George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Five Impressive Local Gardeners

July 5th, 2016

For all of the boring, outdated, overgrown and/or bare-bone landscapes that make up the norm, it’s uplifting to see what some motivated people are doing with their yards.

Ann Markley next to her landscaped labyrinth.

A hundred-plus garden-lovers who went on our Lowee’s Group Tours day trips last week got to see the work of five uber-gardeners in Harrisburg’s East Shore suburbs – ones I’ve seen and marveled at before.

I could try to describe each place and tell you about the wonderful designs and cool plants these people are using, but the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words applies here.

Instead, I’ve put together a collection of photos from each of the five places so you can at least do a “virtual tour.” It’s posted under Home-Grown Gardens 2016 at the top of my Photo Galleries section. (Photos from last year’s Home-Grown Gardens 2015 is a little lower on the same list.)

Briefly, here’s what we saw:

Back to Florida, This Time the West Coast

June 21st, 2016

Our February 2016 trip to see “Mickey’s plants” and gardens of central Florida went over so well that Lowee’s Group Tours and I have put together an encore winter get-away for 2017 – this time to Florida’s west coast.

Naples Botanical Gardens is one of the gardens we’ll be seeing on the February 2017 Florida tour.
Photo Credit: Lorrie Preston

We’ll be flying back and forth to Tampa and seeing excellent gardens and nature attractions as far down the coast as Naples from Feb. 14-21, 2017.

Included in the lineup are superb public gardens such as Naples Botanical Gardens and Sarasota’s Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (my favorite Florida garden) but also a few off-the-beaten-track stops that I think gardeners will like, such as a greenhouse that specializes in caladiums and a spectacular home garden in Punta Gorda.

We’ll also see plenty of Florida’s native plant life at places such as Sanibel Island’s Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge and the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples.

The whole trip costs $2,350 per person double, which includes airfare, hotels, all admissions and 14 meals. Lowees is taking bookings now by calling 717-657-9658 or by emailing Chrissie Kelly at ckelly@lowees.com.

The day-by-day itinerary with a signup sheet is now posted on the Lowee’s Group Tours website.

Here’s a look at what we’ll be seeing:

Big Stinker Blooms Again

June 14th, 2016

Romero, likely the stinkiest plant in Pennsylvania, must have enjoyed the attention he got 3 years ago. He just bloomed again last week in an encore performance to his 2013 stinking in front of another stench-enjoying audience.

George and his little grandsweetie taking a whiff of Phipps’ Romero.

Romero is the name of the corpse flower that makes his home inside Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory.

The specimen is a fairly rare Indonesian native plant that usually blooms only once every 6 or so years and for only a day or less even then.

The whole thing can reach upward nearly 8 feet by the time the central cylinder shoots out from the middle of the 3- to 4-foot-tall vase-shaped flower.

But what really sets it apart is the awful smell. To attract the beetles and flies that pollinate it, the corpse flower produces an odor said to simulate rotting flesh.

That’s the part that draws hordes of people whenever one is blooming in a public place.

True to form, thousands of stink-seekers visited Phipps last Wednesday into Thursday when the flower opened. Tens of thousands more followed the happening online. Phipps even stayed open until 2 a.m. to accommodate people wishing to smell and see the weird thing in the middle of the night.

I wasn’t there at 2 a.m., but I admit I did pay a visit – in the name of research.

Actually and coincidentally, I was visiting family in Pittsburgh, so I popped over to show my granddaughter the “big, stinky flower.”

Reaching the Youngsters

June 7th, 2016

I talk to a lot of gardeners, and the common thread running through most of them – besides being the nicest, most nurturing cluster of people I know – is that they have gray hair.

Here’s a sight we don’t see often enough… youngsters working in a garden.

Maybe it’s because I’m also in that rapidly aging category, but it sure seems as if very few people under the age of 50 are into gardening.

Some of the research indicates that’s because dual-working couples with kids just don’t have the time. So it’s not until empty-nest and retirement that people turn to the soil.

Does that mean young adults aren’t interested?

No, although the way they see gardening and how they get involved with it is apparently much different than the “old folks.”

Michigan State University, the garden-center industry and others have been trying to figure out this next generation of would-be gardeners – especially “millennials,” those born after 1980 and now aged 16-35.

This is the age group that has been reared on smart phones and Facebook. For one thing, they take for granted that technology is going to be woven into gardening.

That’s opposite the prevailing over-50 attitude that the garden is still one place you can go to find solitude from the fast pace and constant clatter of the high-tech world.

According to the research, millennials are drawn to things like self-watering pots, phone apps that remind them to fertilize a plant, and especially tips, reviews and feedback via social media.

Blame It On the Weather

May 31st, 2016

I’ve been getting a swarm of plant-growth questions in the past couple of weeks. Actually, non-plant-growth questions is more like it.

These newly planted petunias are just sitting there sulking in an unusually cool, wet May.

Readers are reporting corn seeds that didn’t sprout, clematis leaves that are sickly yellow, peppers that are just sitting there in pause mode, and sycamore trees that have completely defoliated.

In short, it hasn’t been a great May for plants… at least not like the glorious growth month it usually is.

All or most of the trouble is related to the cool, cloudy, drizzly, wet weather we had for most of the month.

Soggy soil can rot roots, seeds and bulbs. Constantly wet leaves are more prone to fungal diseases. And the lack of sun has deprived plants of the fuel they need to generate growth energy.

As I’ve been telling people, once we get a string of warm and sunny days, I think most of the problems will correct themselves.

The exception is seeds and plants that rotted. If they died or were damaged badly enough, your only recourse is to plant again. Or go without.

Check out the PennLive garden column “How Does Your Garden Grow? Not So Much So Far” that I wrote last week for more on our slow start and what to make of it.

More than a few followers of Murphy’s Law (me included) were saying, “You know what’s going to happen next, right? We’ll go from ridiculously cool to unbearably hot.” (See my list of 10 Murphy’s Laws That Apply to Gardening.)