Garden Trips Are Back
May 24th, 2021
It was nice to do something normal for a change.
This hillside water feature was one of the highlights at Pheasant Run Bed and Breakfast, one of our Lancaster County stops last week.
Last week marked the first time in more than a year that Lowee’s Group Tours and I ran a garden trip – a day trip to a pair of Lancaster County gardens and a pair of Pa. Dutch country plant nurseries with a lunch at the Shady Maple smorgasbord wedged between.
Other than the masks (and disposable gloves at Shady Maple), it seemed like old times wading through gardens and plants with familiar faces.
With vaccination rates fast rising and venues reopening to business-as-usual levels, travel is poised to resume.
If/when you’re ready, your next shot at one of our 2021 trips is June 7, 8, 9, or 11, when we’re doing day trips to the first-ever outdoors Philadelphia Flower Show, being held over 15 acres at Philly’s FDR Park.
Then we’ll be visiting Mt. Cuba Center and the new Delaware Botanic Gardens on June 25, then America’s biggest garden tour – Garden Walk Buffalo – the fourth weekend of July (July 23-25).
I’ll lay out the whole rest of the year’s trips – plus a spring 2022 tour of the Netherlands and Belgium featuring the Floriade 2022 expo and the fabulous Keukenhof bulb gardens – in pictures this Thursday, May 27, at 6:30 p.m.
The program is free, and you’re invited. You can register and get a link by going to this address anytime in advance: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtd-uqqDIuG9el5Uyp9-Q1Tw0W8i95kPB_
Or just go to this Zoom link at the above time: https://zoom.us/j/94002269413
After Buffalo in July, the remaining 2021 lineup includes a tour of two Thomas Jefferson sites (Monticello and Tufton Farm) on Aug. 19; a five-day tour of great gardens of North Carolina Sept. 10-14; a mystery trip on Sept. 16; a Christmas trip to the mansions of Rhode Island Nov. 29-Dec. 2, and a day trip to the U.S. Botanic Garden and Brookside Gardens’ amazing light show Dec. 3.
A water garden at Sarah Duke Gardens, one of the venues we’ll be seeing on the North Carolina trip.
All of the 2021 tours are open for booking at Lowee’s Group Tours’ website, and more details on each are posted on my George’s Talks and Trips page.
We were going to do a three-day trip to gardens of the Hudson Valley as well in June but had to scrap that one since some the venues couldn’t assure us they’d be back open by then.
Our “big” trip of 2021 – a 17-day fall tour of Australia and New Zealand – also is off because those countries are closed to tourists and saying they probably won’t reopen until 2022.
Otherwise, I’m especially looking forward to seeing what the planners of the Philadelphia Flower Show will do with outdoor space. The show is typically held indoors at the end of winter, which means all of the blooms have to be forced into bloom ahead of time in a greenhouse.
The outside version not only makes it easier for the designers to use the many plants naturally in bloom in June, but the extra space and timed ticketing means this show shouldn’t be nearly as crowded as indoors.
Packed crowds are the one thing some people say they don’t like about the Philly show.
One of the “sculptures” in the Juniper Level Botanic Garden.
I’m also particularly looking forward to the North Carolina trip. We’ll be stopping off at one of my favorite gardens anywhere – the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond on the way down – then seeing seven superb North Carolina public gardens and two arboreta, including N.C. State University’s J.C. Raulston Gardens, the fun Juniper Level Botanic Gardens at Plant Delights Nursery, Duke University’s Sarah P. Duke Gardens, and the Reynolda Gardens at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.
I think people are also going to like our first-time “mystery trip” (all I can say about that one is that it features one of our most curious native plants) and that Christmas trip to see Newport, R.I., and three of its gilded mansions in holiday décor.
Here’s hoping to see you on one of the trips again after a year in hibernation.