George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

What Became of Cypress Gardens?

March 10th, 2020

   Cypress Gardens in central Florida used to be one of America’s best-known public gardens and top tourist attractions.

Cypress Gardens still exists… it’s just now rolled into Florida’s Legoland theme park.

   Then it struggled through three decades of ownership changes, declining attendance, hurricanes, and the Disneyfication of the region, finally closing in 2009.

   A lot of people assume it’s been gone ever since with the space taken over by the Legoland Florida theme park.

   Although it’s a far cry from its 200-acre glory days of the late 1930s through 1960s, much of Cypress Gardens lives on as a part of Legoland near Winter Haven, Fla. And the 30 or so acres still in plants is a beautiful tropical garden, filled with winding paths through palm and cypress trees and lush beds of colorful tropical shrubs.

   I saw it earlier this winter for the first time since 1974, when the other two main attractions were the waterski shows and the “Southern belles” wearing their Civil War-era hoop dresses on the lawn by the Gardens’ signature gazebo.

   Legoland still runs a few ski shows a day on the park’s Lake Eloise with the once-famous human pyramids replaced by skiers dressed as Lego characters.

The wedding chapel gazebo is a signature feature. That’s a Lego Southern belle in front of it.

   The belles are gone altogether, save for one life-sized Lego belle stationed near the gazebo’s entrance.

   Cypress Gardens is billed as one of the lands within Legoland, alongside several ride areas, the ski-show theater, a water park, and a really impressive Miniature Land of famous places throughout the world built in scale size out of Lego bricks.

   There’s no extra charge for Cypress Gardens, but you have to buy a general admission ticket to get in the park to see it. You can’t just buy a gardens admission.

   The Gardens are roughly the size of Hershey Gardens and mostly naturalized tropical in appearance. They’re not really theme gardens, i.e. a rose garden, herb garden, or conifer garden.

   Instead, these gardens are mostly laid out in masses of nicely paired combinations, intended to stroll through rather than study as in a botanical garden.

Mediterranean Gardens for Pennsylvania

March 3rd, 2020

   This week’s 2020 Philadelphia Flower Show is showcasing plants and gardening of the Mediterranean – especially the gardens of southern France, Monaco, northwestern Italy, and a touch of Spain.

Here’s a classic Mediterranean-style garden, complete with stone and the Mediterranean signature plant, lavender.

   This is a colorful, fragrant, and highly textural form of gardening that I think a lot of Pennsylvanians would like… if we didn’t have that little problem of freezing winters to deal with.

   Mediterranean climates are distinctive for their year-round warm temperatures and very dry summers. So the look is different from what you see in warm but wetter tropical/subtropical regions such as Florida, the Caribbean, and parts of central America.

   Although we can’t do a real Mediterranean garden with olive and citrus trees, agaves, and arrow-like Italian cypresses, we can create Mediterranean-like gardens.

   Let’s have a look at some key features of the Mediterranean style and how we can shift gears a bit to make it happen here.

My 50 Favorite International Garden Settings of All-Time

February 25th, 2020

   Last week, I introduced you to a photo gallery of 50 of my favorite American garden settings of all-time.

The Quarry Garden at Butchart Gardens on Canada’s Vancouver Island… one of my favorite garden settings ever.

   This week, it’s time to take a look at 50 of my favorite international gardens that I’ve seen in the 30 or so years I’ve been a garden writer.

   As with the American ones, I picked these mostly because of a particular feature or setting that made the space impressively memorable.

   What helped me decide which to whittle out and which to keep was how I felt about being in the space.

   If it came down to a choice between an elaborate, impressive, one-of-a-kind feature vs. a space where I just wanted to stand there and marvel, I went with the latter.

   So here you go… “My 50 Favorite International Garden Settings of All-Time.”

My 50 Favorite American Garden Settings of All-Time

February 18th, 2020

   I’ve seen literally thousands of gardens, both public and private, in the 30 or so years I’ve been a garden writer.

My all-time favorite garden setting. Check out the last photo in My 50 Favorite American Garden Settings photo gallery to see where it is (or was).

   Some of them really stand out in my mind, mostly because of a particular feature or setting that made the space impressively memorable.

   I thought I’d share some of them with you, so I put together a new photo gallery of 50 of my favorite garden settings.

   There were a lot more I could’ve added, but I had to cut it off somewhere.

   In fact, I was going to do just one overall gallery but had so many “finalists” that I decided to break it down into two galleries – one of my favorite American garden settings and one of my favorite international (i.e. not-in-America) garden settings.

   What helped me decide which to whittle out and which to keep was how I felt about being in the space.

   If it came down to a choice between an elaborate, impressive, one-of-a-kind feature vs. a space where I just wanted to stand there and marvel, I went with the latter.

   If you’re ready for a virtual tour through places that made me marvel, go to my Photo Gallery and check out, “My 50 Favorite American Garden Settings of All-Time.”

   I’ll add the international one next week.

Philly and the Chelsea Factor

February 11th, 2020

   We’re less than three weeks away from the 191^st annual Philadelphia Flower Show, and I’m hoping I’m not disappointed with this year’s Mediterranean-themed production.

London’s Chelsea Flower Show attracts wall-to-wall crowds… and for good reason.

   My misgivings have nothing to do with the theme or any peculiarities of the 2020 show.

   I’m leery this year because I visited London’s Chelsea Flower Show for the first time last year.

See a photo gallery of shots from Chelsea 2019 and our England garden trip

   I’ve been to about 25 Philly shows now and enjoyed them all… some more so than others. Philly has the world’s biggest, longest-running indoor flower show, while Chelsea is the world’s longest-running and most prestigious outdoor flower show.

   After seeing the staggeringly impressive Chelsea show – spread over 11 acres of the Royal Hospital Chelsea grounds in downtown London – I’m afraid Philly’s gardens and exhibits are going to pale.

   Brits adore plants and gardening like no other nation, and for the Chelsea Flower Show, they pull out all of the stops.

One of the many beautiful displays in the 2019 Chelsea Great Pavilion.

   The central feature is the Great Pavilion, which is three acres under tent and devoted to over-the-top plant displays, educational exhibits, gardens built by growers, floral designs, and more.

   One exceptional display last year was sponsored by the Swedish home-store chain IKEA, showing examples of how people can grow food in urban and other tight-spot spaces. I especially liked the recycled raised-bed vegetable garden made out of wooden shipping crates stacked on pallets.

   Another pavilion display mounted thousands of cut lilies of dozens of varieties on a wall. It was a sort of living-bouquet catalog, and the fragrance was strong enough to stop a line of Army tanks.