George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Watery Wonders Coming to the 2018 Philly Flower Show

February 20th, 2018

   Any gardener who has spent a hot, dry summer married to the hose knows how critical water is to plants – and to people and the planet, for that matter.

This artist’s rendering gives an idea what the main entrance to the 2018 Philadelphia Flower Show will look like.
Credit: Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

   That’s why this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show “Wonders of Water” theme is such a worthy, important one. It also happens to lend itself really well to a variety of creative displays.

   I suspect this year’s show, which takes place March 3 through 11 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, is going to be one of the more diverse and impressive ones. There’s a lot you can do with water.

   The main entrance alone sounds worth the trip – an indoor rainforest with a 25-foot waterfall, five levels of hanging flowers, a way-cool creation called a rain curtain, and a rope bridge leading through a lush, tropical, 4,000-plant setting of palms, ferns, orchids, and a pond with 3-foot-wide water-platter water lilies.

   Landscapers are planning dozens of other gardens that employ water in one way or another – including the lack of it in the case of displays on desert plants and xeriscaping.

   Expect lots of waterfalls, water features, ponds, rain gardens, bog gardens, and fountains.

   If you’ve never seen a Philadelphia Flower Show, it’s the world’s biggest, oldest indoor flower show, featuring acres of wow gardens plus seminars, a huge amateur plant-growing competition, a gardener’s marketplace of more than 100 vendors, floral-arranging demos, hands-on crafts, wine-tasting, and much more.

See George’s PennLive post on highlights from the 2017 Dutch-themed Philadelphia Flower Show.

   It’s one of those bucket-list events that even non-gardeners appreciate. People come from all over the world to see it – some 250,000 visitors over the nine show days.

   I’ve been to at least two dozen Philly Flower Shows, and I never get tired of them. Every year is different. That’s even considering I’ve been seeing each year’s show five times the last several years.

   I go five times because I take bus loads of gardeners there each show weekday.

   Lowee’s Group Tours and I have scheduled another lineup of five day trips this year, leaving from West Shore and East Shore locations on March 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. (Note: These have all sold out, so all that’s left this year is to get on the cancellation list.)

   I think bus is the best way to see the Philly show. The driver deals with the Schuylkill traffic and turnpike tolls, drops you off and picks you up at the front door, and saves you the hassle of parking.

   Our trips leave later in the morning so we get there after the cattle herd has cleared the entrance. We also stay later to enjoy the exhibits as the crowds thin, starting around dinner time.

   The cost is $85 per person (same as last year), which includes your show ticket. On the way down, I also give away prizes on the bus and give inside show tips to help you make the most of your day.

   If you’re interested, call Lowee’s at 717-657-965 or toll-free 888-345-6933 to see if any seats are left or to get on a wait list in case anyone cancels.

The Beauty of – Believe It or Not – Desert Plants

February 13th, 2018

   The desert doesn’t come to mind first (or usually second, third or 10^th) when you think of settings for beautiful plants.

A backlit cactus in the Huntington Library Desert Garden.

   Most people probably think of fat, green, spiny barrel cactuses and tumbleweed, and that’s about it.

   I was never that enamored with the whole concept of desert plants either – that is, until I saw the surprisingly amazing and diverse desert garden at California’s Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens.

   The variety of plants that grows in the world’s most arid spots is way more than cactus and tumbleweed. The Huntington collection features more than 5,000 species of creeping succulents, agaves, aloes, euphorbia, cactuses, yuccas, and a whole lot of plants that most people have never heard of.

   The garden looks nothing like what we’re used to seeing. Plants grow there into tall columns, paddle-leafed trees, rosettes of fleshy upright blades, puffy/fluffy balls that bloom, and even creations that look more like stones than plants (i.e. the South African lithops species).

   Most of the Huntington plants look like something Dr. Seuss concocted.

   Some of my favorites were the purple-padded cactus, the steroidal orange spikes of blooming aloes, the shiny black leaves of Aeonium ‘Swartkop,’ and the garden of hundreds of golden barrel cactus paired with Mammillaria geminispina, which look like a pile of prickly silvery-gray pin-cushions.

   I could try to describe this garden – which famed Brazilian landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx once called “the most extraordinary garden in the world” – but I thought you’d appreciate it more by seeing a photo gallery of pictures I took there.

How to Get Poinsettias to Color Back Up

February 6th, 2018

Poinsettias are impressive for holding their color well into winter and sometimes the whole way into spring.

Poinsettias in the process of coloring inside Quality Greenhouses near Dillsburg.

They even make excellent foliage plants in a pot or garden outside in summer after the showy bracts drop to leave behind slimmer, tropical-looking, little green bushes.

The real trick is getting poinsettias to color back up again for a repeat winter show.

Poinsettias are fairly finicky about producing a new round of colorful bracts, needing a steady diet of about 14 hours of interrupted darkness every night for 8 to 10 weeks.

Mess up and you’ll still have a green bush next December – or one with a smattering of color that’s a far cry from what you bought a year ago.

Many people have tried the poinsettia-recycling routine, going so far as to pack their plant away in a closet every night to avoid stray light. They usually end up saying, “That’s the last time I’m going to go to that trouble. It’s easier just to buy a new one.”

Ah, but to an avid green-thumber, this is a challenge. If any old non-gardener can do something easily, that’s no fun. It’s the hard-to-do stuff that’s worth a go.

Want to try re-coloring a poinsettia rather than sending it to the compost pile? Here’s a how-to from the king of poinsettia producers, California’s Ecke Ranch.

There Goes the Exercise

December 19th, 2017

   Winter has always been a downer for the gardening me because it kills the flowers, turns lush green to dreary brown, and takes away my tasty, home-grown, heirloom tomatoes.

Burning calories? Maybe not much, but at least I’m not eating pie.

   This year, those all take a back seat to the fact that I’ve lost my main source of exercise.

   I’ve always tried to get regular exercise as a way to head off my lousy genetics and the many things that can go wrong with too many potato chips and too many hours on the couch.

   Lately, though, I’ve been counting more and more on garden-related calorie-burning as a way to counteract weight creep.

   If you’re into your 50s or 60s, you probably know what I’m talking about. Even when you eat the same (or less) and maintain the same activity, a pound creeps on here, another one there, and another one there. Before you know it, you’re 10 pounds heavier.

   Without gardening, I hate to think where I’d be. I certainly wouldn’t be wearing the same pants size as since my college days… although they are noticeably tighter than ever before.

   Despite an energy level that’s lagging almost as much as my metabolism rate, I’ve been trying hard to burn off fat via trowel and hoe.

   For me, gardening isn’t a passive activity where I mainly inspect the roses and snip off a few spent flowers every now and then.

   I go at it full tilt for hours at a time – squatting to yank weeds, lugging buckets full of compost to the bins, trimming shrubs, laying mulch, top-dressing the lawn, raking prunings, dragging hoses, bending over literally hundreds of times, and occasionally sprinting after rabbits seen nibbling on the petunias.

Wash Away Winter with Blooming Azaleas

December 12th, 2017

   One way I like to “shorten” winter is by getting out of the snow-laden North and spending at least a few weeks somewhere in the South where it’s green instead of white (or dreary brown).

Azaleas in full bloom at Callaway Gardens in Georgia.
Credit: Callaway Gardens

   This coming winter, you’ll be able to join me on a 10-day escape to New Orleans and gardens of the Deep South.

   This Lowee’s Group Tours bus trip is timed for when we’re really fed up with the cold toward winter’s end (March 15-24, 2018) and hopefully when the gardens down there are awash in azaleas.

   Azaleas are a southern favorite. In Louisiana and southern Alabama and Mississippi, they bloom four to six weeks ahead of ours – typically in mid to late March.

   Assuming we hit it right, you’ll see two of the biggest, most glorious displays of blooming azaleas anywhere – in the wooded trails of Georgia’s Callaway Gardens and throughout Alabama’s Bellingrath Gardens.

   Although New Orleans is the main destination of this trip, we’ll be seeing a whole lot more than azaleas and bourbon shrimp.

   For one thing, this region is loaded with pre-Civil-War plantations – many of which have nice gardens and are open for touring. We plan to see two of them: Nottoway (near New Orleans and dating to 1859) and Rosalie (in Natchez, Miss., and home of the Daughters of the American Revolution).

   On the way down, in addition to seeing the amazing Callaway and Bellingrath gardens, we’ll stop for visits at Virginia Tech’s Hahn Horticulture Garden and the 295-acre South Carolina Botanical Garden at Clemson University.