Author Archives: Denise
Do Not Fill Angel Trumpets with Whipped Cream
Amazing how fast plants cycle back into flower. This brugmansia had dropped all flower buds in response to high temperatures in September, and now this show in November, taken early this morning. These blooms on ‘Charles Grimaldi’ are a pallid … Continue reading
Silver&Gold
(I’m describing the slow accretion of the colors selected to surround me, practiced by me, a nonprofessional. An inattentive process of anti-design, if you will.) It starts out with silver. Just silver. Silver came home first, in the form of … Continue reading
Longwood Gardens Miscellany
Such an awful moment, when a recent vacation begins to drift off into the mists of long ago and far away. Only a couple weeks ago, but the travel mojo you came home with is already smothered under to-do lists. … Continue reading
Dustin’s Ballsy Totems
These stacked spheres are currently the stony exclamation points embellishing Dustin Gimbel’s Southern California garden/design laboratory/plant nursery. Dustin has described his fascination with the geologic anomaly of concretions on his blog non-secateur and how his obsession with them led him … Continue reading
Fall Salvias at Longwood Gardens
Longwood was full of “firsts” for me: My first Dutch Elm, the last lone sentinel remaining of a row of elm destroyed by Dutch Elm disease. My first Cornus kousa. My first Copper Beech, Fagus sylvatica. But amongst all these … Continue reading
Longwood Gardens
Longwood Gardens is vast, over 1,050 acres, and also very old. From Wikipedia: “What is now Longwood Gardens was originally purchased from William Penn in 1700 by a fellow Quaker named George Peirce (1646-1734). Although it started as a working … Continue reading
Dutch Wave Breaks Over New Amsterdam
At the Battery, Piet Oudolf has written another glorious fall chapter to the story of the renaissance of urban gardens in New York City. Here at the Battery Bosque, the emphatic sweep of plants is at times even more dramatic … Continue reading
Weedy, Weedier, Weediest Mullein
A white seedling of Verbascum phoeniceum is enthusiastically blooming away after the October surprise of early rains. It held on to its basal leaves in the sere gravel garden all summer in hope of some form of irrigation. Tough little … Continue reading
More Echeverias
This mossed basket of various succulents failed to really gel over summer, no doubt from a bad habit of sticking in a hodge-podge of succulents that break off from plants in the garden and need a home to root in. … Continue reading
Posted in succulents
Tagged Echeveria elegans, Echeveria pulidonis, Senecio anteuphorbium
4 Comments
The High Line in Autumn
Crocus sativus, the saffron crocus I first became intrigued by the High Line when it was in its derelict state. I’d read a New York Times piece about an abandoned elevated railway in Manhattan, its purpose as a rail line … Continue reading
Posted in garden visit, MB Maher
Tagged Crocus sativus, Jane Jacobs, Piet Oudolf, The Great Gatsby, The High Line Park
5 Comments