Brine Garden, Pawling, NY

Posted on 2009-08-30 by admin

A path in the Brine Garden in Pawling in Dutchess County, NY, north of New York City.

Last Sunday, Blog Widow and I drove up to Pawling, NY and spent the day with a friend of ours. I also got to meet Julia and Duncan Brine. In their landscape design firm, they specialize in native plants, so I was excited to meet them and visit their gardens.

The gardens ramble over six acres. In contrast to the familiar limitations of urban gardening, it may as well have been 600 acres. The property slopes, steeply at times, from the unpaved entrance drive down to Route 22. Water flows through the property. The day of my visit, precipitation seamlessly cycled through mist, drizzle, sprinkles. There was nearly a film of water over the gardens. I’m not exaggerating. My friend’s sneakers became soaked just from walking through the long, wet grass. And it was wet enough for this fellow to crawl over the ground to his burrow of mud at the base of a log.

With the almost constant rains we’ve had this summer, everything was lush, full, and green. The rampant growth encroached from all sides, overtaking and disguising any intended boundaries of the cleared areas. This contributed to the fluid expression of “path” at play in the Brine Garden. Narrows suggest passage; wider bays encourage a slower pace.

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Brine Garden

Native Plant Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden

Posted on 2009-06-10 by admin

At the Chicago Botanic Garden, our first garden stop for Chicago Spring Fling 2009, I made a pilgrimage to the Native Plant Garden. I was surprised that most of the plants were familiar to me as Northeastern natives. However, I had never before encountered Geum triflorum, Prairie Smoke. I saw a lot more of over that weekend, but I saw it here first.

Even close up, it reminds me of trails of smoke rising from a candle wick that’s just been extinguished. I bumped into the staff photographer who took the group shot of us just outside the visitor’s center. I asked her what she liked in this garden; she said this was one of her favorite flowers.

Most of the Baptisia were not yet fully open here as they were at the Lurie Garden we visited later in the day. They looked like grass eels rising from the lake bed.

On closer inspection they looked slightly less reptilian.

I did find one handsome stand of Baptisia australis.

Another sinuous plant was this beautiful Carpinus caroliniana, Hornbeam. Another common name is Musclewood. It’s easy to see why.

I find beauty in the green things, whose forms gain prominence.

Carex grayi, Bur Sedge

Parthenocissus quinquefolia, Virginia Creeper

A grass I neglected to identify.

Aristolochia macrophylla, Dutchman’s Pipevine

The big star when I visited was Dodecathon meadia, Eastern Shooting Star, an eastern woodland wildflower with which I am familiar. I grew it in Garden #1 in the East Village decades ago. During my Chicago visit, it appeared and reappeared in drifts, and in its full color range, from pristine white to pink to deep rose.

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Links

Chicago Botanic Garden

Edible Gardens, Chicago Botanic Garden

Posted on 2009-06-08 by admin

The first garden visited by Chicago Spring Fling 2009 was the Chicago Botanic Garden. Spread out over nine islands, the Garden is huge: 385 acres. One could spend an entire day there and not see all of it.

The Fruit and Vegetable Garden occupies one of the islands of the Chicago Botanic Garden. There are several areas within this garden, showcasing orchards, vine fruits, vegetables, and other edibles. Here’s the entrance display that greets you after you cross the bridge to the island.

All of the display gardens were laid out beautifully. The formal designs and beautifully constructed hardscape would serve many kinds of gardens well. For food production, the structures assure interest and orderliness during the less tidy seasons.

Glam Shots

Violets, Parsley, and Cabbage

Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’

Potato Flowers

I did not disturb the Bollworm Traps in the orchard, but I did peek inside. No bollworm moth action when I visited.

Some Viola. I want to make some candied violets someday. I don’t know what the best species or variety would be.

Flowers of some Brassica.

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Links

Chicago Botanic Garden

Shedd Aquarium, Chicago

Posted on 2009-06-04 by admin

I got to Chicago early last week, ahead of the Chicago Spring Fling 2009 (CSF) weekend meetup of garden bloggers from across the country, so I could do a little touristy stuff. I didn’t get out as much as I had planned; mostly, I corrected my sleep deprivation. But I did get to go to the Shedd Aquarium.

When I was a boy, I lived in Florida for six years. That period of my childhood secured many of the interests that sustain me today, including photography, cosmology and space exploration, general natural history, and oceanography. I’ve lived my entire life no more than 20 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and most of it less than 5 miles. If you had asked me, when I was 10 or 11 years old, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have responded: “A neurosurgeon, or a marine biologist.” (Yes, I have always been a geek, and proud of it.)

So, when I travel, I try to make a pilgrimage to whatever oceanographic attractions area nearby. Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium has been on my list to see. So it was easy to make that my first (and, it turned out, only) side-trip during CSF.

I didn’t know that much of what I saw was brand new. I also didn’t anticipate that, by mid-morning, I would be jostling for viewing space with thousands of school-children of all ages. I would have stayed longer, but I needed to eat. The line for the cafeteria went down the exhibit hall, so I had to leave earlier than I wanted to forage elsewhere.

Belugas

Sea Otters

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Links

Shedd Aquarium

Model Railroad Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden

Posted on 2009-06-01 by admin

Last Friday morning, the Chicago Spring Fling meetup of garden bloggers traveled to the Chicago Botanic Garden, one of the sponsors of the event. They provided a shuttle between the train station and the garden, free entry, and passes for the tram and this area: the Model Railroad Garden.

I had imagined a small kiddie ride of a train traveling through a garden. I thought it unseemly that a botanic garden should have an amusement ride in it. I also doubted that such a machine would have trouble handling my mass. So I wasn’t planning to visit this garden, despite the free pass.

However, as I left the landscape gardens behind, the entrance to this garden was right there. Since I had a free pass, I thought, “What the heck.” Similar to the New York Botanical Gardens annual display, this garden features, yes, model trains running continuously among model houses, buildings, dioramas and other scenes made of plant material. The difference is that this is outdoors, on and in the ground, with permanent plantings.

As a garden, it didn’t move me. But that’s not what this is about. It’s model trains. Leave your cynicism behind.

The 7,500-square-foot Model Railroad Garden features 17 garden-scale (G-scale) trains on 1,600 feet of track. The garden-scale trains are 1/29th the size of life-sized trains. Train and garden enthusiasts, young and old, return year after year for the delightful sights and sounds of the miniature trains traversing high and low through tunnels, across bridges, and around buildings — all intricately handcrafted with natural materials, including twigs, bark, leaves, acorns, and pebbles. More than 5,000 tiny trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and flowering plants of close to 300 varieties re-create the topographical landscape of America. Vignettes of tiny people and animals give the exhibit a storybook feel, while sound effects and a working geyser capture visitors’ imaginations.
– Railroad Garden

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Links

Railroad Garden

Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool, Lincoln Park, Chicago

Posted on 2009-05-31 by admin

A masterpiece of Prairie School landscape architecture.

Originally built in 1889 for raising tropical water lilies, the Lily Pool was redesigned in the prairie style during the 1930’s by Alfred Caldwell. The landscape design of the Caldwell Lily Pool is a tribute to the natural ecology of the Midwest. It was originally designed to mimic a river formed by a melting glacier’s flow of water cutting through limestone. The stonework and paths have a natural look that conveys the interpretation that melted glacial water flows are cutting through moraines, creating dramatic limestone bluffs. A waterfall near the north end of the lily pool represents the source of this glacial river.
– Lincoln Park Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

After decades of disrepair and neglect, this site was rehabilitated and refurbished in 2001 and 2002 and reopened to the public.

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Links

Lincoln Park Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

Rick Bayless Garden, Chicago Spring Fling 2009

Posted on 2009-05-31 by admin

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Links

Chicago Now
Mr. Brown Thumb
My Skinny Garden
Our Little Acre

Rick Bayless

Chicago Spring Fling 2009

Posted on 2009-05-30 by admin

It’s going to take me several days to slog through the 350 photos I shot today, let alone what’s coming tomorrow. Suffice to say that I was overwhelmed and inspired by what I saw.

Here’s the outline for my entire Chicago trip. I’ll be adding the links as I write the posts for each feature of the tours.

Shedd Aquarium
Chicago Botanic Garden:
- Native Plant Garden
- Edible Plant Garden
- Landscape Gardens
- Model Train Garden
- Other
Lurie Garden
Rick Bayless Garden
Ginkgo Botanic Garden
Carolyn Gail’s Garden
Franklin Park:
- Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

This is a 180-degree panoramic shot stitched together from eight hand-held and panned shots using the pano tool built into Microsoft Vista. Best viewed at the largest resolution your monitor can support. I took this shot while standing on the Nichols Bridgeway, just opened two weeks ago, which joins Millennium Park to the new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. Monroe Street passes underneath, on the left and right of the photo. Downtown Chicago is to the left, and Lake Michigan is to the right. Millenium Park, including the Great Lawn and Lurie Garden, are roughly in the center of the photo.

I created this panorama of the Native Plant Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden the same way.

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Links

Each Little World
Garden Punks
Gardening While Intoxicated
Mr. Brown Thumb: Words, Pictures
On the Shores of Lake Chicago: Day 1, Days 2 & 3
Our Little Acre
Prairie Rose’s Garden

Chicago Botanic Garden
Lurie Garden

Spencer Street Community Garden, Bed-Stuy, Green With Envy Tour 2008 III.06

Posted on 2009-01-16 by admin

This is the Spencer Street Block Association Community Garden, at 230 Spencer Street, between Willoughby & DeKalb, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. This was the 6th stop on the third 2008 Green With Envy tour of Brooklyn Community Gardens last October.

Greene Acres Community Garden, Bed-Stuy, Green With Envy Tour 2008 III.04

Posted on 2009-01-15 by admin

One of the paths defined by hexagonal raised beds at the Green Acres Community Garden in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

Stop #4 of the third 2008 Green With Envy (GWE) tour of Brooklyn community gardens was the Green Acres Community Garden, at the corner of Greene and Franklin Avenues [GMAP] in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Flatbush Gardener

Urban Habitat Gardening with Native Plants

Tag Archives: Other Gardens

Brine Garden, Pawling, NY

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Native Plant Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden

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Greene Acres Community Garden, Bed-Stuy, Green With Envy Tour 2008 III.04

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