The same can be said of taking time to enjoy the labors of your gardening. Rarely is it not lovely to stroll through your garden in the morning, the earlier the better some days, I admit. Come afternoon it is much lovelier to stroll through your shaded garden – if you have one. And again, come evening the temperature usually moderates so it can be nice to do the daily inspection or sit out in the garden and just relax.

But you need some plants out there or why bother? Something that does well in the shade. Something that shows well in the evening light. Something not too demanding as it is July and hot and humid and you are a little weary of garden chores. How about a shrub? How about a white flowering shrub? How about a tough shrub? How about a native white-flowering tough shrub for shade that also does well in the sun? How about Hydrangea arborescens, smooth hydrangea?

This plant can be seen back home in southern Indiana growing on the cut bank of the gravel road, clinging to the soil, and live no matter what the weather has been. You gotta be tough to grow along a gravel road. Trust me. That’s the ‘hood I grew up in.

Hydrangea arborescens can grow from three to five feet tall and wide, on average. Unlike the more sought after Hydrangea macrophylla (big blue and pink blooms), this hydrangea blooms on new wood so you can cut it back every year if you want and it still blooms (this also reduces the size somewhat). It will even bloom after one of our vicious winters. And yes, I know many new forms of H. macrophylla claim to bloom wondrously every year, but I have yet to see one truly pull that off. I want them to, yet the performance just doesn’t seem to match the promotional literature in my experience. But I will keep trialing them.

If you are going to grow H. arborescens in the sun, which is fine, make sure your soil is good and be prepared to give it some extra water. Also don’t be surprised if it wilts in the heat of the midday sun. It’ll perk right back up in the evening.

The straight species has a lacecap type of flower.

All those tiny flowers are fertile – they can make seed. The bigger flowers are sterile – they are just for show. Cultivars have been selected that have all sterile flowers.

These are much showier. I won’t say prettier because that may or may not be true. Personally, it depends on my mood of the moment.

You can choose a plant based on the leaves, as well as flowers. H. arborescens subspecies radiata has silvery undersides.

Even light breezes can move the leaves and reveal this hidden beauty.

The cultivar “Samantha” is selected from this form and has large heads of sterile flowers. This is not our finest plant.

We have had some Phytophthora problems with our “Samantha” plants, but I don’t know if that is a culture issue because of where we planted them or a sign of a plant susceptible to this disease. Or did the plants have the disease when we received them? No other H. arborescens plants have had a problem here so I’m not worrying about it just yet.

Another cultivar is “Hayes Starburst.” I am loving the bloom on this selection. The flowers are double and the sepals (not really petals) are just a little more pointed.

I have a clump of five young plants in one of the beds on the Sutphin Mall. They look good so far in this challenging spot.

For those who want a pink hydrangea, there are pink forms of H. arborescens available. The first to hit the market is from Proven Winners.^® Invincibelle^® Spirit (“NCHA 1″) was developed in a breeding program that used a wild pink form crossed with the old standard “Annabelle” that has giant, white ball-shaped flowers. The pink color is very strong when the bloom begins.

It does fade, as you can see from this photo, but that is to be expected. I bet a little afternoon shade would help hold the color too.

One dollar from each plant sold goes to breast cancer research.

Watch for more pinks to appear soon.

Here is a shot of my new and improved Annabelle, a cultivar called Incrediball^® (“Abetwo”).

It has stronger stems, plus more and larger flowers than Annabelle. I have seen the blooms side by side and they are larger. My plant needs another year to prove it doesn’t flop. You can find more about it and Invincibelle^® Spirit in this Proven Winners^® press release from 2010.

Another very nice cultivar is White Dome (“Dardom”). The name comes from the dome shaped flowers.

It is considered a more vigorous growing selection. Our plants in the Southwest Border Garden have done very well.

The blooms of H. arborescens make good cut flowers and dried flowers as well. I especially like the large ball-types picked when green and dried. They hold that nice green shade for a long, long time.

So there you have it – a tough, easy to grow, long-blooming, reliable-blooming, good foliaged shrub for shade or sun. So smooth…….. hydrangea.

Artworks that are displayed outdoors face different risks than those that are kept inside. The pigeon, for example, is a dangerous bird to bronze sculptures; the acids in guano can actually corrode a bronze patina in a fairly short time. Another risk public artworks face is that we simply stop caring. When we stop noticing the artworks that surround us, their significance and cultural context is lost.

(via Flickr user travelbex)

Enter Wikipedia Saves Public Art (WSPA) which we created as part of our Fall IUPUI Museum Studies class (you might remember our student, Elizabeth Basile, blogged about her personal experience with the project back in December). The logic of this project is to put information about public artworks into Wikipedia so that people won’t forget or stop caring about them. Yes, there’s a lot of guano in Wikipedia, but with its millions of viewers a day and openness to participation, it’s a vital resource for the cultural sector.

Before we started WSPA, there were only a handful of articles in Wikipedia about public art in Indianapolis—not so good for a city that brags about having more monuments than any city other than Washington, DC. Through our efforts, there are now 57 articles (and more each week) about local public artworks on Wikipedia. Since we started WSPA, our articles have been viewed more than 66,000 times. Now we are thinking big about how WSPA can truly become a global project and how to get more people to make articles about public art in their own town.

Recently, we’ve had a lot of help from Lori Byrd Phillips (an IUPUI Museum Studies graduate student) and Sarah Stierch (a soon-to-be George Washington University Graduate student, who runs her own blog, Sarah – Your Favorite Museum Intern. Together, we’ve begun developing “The Process” to help Wikipedians and public art advocates translate information contained in public databases into Wikipedia articles. For example, did you know that volunteers working through Heritage Preservation’s Save Outdoor Sculpture! surveyed Indianapolis in 1992-1994 and found 205 sculptures? Information about all of them is available online through the Smithsonian’s public database.

Thanks to Magnus for making the application that allowed us to make this chart

But a lot has happened in Indy’s world of public art since the early 1990s. That’s why actually going out and visiting the artworks is important—to verify the information contained in the Smithsonian’s database, to make note of any changes, and to use the tools of 2010 to research and share information about those changes. In addition to finding artworks surveyed by the SOS! folks, you can research new artworks that have been installed across the city. We’re grateful to have our laptops, cell phones, and Web-based tools that have allowed us to create these cool things:

Here’s the Flickr map that we are using to plot the location of the more than 500 images we’ve taken of public art in Indianapolis. By mapping them in Flickr we also resolve their GPS coordinates.

Here’s the Google map that we’re using to plot the original 205 SOS! entries from the Smithsonian database. While the Flickr map is a lot easier to use, we are also experimenting with Google Maps because its satellite maps are so much better.

And here are two Gowalla trips we’ve made for Indianapolis:

IUPUI Public Art Collection Highlights Tour.

Top 10 Public Artworks in Indianapolis.

Gowalla is an iPhone-based app that has a lot of potential for helping to geo-locate and photo document public artworks. Look, for example, at the number of people that have checked in and taken a photograph at the Texas Rangers Monument in Austin.

These tools have helped us locate, document, and share information about hundreds of public artworks in just a few weeks. With this information we will continue making Wikipedia articles about public art in Indianapolis. As mobile technology spreads (particularly GPS-based technologies), opportunities to care for public art will also grow.

Wikipedia Saves Public Art. Logo designed in 2009 by Michael Mikulay.

With all of this in mind, we’re excited about travelling to Denver next Tuesday to participate in the one-day workshop, Wikimedia@MW2010. Perhaps we’ll have a chance to discuss how WSPA is an effective tool for documenting collections of public art that are not well known beyond their distinct local context. Also in Denver, we’ll be joining Rob Stein to listen to Max Anderson and Samuel J. Klein (Wikimedia Board of Directors) give the keynote presentations and then work through important issues and ideas raised by other participants. Our experiences with WSPA have given us a few ideas for the cultural sector that we’d like to share in advance of Wikimedia@MW2010:

* In the spirit of the Encyclopédie and in particular the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers, Wikipedia can become the central hub of information about the materials, tools, and techniques artists have used and are currently using in their practices. Likewise, Wikipedia can become the central hub of information for the materials, tools, and techniques art conservators use in their work. An ideal article about a public artwork would include a material and technical description that was linked to corresponding and accurate information within Wikipedia.

* Public art today is often made using “current technology,” which presents an entire new set of issues. For example, Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain in Chicago is comprised of thousands of LEDs. Many technologies used in art quickly become outdated or difficult to update after a few short years. What if we could develop a similar “Conservation Status” for technologies like what exists for endangered animal species like the Bengal Tiger?

* Cultural institutions and public repositories should be encouraged to share their out-of-copyright images of art and put them in Wikimedia Commons.

* Finally, wouldn’t it be cool if the article about Art21 and all of its seasons was as thoroughly detailed and researched as iCarly’s?

What WSPA really needs, though, is for more people to make articles about public art in Wikipedia. Why not try it? If you need some inspiration, check out the “Template”, “Showcase,”, and “Open tasks”. And be sure to use the “talk pages” to leave feedback, questions, or ideas so we can all work together to make the project better.

Everything we know about Wikipedia and the other digital tools discussed above, we’ve learned by using our computers to experiment and engage in dialogue with more experienced contributors. (Wikipedia even gives “newbies” a sandbox to play in!) If you care about cultural heritage, you’ll find many kindred spirits in Wikipedia. That’s why we’d like to see you on Wikipedia, where we can work together and maybe even enjoy some Wiki Love. In an effort to bring some of the energy from Wikimedia@MW2010 directly back to Indianapolis, we’ve invited Liam Wyatt (Vice President, Wikimedia Australia) to give a public lecture at the Herron School of Art and Design on April 19 at 1:30 p.m. in the Basile Auditorium.

The IMA Design Team used creative methods to establish the maps and wayfinding signs in 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park. Join them as they ‘get lost’ to help others find their way:

When I started at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the fall of 2004, the opening of the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park seemed so far in the future it was laughable to me that we even had meetings about it. Fall 2009 seemed like an eternity away. For God’s sake, I thought to myself, I’ll be nearly 30 years old when the park finally opens! Now with the recent proliferation of my first gray hairs, 30 doesn’t seem that far away, and with the plans for the park taking shape neither does opening day.

The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park has always seemed a bit ambiguous to me. With the solidity of the Museum and its galleries and history of Oldfields-Lilly House & Gardens, the Art & Nature Park seemed like the elusive Holy Ghost of the IMA’s trinity. Scheduled to open in the fall of 2009, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park has a history that goes well beyond my time at the IMA. Discussions about the use of the space have been ongoing for decades. However, over the last few months, plans for the park have really come together and as we get closer and closer to the opening date, I can now see more clearly the future of the 100 acres of woodland, wetland and meadows adjacent to the Museum.

Want to learn more about the Art & Nature Park?

1. I would suggest visiting the Art & Nature Park section of the IMA’s Web site to read up on the basics. Find out what has been done already. Learn about the inaugural artists commissioned for the park. And discover some of the goals and plans for the space.

2. I highly encourage you to come to the Art & Nature Park Public Forum tonight at 7:30 PM at the IMA. Here’s the official description of the event: Maxwell L. Anderson, the Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the IMA, will welcome the audience and give an overview of the vision for the Park. Mark Zelonis, the Ruth Lilly Deputy Director of Environmental and Historic Preservation, will present an overview of the nature found at the site. Lisa D. Freiman, senior curator of contemporary art and director of the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, will present an overview of the artist projects and the visitor center.

Following these brief presentations, those present will have the chance to ask questions of key players about plans for the park. Special guests will include representatives from neighborhood groups and representatives from environmental organizations.

3. I would love for you to share your thoughts on our blog. Let’s start an online dialogue about The Park. To date, what have been your experiences with The Park? What interests you the most about the space? What are your concerns and comments about the project? Please feel free to share your thoughts here.