Prime Time to Garden-Gawk

May 3rd, 2022

   Any day is a good day to be in a garden so far as I’m concerned, but for “normal” people, there’s no better time than the next few weeks.

The meadow garden at one of my favorite public gardens, Chanticleer.

   May’s weather is usually warm but not yet into hot, and so much of the plant world here has decided that late spring is the ideal time to unfurl, flower, and perfume.

   In other words, there’s a lot to see, and it’s a comfortable time to be out there seeing it.

   No wonder the Chester County-based American Public Gardens Association decided to make the second week of May the time frame for its annual “Go Public Gardens Days” celebration.

   This year, the initiative runs May 6 through 15. Many public gardens use the occasion to run special events or offer special admissions, so it’s worth poking around at places you’ve been thinking about seeing.

   One example is in our own backyard where Hershey Gardens is offering half-priced admission this Friday, May 6, for Go Public Gardens day. Vouchers are available on the Gardens website. (Moms also get in free this Saturday and Sunday in honor of Mother’s Day. Dads get in free June 19 for Father’s Day.)

   APGA makes it easy to find gardens by publishing a map of its members on its website. It’ll show you what’s within 150 miles of your home or let you search out and link to gardens anywhere in the U.S. if you like to include garden visits in your vacation plans.

    You can also find out about Go Public Gardens Days events by going to @PublicGardens on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn or by going to @AmericanPublicGardens on Instagram.

   Another good resource for planning trips to gardens within day-trip range of Harrisburg is America’s Garden Capital, an umbrella group for 38 public gardens in the Philadelphia region. That cluster represents the most gardens in any one region in America.

Stoneleigh in Villanova is one of the region’s newest public gardens.

   The group offers a free America’s Garden Capital Passport that includes descriptions and contact information on the 38 gardens, which includes such well known ones as Longwood, Chanticleer, Morris Arboretum, and Winterthur but also smaller gems such as Philadelphia’s Shofuso Japanese garden, Temple’s Ambler Arboretum, Jenkins Arboretum, and Stoneleigh.

   If you need some help zeroing in on the best of the best gardens worth seeing, I wrote an e-book last year called “50 American Public Gardens You Really Ought to See.” It’s a $7.95 download on my Buy Helpful Info page.

   The 62-page e-book features one-page profiles of my 50 favorite U.S. public gardens – in order. It includes overviews and highlights of each garden, location and contact information, two photos of each garden, and a “George’s Take” on what stands out most to me at each place.

   If you like to visit gardens with fellow garden-gawkers, Lowee’s Group Tours and I run trips every year to great gardens all over the U.S. and even overseas. Some are one-day coach tours; others are multi-day garden-themed vacations.

   The list for the rest of 2022 is on my George’s Talks and Trips page.

   One other thing I should mention is the American Horticultural Society’s Reciprocal Admissions Program. This is an amazing bargain in which participating gardens let you in free if you’re a member of any one of them or a member of AHS.

   And this is anytime, not just during Go Public Gardens Days.

   At the moment, the program includes more than 345 gardens throughout North America.

Morris Arboretum… one of the 345+ gardens in the AHS Reciprocal Admissions Program.

   That means that if you, say, become a member of Hershey Gardens, your card gets you into 345 other gardens, including such other day-trip-range gardens as Philadelphia’s Morris Arboretum, the Winterthur Estate in Delaware, and New York’s troika of Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Wave Hill, and the New York Botanical Garden, plus others on my top-50 list such as Ohio’s Franklin Park Conservatory, Maine’s Coastal Maine Botanic Garden, Richmond’s Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, and the Bok Tower, Fairchild, and Marie Selby gardens in Florida.

   Chlorophyllic treasures like these are worth a visit just for their sheer beauty. Even non-gardeners who can’t tell a coneflower from a conehead can appreciate public gardens for their peace, serenity, and offer of relaxation with nature.

   That’s a big reason why public gardens and parks in general have been extremely well visited in the past two years. COVID-hindered people are trying to find some solace (and outdoor safe havens) in outdoor green spaces.

   For gardeners, public gardens are also a tremendous resource to introduce us to plants we’ve never seen. Gardens nearby are especially useful for giving ideas on what plants will work at home and how to use them.

   Maybe best of all, we get to enjoy the plants, gardens, and color without having to yank weeds, edge the beds, or prune the hedges.

   We can just show up, ogle the results, and go have an iced tea.

   Different gardens all have their own different “personalities,” and their highlights change with the seasons… sometimes even by the day as plants come into and go out of peak form.

   This makes gardens sort of “evergreen” in that you can’t really say, “Been there, done that,” just because you’ve seen it on one particular day.

Time your visit for June, and this is the highlight of a visit to Hershey Gardens.

   Most gardens put on drastically different shows throughout the season. Visit Hershey Gardens in June, for example, and you’ll see tons of blooming roses and colorful display beds of annual flowers. But come back in October, and the fall foliage of the trees and shrubs, the late-blooming perennials, and the pumpkin displays are the stars.

   If you can only see a place once, though, it helps to do some research in advance to time your visit to catch their “signature” display.

   If you’ve heard that Winterthur, for instance, has stunning swoops of woodland bulbs (which they do), you won’t see any sign of it if you visit in July. The Netherlands’ famed Keukenhof garden isn’t even open beyond May because it devotes all of its cylinders to spring bulbs.

   It also helps to double-check a garden’s hours and visiting rules before you go (not all are open every day) and to have a look at their online maps and layouts to plan your route. The more you know ahead of time, the better you can maximize your time when you get there.

   That said, allow yourself more time than you think.

   I’ve seen people flash through a 50-acre public garden in an hour, which is fine if your aim is to for a walk in the general beauty.

   But if you’re a gardener, take at least a half-day and maybe even a whole day to savor.

   That’ll give you time to check out plant names, jot down ideas, take some photos, and appreciate the details of the plants and how they’re being used with one another as well as in the overall setting.

   I like to look beyond the obvious, too… the botanical equivalent of checking under the hood.

   Sometimes some of the most interesting finds are the little plants around a corner or a bud or bug or ornament that isn’t front and center.

   This is what drives non-gardeners crazy and is a good argument for why gardeners should go with other gardeners to see gardens as opposed to reticent spouses. (The latter case is where garden cafes come in handy.)

My “secret” Longwood bench.

   One other thing I can suggest… take some time to rest. Find a peaceful spot with a bench or a boulder and a view you like, then just sit there and soak it in.

   My all-time favorite one of those is a little-noticed bench at the top of Longwood’s Chimes Tower. The bench is tucked into a shaded nook, surrounded by trees and just above where water surges out to create a large waterfall in that area. It’s a heavenly place.

   Now that I told you all about it, I hope it doesn’t turn into the worst-kept secret spot.

   See more of these special places in a 2015 post I did for PennLive.com on the top 10 public-garden views in Pennsylvania.