(Realistic?) Expectations When Visiting a Public Botanical Garden

Allen Centennial Gardens, August 2012

I suppose for a lot of arm chair gardeners our area botanical gardens are their gardens. For actual gardeners, these botanical gardens are a resource and a respite from the labors and tribulations in our own small plots. A recent response from the Director of Allen Centennial Gardens on a blog posting I did after a visit to the Allen has pointed out possibly the only hot spot in Wisconsin this spring-- the area under the collar of its director, Mr. Ed Lyon. All of which has gotten me thinking about what our expectations should be when visiting any botanical garden.

So I pose the question, "In this age of arm chair gardening and virtual tourism, what should be our expectations when we actually put feet to gravel and smear on the sunscreen?"

I have read there is a whole new level of garden visitation going on-- a garden tourism craze. It has gone a long way to revitalizing tourism for broad areas, if you doubt the trend you need only read a few blogposts of one of the driving forces behind the nationally acclaimed Buffalo/Niagara garden walks.

Certainly the internet has changed our expectations. Pinterest, I feel, is making its mark. Pinterest worried me even before I read Nancy Ondra's post about hunting her photos "pinned" without thought to photo copyright infringement.





These two photos of mine have had thousands of re-pins since I first posted them in a blogpost critiquing the 2011 Outagamie Master Gardeners' Garden Walk. (These are not the only popular photos of mine floating around out there.) I wonder if the homeowners have come across these pictures from their yards and what were their thoughts?

Certainly, Instagram, FaceBook, and cameras within the reach of our cell phones should put firmly in mind the idea that everything is posted to internet these days, too. The internet is certainly an image-driven medium, but there is certainly plenty of room out there for words to go along with our pictures.

It shouldn't be beyond anyone's expectations that pictures will be accompanied with words, sometimes questioning, "What is really going on here!"







Above are more pictures from my August 2012 Allen Centennial Garden visit.

Different botanical gardens have differing missions. Some have extensive educational facilities connected with their displays. Others have herbariums; some hold living collections of rare and unusual plants. Arboretums, although low-key, grow group plantings of many cultivars and species of a genus of herbaceous, woody perennials. Some do testing of perennials, roses, and annuals. Needless to say, an expectation of being able to visit an interesting collection of growing plants should be pretty much a given.

The plants are the entre for garden. They should be well-labeled, well-grown, and well-displayed. Many an interesting plant has entered my garden as a single specimen after seeing it massed in a botanical garden.

If any experimental growing methods are being used, placards to educate can be present. I really liked those used in 2011 by the Chicago Botanical Gardens in their edible gardens.



I really like how most botanical gardens are broken into smaller rooms. Many of my favorite ideas have been inspired by deconstructions of how these "rooms" are composed. These ideas are transplantable to my own yard, too.

So, plants, nice views(interesting landscaping), ideas, education, maybe even a sense of serenity should be expected take-aways from any visit to a botanical garden.

What are your expectations from your botanical garden visits?

Stick It to...the Gardener?

(Do you see that "attractive" green watering stand hiding behind the green PVC stick thingee? Clever!!)

Crap! I hate it when this happens. You deal with the weeds only to have these PVC thingees pop up everywhere in beautifully planted bedding annuals. I like a shot of color, a painted chair, a vibrant pot, but these stick thingees?

Recycle 'em!

Allen Centennial Gardens is usually my favorite garden visit of the year. I seldom make the trip to the UW-Madison campus to take in the Allen in spring. Once I went in winter; they have a remarkably diverse pinetum for a garden that covers less than two acres. I typically get there late summer or fall.

This year though, I could have skipped my visit.

Okay, we've been in a severe drought. We need to water. It can be inconvenient to lug tripod and hose around. I understand. But it was 4:30 PM, and not a gardener in sight. But there were plenty of these, just standing around.

It was hard to frame a shot without all the other non-garden items. It was downright distracting.

Not only did the watering regimen and the sticks stick it to me, but there were major areas of bare ground (in August?) with this sign:



And then, because of the drought, irregardless of the watering schedule, there were dead, dying, or missing plants.

And then, of course, they are sandblasting or tuck-pointing or doing some sort of restoration on the building, so there is scaffolding, but also we have a couple borrowed views like this.

Isn't this clever how the irrigation head on a pipe mimics the carillon bell tower in the distance? How nice to repeat and mimic shapes throughout the garden.

And this mortuary/funeral urn cemetery-looking display. "What'll ya' have on your tombstone!"



They were concerned about gardening in small spaces. But with this jumble and lackadaisical watering schedule, I'm not sure the yield that could be obtained from this.




And just to give you one more look at all those sticks:



I'm just not that into those sticks, Allen Centennial Garden folks!

April 22, 2011: Today in a Zone 4 Garden, Central Wisconsin

This afternoon, the sun is beginning to peek out. It seems like forever since we've had that much light! It is not supposed to freeze for at least the next several days, although we are supposed to have some wind today. It is pretty wet to work in the garden.

I did move three flats filled with kale, cabbage, and onions out of the cold frame and under a storm door screen. I have found the screen provides just enough sun, wind, and torrential rain protection to serve as the perfect cover when hardening off plantlings. One edge of the screen is on the cold frame the other two corners are supported by a stack of bricks. I tucked three flats under one edge next to the thermal mass of the cold frame.

This frees up space for three more flats in the cold frame. At this point with temps in the mid-30s at night, I don't want to bring out peppers, eggplant, coleus, or tomatoes; but dino kale seedlings, radicchio and head lettuce starts may do well in the cold frame.

I started some peas indoors and after they have germinated and grown true leaves, they will be candidate to bring out to harden off. There's still no sign of those I planted in the ground. I also planted some yellow onion sets before our major spring snow storm. Onions are pretty cold hardy and even wet, cold ground should not deter them.

This activity has also freed up space on the grow racks. The average last frost date is about 4 weeks out. I am thinking of getting some more spinach started, including a climbing spinach.

After May 1, I will start some heat lovers, like melons and pumpkins. These won't go into the garden until almost June 1 here, well after any chance of frost.

Edible Ornamentals and One of My Favorite Public Gardens

The Allen Centennial Garden on the UW-Madison campus is one of the smallest public gardens I regularly visit. It packs a lot into its small space, including an area dedicated to edible ornamentals, a pinetum, a scree garden, and much more.

Since winter is holding fast to Wisconsin, although I did see a bare spot in my yard today with inch tall tulips (insert wild applause, chanting, and crowd adoration for the coming of spring here!), it still only worked its way up to freezing. If you are a glass full type, maybe we could saying "melting temperatures".

Enjoy!


This first picture at the Allen shows a variety of cabbage, and kale, an artichoke in the foreground and some grains. I think they are buckwheat, sorghum, and millet.


This picture features Redbor kale and edible flowers.


This bed is primarily herbs. Not sure why they would mix in a poisonous plant like datura in an herb garden. Datura is medicinal, but best left to chemists, not gardeners.




The limey-yellow plant with the pinkish-orange bloom is a decorative-leaved geranium.




The next few pictures show some great plant combinations from the scree and trough gardens. Some of these plants are "temperperennials", meaning not annuals but not hardy to this zone.




Let me know if you need the name of something. I can identify almost all of these cultivars, if you are actively looking to obtain a particular specimen pictured here.