The Garden Worm blog Digging up the best dirt on gardening!

November 2, 2012

Fall 2012 at the Phipps

Filed under: Fall,Slideshows,Travel — Judy @ 12:54 am

We had a great trip to Pittsburgh again at the end of October to celebrate Kelsey’s birthday. A requisite visit to the Phipps Conservatory was in order and the Fall show was outstanding! I have never seen so many varieties of chrysanthemum and all were beautifully displayed. Did you know that there is a hanging basket type? It was gorgeous drooping from the wall planters and, of course, the hanging baskets.

The usual plantings were interspersed with the seasonal displays and every time we go, it looks different, yet the same. It would be an incredible place for someone who loves plants like I do to work.

A note before viewing the slideshow: In slide #4, the plant with the unusual bright red cone-like center is a Zululand cycad. This plant is native to Mozambique in South Africa. Its leaf fronds resemble a holly fern and it has both a male and a female form. This one is a female as it has only one central cone and is stemless (sessile). The male bears several cones on short stalks and is somewhat less colorful.

Slideshow for Phipps Fall 2012

They do such beautiful displays at the Phipps, don’t they?

June 2, 2012

Linwood Gardens

Filed under: Flowers,Shows and Tours,Slideshows,Spring,Travel — Judy @ 5:28 pm

Another sister trip – this time to Linwood Gardens in Pavilion, New York to see the Tree Peony Festival of Flowers. We love going here, nice drive into the countryside, and you just feel calmed wandering around, seeing the gardens, and looking out over the vista. The Festival is open only when the tree peonies are in bloom, usually mid-May.

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Linwood was built between 1901 and 1910 as the country home of William Henry Gratwick II from Buffalo. The original garden areas and portions of the Summer House were designed by architect Thomas Fox. William H. Gratwick III (W.G.) moved to Linwood in 1933 and started the Rare Plants Nursery. W.G. was an artist, a landscape architect, and a horticulturist, and much of the sculpture and new garden areas were his contributions.

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W.G. worked for Dr. Arthur Saunders, the first significant breeder of peonies and tree peonies in America and who taught chemistry at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. Dr. Saunders made the cross between the rare yellow peony (Paeonia lutea) and the strong-stemmed Japanese varieties and obtained 70 new beautiful and vigorous hybrids. He was also responsible for 17,000 new cultivars of various types including these 70 tree peonies and 300 herbaceous peonies. Upon his death, his tree peonies passed to William Gratwick who continued his breeding work with a friend, Nassos Daphnis, at Linwood Gardens.

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Tree peonies are known as the “King of Flowers,” held sacred in the ancient monasteries of Asia and grown as an exclusive treasure of the Imperial Palaces. In the 8th century, moutan (the Chinese tree peony) was brought to Japan by Buddhist monks. There it was improved with clearer coloring, elegant and more delicate flowers. The tree peony eventually appeared in England and America in the 19th century.

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As compared to the herbaceous peony that many of us know and love, the tree peony develops rough-barked, woody stems that continue to grow until a shrub about four to six feet tall and wide is formed. It does not die back to the ground in winter. Additionally, the tree peony blooms about two weeks earlier with generally larger blooms. They are hardy in our area and long-lived, growing best in rich, well-drained soil and protection from strong afternoon sun.

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There were so many beautiful tree peonies at Linwood Gardens and I’ve put more pictures of them and the grounds in a slideshow.

Does this inspire you to visit Linwood Gardens next year, or maybe find a spot for a tree peony in your own gardens?

March 28, 2012

Blooming in March

Filed under: Flowers,Our gardens,Slideshows,Spring — Judy @ 12:07 am

We have had the craziest winter/spring so far. Temps have been hovering in the 50-60 range with occasional forays up into the low 70s. The lack of a decent snow cover and good length of cold weather have pushed the plants into an early bloom, up to a month or so early! This is quite worrisome as we will surely get some more frosts, possibly even snow, before it finally warms up for good, and this can mean trouble with a capital T.

Caution! Scientific stuff coming up! So, first of all, do you know your Hardiness Zone? You can find it here on the new USDA interactive zone map. In general, your Hardiness Zone number indicates the maximum cold it may get in your area and plants that grow well in your zone can withstand these temperatures in midwinter and survive. Based on this map, we might be considered 5b-6a around here, but looking solely at this winter, we fell in the zone 8 range! Why does this matter? As the temperatures fall in beginning of winter, plants become acclimated to the lower temps and develop more hardiness and resistance to plant death. When the temps start warming back up, the plants become de-acclimated to low temps, hardiness is reduced, and plant death or winter injury can occur if sudden drops in temperature are experienced. You can read more about this here if you are so inclined.

The bottom line is that the peach trees, in particular, that are blooming now, along with everything else, are particularly susceptible to frost injury and those low temps that are sure to come may destroy our little peach crop. Crossing my fingers! Other plants may be OK, but with a shortened blooming period. We shall see what happens.

On a related note, I’ve got a slideshow for you of some of the blooms in my garden now. Sorry, my camera croaked so these are from my cell phone and the quality is not very good.

What is blooming in your gardens now? Are you in danger of further frosts too?

March 9, 2012

Robert Treman Park

Filed under: Parks,Slideshows,Travel,Winter — Judy @ 9:57 pm

We had a beautiful, light-jacket-kind-of-weather day to take a short hike into Robert H. Treman State Park in Ithaca, NY. The park wasn’t really open for the season yet, but a few of the trails were available for the intrepid/curious. This park features 12 waterfalls (including 115 foot tall Lucifer Falls) as Enfield Creek winds down a narrow, deep gorge on its way to the Cayuga Lake inlet. There are lots of pretty cascades, and plunges, and flumes to be seen. Only the upper part of the Gorge trail was open so a trip back is definitely is in order.

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