Holiday Trip for Gardeners

October 21st, 2014

Our last garden trip of the year is ready, and it’ll feature a shopping trip to one of D.C.’s best garden centers and an afternoon visit to the U.S. Botanic Garden, decorated for Christmas.

The U.S. Botanic Garden’s model train Christmas exhibit.

The bus day trip is scheduled for Fri., Dec. 5, and includes pickups on both the East and West Shores.

The cost is $125 per person, which includes transportation, a catered lunch, and dinner at Mrs. K’s Toll House, a restaurant we’ve been to before that got rave reviews from the group.

Lowee’s Group Tours of Harrisburg is handling the booking by calling 717-657-9658 or toll-free 888-345-6933.

We’re leaving at 7 and 7:30 a.m. and spending the morning at Merrifield Garden Center, a local chain of three garden centers that serves the Washington metro area.

We’re going to their newest place, the Gainesville store, which is a modern and sprawling place that has just about everything for the gardener – bagged goods, gift items, a tropical greenhouse, trees and shrubs, water-garden supplies, fresh-cut flowers… you name it.

For Christmas, Merrifield has all sorts of fresh greenery for decorating as well as a Christmas shop filled with ornaments, tree-toppers, ribbons, lights and candles. We’ll have a couple of hours there, including a catered lunch before we get back on the bus to the U.S. Botanic Garden at the Capitol complex.

The highlight of the U.S. Botanic Garden is the conservatory, which this year is planning a Christmas display called “Season’s Greenings” that will feature 15 historic lighthouses and sea creatures, mermaids and a pirate ship all made out of plant parts.

The exhibit includes the popular model train village with small-gauge trains running through decorated vistas.

We’ll have time to see those and the rest of the conservatory with its amazing collection of plants from around the world, ranging from a tropical rainforest to a desert.

Barring atrocious weather, the visit allows time to see the 3-acre National Garden outside the conservatory, which features a large garden of mid-Atlantic native plants, a rose garden, the First Ladies Water Garden dedicated to America’s first ladies, and a butterfly garden.

Across Independence Avenue is the impressive but lesser known Bartholdi Park, which is another 2-acre series of gardens planted and cared for by the staff of the U.S. Botanic Garden. I like that so-called “secret garden” of Washingtonians better than the National Garden.

A section of Bartholdi Park in December.

The centerpiece of Bartholdi Park is the 30-foot-tall Bartholdi fountain, designed by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi – the same French sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty.

The Smithsonian museums are also within walking distance for anyone who wants to cram a quick tour in to one or two of those.

The last stop is dinner at Mrs. K’s, a fine-dining restaurant in Silver Spring, Md., that once was the last operating tollhouse in Montgomery County (4 cents a horse to use the private road). The restaurant has a nice garden out back as well an antiques-decorated “barrel bar” and great food.

I’ll be talking gardening on the bus and giving away 10 gardening prizes in addition to four $25 gift cards to Stauffers of Kissel Hill Garden Centers, our own local garden-center and grocery chain that sponsors the trips that my wife, Sue, and I and Lowee’s do every year.

We’re already at work on the 2015 lineup, by the way. We hope to have the schedule done and out before Christmas.

Tentative venues include five trips to the Philadelphia International Flower Show (themed around the movies next year), a trip to see Pearl Fryar’s incredible topiary garden and the Charleston garden tour in March, a tour of some of the best Harrisburg-area gardens in July, and a fall trip to Penn State’s new Children’s Garden and the new Pittsburgh Botanical Garden.

If you’re not already on Lowee’s trip mailing list, check out George’s Talks and Trips page for all of the talks and trips I’ve got coming up. Or call Lowee’s at 717-657-9658 or toll-free 888-345-6933 to get on their list.

The “big” trip of 2015 will be a 10-day garden tour of the villas and island gardens of northern Italy. It’s a trip put together by Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society and operated by Collette Vacations.

Lowee’s is booking that one locally and has the full itinerary and details posted on its website. That’ll make a nice Christmas gift for the gardener on your list…