Carla’s Garden Tour

Holland Park has some Zen like features but fails my Zen test. The classic elements of a successful Zen are stone, sand or gravel, water, plants and space. Then there is a question of balance between yin and yang. Cramped or cluttered gardens inhibit the flow of spirit so space is potentially the key ingredient of a Zen garden.

Garden Sprouts is a program I run at the South Carolina Botanical Garden that is designed for preschoolers and caregivers. This class takes place once a week for three months every spring and fall. The goal is to share age-appropriate nature-based activities with children, who are mostly three to five years old, but sometimes younger or older. Over time I have learned the caregivers also learn things they never knew, enjoy the activities immensely, and are able to connect more deeply to the natural world through this program. The structure of this hour-long program is three-fold, we begin inside with a book related to the theme of the day, a walk or outdoor activity, and finally a craft. In this blog, I would like to share some of the books, outdoor activities, and crafts we have done in this class.

WHO VISITED: We met Twitter friends like @GardenGuyKenn (all the way from Michigan) and other blog-commenters like Bobster (all the way from Rhode Island) and Leslie (from Connecticut) and Ailsa and Patti, from Ottawa, Ontario.We met Joyce from Iowa and Michelle from Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania (31 miles from Wilkes-Barre, apparently) and Sandra from Clarks Summit (also Pennsylvania, 8 miles from Scranton) and Julie from Reston, Virginia, and Stephanie from Bainbridge Island, Washington, and Stephanie from Seattle (both Stephanies, both from prime garden country…a coincidence?). Someone signed in as being from Scotland, but can that be so? And all of you, thank you, whether from a mile down the road or a country or ocean away…or whether you just visited our virtual tour yesterday.Some of t

Where did we fail?Is it the wrong orchid for our conditions, or did we do wrong by the right orchid? Oh, dear.I sought advice from Greg Griffis, the orchid grower for Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where the annual Orchid

THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.

Saturday’s event included a giant plant sale by Broken Arrow Nursery (shopping in my own driveway?–divine!) and a triple-homicide performance piece by Jack the Demon Cat (in front of large numbers of guests, of course; he loves an audience almost as much as he loves chipmunks).  As ever, my massive stand of common old rhubarb (above) got the most “What is it?” questions of all…but here are the other top contenders:The SlideshowClick on the first thumbnail to start the slides, then toggle between images using your keyboard arrows or the ones beside the captions. Links to stories on some of the subjects are included below the slides.Links to the FavoritesHow I grow massive garlic Bottlebrush buckeye,Aesculus parviflora, beloved multiseason giant My favorite bawdy primrose, Primula kisoana Golden cutleaf staghorn su

Whether you get technical or go generic with your terminology, it’s time to tuck tubers and corms and tuberous roots and rhizomes and yes, even some true bulbs into the soil for years of enjoyment. But which ones, and how?With help from horticulturist Jonathan Wright of Chanticleer Garden, who joined me on my public radio show and podcast, we’ll learn some less-than-expected uses of bulbs, like massed in lawns [photo below, at Chanticleer], and layered in containers. Plus: tips such as which bulbs are more animal-proof tha

Thanks also to Carol Gracie, whose spring wildflower lecture down the road at the local church was a big hit.I can’t really capture the in-person experience of touring my hilly, 2.3-acre place for you here, so instead I try to show what people asked about, in the slideshow below. Things like the ultra-fragrant and chaming flowers of the American fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus, below) that they found along the way on their walkabouts.open day slideshowHOW THE SLIDESHOW WORKS: Simply hover your cursor over the right side of the first image, and an arrow for navigation will display; use it to move from slide to slide. Note: A few are vertical images (you can tell which by the shape of the thumbnail), so even better with those is to click on the photo, and it will pop up full size on your screen, with its caption beneath. You can also watch the whole slideshow by clicking on the first

Maybe the best answer to that question is one I found on page 28 of the new book “The Art of Gardening: Design Inspiration and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer,” where it says:“It is a garden for the sake of being a garden.”Bill Thomas (above photo, back row, far right), came to Chanticleer Garden in 2003, as director and head gardener, after 26 years at nearby Longwood Gar

You can order the plan, a pdf, from Wave Hill’s shop. My pairs were adapted from there–made in cedar, not pine; the arms slightly longer; the wood slightly thicker and so on–and a savvy carpenter can adjust the angle of the seat and back before screwing everything together, to be more upright or less so. Follow the plans to the letter…or have some fun with them. Order the Wave Hill chair plan by calling the Wave Hill Shop at 718.549.3200 x 249, or email jenahb at wavehill dot org.Want them painted? My expert woodworking neighbor recommends using Benjamin Moore Aura exterior on top of an oil-based primer to help stop any tannin bleed (assuming that the material is cedar, which is the best choice if you plant for long life of the chairs, or to leave them outdoors in winter). If there are knots, use oil-based Binz primer on the knots only.You may recall my recent interview

For a Garden Conservancy Open Day here, it was relatively sane and quiet: just 175ish guests, and no lectures or workshops on the agenda, the way there usually are. Just the garden, and the plant sale by Broken Arrow Nursery–our fourth time this season together.Visitors, and many bumblebees and other pollinators looking for a late-season meal, were attracted to easy-to-grow ‘September Charm’ anemone, which has been in bloom for at least six weeks already.My houseplants, including various bromeliads and many large fancy-leaf begonias, will soon head indoors for winter, with colder nights approaching.Even thou

You may ask: Now why would I want to go to a talk about a historic and grand National Trust property situated in another climate altogether, a place long on fantastic walls and fountains, connecting outdoor “hallways,” magnificent topiaries, and hedges of box, hornbeam and yew? (As is probably the case in your garden, I have not one of those things here.)On a visit maybe 20 years ago, Hidcote was the initial place I saw such formal lines contrasted against a “jungle style of planting.” Even though each garden area is clearly enclosed and its shape well-defined, as in the famed Red Border up top, the plants in individual beds within each area were invited to just have at it, to spill out into the paths here and there, and to spill into one another in a riot of color, texture and intimate connection that’s both restrained and unrestrained all at once. Delightful.And then, it was this that made me perk up at news of the upcoming lecture:On Garden Conservancy Open Days at my