Amaryllis bulb

I have been pulling some of my Amaryllis bulbs out of the basement and get them potted to re-grow, bloom, and brighten my mother’s kitchen. These are amazing plants: start as a baseball-sized bulb; stick it in a 6 inch pot with a little soil; a shoot grows 10- 16 inches, topped with red, white, or pink blooms; plant it in the garden to recover all summer; cut off the leaves and stick it in the basement for the winter to “nap;” and start all over the next spring.

This amazing plant reminds me of my favorite artist-scientist, George Washington Carver. His painting by Betsy Graves Reyneau in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, depicts him as an older man working at one of his favorite hobbies, breeding Amaryllis. At the risk of sounding over dramatic, the arc of Carver’s career was like the Amaryllis – a humble looking origin, opening to a spectacular blossom.

(via National Portrait Gallery)

Because there are many excellent books and articles about Carver, as well as two National Park Service sites in Missouri and Alabama memorializing his life and work, I am going to give only a brief sketch – one that may be at odds with the usual hagiographies. Read the rest of this entry »

We took a walk around the Art and Nature Park Wednesday afternoon. There was some sun but it was surprisingly chilly. What a change from what it was several years ago before the Grounds Guys started doing all the removal of weedy shrubs and trees. Wildflowers like Anemonella were up in multiple places but the animals were far more attention-getting.

Saw several feathered and furred creatures on the river – a great blue heron (twice), mallard and bufflehead ducks, and three beavers. One beaver was quite unperturbed by my presence as I hung back to try to get some better shots. I started taking pictures when it was far out in the river. Read the rest of this entry »

To judge by the few blogs I’ve posted about happenings out here in the world of horticulture, one would think that I’m always whistling Zippity-do-dah in the peaceable kingdom. Wonderful as nature is and as much as I love my job, sometimes things do not go as hoped. So here is a review of some of the disagreeable occurrences that occurred in the garden this year, including a warning about what lurks among the plants.

(via IMA Flickr 2004)

Bambi is a browser. This does not mean that deer tend to thumb through magazines at the newsstand instead of making a purchase. No, they browse in the sense of “chew off the buds and tender twigs of trees and shrubs.” Sure, deer eat grass and hostas and other herbaceous plants, but they have a fondness for woody plants enjoying the young stems and sweet buds of fruit trees and shrubs – I need those buds for next spring’s blossoms. And they like to take naps in the flower beds. So, if you see Odocoileus virginianus out in the gardens, please suggest they trot back over to 100 Acres or Crown Hill. Read the rest of this entry »

Had thought I learned all I needed to know about geometry back in the 10th grade. Repeated visits to the Miller House over the past few years have forced me to further appreciate another aspect of the topic, with Dan Kiley’s use of the medium in creating his masterpiece of modernist landscape design.

View through the orchard

Though much of landscape architecture involves the careful manipulation of spaces, the gardens at Miller House represent one of the best examples of the craft. Working closely with the home’s architect, Eero Saarinen, Kiley laid out a plan which closely reflects and reinforces the strict geometry of the residence. As with his many other commissions, Mr. Kiley used a limited palette of plants. This was not to be a garden of show-stopping color and horticultural diversity. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I wasn’t a plant slut dragging myself down the streets of horticultural whoredom searching for another roll in the beds and borders. Life would be easier. There wouldn’t be that constant lusting after just about everything new on the market. You’d think I would have learned by now. Because frequently, way too frequently, the new love turns out to really just be a one-season stand, not even worthy of being introduced to the perennial family.

At least with experience I am able to spot some of the n’er-do-well types before they break my heart – “Oh. You again. Go throw your piddly-assed blooms in somebody else’s flower bed. Just seeing something like you again makes me want to go right out and buy a 50 gallon barrel of RoundUp.” That can be especially true when I can see it’s just the straight species that somebody has tarted up with a cultivar name or a trademark like a bunch of cheap make-up from the Village Pantry. C’mon! Who the hell you people think you’re dealing with here?

But all that said, I still get all excited when the catalogues come out or somebody introduces a plant at PPA’s New Plant Forum. My cynical side is forever at war with my everything-is-roses-and-clover side. A battle of epic proportions. “This plant really could be different!” I really do believe it, at least until I fully process the info. Wouldn’t you rather think it was new and improved and impossible to live without? Ah, infatuation. Maybe it will develop into truly perennial love? Read the rest of this entry »