George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Hawaiian Philadelphia

March 6th, 2012

   Ever see a jungle of orchids?

Hawaiian dance performances in the main entry garden at the 2012 Philadelphia Flower Show.

   How about a 25-foot-tall indoor waterfall?

   Or maybe a 9-foot-high wall lined with 3,000 lettuce plants?

   That’s just a bit of what’s on stage at this week’s Philadelphia Flower Show — one that’s been getting mixed reviews from the busloads of central Pennsylvanians I’ve been taking to see the show this week.

   The theme is Hawaii. That seemed like a good opportunity to work with, and the show designers came up with some interesting opportunities.

   The Pennsylvania Convention Center is crawling with big, showy, fragrant tropicals like orchids, bromeliads, pink ti plants, crotons, birds of paradise, pin-cushion proteas and red, white and pink anthuriums.

   The cliff-like waterfall was creating most of the oohs and aahs. The whole backside of this rocky structure is planted with orchids, and the water is dropping into a 30-foot-wide pond surrounded by palms, tropicals and more orchids.

   Next to it is an A-frame bamboo hut — about 20 feet tall — where hula dancers perform several times a day.

   Overhead lights change the color of the whole display while nearly life-like videos of people and waves and volcanoes project onto the bamboo hut.

Expo Gleanings

February 28th, 2012

I thought the crowds, the gardens and the nice mix of things to do at this year’s Pennsylvania Garden Expo were better than ever.

Hope you got to see this three-day show over the weekend at the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex.

This year’s Best of Show went to The Greenskeeper of Palmyra, which won for the second year in a row.

Eric Allebach and crew pulled out all the stops and built a display with just about every landscape feature you could imagine – a playhouse with sandbox, a two-level water feature, a bridge, a pergola-covered patio, bubbling columnar rock fountains, a hot tub, a fireplace with patio and a variety of specimen plants (including one of my favorites, the weeping Alaska cedar).

The garden also won the People’s Choice popular vote on Saturday and Sunday.

Second place for Best of Show went to Hummel’s Landscape of Harrisburg, which paired up with Dreamscapes Watergardens of Lebanon on a backyard get-away with a covered outdoor kitchen and a hot tub next to a natural stream.

Third place Best of Show went to Chris Archibald Landscape Design of Harrisburg for its pergola-covered patio and very cool paver fire pit surrounded by a half-circle seating area made out of matching pavers.

The People’s Choice award for Friday went to the Hummel/Dreamscapes display.

Other winners were:

Expo Time

February 21st, 2012

   This is where it starts to get nuts.

   The first sign of spring for me isn’t when the first snowdrop bulbs pop up or when I see the first robin.

   To me, it’s Expo time.

George speaking at last year's Pa. Garden Expo.

   Expo is the Pennsylvania Garden Expo, and it’s the opening shot in a machine-gun salvo of talks, trips, writing, questions, consults and drawings that make March through June seem like a blur.

   I’m not complaining. It’s just nice there’s a little winter sanity in there to catch up.

   Expo runs Fri., Feb. 24, through Sun., Feb. 26, and if you’ve never been to it, it’s kind of central Pennsylvania’s version of the Philadelphia International Flower Show.

   It’s not nearly as big or showy (what is?), but it’s a nice late-winter get-away where the flowers are blooming, the aroma of mulch is in the air, and where like-minded souls are dreaming about the gardens that are about to be.

   Some people like Expo better than Philly. For one thing, you don’t feel like you’re in a cattle herd. For another, the display gardens are ones that are do-able at home and not showpieces built mainly for the “wow” factor.

Garden Oscars

February 14th, 2012

   The motion-picture industry gives out its annual Academy Awards for best performances on Feb. 26.

   If I could give out Oscars for the best stars of our central-Pennsylvania landscapes, here’s what would get my vote:

Shrub rose 'Pink Double Knock Out'

   * Best Lead Actor (Sun): ‘Knock Out’ roses. Yeah, they’ve become so common they’re almost over-used, but these no-spray, long-blooming roses do so well with so little care in so many places that they’re already a legend. They’re the Tom Hanks of horticulture.

   The four best ones are the original ‘Knock Out,’ ‘Double Knock Out’ (twice the petals), ‘Pink Knock Out’ and ‘Pink Double Knock Out.’

   * Best Lead Actor (Shade): ‘Forever and Ever’ hydrangeas.Also low-care and very showy, this seven-color series of mophead hydrangeas blooms on both old and new wood. That means it’s in flower most of the season.

Hydrangea 'Forever and Ever Blue Heaven'

   Especially nice: the rich blue ‘Forever and Ever Blue Heaven.’ These all do best in morning sun and afternoon shade.

   * Best New Actor: Dwarf butterfly bush ‘Lo and Behold Blue Chip.’ This compact new butterfly bush blooms its head off all summer and fall in classic cone-shaped blue-purple flowers. But it does it at a size of about 2 feet tall and maybe 4 feet wide.

   It’s also supposed to be sterile, meaning no unwanted seeding around like so many butterfly bushes.

   * Best Supporting Actor: Creeping sedum ‘Angelina.’ Showy enough to be a star, this 3-inch-tall, gold-leafed, succulent, ferny-looking groundcover looks great as a carpet under just about any tree, shrub, evergreen or tall perennial where I’ve seen it used.

The Trouble with Out-of-Whackness

February 7th, 2012

   So here it is the second week of February, and Punxsutawney Phil – that famous weather-forecasting rodent – is telling us to expect 6 more weeks of winter.

No more snow-covered winter snoozes for central-Pennsylvania plants. (Photo by Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center)

   I’m wondering when winter is going to start, not when it’s going to end.

   We’ve been hovering mostly in the 40s and 50s since November with just one half-hearted snow. That’s drastically different from the winters I remember when we’d have a snow cover most of the time from December through early March and at least a few bouts of zero degrees – or less.

   This warmer weather is becoming the new norm, a change verified 2 weeks ago when the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated the official Plant Hardiness Map for the first time in 22 years.

   Based on the more recent temperature data from 1976 to 2005, the map shows most of the United States is a half of a growing zone warmer than it used to be.

   That means we probably can get away with growing some so-called “borderline-hardy” species that previously wouldn’t even have been sold here – something alert gardeners have noticed for years.

   In other words, Harrisburg is the new Baltimore.