it
it open up shop in an underserved and disadvantaged neighborhood and provided some needed stability and investment
it sells many locally-made products (as opposed to Home Depot down the street)
it has knowledgeable sales people
it has lots of locally made garden art
it encourages Buffalo's great gardening culture
it's board, volunteers and employees are all genuinely nice people
it throws good member appreciation parties.

So far results from the "Holiday Gift Guide" has been great, surpassing monthly goals for December. Next year? Color and more pages!

If you'd like, you can download a .pdf of the newsletter here: 2011 Holiday Gift Guide. You don't have to be a member to shop there, and you're eligible for the store $10 Gift Card offer and sale prices. If you live in the Buffalo area -- stop by! Happy shopping!

My Homemade Copper Coral Bell Fountain

2011-12-10T10:13:00.001-05:00

I've wanted to make this fountain for a while. It's been one of those projects I think about while I lay awake at night. Finally got up the nerve (and budget) to make it happen.

It started with seeing
copper water fountains
at the Chelsea Flower
Show last spring.

At the Chelsea Flower Show last spring, I walked straight from the display of copper fountains that looked like trees into a display of Coral Bells (heuchera) (below right) and I decided I wanted a bed of just heuchera. With a fountain. Heuchera come in such great colors now - I've been telling anyone that'll listen that heuchea are the new coleus. They have the added benefit of being a perennial - and last WAY into the fall, and seem to be already there once snow melts in the spring.

Heuchera come in such
great colors - including copper!

And, sadly, my Royal Purple Smoke tree died last year. The raised bed it was in is filled with a mish-mash of plants -- iris, tulips, violets, anemone, grasses, hosta and invasive mint. This spring I intend to take everything out, replant what's worth saving into other areas, plant all heucheras and curse myself for ever having considered mint.

I already went out, a few weeks back, to all my usual nurseries and bought as many heuchera as I could find -- on late season sale and slapped them in the ground. I now have two each of "Green Spice," "Key Lime Pie, "Mocha," and another couple with no name. Add those to the few heuchera out there already and I've got a start on a collection. This spring, buying excursions will now be a heuchera hunt.

So the space is ripe for a fountain, so why not one based on a heuchera? A few weekends in the basement and you can see what I've done here. Most heuchera have a more mounding nature, but the huechera I've had in the garden for years IS tall and gangly, with pointed leaves. The only thing left to do on the fountain is to add flowers & their perky stems. I already have the copper wire I'll use, and the "flowers" may end up being just loops in the wire. I probably won't get to that until after the holidays at this point. It'll be ready for a spring debut. If I can then figure out how to get it carefully out of the basement.

Started with photographing a heuchera leaf. I tried to pay attention to the veining.

Scanned it in and made a template in three sizes.

Bought a roll of copper flashing.
About $125 got me a roll 10' long and 14" tall.

I then cut out a leaf shape and experimented
with folds, texture and such.

I determined they looked best if I hammered the hell out of them
for a rough texture, then folded them over the edge of the workbench to get veins.

I did three different sizes. There are a total of 26 leaves.
Cripes did my hands hurt from using the tin snips.
I went through just about all the roll of copper flashing.

I experimented with heating them with a flame to get some colors going.
I couldn't do it to look consistent, so I gave up. They'll weather and age to a nice coppery,
green-y patina as long as they're not coated with a sealant.

Started with the "stand."

The three top leaves all have their own water source, thin copper
tubing emanating from the main copper pipe.
My high school soldering lessons really came in handy.

Then added the largest leaves to the bottom. Soldering all the way.
The bottom leaves are kinda' heavy, the small copper tube "stems" attaching them to
the copper pipe may not hold up. I may have to reattach these with a wider diameter copper tube.
The bottom leaves can have a spread no wider than 2' because that's the width of the tub it'll sit in.

Bought the smallest pump I could buy.
The tub is 2' wide.

First time through and it worked! No leaks! The tub will be sunk into the garden,
a heavy screen will be added at ground level and I'll buy some river
rocks to put on top of the screen so the tub can't be seen. It does take almost endless adjusting
to make sure the water falls and hits as many leaves as possible on the way down.
I'll plant more heuchera around it and I'll be done - heuchera heaven!

It all began in a garden...

2011-11-20T06:42:00.001-05:00

The Ken-Ton Garden Tour is a nice garden tour filled with many garden gems. Much like any garden tour, not all gardens are stunners, but many gardens have bits and pieces of great creativity. It's hard to compare gardens on tours because they're all so uniquely designed. This funky garden had many great ideas hidden throughout, including a giraffe in a hat.

Fourth year blogiversary

2011-11-18T06:39:00.003-05:00

My first ever blog post was on Sunday, November 18, 2007. It was on a Better Homes & Gardens photo shoot here in Buffalo, actually on my street. Since then, story producer Donna Talley and photographer Andreas Trauttsmansdorff have been back two more times. Andreas even came back to photograph Buffalo gardens for Martha Stewart Living magazine (those photos were never published. Long story, buy me a drink and I'll share it with you).

In the meantime, I've gotten rid of ALL my grass.

I started the blog really so I could promote Garden Walk Buffalo, the largest garden tour in the U.S. It's also been an outlet for sharing garden photos taken on vacations, my own garden projects as well as the National Garden Festival, an annual five-week long series of garden events that culminates with Garden Walk Buffalo.

I've also attended two garden blogger meet-ups, one in Chicago in 2009, and hosted a meet-up here in Buffalo (with Elizabeth Licata of Garden Rant/Gardening While Intoxicated) with 72 garden bloggers and met some really great people that like to share garden information from 23 different states and Canada. I am anticipating going to this year's garden blogger's meet-up in Asheville, NC.

Some blog stats from four years:

Number of posts: 530 (including this one)
Top five posts of all time:
Magic or deception. And what’s the difference?
Tulip bed time story
Snowflake Field Guide Part 6 - The Blizzard of '77...
Have I introduced you to my Garden Fairy friend?
National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden
For the most popular posts this week, see the sidebar under "Popular Posts"
Most commented on post: 24 - Villandry Garden of Love (but to be fair, I publish this post every Valentines Day)
Average visitors per day: 93
Average number of pages viewed each day: 147
Top three other websites I consistently get traffic from: Paradise Express, Living without Money, Garden Walk Buffalo. But the vast majority of new visitors arrive through Google.
Top five keywords used to lead people to my blog: Tomato tree, Art of Gardening, Blizzard of 77, Backyard Solutions magazine, and Great Backyards
Top five countries with visitors, in order: United States, Romania, Canada, United Kingdom and France.
Browsers used: 46% Explorer, 29% Firefox, 12% Safari, 8% Chrome, others are 1% or less.
Computers used by visitors: 79% Window PCs, 15% Macintosh, 1% iPad, 1% iPhone.
Travel in the last four years included: Long Island; Cape Cod; Boston; Washington; New York City, Pittsburgh; Philadelphia; Chicago; Orlando/Disney; the Caribbean, Paris, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Loire Valley of France; Brussels, Antwerp, and Bruges, Belgium; Rome, Italy; London, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; Amsterdam, Holland; Munich, Frankfort, Berlin and Potsdam in Germany; Salzburg, Austria; Sayulita, Mexico; Athens, Greece; Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and the Dead Sea in Israel. And Canada (if a couple trips to Ikea counts). Travel posts are listed by country in the sidebar to the right in the "Labels" column.

That last bullet makes me look forward to the next four years!

Cemetery tour with Speedy the deer

2011-11-15T06:05:00.036-05:00

This past Saturday I took a Forest Lawn Cemetery tour along with 17 other friends, and Speedy the deer. He hung with us for about a half hour or more, just walking along following us. It was a spectacular fall day here in Buffalo, sunny, blue skies and in the 50s.

Forest Lawn, when it was established the countryside in 1849, was about 2.5 miles from downtown Buffalo, and modeled on Paris' Père-Lachais, the world's most famous cemetery. Now? It's 269 acres in the land-locked heart of Buffalo and can still rival any cemetery in the world for beauty and significance.

It's the largest arboretum in the area, as well as a natural habitat for any type of bird (from Canada geese to turkeys) that can be found in Western New York, as well as raccoons, fox, and Speedy the deer. Speedy's been there for at least three years. No telling how he got in. It's a natural habitat, so everything he needs to live well is in there. Except, obviously companionship. That may be why he hangs with the tour groups, walkers and joggers. He famously took on the role of protector for a egg-sitting Canada goose without a partner. That got coverage around the world.

Of course, I'm assuming S-p-e-e-d-y is the correct spelling. If it's S-p-i-e-d-i-e, that's a whole 'nother thing. I'm from Binghamton, NY where a spiedie is a local food (much like Buffalo has the Chicken Wing ). A spiedie is marinated, grilled, skewered meat chunks of lamb, pork, beef, chicken, or -- not unheard of -- venison, served on buttered Italian bread. In Binghamton, there are Spiedie restaurants, competitions, jarred sauces sold in grocery stores, and an annual three-day Spiedie Festival. I hope Speedy isn't destined to become a spiedie.

To the best of the Cemetery's knowledge, there is only one deer. Some report having seen another, but Speedy here will loose his rack shortly, which may lead to the confusion of some having seeing a doe without a rack. Two deer have never been spotted together.

There are monuments and mausoleums created by some of the world's most famous architects and artists, including Stanford White, Frank Lloyd Wright, Tiffany, Charles Cary Rumsey, Nicola Cantalamessa-Papotti, and Augustus Saint Gaudens. As a matter of fact, it's the only place in the world where you can be buried in a Frank Lloyd Wright designed mausoleum.

Among the more than 160,000 residents are some you may have heard of -- President Millard Filmore, superfreak Rick James, Aretha Franklin's mom, Irving Berlin's first wife, inventor of the air conditioner Willis Carrier, the first female architect (maybe in all of history) Louise Bethune and hundreds of other families and names anyone in Western New York would know - Knox, Depew, Waldon, Letchworth, Birge, Hengerer and more.

It also has veterans - from every U.S. conflict since, and including, the Revolutionary War. Many markers pre-date the opening of the cemetery because, as Buffalo grew, church-side grave yards were dug up and inhabitants were moved to Forest Lawn.

Too many of these will still get you in Forest Lawn.
Where you go from here is you're own problem.

From the top photo you can see how beautiful areas of the Cemetery are. It's a popular area for walkers, joggers and bike riders. It's just a few blocks away from my house, so we're over there on occasion. My wife jogs there often -- it's got plenty of rolling hills.

There's still acres and acres left to be "planted," if you were interested in spending your eternal life there. Plots are not any more expensive than any other cemetery -- your major cost will depend on how elaborate you require your monument to be.

We took a basic hour-long walking tour with a friend, Nancy, as tour guide (only $10!). We covered almost a third of the cemetery and she shared great stories, some sweet, some romantic, some funny. She also explained where some of the customs and terms used in the funeral traditions come from. Forest Lawn also operates longer tours that include a shuttle bus and actors posing as some of the more famous residents.

Chief of the Senecas, Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha), is buried here. He's wearing his Peace Medal
from George Washington and his Red Jacket, given to him by the British.

A monument you could order through Sears in years past. Most cemeteries
banned them, being made of zinc and expected to corrode.
This one looks pristine and still sharp and crisp after more than 100 years.

Amaryllis Jones obviously had a problem with people believing her.

There are dozens of monuments as furniture to sit and relax.

Speedy walking along with us on the tour.

Loise Bethune's historical marker is not actually too near her grave.
She's the country's first female architect.


One of the more famous residents...

That stand of trees across Scajaqueda Creek are Bald Cypress that were planted during
the Pan American Exposition in 1900-01. They're not indigenous nor were expected
to survive in our climate. They've proved us wrong.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Blue Sky Mausoleum. Designed in 1928 for the
Darwin Martin Family to be built in Forest Lawn, but not built until 2004. Darwin Martin,
at one time one of America's highest paid executives, is buried in Forest Lawn,
but not in this mausoleum, by his descendant's choice.

Paper-inspired garden at Chelsea

2011-11-13T06:12:00.005-05:00

Here is yet another Chelsea garden, this one the Basildon Bond Centenary Garden, commissioned for the 100th anniversary celebration of Basildon Bond, a well-known stationery products supplier in Britain. The theme is letter writing -- with table chair, inky-blue-colored iris and other flowers, seen against a crisp bright white backdrop.

The all-weather paper wall also contrasts the Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum) growing through the table with its paper-thin peeling orange-red bark. Not being familiar with Basildon Bond, it did not occur to me that the theme was writing paper until I saw it in the program.

The white wall was too stark for my tateses, but I like the texture of it. Even faint breezes made the papers lightly rustle. I think it was made of the same material of which FedEx envelopes are made. This is one garden where I might have added some typography. I'm sure it was their conscience decision not to.

This was one of the seven "Artisan Gardens" at Chelsea, built in the park beside the football (soccer) field where the larger displays were. The crowds were most dense here, more dense than anywhere else during the show, because the pathways were narrow. You could easily get a good view of these gardens if you were patient and forgave other human beings for their ruthless pushing and shoving.

And is that papyrus I see?

A piano planter? Ginko colors? I know, Wright?

2011-11-11T06:28:00.006-05:00

I don't steal things from other sites for my own posts, but I came across this post by my friend Eric Jackson-Forsberg, the curator for Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Complex. It was on the Martin House blog he writes, The Weekly Wright-up. It intersects my interest in all things gardening and my Wright fascination.

Here's a different piano design
by Wright, designed for another
house -- also not buil

It's a piano Wright designed for the Martin House (never built) that actually had planters built into it. It doesn't say so, but I would assume Wright would have also spec'd the plants he'd have intended for the planters.

I'm no piano expert (okay, I know nothing about pianos, or any instrument, for that matter) but I cannot imagine a "...design that is a curious hybrid of baby grand and upright, with pier-like front legs that sport ovular planters" would be huge with piano players or music aficionados. Would it still sound good? Would the plants grow better with music? What music do plants like?

But damn! It would have looked good in the room. If I could have a piano like this, I'd learn to play.

Photos from The Weekly Wright-up blog -- the refurbished Reception Room colors
seem to be inspired by neighborhood ginkgo trees.

If you visit his blog, please also check out his post on Wright's interior color designs and choices. He makes an argument the the interior colors used in rooms throughout the house were derived from ginkgo trees in Fall from the surrounding Frederic Law Olmsted-designed neighborhood. It's mere conjecture, but knowing Wright, by his own admission, was inspired by the organic colors of nature it seems plausible. And then, if you see the one (nearly) finished room at the house, you'd believe it too.

Chelsea - Blood cells in the garden

2011-11-07T06:54:00.002-05:00

The British Heart Foundation Garden at Chelsea was not among my favorites. Veins, arteries, corpuscles and red blood cells just don't seem ready-made for integrating into a garden plan. At least there as no spurting blood fountain or anything. Kudos to the designers for their restraint, that's the first thing I thought of.

One nice feature of this garden was the inclusion of plants known for their healing properties and especially Salix caprea, a plant that provided clues to the development of aspirin.

A lesson in leaves

2011-11-05T06:21:00.006-04:00

When I visited this garden on the KenTon Garden tour, the first thing I noticed was the exuberance and dense planting of the garden - which took up all of this small backyard, except for a looping pea-gravel path around the center island. I remember the garden being very colorful, but looking at the photos now, I see that the colors were mostly greens. But I now notice also that the gardener has a masterful touch with choosing leaf shapes and sizes and plant placement. She mixes plant heights, colors and leaf textures brilliantly. My biggest mistake, I make everytime, is planting things too close together. This is a jam-packed, but well-edited garden. And it's mostly shade!

I'm not big on religous statuary in gardens (I've seen it done so poorly in other gardens), but I have to say these few, and well-located statues, made of quality materials, looked great, appropriate and were integrated in the garden very well - not as afterthoughts. Even the wall hangings along the fence are tasteful. Simple brick edging is made nicer by using unique-shaped bricks. The easy-to-maintain pea-gravel path was a nice touch.

My only complaint about this garden -- there was no place for the owner to sit in it and enjoy it! But I have a feeling, from seeing the garden lights set up in what looked like strategic spots, that this garden is probably enjoyed as much from the home's windows day and night.

A Summer Street beauty

2011-11-03T06:07:00.004-04:00

On Garden Walk Buffalo, being the president, I feel as though every garden is special and I can't show favorites. Kinda' like pickin' your favorite kid. But really, this garden is a quiet stalwart among the colorful exuberance of the Summer Street Cottage district. It doesn't get a lot of coverage because there are so many great gardens in such a close proximity. But I can assure you any neighborhood would LOVE to have a home like this in it.

Sitting on a corner lot on Summer & York streets, this sharp-looking cottage is the first one you'll see on this one-way strip of Civil War-era cottages. Friends of ours owned this house in the '90s (hi Rhonda) and the inside is as charming as the outside.

The current owners have done such a great job with such a small place - and look at the plant colors, combinations and shapes. And that doorway above? Perfect choices all around.

Dutch Iguanas

2011-11-01T05:40:00.001-04:00

Walking along in a recent trip to Amsterdam we came across these bronze sculptures of frolicking iguanas. No rhyme or reason, just some random non-naive iguanas. Certainly made us stop and pay attention othe garden space there, which we may have just frolicked by. Iguanas, are not too readily associated with the Netherlands. Makes me wonder how they were selected to be displayed there.

The Berlin Zoo gardens

2011-10-30T18:47:00.001-04:00

In August, we visited Berlin. Our first stop, after a few hours sleep was the Zoologischer Garten Berlin. Opened in 1844, it's the oldest Zoo in Germany. With 1,500 species and 17,000 animals, it's the most comprehensive collection of species in the world.

Its most recent famous inhabitant was the polar bear Knut, raised by humans after being rejected by his own kind. Knut was siad to be a social psychopath in that he craved human interaction. He was quite the showman/showbear. He's since passed on. I think his death was a plot by the pandas who were tired of sharing the limelight with such a media hog.

Anyway, the gardens were nice. Much of the plantings came from the native habitat of the animals they were around, when possible. Berlin is frigid in the wintertime and not much from any tropic will grow here. Berlin's winters are cold, gray and windy. Daytime temperatures hover just above or below freezing and though snow is not uncommon it generally turns to dirty slush within hours. Nice. Makes me glad to live in Buffalo.

One thing we noticed and that I liked was that the architecture of all the animal houses was also native to the area of the planet the animal came from. I'm sure it made the animals feel more at home, being architecture appreciators and all.

One of the gardeners?

If I were an elk or moose, I would find this kinda' scary to wake up to every morning.

Gnasty Gnomes

2011-10-28T06:04:00.009-04:00

Gnomes for your garden (not mine). You can't see it here, but the gnome on the right, behind the frog, is exposing his gnome gnaughty bits. I didn't feel it was okay to rearrange the display to get a shot of him. But I regret that now. Found these in a novelty gift shop in Amsterdam, Holland, across from the Hortus Botanicus.

Farm-to-fork: The latest book I've designed - Nickel City Chef

2011-10-26T06:12:00.007-04:00

Nickel City Chef, Buffalo's Finest Chefs & Ingredients hits the bookstores this week. The book, written by Christa Glennie Seychew, features the Nickel City Chef competition - an hour-long competition between chefs using a surprise local ingredient in front of a live audience - with expert judges and audience participation determining the outcome. It's the only competition like this in the U.S. Even the chef competitions on TV have limited audience members or engagement - and none feature locally grown or produced ingredients.

I've attended a competition and it's a break-neck pace of chefs doing the most creative things with ordinary ingredients - but all of the highest caliber. While chefs are cooking, attendees (around 250 each competition) are treated to great food & drink, hosts talk to the chefs while they work, the secret ingredient farmer or producer is there being interviewed by the hosts, you can purchase, or order the secret ingredient during the event. Multiple overhead video monitors and a video crew allow every seat to be a good seat. The competition takes place in a kitchen & bath store, in an old warehouse with two working (drool-worthy) kitchens.

Each color-coded chapter,
or "Competion" starts out
with a featured local
ingredient - and interview
with the producer/grower and
what they do to make
their product special.

Christa has long been this area's greatest advocate for the farm-to-fork movement. She (as Feed Your Soul Productions) arranges everything from farmers' market tours, farm tours, a pastry competiton and this signature event, Nickel City Chef.

Nickel City Chef (NCC) has gained a large following - and the number one request has been to get some of the competition recipes for these followers. Not content to just do a cookbook, Christa has made this book a rallying cry for the use of local growers and producers products - everything from eggs to potatoes to pork. There are more than 7,500 farms in Western New York and Christa's goal is always to get restaurants to purchase more produce locally - and with this "cookbook-plus" hopefully more consumers will be open to buying more direct from farmers, or at least look for the farmer's products in local stores.

Two recipes from each competition are
thoroughly researched and tested multiple times
to make sure they can be produced in
an average kitchen. Simple-to-follow directions,
plating suggestions and full color
photos are provided for all recipes.

In the book, you'll find:

A forward by Manhattan food writer and cookbook author Regina Schrambling. Regina's best known as snarkmistress of her acerbic website, Gastropoda.com, which skewers absurdities in the food world. She contributes to Plate, Slate, Culture, Edible Manhattan, Gourmet Live and blogs at Epicurious.com. Her resumé includes stints as deputy editor of the New York Times Dining section and contract writer for the Los Angeles Times Food section. Anthony Bourdain has called her “the angriest person writing about food.”
Features on each of the local farmers/producers of the ingredients featured in the sixteen chapters.
Ingredient sources for the sixteen local ingredients: eggs, sausage, yogurt, potatoes, ricotta, shiitake mushrooms, grapes, cherries, maple syrup, wine, pork, chicken, apples, tomatoes, beer and duck eggs.
Two recipes from each of sixteen competitions, one by each participating chef, from the very approachable to the "experienced" cook level of complexity - nothing that cannot be done in a typical kitchen.
The history behind the NCC competition, which starts with great soil to grow stuff in.
Bios on the Nickel City Chefs: Adam Goetz of Sample, Brian Mietus of Bacchus, JJ Richert of Torches, Krista Van Wagner of Curly’s, and Paul Jenkins of Tempo.
Backgrounds on hosts radio personality Bert Gambini of WBFO, and Chef Mike Andrzejewski of Seabar.
Behind the scenes commentary on each of the competitions in the book - there are sixteen and they cover the first three season of the competition.
A DVD documentary on the food-to-fork movement here in Buffalo along with footage from five NCC competitions. The 50-minute documentary, Nickel City Chef, Food for Change by director Nathan Peracciny, features interviews with chefs, growers and NCC participants.


Each Competition features a locally grown or produced secret ingredient for the chefs to work with. They have one hour to create a starter, entree and a dessert with the ingredient. They can bring up to 20 of their own supplies from their kitchen, and NCC provides a "Wegmans Pantry" of items they can use as well. They also get one sous chef.

Recipes come from 20 top restaurants including:

Bacchus
Bistro Europa
Blue Monk
Carmelo’s
Creekview
Curly’s
The Mansion on Delaware Avenue
Marco’s
The Roycroft Inn
Sample
Shango
Tempo
Torches
Trattoria Aroma

Contact info on the secret ingredients is found
in the resource list, as well as other resources
to access the more than 7,500 farms in the
eight counties of Western New York.

The book is published by Buffalo Heritage Press. This is the fourth book I've designed for them. Past books include Garden Walk Buffalo; The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, The BPO Celebrates The First 75 Years; and AUDieu, Buffalo says goodbye to the Aud.

Books can be ordered online at Buffalo Heritage Press or you'll find them in local bookstores, gift shops, Wegmans, area restaurants and other select food-selling operations.

What's being said:

“I tasted some dishes that would be at home in Manhattan

or Paris. The chefs’ cleverness was rivaled only by the

depth of understanding of what they were working with.”

~Regina Schrambling, New York City food writer and cookbook author

“Christa Glennie Seychew is the driving force behind getting

Buffalo and Western New York’s food scene on the culinary map.

Look out Portland, you’re about to be demoted.”

~Ivy Knight, Toronto-based food writer

“When I first arrived in Buffalo last year I wasn’t sure

what to expect regarding the food scene. I was totally surprised

to find some of the most progressive and creative cooking

in the country. There are chefs and artisan food producers

in Buffalo and surrounding areas that would be

superstars in just about any city in the United States.”

~Steve Carlin, Founder and CEO of Napa Valley’s Oxbow Public Market

Plants in cans

2011-10-24T06:30:00.003-04:00

This must be the newest way to sell plants. These are photos from a recent trip to Amsterdam - in the flower market. I'd seen canned cannabis before, but now all sorts of plants come in cans - birds of paradise, Venus flytraps, orange trees, lemon trees, sensitive plants, cucumbers, daisies, strawberries and tulips. Haven't seen these in the States yet. Wonder how long they stay viable? I wonder too, if it is allowed to bring them into the states in cans?

Give a tree an inch...

2011-10-22T06:12:00.007-04:00

Last week, my daughter and I went for a hike in the Niagara Gorge, just downstream from Niagara Falls. This poor tree was doing its thing in a crack in the rock with no soil visible all around in any direction. It was a beautiful day for a walk in the gorge. It's a pretty harsh existence here in the rapids, winters must be brutal.

We've hiked this trail before, though this time I counted 309 stairs down to the water level. Last time I counted 308. I have more & better photos here.

The Whirlpool Aero Car hangs above Whirlpool Rapids.
In continuous operation since 1916.

The roiling water looks like its boiling. It's against the law to be in this part of the Niagara River.
You can be instantly carried away, dragged down under and pinned at the bottom and never found.
At least not all of you.

Another tree, growing between the cracks.

The area below Whirlpool State Park. You can see all the
trees & brush growing where ever they get a foot hold.

Wright's Martin House plantings looking spiffy

2011-10-20T06:53:00.003-04:00

Over at Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Complex – things are looking great inside and out. The National Historic Trust holds its annual conference here in Buffalo this week and the whole city's being spiffed up a bit – but the advances at the Martin House have been significant.

The major work to the inside in nearing its end, there's LOTS of "finishing up" work to be done. One room, the reception room, is completely finished (minus a few original windows). There is carpeting and furniture in the dining an living rooms, and Japanese prints hanging on the walls. And an impressive reproduction of the "I" shaped dining table is holding steady in the dining room. I've seen it all, and wish I could share pictures, but there is no photography allowed in the House.

The kitchen restoration is still being worked on – but it is already, in its working state, a huge transformation from the bad floors, walls, lighting, and yellow-formica'd past. I toured the building in the early '90s and remember thinking I had a better kitchen than what this one had turned into.

Even the basement is looking good. It has really tall ceilings and is as large as the house itself. It is equipped with a brand new, fully-functional, professional, all-stainless-steel kitchen hidden behind milky-glass sliding panels. I would guess they're looking at holding meetings, receptions and classes in the basement. There will be an education center in the basement that's not yet set up.

The clothes line pole garden.

Outside, the planters are looking great with their hanging vines – they remind me of Wright drawings. The gardens, while not restored to their original designs (yet), are looking rather grand. Former Garden Walk committee leader Arlan Peters has been one of dozens to help get the gardens looking as good as they are. And Garden Walk committee member Ginny Williams is in charge of keeping the interior of the house looking good. It's her team that my daughter volunteers for. This week, my daughter got to clean a priceless widow with a Q-tip. Now, if only I could get her to clean her room.

Garden Walk Buffalo has also helped with the reconstruction – Garden Walk gave a restricted grant of $1,800 a few years ago for the reconstruction of the clothes line poles to be restored in the gardens. The poles went up last week. Yes, Frank Lloyd Wright designed clothes line poles too. The poles, while simply designed, make a significant change in the garden area – the poles are placed within the grid established by the buildings and their repeated use makes a design statement all its own. This garden area also has a brick endwall with end caps holding shallow bowl planters that also incorporates a fountain. This end wall shields the view of the carriage house from the main house. The reconstructed carriage house is now the gift shop.

The roman brick (narrower than common brick)
is pointed with deepset mortar and the horizontal mortar between
bricks is dyed the same color as the brick itself,
giving a very horizontal look to the brick-work.

There are plans to replicate the gardens as Wright had originally intended. That will still take some time, as getting the interior of the house is a priority currently. Before that, the priority was to shore up the structure of the house, updating utilities (now has a geothermal HVAC system), re-pointing brickwork, fixing the roof, undoing some renovations not following the original plan, and so on. Before that, the priority was to rebuild the part of the complex that had been torn down – the 100 ft. long pergola, the conservatory, and the carriage house.

Once word gets out about this restoration, the assumption is that visitors from around the globe will want to visit. I've been to Taliesen in Spring Green, WI; Taliesen West in Scottsdale, AZ and Fallingwater in Mill Run, PA. This house is as significant as any of them. It is the premiere example of Wright's Prairie Style of home. Even Wright called this house his "opus." You should see it.

Walkway to the Carriage house.

Walkway to the Gardeners Cottage, which
just go ta new coat of paint & colors.

from teh Clothes pole garden looking
over to the Visitors Center Pavilion.

His geometric architecture leaves odd-shaped
garden beds to soften the look.

Sneaking in some thyme along a narrow built-in bed.

On the Barton House, one of the buildings on the campus.

The back of the Barton House.

The clothes pole garden area. The far wall is
the fountain, it's not on in this photo.

Close-up of a clothes pole.

Seen on the top of the Martin House are...
wait for it... marten houses!

Front elevation facing Jewett Parkway. Jewett Parkway itself was laid out and planned by Frederick Law Olmsted.

Backside of the fountain wall.

From the fountain wall looking toward the porte-cochère.

A bed of succulants

2011-10-18T06:34:00.005-04:00

Literally. At the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens, they now have a bed of succulents. And a dresser. And a table. And a doghouse.

And, along with the succulent "show" was the exhibit "Cacti and Other Treasures" in the Arcangel Gallery at the Gardens, of artistically rendered photographs of, you guessed it, more succulents. The exhibition was of photos by Buffalo artist Eileen Graetz. Eileen was the artist of two past Garden Walk Buffalo posters (2011 & 2008) and also of this past year's Parkside Garden Tour's poster. Th exhibition closed this week.

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

2011-10-16T06:48:00.003-04:00

Our daughter has Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (AIWS) -- an actual, disorienting neurological condition that affects human perception, often associated with migraines. It can effect some or all of a person's senses, usually manifesting with visions just before the onset of a migraine.

A few times, she's seen
classmates sink into the floor.

But our daughter has them every single day -- most are not severe and she's learned to just deal with them and not even call attention to herself. Here are some of the things she's experienced almost every day:

If she holds a piece of paper with text and images just right, she can see the space between the paper and text.
Reading books -- she's an avid reader, but usually all letters look like they're lit from behind.
If she looks at a busy page just right, the words come off and are in 3D in front of her. Bubble sheets for standardized tests? Forget about it!
Just about every day she'll see everything in a color, she can see everything clearly, but everything will be green, or purple.
Occasionally she can see auras around people (this may be due to her being a witch though).
Sometimes, outdoors, shadows will have no gray values and look solid black.
Lightning's been known to dance around the upper part of her bedroom walls.
Once in a while, a person's head will disappear, or, look really, really big.
In the classroom the desks around her will look like they're miles away from her.
From her bunk bed, sometimes the floor of the room looks far away, like she said, "...like she's at the top of the Empire State Building looking down."
Once in a great while, voices are delayed as they come out of a person's mouth -- like a badly dubbed movie.
People can look like they're vibrating.
At the optometrists office, the computer with the eye chart disappeared and she could only see the wall behind it.
She can't write well. At all. Her handwriting looks like a third-grader's. She's in eighth grade.
She can't write flush left. Even when she's trying, each line is a little more to the right, causing hand-written papers to look like an inverted triangle.

Once, the hallway went upside down
and she "fell" to the ceiling.

But once in a while, she gets a doozy. Some of the bigger "visual effects," as we call them, signal an oncoming migraine, or are very upsetting, like:

Her own personal earthquake. Found her, the first time this happened, holding on to the ladder of her bunk bed for dear life, crying in a panic. When this happens, she can barely walk, because, well, there's an earthquake going on and the ground is moving.
Once, she saw completely through a wall -- and could see the room and furniture on the other side. Her mind "fills in" what she cannot physically see.
In gym class once, everyone was sinking into the floor, including her own feet and legs.
Another time, she turned around and there was a black wall in front of her, in the middle of the kitchen! It took all her mental strength to realize it wasn't there and force herself to walk through it.
When she's got a migraine, when she's laying on her bed, she can see her reflection in the ceiling above her. There's no mirror there. It's a white painted ceiling.
Sometimes the ceiling looks like it is just at the end of her nose when she's laying down. That sets in panic. We have her wear a sleeping mask when a migraine starts.
Sometimes the room will close up on her and she'll feel like she's gotten really large. Or sometimes the opposite, the room gets incredibly large and she feels like the size of a mouse.
A couple times, when she's gotten up in the middle of the night with a migraine, on her way to our bedroom, the hallway has turned upside down, and she "falls" to the ceiling and we've found her crying on the floor.
Another time, she was laying in bed with a migraine and she felt very small in the bed -- like the size of a doll, sheets and blankets all around. Then, minutes later she felt huge in the bed, with arms & legs hanging off all sides.
Recently, in the middle of the night, while in the bathroom, the walls turned into mirrors and started closing in on her until she was very large in a very small mirrored room.
Recently with migraines, she hears loud ringing.
And the worst one for a parent? When she's got her eyes open and can't see anything.

This has been happening since she was born -- but the migraines didn't start until about two years ago (she's now 13). The visual effects, without the migraine headache, are referred to as ocular migraines, with, fortunately, no pain. The neurologist says it's like taking hallucinogens. Most people that get migraines get some visual "occurrences" but I've never, until her, heard of such wild sightings.

We've heard all the jokes -- like LSD without the side effects! Hallucinogenics without the expense! And for the most part, we try to keep it light. When she asks if we see something that she sees that we can't see, we usually say we see it too. Even if it's purple fuzzy dots wherever there's blue sky. But the migraine-warning, scary visuals we take very seriously.

When she was a just starting school, and learning to read, it was HARD! We hired a tutor to help her reading and writing in third grade. She couldn't verbalize what she saw and we didn't know there was an underlying problem. At first we thought is was dyslexia, or some other reading disability. That was ruled out by reading specialists. We then thought it was an eye problem. One optometrist had us convinced she had extreme tunnel vision and had us doing crazy eye "exercises" for a year -- things like walking in a figure eight pattern in the basement floor while reading a sheet of Ps, Qs, Ds and Bs we held out in a stationary spot.

Sometimes she sees everything fine,
but everything's the same color.

Thank god for the good folks at the Olmsted Center for the Visually Impaired. They recognized immediately that it was not an eyesight problem but was neurological. We've been seeing a neurologist regularly for a couple years. To alleviate the migraines, she takes Maxalt, a prescription pain reliever. She also takes another low-dose prescription to help her get regular sleep. Sleeping is one of her favorite things, and something at which she excels!

From what I've found, AIWS usually affects children. And, from what I've seen online, it seems to be mostly girls. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, had a niece with it, hence the name (though his own use of psychotropic drugs probably help with his writing too). It can effect all senses -- some can feel a concrete wall and it'll feel soft, like feathers, or the opposite. With our daughter, it seems to be only sight and sound.

She's got some allowances in school to make it easier on her -- she can use a keyboard for writing since her handwriting is so bad; she can take tests and put answers in the booklet, and not use bubble sheets; she can have more time on tests if she needs it; she can have questions read to her, if she wishes; and she takes tests in a separate room, alone.

Earthquakes have been known to start
in the kitchen

She's a good student, a voracious reader, a Girl Scout, got lots of friends, sells homemade glass-bead jewelry, is interested in architecture, and is the youngest volunteer (and donor) at Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House. She is on the cleaning crew and assistants docents on tours. She's even an acolyte at our church and involved with the youth group there.

There is no cure to speak of. Many women get migraines that effect them during different hormonally-charged times in their lives -- puberty, pregnancies, and menopause. Our only hope is that it fades away with puberty, which is a possibility.

We had her start a blog Wonderland Vision to chronicle some of the things she sees or goes through (though she's not made an entry in months). My thought was that she could contribute to the information out there about this rare condition. There really isn't too much out there about it. Even the neurologist knew of it, but had never had a patient with it. So this post isn't about gardening. It's about Alice in Wonderland Syndrome -- so that others trawling the web for AIWS might stumble across this and know what others have gone through.

My lantana bonsai

2011-10-14T06:19:00.000-04:00

Okay, so it's not really mine, yet. Really. It is, but it isn't. I saw this beautiful, old, clipped lantana in a garden on the KenTon Garden Tour this past summer. I told the owner that I admired it because I grow lantana, as annuals in baskets, every year. And then he asked me if I wanted it!

He grows many lantana and said he overwinters these in a cold space -- first he severely prunes them -- and then root prunes them before putting them away for the winter. He says that too many leaves requires to much energy, and if there's less leaves, it makes sense there should be less roots to keep it going.

Then he offered to give it to me after the season was over. Of course I said yes, I'm not stupid. Last week I went to pick it up along with another one he'd trimmed up for the winter -- and three other non-bonsai lantana in pots! Now the pressure is on me to keep them going through the winter. I am notoriously bad at watering pants kept in the basement. Wish me luck.

Above is full bloom, to the right is what they looked like when he gave them to me.

People on garden tours are the best kind of people. I left him a bottle of Fleur Pinot Noir in return, but that hardly seems fair.

What are you overwintering?

Garden Walk Buffalo Zip Code study

2011-10-12T06:59:00.002-04:00

So in addition to the Intercept Survey done during Garden Walk Buffalo this year (paid for by Visit Buffalo Niagara, results found here), Visit Buffalo Niagara, a few gardeners, and GW headquarters volunteers, collected zip codes from visitors. Here's the result.

Collected: 1,597
Outside Erie and Niagara Counties: 20%
States represented: 29 and Canada

NY-1449
PA-43
OH-20
FL-10
NC-8
CT-7
CA-6
MA-6
GA-5
MI-4
VA-4
NJ-3
TX-3
WA-3
WI-3
AZ-2
CO-2
IL-2
MD-2
NH-2
NV-2
VT-2
AL-1
DC-1
DE-1
IN-1
KY-1
MO-1
OR-1

We assume about 60,000 people visited for Garden Walk Buffalo, the country's largest garden tour. That number is based on the number of maps we hand out or are downloaded from our website, figuring two people per map. We don't sell tickets or require reservations, the entire two-day event is free, so we really have no idea how many people attend. Gardens get visited, buses are full, HQs are busy, hotels are full and streets on the Westside are never fuller. A garden tourism expert in Connecticut tells us we're being VERY conservative with our numbers of attendees, just based on what he knows of attendance based on number of gardens on a tour.

So that means that any numbers you see here would be representative of the overall event if they were multiplied by 38. Not that exactly 38x7 (from CT) would be accurate, but you get a sense of how large the numbers can get.

A garden in new ruins

2011-10-10T06:22:00.001-04:00

Saw this garden on the KenTon Garden Tour this past summer. This gardener's been gardening here for a loooong time. She's been collecting columns, architectural remnants, sculptures and more for years, adding them to the garden as she sees fit. The lot was shockingly deep, once down the narrow and long driveway, the actual garden started in the narrow area beside the garage with three parallel paths all leading to the huge area behind the garage.

Above: The front of the house, in greens and yellows

meshes well with the plant color choices.

These beautiful columns start off the paths to the back yard. There's a store here in Buffalo (Buffalo ReUse) where columns like these can be easily found.

It's a lot of structure for two plastic Adirondack chairs. Probably nice for a cocktail hour for just two.

I made the mistake of thinking this was a George Seurat Pointillist interpretation. Turns out it was here attempt at painting a mosaic tile effect onto the back of the garage. Oops.

Small vignettes were everywhere, here classical, other places rough-hewn.

This is sort of an odd sitting area, especially with the sphinx-like dog statues.

Glowing orbs hung from the massive tree. There's also a fairy house (bird house)
you can barely make out here.

The sitting area's at an angle in the square plot of yard behind the garage. Her husband put it centered and square, and she had him redo it at an angle, which makes much more sense in the space, especially as you enter it. It also makes four distinct garden areas, as opposed to just splitting the space in two.

A resort in the backyard

2011-10-08T06:52:00.002-04:00

Found this garden on the Amherst Garden Walk this past summer (it was less of a walk and more of a repeated car drive from one garden to another). This was one of my favorites from the few gardens I got to visit. The cantilevered deck over the pond made the pond look much larger than it already was (which was a good-sized chunk of the yard already). The lush plantings made it look downright tropical. This Balinese-esque retreat was behind a very unassuming first-ring, older suburban home.

Outdoor rooms defined

2011-10-06T05:06:00.001-04:00

Friends have built an intriguing structure for their back yard that provides not only a division of the former driveway into defined areas -- dining room and living room -- but provides them with a roof, green wall, planter, porch swing and a built-in shelf in the fence (wall) of the space.

The shelves were too new to have anything on them when I took the photo, but I love the idea. It really makes the dining area seem more like an outdoor room. Another device making each area room-like is the use of outdoor area rugs. Even the brick pattern, without the rugs, defines the dining area. Another device is hanging art on the "walls." They also have free-standing torchieres (not shown) which look more like free-standing lamps.

And yet another room definer is the coffee table in front of the swing. The green wall is a climbing hydrangea which will eventually take of the roof trellis as well. Can you imagine a painting hanging in front of that green wall?

Over the overhang, where the swing swings, now has a brand new fabric shade my wife made for them to keep the sun out of their eyes (not shown). The sun tends to inconveniently hit the swing at cocktail hour. If you break a wine glass stem in their garden, it gets poked into the planter box in the foreground with a tea light in it.

You can't see it in these photos, but they have a great stainless steel custom grill made by the owner of the Made In America store in Elma (our friend is in the steel business). Custom features of the grill? It's got a drawer for utensils, burns both gas and wood, and has a beer bottle shelf to hold the cook's beer. Brilliant.

The most significant portion of their garden is made up mostly of herbs in concentric raised beds with a water feature and many garden figures tucked here and there, some fairy, some funny.

Maybe you've been in their garden for Garden Walk Buffalo - they have the colorful buffalo they won in a raffle from the Herd About Buffalo exhibit a few years back. That's some major garden art.

Anything you do to create the feeling of an outdoor room in your garden?

Purloined Plant Prevention

2011-10-04T08:05:00.002-04:00

On a beautiful side street that faces Delaware Park here in Buffalo, we spotted this doorway/fence/arch/ combo (oh, and lights too) that had planters sitting on the stone wall ledge - in cages built into its "pillars"-- to obviously prevent purloined pots. Seemed like a brilliant way to keep plants out by the sidewalk in planters. Might have been less expensive to just build pots INTO the stone wall.

I've heard from many gardeners over the years about stolen plants - everything from hanging baskets that disappear over night to prized trees, like a Japanese maple being stolen shortly after planting. I wouldn't say its rampant, but it happens.

I've had iris picked out of my front yard, and had solar lights stolen out of the front yard (back when they were new on the scene and expensive), but never had actual plants stolen. I'm cognoscente of it though. My front yard baskets are wired securely to the brackets. They can still be stolen, but it would make it difficult to get them off the brackets.

My alternative would be to plant poison ivy in my front yard baskets. They still might get stolen, but it would give me a certain measure of satisfaction.

Ever have something stolen from your garden?

Survey Results for Garden Walk Buffalo

2011-10-01T12:44:00.001-04:00

I think what surprised me most was that 75% of visitors from out-of-town come here specifically for Garden Walk Buffalo. That means, while here, they visit Niagara Falls, or the Albright-Knox Art Gallery or Wright's Martin House or other attractions, as opposed to the other way around (spending money all the while).

A Granger Place Garden

I also found it surprising that 43% of visitors outside the area have come to Garden Walk an average of three times. That means we're doing something right. I mean, I know people in the neighborhood have gone on Garden Walk and average of seventeen times (it's seventeen years old), but out-of-towners?

Another unexpected result found was that out-of-towners spend an average of three nights here for the weekend -- with about half of them needing hotels rooms. I would not have expected three nights as an average (it was actually 2.9).

And I was very pleased with Garden Walk's REALLY, REALLY high marks with satisfaction on the event (a 4.9, with 5 being excellent).

And I totally expected 96% to leave with an extremely favorable view of Buffalo (4.6, with 5 being excellent). How could you not?

A Lancaster Avenue garden

Here's the nitty-gritty:

Visit Buffalo Niagara commissioned Ruth Diamond Market Research, Inc. for an intercept study, on site, in gardens of Garden Walk Buffalo this past year - focusing on attendees from outside of Erie and Niagara counties. Based on 574 attendees surveyed, 18% lived 50 miles or more, away from Buffalo. Below results refers to this 18% of out-of-town visitors:

AWARENESS

57% had never attended before, but of the 43% that had, the average number of times they'd attended in the past was 2.8.
Word of mouth was the top source of awareness when asked how respondents found out about the event. Media-specific responses included newspaper articles (Cleveland, Erie, Rochester, Pittsburgh) and magazines (Fine Gardening, Horticulture, Canadian Gardening, Better Homes and Gardens' Country Gardens magazine), garden blogs, and Internet (gardenweb.com, buffaloniagara.com).
51% were aware that Garden Walk Buffalo is part of the National Garden Festival. 34% were aware of Open Gardens. 26% were aware of the Front Yard Garden Contest. 16% were aware of AAA Bus Tours.

ATTENDANCE

75% came to Buffalo specifically for this event.
Respondents represented 21 states, Canada and the UK.
The respondents’ “love of gardens/plants,” and interest in getting “inspiration/ideas” were the top reasons given for attending this event. Many also considered the Garden Walk a social event.

A Lincoln Parkway garden

ECONOMIC IMPACT

74% stayed overnight due to this visit.
The average number of days of overnight lodging was 2.9.
46% stayed at a local hotel/motel. Of this group, 44% lodged within the City, 38% in the suburbs, and 18% outside the immediate area.
The following depicts the percentage of respondents who participated in each activity, due to being in town for the Garden Walk:
Eating at local restaurants: 98%
Shopping at local shops/stores/malls: 67%
Visiting other sites/events: 48%
The average number of dollars respondents estimated to spend in the area for this trip was $248 (23% did plan to spend over $400).

OVERALL SATISFACTION

Satisfaction with the event averaged 4.9, with 5 being excellent.
The most prevalent multiple verbatim reasons given behind high ratings included: “Beautiful” (20%); “People / gracious people /open homes / thought and effort” (15%); “Ideas” (10%); “Well organized” (6%); “Variety” (5%).

OVERALL IMPRESSION OF BUFFALO

96% had an extremely favorable overall impression of Buffalo, with the average rating of 4.6, with 5 being excellent.

A York Street garden

DEMOGRAPHIC SNAPSHOT

Average age: 55.5
College educated: 73%
Married: 70%
Average household income: $83,903
Gender: 82% female, 18% male

MEDIA SOURCES FOR GARDENING INFORMATION

Magazines 39%; HGTV 24%; Websites/Search Engines 22%; Other multiple-mentioned sources included garden clubs, garden blogs, garden centers, and word of mouth.
51% use Facebook on a regular basis. 11% use Twitter.

A Lancaster Avenue garden

Conclusion:
One in five Garden Walk Buffalo attendees lives well outside Buffalo, NY, visiting from all over the country. Nearly half of visitors from outside of a fifty mile radius have attended Garden Walk Buffalo three items, showing its appeal as an annual event. The majority visit specifically for Garden Walk Buffalo, with half visiting other area attractions during their stay. Visitors stay for an average of three nights, half of them needing hotel accommodations. Nearly all spend their money on restaurants, a large majority on shopping. Visitors depart with holding Garden Walk Buffalo in extremely high regard and leave with a extremely favorable impression of the City of Buffalo.

Outdoor art for the garden

2011-09-30T09:19:00.001-04:00

I so want this in my own yard someplace. Saw this on the Ken-Ton Garden Tour this past summer. Gotta find me some old pickets. I would use more subtle "worn-looking" paints - maybe even stains. Then I gotta figure out where I'd put something like this. I'm running out of wall space on the outside of my house.

Outdoor rooms deserve to have walls filled with art. Below are some of the art I have hanging around outside.

Above: Well hung this summer, a tiled plaque given to me by my friend Siobhan.
A gift handmade by the Garden Fairies of Florida, a rag-tag group of artistically-inclined,
colorful gardeners around Tarpon Springs, FL. When presented, I was told the city should
be giving me a plaque for my leadership with Garden Walk Buffalo and the
National Garden Festival for so many years. Because this is an original piece of art,
no plaque from a corporate-gift-trophy-making company could ever be better than this.

Above: A closer look, so you can maybe read it. I'm looking or just the right bell
to hang above it. I'm thinking a bell without a clapper.

Above: Wall hanging above the potting table is actually a metal doormat I found cheap at Target.

Above: I count the dwarf pear espalier in the shape of diamonds as wall art.

Above: Hanging on the uprights of the deck are the wine bottle "sconces."

Above: The "window sill" above the hot tub holds a collection of
antique glass telephone pole insulators I found when I was a kid.

Above: The walls of the patio hold mirrors. The rug makes it feel even more
like a room. Next year, we're hoping to get rid of the plastic chairs and get
some substantial outdoor chairs. Also thinking about staining the fence behind
the mirrors a subtle blue to continue the theme of the "blue room."

Above: The grate for climbers. Still looking for good climbers to grow here. The coleus
and nasturtium here EXPLODED this year, but the mandevilla were wimpy at best.

Above: My collection of Garden Walk posters adds color above the hot tub.
This bothers my wife to no end. It's not symmetrical. The last two posters to fill it in
can't be there quick enough for her. It's a slight OCD thing I think.

Above: The rusted metal fern sculpture by local sculpture Paul Gallo.
This comes inside for the winter.

What's hanging in your garden?

My rock collection garden

2011-09-25T07:17:00.001-04:00

I can't call it a rock garden, because it's not a true rock garden filled with unique alpine plants. It's mostly ground covers that are comfortable with shade. But it is a garden of my prized rock collection.

A few years back on a trip to Plymouth, MA, we took a few rocks from the beach we visited for this other-wise neglected area of the garden boxed between the driveway and house, but hosts a pretty, three-trunked River Birch. I liked the idea of having my own "Plymouth Rock."

Since then, on trips, when feasible, my daughter and I have started picking up a rocks for the collection. The most recent purchase? A small chunk of the Berlin Wall. At least we assume it is real, it was purchased in a gift shop across from Checkpoint Charlie. It has papers!

My most cherished rock (not seen here) is one of the rocks that formed the fire pit at my family's lakeside cottage outside Greene, NY. It's burned, black, scarred and broken. It has nearly 40 years worth of bonfires, s'mores, beers, wine, clam bakes, cousins, friends, nieces & nephews, aunts & uncles, a sister & brother, and mom & dad embedded in it, along with having heard thousands of conversations both inanely juvenile and thought-provoking. It's the only rock like it on earth.

Here's a visual list of the collection:

Seen up top (clockwise from top): marble chip from the Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens, Greece; a marble chip from the Temple of Poseidon in Soúnio, on the coast of Greece; a piece of the Berlin Wall from Berlin, Germany (with graffiti); a stone from the Alps around Lake Königssee, Berchtesgaden, Germany; and they're all sitting on a chunk of foundation block from Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House (it came with provenance papers).

Below: Plymouth Rock from Plymouth, MA

Below: A "turtle rock," a glacial-formed rock unique to this area. A gift from Stan Swisher, the man in charge of the Erie Basin Marina Trial Gardens.

Below: Another chunk of the Wright house foundation; resting on top is a sparkly stone from the beach in Sayulita, Mexico.

Below: Another (larger) turtle rock; stones from the Niagara Gorge, Cape Cod, Jones Beach on Long Island, and slate pieces left over from weekend handyman projects.

Below: This is another chunk of foundation stone from Wright's Martin House. This one has glass chunks embedded in it. The provenance sheet that came with it reads:

Original Foundation Stone from the Martin House Complex
This piece of stone was salvaged from buried sections of original foundations for the Martin's pergola and conservatory (1904). It was recovered during an archaeological dig (2002) of the foundation after the apartment building built on top of it was demolished. The foundation was composed of mortared, rough pieces of locally-quarried Onondoga limestone.

What rocks your garden?

An orange garden on Summer

2011-09-21T08:53:00.001-04:00

Little Summer Street is unquestionably the most popular destination during Garden Walk Buffalo. The dense Civil War-era neighborhood of tiny cottages is even more densely planted with exuberant gardens and, without a doubt, one of the most charming and photogenic neighborhoods in Buffalo. And even here among these unique and colorful cottages one stands out.

2010 Photo by Jacquie Walker.

This garden gets a different treatment each year. Home to local artist Dottie Fitzgerald, it's usually a surprising and oddly funny take on pop art with readily available materials. One year it was colorful vintage suitcases floating in the hot tub. Another year it was sculptural/architectural takes on shopping carts. Another year saw the hot tub filled with floating melmac tea cups & saucers.

This year? Orange. The pale pink cottage with the red door and shockingly-painted orange shutters is just screaming to have its orange justified (by using more orange). Orange decals on the outside of the house start you on the path to the back yard where you'll find orange string like a Cats Cradle game gone mad, dangling orange orbs of varying sizes, floating vinyl circles in the tub and orange-wrapped trees are among the devices used to carry out the theme. Oh, and an orange golf bag which seems to appear from year to year. And if you're there into the evening, there's orange lights in the trees out front.

I've often said that Garden Walk Buffalo is like visiting more than 370+ art installations. This truly is one. Can't wait to see what she does next year. A couple years back she had mentioned to me sourcing a bowling pin that stood taller than her house. Appreciate the artistic efforts or not, it's one of the most remembered gardens on the entire tour.

Would I be adventurous enough to make a temporary, quirky art installation in my garden for the tour? Probably not, but just by virtue of the fact I designed my space myself and do have personal artifacts, decorations and the odd sculpture, I suppose it already is a personal expression of its creator. But I'm not a rule-breaking, taste-challenging, convention-questioning, thought-provoking, envelope pusher like Dottie. Long live Dottie and others like her!

The rarest (and loneliest) tree on earth - the Wollemi Pine

2011-09-18T05:49:00.005-04:00

Recently we had the chance to visit the Hortus Botanicus the botanical garden in Amsterdam. It's a very nice botanical garden with all the trappings of a great horticultural tourist destination - even a café. It's been around since 1638, making it one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. I'll post about it sometime soon.

The one thing I didn't expect to find in the middle of the metropolis of Amsterdam was one of the rarest plants on earth - the Wollemi Pine. I remember reading about this rare tree, thought to be extinct, when it was found in 1994. I saw it in Time magazine. The tree is now considered "Critically Endangered."

The tree we saw (above) was enclosed by a fence, to thwart tree thieves. Poor thing looked like it was in jail.

Park ranger and ardent hiker, Australian David Noble came upon about 60 of them growing in a remote area of the Blue Mountains outside of Sidney. The trees had strange bark that looked like bubbles of chocolate, multiple trunks, ferny-looking leaves growing in spirals and were up to 125 feet tall.

Before then, the tree was only known through fossils as old as 90 million years. What fascinates me is that he recognized them as never having had seen them and found them to be thought of as extinct. If you ask me, they should be called the Noble Pine. Currently, there are around 100 growing in the wild.

It's said that it was the equivalent of finding the a living dinosaur. They are thought to have populated the supercontinent that broke apart and formed all the continents. Going back to the Jurassic era, it's probably the tree that T. Rex used to pee on.

Apparently man is its greatest threat. To help assure their survival, the tree's original location remains a secret, to avoid poaching. After figuring how to propagate them, trees were also made available for sale to the public – to stem a black market on them. 50,000 alone were sold in Australia. Trees were also made available to the world's botanical gardens.

They're not for the meek. They're big. At full size, they stand more than 80 ft tall, have up to one hundred trunks that span up to 3 ft across. They are slow growers. But they're hardy – they can survive climates from 23 degrees F to 113 degrees F. They can also be grown as house plants, or in pots for patios. You an even make a Bonsai of them. That's range.

Seen and enjoyed...

2011-09-16T06:02:00.000-04:00

A bowling ball fountain! I could do this in my own yard. Can't be too large a project. This is found, of course in the Highland garden where the bowling ball totem can be found. You can see it each year on Garden Walk Buffalo.

Bauhus Museum and its garden(?)

2011-09-14T06:38:00.001-04:00

I'd always wanted to visit here. The Bauhaus School movement (also called the International Style) is an important influence in design, typography, art, industrial design, interior design & architecture. But certainly not on gardens. I guess it's too much ornamentation for them. But I figure Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius or Marcel Breuer must have had gardens someplace. They weren't here.

It was an actual school that, after graduating students, would put them to work in "workshops" to design products, and then actually develop them into marketable, sell-able items. They developed everything from chairs to lamps to dishware.They closed themselves down under pressure from the Nazis. The bastards.

The museum itself looks like some past generation's version of the future still yet to come. It's a bit severe. But inside are Bauhaus influenced art from furniture to product design, from photography to architecture. Still stunning after all these years is a model of the 1929 International Exposition Germany Pavilion in Barcelona, Spain, by Bauhaus former director, Mies van der Rohe. It STILL looks futuristic.

If nothing else, I want the colored totem seen in the top photo for my garden.

See the thin strip of green? You may have missed it.

Built-in planters tells me that plants ARE a consideration.
Just not as exuberant as I might design. I wouldn't make a good Bauhauser.

Not sure I'd be able to plant with such restraint. I admire the willpower of the garden designer.

Not much greenery, but it suits the architecture.

Charlottenburg Gardens, Berlin

2011-09-12T06:57:00.002-04:00

These 1697 gardens were designed by landscape architect Siméon Godeau, a student of French landscape architect André Le Notre, designer of the gardens at Versaille. It is significant because it is the earliest garden in Germany to be influenced by the French style of gardening at the time. It has been added to and revised over the years, so it may not reflect the original intent of the designer.

Charlottenburg Palace was pretty much the invention and domain of Sophie Charlotte, wife of Freidrich III. If you ever get there, you have to see her china room. Never been in a room like it. Couldn't take photos inside though.

The grounds were vast and impressive, much like the gardens at Versaille. Many of the same principles were used in its design - avenues, moats, boulevards, fountains, parterres, sculptures, topiaries and grand planters. One thing that served a more useful purpose was the lake at the end of the gardens. Generally, lakes, canals or ponds were designed into gardens to provide and end view or vista. This one served a purpose. Sophie Charlotte didn't like taking the dusty coaches into Berlin and had her lake connect to the canals and rivers leading into Berlin so she could take boats in when she had to go into the city.

One thing I found common in these more formal gardens in Germany
was very informal borders when you get up close. They were mixes
of perennials in many colors and shapes and heights and textures.
In France, many we'd seen were all of the same
plant in uniform colors and sizes.

The colored rock pattern of a flourish on the ground seemed like a cop out to me though.
Usually, patterns like this were done in plants, like annuals, not colored stone.
Or maybe some garden historian can tell me they were done in stone as well.
It just didn't seem in keeping with the rest of the gardens.

Sort of an undersized plant for such a majestic planter!

Opposite problem. Awfully significant
plant in an underwhelming container.

Geraniums? Maybe they're something special here.
Not at home.

Geraniums. Really?! Really?!

Takes a lot of planters to fill a garden this large.

The overwhelming perennial borders looked beautiful up close where you could appreciate
the different blooms, but sloppy from farther away -- taking over the topiaries.

Rather see something beautiful and naked
than a chubby kid holding a goat.

Looking back toward the palace.

Pretty up close where you can appreciate the mixed border.

The Belvedere, originally the palace tea house. Now the Royal porcelain museum.

Hydrangea on the steps of the mausoleum.

The garden in front of the mausoleum.

Gardens around the Orangery.

The office worker's garden

2011-09-10T06:43:00.002-04:00

Seen in Amsterdam, Holland. A field of wildflowers between two large office towers out by the exhibition center. Both mornings we went by and office workers were picking flowers for their offices. How simple. How thoughtful. What an elegant, gracious and simple idea. What a good way to start the day.

Schiphol Airport Forest

2011-09-08T06:29:00.004-04:00

These, along with the recorded sounds of birds, crickets and a gurgling stream? In the middle of not only Holland's largest airport, but one of the busiest airports in the world? "A" for effort, but I'm gonna' have to say no.

Chelsea - my favorite display garden

2011-09-06T19:52:00.004-04:00

This was probably the most difficult of all the show gardens to take in all at once. It was only open on two sides. The "back" was a two-level deck/glass platform. The lower level had built-in bench seating around a contemporary fireplace. The second floor was a dining table surrounded in waist-high glass walls. The whole thing was floating - seemingly supported by espaliered fruit trees that masked the actual weight-bearing supports. Even the second floor of the deck was glass. This is NOT a handy-man weekend project!

I saw the video here first, before I went to Chelsea. The The M&G Bank garden seemed like a winner -- the ultimate potager garden or "modern kitchen garden." But cripes, some great ideas and a big budget, and how can you go wrong? It had everything I would put in my own backyard – given the money and the space. Time? Not so much of an issue if you can bring in mature pleached trees, willow-weaved raised beds, immense specially-embossed terracotta pots with trees, full sized trees and fruits and vegetables all at peak (even if it isn't even close to their season).

The rest of the garden, in front of this space, was all in containers -- the beautiful basket-weave raised beds and planters. Everything in the garden was intended to be productive: lemon, fig, apple pear and lime trees; kale, beans, peppers, squash, chard, artichoke and lettuce; chives, dill, tarragon, fennel, mint, parsley & sage; lavender, thistle, loosestrife and other flowers to attract beneficial insects. Full planting guide found here.

To see a 360-degree view of the garden and videos of it, visit the Royal Horticultural Society's site, here.

Here's the area under the glass platform. You can see a bit of the fireplace to the left,
the built-in seating and some of the espaliered trees. What you don't see
are the supports to the upper deck, covered in vines & ironwork
matching the pylon ironwork used throughout the garden.

The fruit trees planted in terracotta pots, underplanted with lavender were
my favorite feature. I have to do more and more interesting underplanting.

Here you can better see the seating, and hidden deck supports covered in ironwork and vine.
That's the glass "roof" reflection at the top of the photo, below the leaves.
Probably not a good idea to wear a skirt when you're upstairs.

Loved, loved, loved the willow-weave raised beds!


That was a door to nowhere. But it made a great focal point from this side perspective of the garden.

Trees underplanted with lettuce!

Pylons here used for climbing vegetables like scarlet runner beans.

Couldn't get enough of the basket weave beds & underplanted lavender.

You can see a bit of the glass ceiling in this shot.

Columns of pleached trees.

This was so densely-planted that the textures looked great from any angle.

Yummy.

Sanssouci Palace garden in Potsdam

2011-08-27T06:51:00.005-04:00

We were in Berlin last week and did a Fat Bike Tour of Potsdam, just a short train ride from Berlin. Potsdam is a BEAUTIFUL city -- what's left of it anyway, after WWII. Much of what remained standing were the summer palaces of the Prussian aristocracy.

Having a palace in Berlin was apparently too draining for some of these royals, so to get away from the pressures of daily palace living in Berlin, it was de rigueur to build a summer palace in Potsdam. There was a lot of "keeping up with the Müllers" going on the in the building of these summer homes.

This Rococo-style palace, Sanssouci (1745-47), was built by Frederick the Great. Frederick wasn't trying to outdo the other palace gardens of Potsdam though. His goal was to outdo Versailles' gardens. Germans don't think small.

Sad story though, Frederick loved this palace more than any of his others. Sanssouci, in French, means "carefree." And we were told by our guide that Frederick spent as much time as possible here. With his boyfriend.

Once, when he and his partner tried to leave Germany, they were caught and his father wanted to have him executed. That was deemed too harsh by the laws & courts of the time. So instead, they executed his partner and made Frederic watch.

He later married another well-connected royal (and later separated when he ascended to the throne -- she lived alone in a a separate palace) and asked to be buried here at Sanssouci. After his death in 1786, it was decided that it would be most proper to bury him alongside his father in the Potsdam cathedral nearby. But, after damage to the cathedral during WWII, his remains were re-buried at Sanssouci -- so he did get his wish -- just a few hundred years late.

The terraced grounds originally had mostly grapevines for wine making, and there are still some low-climbing grape vines, but the terraces now feature 168 windowed niches planted with fig trees, alternating with trellised vines from Portugal, Italy & France.

The lowest level had a more formal, Baroque, park-like setting of fountains, statues, boxwoods, ornamental gardens an parterres, all based on the gardens of Versailles.

One of the garden's greatest features, other than a party palace, were the gazebos and arbor/tunnels in verdigris and gold. They looked striking on either end of the long yellow-gold painted palace.

Versailles-inspired garden bellow. In the foreground
are grape vines growing along a chain fence.

Yeah, that's a windmill above the treeline.

No German garden is complete without a
monumental, over-scaled statue to something.

The curved boxwoods enclosed seating areas.

IN the center off the garden were a set of stairs.
Oddly, the side access to the lower gardens were ramps -- no stairs
Probably so the Frederick the Great could more
easily get his wheelbarrow up and down the hill.

Cool arbor/trellis.

Exterior of arbor/trellis from above.

Alternating vines & fig trees, with windows.

Do you suppose they close the windows for winter to overwinter the trees?
I couldn't figure out their practical purpose. Visually it was stunning.

Unlike many formal gardens of mass plantings of one type of plant,
formal German gardens we saw all had a mix of perennials in the borders.

The mix of different colors and textures of perennials in the "formal"
gardens gave them a more casual and lively appearance.

No color theme here.

The effect of the greens of the fig trees, vines and color of
the windows went surprisingly well with the Rococo palace.

The fountain never actually worked in Frederick's time.
His engineers never figured out the plumbing logistics.


Repeated perennials in the borders -- but it seemed to have no rhyme or reason to the selections that I could fathom. Though low maintenance (compared to planting annuals each year) is enough reasoning for me.

Gardens on TV...

2011-08-24T06:50:00.003-04:00

Here's just some of the coverage Garden Walk Buffalo got on the TV during the Walk...

If this post ends up on Facebook (I'm never sure when, or if, it will) you'll probbaly not see the videos -- you'll have to visit ArtofGardening.org.

Hotels in Buffalo near or at capacity: wivb.com

Buffalo hosts largest garden walk in US: wivb.com

Garden Walk Buffalo: cw23.com

(Ignore the fact that the headline reads "Buffalo Spree sponsors Garden Walk." They are not a sponsor. Spree knows that's not accurate, it is a WKBW headline. Buffalo Spree magazine is good to us and one of our greatest great advocates, but they're not a sponsor -- yet.)

An image-enhancing event

2011-08-22T06:25:00.007-04:00

Another great mention in the Buffalo News this year was in columnist Donn Esmonde's article after Garden Walk weekend. The best quote was the opening line. I felt a though he was talking directly to me and the Garden Walk committee and gardeners:

"Stop whatever you are doing and pat yourself on the back. Yes, you. You are leading the community. You are shaping the present and the future. Not the politicians or the power brokers. You."

He goes further to say, "The 1995 brainstorm of Marvin Lunenfeld and Gail McCarthy is a tribute to the communal spirit of folks in a city with a four-month growing season. It has blossomed (heh heh) into an image-enhancing event that — unlike pro sports or cultural attractions — actually brings suburbanites into city neighborhoods. The first-hand look cannot help but dissolve crime-and-grime stereotypes of the city. Some things you cannot put a price on."

Read the whole article here.

Photo up top is of the West Utica Street Community Garden.

The hotels are full, the streets were full, the gardens were full

2011-08-20T06:10:00.015-04:00

The Buffalo News' coverage of Garden Walk Buffalo was phenomenal this year. Here's just one -- News writer Anne Neville interviewed me just as the Walk was winding down for the day.

"The 17th annual Garden Walk Buffalo had been over for less than an hour, and already Jim Charlier was musing about how to make next year’s walk better.

“We’re going to need more buses,” said Charlier, who has been president of the garden walk for six years. “The hotels are full, the streets were full, the gardens were full, and our buses were full.”

Read the full article here.

But even better (sometimes!) are the unsolicited comments the online version of the articles get. There were only two here, and here are excerpts:

"WOW!! To much to see in one day. I must go each day next year to try and see it all. The bus was very handy, and almost fun if my legs fit, but it is a garden walk. We are a city that has it to be found by those who dont know. We have a lot of good folks here!!"

"Based on what I saw this weekend, maybe Buffalo needs to call itself "The Garden City." There were thousands of people from all over the country walking around, smiling, talking, having a wonderful time. Though I am a Buffalonian, I took the opportunity to venture outside my neighborhood to see what other gardens and houses looked like. It was inspiring."

It's over (for now!)

2011-08-17T09:07:00.005-04:00

Forgive me blog readers, for I have sinned. It has been18 days since my last post.

I am still recovering from Garden Walk Buffalo and the National Garden Festival (and doing all the work from my day job that went undone). Garden Walk Buffalo was another big success.

It looked like this solid for two days
(between 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. both days)

This year the local press for Garden Walk Buffalo was outstanding. Not sure why. We did nothing on our end different this year. It's as though they finally "got" us. But it did help that we had zip code research, from last year, to quantify the out-of-town visitors, and survey results that documents our "little garden tour" has a direct economic impact of $3.6 million on the local economy. If you add the commonly accepted "tourism multipliers" to the $3.6 million, the economic impact is closer to $10 million, but that's harder to quantify.

There was LOTS of coverage from all three local TV stations as well as from the Buffalo News. The News had articles about the Walk from the Thursday before through the Monday after. I'll post some of the articles in the coming days.

A research company (one of those "mall intercept" firms) was hired by Visit Buffalo Niagara to survey visitors. Zip code collection was also done to gauge where people are coming from. This year, we helped fill local hotels to at or near capacity, so we were especially curious to see the zip code results, which is not yet in. I'll cover some of those results in upcoming posts.

In our own yard, I estimate we had over 2,000 visitors over two days (my neighbor Steve counted 1,814). In past years, there were often lulls in visitors, this year there were no lulls. Constant people i the garden. They traverse mostly my driveway, so no harm done. I can't imagine what damage gets done to other gardener's grass paths!

The garden with the bowling ball totem...

2011-07-30T05:57:00.001-04:00

Buffalo hosts largest garden walk in US: wivb.com

We were supposed to go live in Ellen's Highland Ave. garden at 4:50 a.m. yesterday morning, but with severe thunderstorms anticipated, it was canceled because they can't set up their truck with the big antennae tower. Wimps.

I still got to the TV studio to record my bits, and later in the day, they were still able to connect with Ellen. Better to shoot the garden in the daylight as opposed to the darkness 4:00 a.m. Man, this is Buffalo- the bars are still open at 4:00 a.m.

My editorial in the newspaper. And Ellie's response.

2011-07-29T04:19:00.003-04:00

Yesterday a short bit I wrote ended up in the Buffalo News, which I've posted below, so you don't have to link over to read. If you've read my garden blog for any length of time, you'll see familiar themes in this editorial.

My favorite part of my mini essay is the one response it got on the Buffalo News website--from Ellie of course. Ellie is one of Garden Walk's most fierce advocates -- not for its tourism aspects, not because it makes properties pretty, or it brings in outside money, or changes peoples perceptions of a much-maligned city, but because "...people are looking out for each other." Well said Ellie.

ELLIE'S RESPONSE

It's not just Buffalo's image that's changed because of our gardens, but Buffalo itself, as this article says. People who care for gardens also care for their neighborhoods, and often reach out and get to know neighbors, and feel their ability to change things. It's pretty much free (not counting the labor!), it costs the city nothing, and it works better than any of the silver-bullet profit-making ideas that have us owing the banks and paying back interest for generations to come. It makes prospective homebuyers feel that, even if city services to a neighborhood are lacking, the neighborhood is safer because the neighbors are taking care of it and looking out for each other.
- ELLIE

MY EDITORIAL
Jim Charlier: Our generous gardeners make Buffalo a destination
When you think of cities known for their gardens, do any names come to mind? Savannah? Seattle? Portland? That’s precisely the area Buffalo could occupy in the minds of folks throughout the country.

Don’t laugh. We’re making headway. When you already have the nation’s largest garden tour (Garden Walk Buffalo, Saturday and Sunday), one of the country’s most well-designed park systems (Olmsted Parks), a historic and stunningly beautiful botanical gardens, a five-week-long annual summer garden tourism event (National Buffalo Garden Festival), generous and philanthropic landscape pros (WNYS Nursery &Landscape Association), 13 other local garden tours, dozens of gardens published in national magazines and a thriving and growing gardening culture/ social network, you’re already just about there.

ZIP code collection by Visit Buffalo Niagara during last year’s Garden Walk Buffalo indicated that 24 percent of attendees came from outside Erie and Niagara counties. A survey showed an average of $68 was spent by each visitor on food, tickets to other culturals and incidentals. With crowds estimated at 50,000 to 55,000, that means a direct economic impact of $3.4 million to $3.7 million.

The National Garden Festival Open Gardens today and Friday, gardenthemed bus tours Friday and other privately organized tours have shown the popularity of visiting private gardens. These, and buses from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Toronto for Garden Walk Buffalo, have created a garden tourism industry where there was none two years ago. The seed for our horticultural tourism was planted in 1995 when Marvin Lunenfeld and Gail McCarthy brought the idea of a garden tour to their Norwood Avenue block club. The 29 gardens have grown to 372 gardens in 2011.

Whole neighborhoods on the West Side have been improved, housing values in Garden Walk neighborhoods have increased, streets are more walkable, Buffalo looks beautiful, visitors are awed — and Garden Walk has given more than $30,000 in grants back to the neighborhoods for gardening beautification projects.

Did I mention Garden Walk Buffalo is absolutely free? Even the shuttle buses are free! All thanks to corporate sponsors and generous donors — with no government support or funding.

An event like this could not happen in many other cities—our greatest horticultural asset is our freakishly friendly gardeners, inviting sometimes thousands of visitors into their gardens. When you visit them this weekend on Garden Walk, please thank them for all they do for Buffalo.

I tell anyone who will listen that Buffalo’s Snow Belt/Rust Belt image will not be changed by witty ad campaigns, clever taglines (this, coming from an ad guy) or politicians, but by our generous and creative gardeners.

Jim Charlier is president of Garden Walk Buffalo and a member of the planning committee of the National Buffalo Garden Festival.

Garden Walk Buffalo helps fill hotels to maximum

2011-07-28T02:25:00.001-04:00

Hotels in Buffalo near or at capacity: wivb.com

With 50,000 expected to tour our gardens this weekend, and 24% coming from outside of Erie and Niagara Counties, that means there will be around 12,000 people coming from out of town. It's safe to assume the vast majority will be staying with family & friends. Even if we assume three-quarters of them will be with family and friends, that still leaves around 3,000 people looking for hotel rooms.

Holy crud.

The Arts & Crafts Garden

2011-07-26T15:58:00.003-04:00

"The Arts & Crafts Garden" a talk by Paul Duchscherer, this Thursday at the Roycroft Inn 7:30 p.m. Only $10. Call 716-652-5552 to reserve a spot.

I never even really thought about it. There's an Arts & Crafts style of garden? I guess that just makes sense. The Arts & Crafts style of home is very distinctive, and the whole philosophy of the Arts & Crafts movement was toward hand-crafted, artisan-created wares with a nod toward nature -- and away from mechanization and industrialization.

Well, Paul Duchscherer, an expert in all things Arts & Crafts (and a Buffalo native), will be here this week from San Francisco, to talk about what happens OUTSIDE the Arts & Crafts (or bungalow) homes.

You can read an interview with Paul by Jana Eisenberg of Buffalo Spree magazine here. He states that an Arts & Craft garden style is influenced by Japanese, European, Mediterranean and English cottage gardens. And when asked if he's surprised that Buffalo has become a hotbed for gardening, he says no and tells why.

Paul has appeared on This Old House, and the HGTV series Curb Appeal. He's written many books, including The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Home (1995), Inside the Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Interior (1997), Outside the Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Garden (1999), and Victorian Glory in San Francisco and the Bay Area (2001) and a series of small-format books called Bungalow Basics (2003-2004). Paul's most recent books, Beyond the Bungalow: Grand Homes in the Arts & Crafts Tradition (2005) and Along Bungalow Lines: Creating an Arts & Crafts Home (2006) were collaborations with photographer Linda Svendsen.

Before hand, for only $25, the Roycroft Inn is preparing a special menu of all locally-sourced dinner items. For reservations, call 716-652-5552.

The Roycroft Inn on the Roycroft Campus in East Aurora is the epitome of the Arts & Crafts style, being home to the Roycrofters, contemporaries to William Morris, Charles & Henry Greene, and Gustav Stickley.