Summer Color 2015 I

     Like I did last year about this time, I want to make use of a weekend spent inside. It is too cold to venture out, and the garden has been dusted with some of that horrible white stuff, so it will be a good time to look back at this past summer. As I said last year "These are all shots of the annual display beds taken last summer at the Norfolk Botanical Garden where I work. My team is responsible for their design, planting, and maintenance, and it takes a lot of collaboration to pull off. It is hard work, but we do get help, and I think it is one of the best parts of my job."

     Let's start at the Front Entrance where a busted blue and white Greek dinghy was our jumping off point. It's been a long time since the boat held water, in fact the bottom was mostly gone which was an advantage using it as a planter full of Lantana 'New Gold'. We planted edible rice behind it to evoke a marsh, and blue plumbago (Plumbago auriculata) and Evolvulus 'Blue Daze' to evoke water. The large elephant ears (Alocasia x calidora 'Persian Palm Maxi') where for a fun textural contrast.

     We are fortunate to have space in our nursery to overwinter tropicals and other tender plants, and we like to reuse some of them from year to year in different combinations, and in different locations. The previous summer we loved how well Cyperus papyrus King Tut® did for us and wanted a repeat at the Toll Booth, where it formed a backdrop for Colocasia esculenta 'Coffee Cups', Persian shield (Strobilanthes dyerianus), and hot pink New Guinea impatiens.

     One of my favorite combination of colors includes various oranges with blacks and smoky purples, and I was able to indulge this in front of the Visitor's Center. The main plant was a dark sugar cane, Saccharum officinarum 'Pele's Smoke', whose height, color, and movement I love. We received a small clump of it in a plant trade with the Virginia Zoo, and our propagator was able to make about a dozen additional plants for me.  Around its base we planted Zinnia 'Zowie Yellow Flame', a bronze sweet potato vine, 'Black Pearl' ornamental pepper, Euphorbia 'Diamond Frost', a black basil (which was quickly overwhelmed by the other players), 'Sedona' coleus, coral Stachytarpheta, and one of the absolute best annual lanantas, 'Landmark Sunrise Rose'. Somewhat sad to me, we are converting some annual bed spaces to more sustainable plantings of perennials and shrubs, and this was the last time annuals were to be used in this bed.

     Within in sight of the above bed is one also now no longer planted with annuals. Here we used a few of the same plants, but swapped Cordyline 'Red Sensation' for the sugar cane.

     In the Sensory Garden we had mixed results, mainly due to soils that tend to hold moisture and a summer of several wet periods. Our main floral components were to be Bidens 'Goldilocks Rocks', which didn't like the extra moistue, and Lantana 'Little Lucky Red' which did poorly everywhere it was planted, not just in this garden. The bananas, coleus, bamboo muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa), red fountain grass, and purple hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus) seemed to like the extra moisture.

     In containers it can be easier to control the moisture, and in large matching bowls on a terrace behind the Visitor's Center we chose some very drought tolerant plants, which did well all summer. In the center of each pot was an Agave americana, which was surrounded by several varieties of sedum, Gomphrenea 'QIS Carmine', two colors from the Pizazz series of Portulaca, a yellow Lantana and my new favorite trailer, Dichondra 'Silver Falls'.

     On the same terrace under a large overhang, we kept a collection of potted tropicals and annuals. It is a good way of bringing things out of the nursery for our visitors to see, and the tropicals thrive in our summer heat and humidity.

     We will end this post here before I risk losing your interest, or taxing your bandwidth. Next time we will venture out a little further into the garden.

The Meadow Garden at Longwood

     I became fond of meadows at an early age. Growing up in the Piedmont of Virginia on the outskirts of Richmond, our then relatively new neighborhood was surrounded by several meadows that made for great play and exploration. Only a few years earlier they were likely to have been cow pastures. I also have a fond memory of dove hunting with my father on a late fall morning in a wild meadow. I was more interested in the swaying grasses, odd seed pods, and the burs and patches sticking to my pants than I was in shooting doves. Along the coast here in Tidewater, meadows are very temporary situations - clear a patch of ground, turn your back, and a forest of loblolly pines has taken root. With this nearly innate fondness, I really enjoyed my October visit with two of my co-workers to Longwood Gardens' Meadow Garden.

     Either by design or circumstance, one of the main entrances to the Meadow Garden takes you past Longwood's Italian Water Garden, creating quite the contrast in gardening styles. Personally, I think classic Italian Gardens are best left in Italy.

     The entrance takes you through a wooded area, and on the day we visited the maples were showing color and casting shadows. One of several beautifully designed bridges leads you over a lake and to an equally beautiful pavilion where volunteers orient visitors and answer questions. I wish I had taken photos of these structures, but I was distracted by other things.

     To augment what was already here, Longwood added masses of additional plants from 100 species that are both appropriate to the site, and appropriate to the Brandywine Valley - all planted and managed using current best ecological practices. To experience the Meadow Garden there are trails and boardwalks throughout its 86 acres that lead visitors through the surrounding wood edges, over wetlands, and through the meadow itself. A few of the trails, and vistas, lead to the Webb Farmhouse, built in the 1700's, and revealing another, cultural, layer of the garden. I asked one of the farmhouse volunteers what her her favorite season was in the garden. She said late summer when many of the flowers were at their peak. With the sun, the colors, and all the birdsong, I told her I couldn't imagine it being any nicer than it was that day.

     Even though we knew that it took an incredible amount of work to make it look so, the garden felt incredibly natural and very easy on the land. We left hoping we had just seen the future of horticulture.