The Tyler Municipal Rose Garden in Tyler, Texas, is the nation’s oldest and largest municipal garden. The garden features more than 38,000 bushes, and 600 cultivars, spanning 14 acres of beautifully manicured grounds. It is open year round and free…
Over the years my work with the gardens at the National Museum of Dance has allowed me to demonstrate the close relationship of gardens with dance. Various areas of each garden reflect different dance styles and relate to choreography within the…
Bee and butterfly populations are in decline in Connecticut. To address this problem, to lure them in, and to increase their numbers, the Millbrook Garden Club created a pollinator garden at the Sharon Audubon Center. At this site, the garden club…
The Bradley and Leila Barnes Grounds & Victorian Gardens are part of the historic Barnes Museum Homestead. Located in the heart of downtown Southington, Connecticut, the property was purchased in 1836 by Bradley Barnes’ grandparents, Amon and…
I’ve sometimes wondered about the importance of space in one’s life. For me, my home filled with family photos, colorful art works, plants, and books is the place that provides comfort and peace and is the space I can always count on. Bridge Gardens,…
Forty years ago, the Wilburton Hill neighborhood in Bellevue, Washington was forests and pastures. That all changed in 1981 when Cal and Harriet Shorts deeded their mid-century home and 7.5 acres of land to the City of Bellevue, with the provision…
IntroductionIn the fall of 2016, The Korea Gallery’s scheduled decade-long run at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) was coming close to its end. The question arose – what do we put in its place? A fun challenge, but a…
Few public gardens have had such an enduring influence on American camellia history as the world-famous Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama. Ever since its 1930’s opening during the rise of America’s fascination with camellias, it has topped…
A unique attraction of the K. Sawada WinterGarden at the Mobile Botanical Gardens is its rare and significant collection of camellias developed by the region's renowned local growers. None were greater than Kosaku Sawada who famously grew a chest of…
Pittsburgh Botanic Garden inspires people to value plants, garden design and the natural world by cultivating plant collections of the Allegheny Plateau and temperate regions, creating display gardens, conducting educational programs and conserving…
Filoli is a country house estate on 654 acres in Woodside, California. There are sixteen acres of beautifully designed formal gardens around the house. In the spring the perennial garden shines with lovely blue delphiniums taking center stage. The…
The peacock is the iconic symbol of this 127-acre garden. They serve as unofficial greeters whenever one enters. Lucky Baldwin, the owner before it became a county property, imported three pairs from China around 1910. Today the population is around…
We visited this free garden in Palo Alto, California when we read it was added to the American Camellia Society Camellia Trail. We were not disappointed. It is the former home and garden of Elizabeth Gamble, the granddaughter of the founder of…
We prepared for rain when we visited Portland, Oregon because the average annual rainfall is 36 inches. Therefore we were not deterred from visiting the Portland Japanese Garden in February. We were on a American Camellia Society (ACS) tour. The…
Opened in 2007, this “People’s Garden” invites visitors of all ages and abilities to create and to explore meaningful connections to plants and nature at their own pace. The journey began in 1991 when a small group of midcoast Maine residents dreamed…
In the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in La Cañada Flintridge, north of Los Angeles, California is the largest collection of camellias in North America. Descanso’s 150 acres are filled with native California plants, a rose garden, flowering…
A wet Saturday morning dawned for the May “Saturdays in the Garden” lecture recently. “The Garden” in the lecture title is Loudoun’s Extension Master Gardener Demonstration Garden at Ida Lee Park and Recreation Center. In this space, our volunteer…
The Many Faces of the Albuquerque BioPark Botanic Garden Our Botanic Garden consists of about 13 recognizable gardens: Pollinator, Spanish-Moorish, Jardin Redondo, Xeric, Curandera, High Desert Rose, Japanese, Children’s Fantasy, G-scale Railroad,…
In 1843, Luke Gannon and his family, immigrants from Ireland, built a log cabin in what is now Crystal Lake, Illinois. The restored cabin was moved to Union, Illinois in 1966 on the grounds of the McHenry County Historical Society. Two years ago, in…
An essential part of a public botanical garden is visitor education and being a docent is my small way of helping with that mission. It is about as stress-free as anything could be. But it was with some trepidation that I heard Cheri V., our…
Sarah Hedean is the Living Collections Manager at Smithsonian Gardens. I sat down to talk with her on August 9, 2017 about her career, the field of horticulture and some of her current undertakings with Smithsonian Gardens. For part two of our…
The Van Vleck House & Gardens originated as a 12-acre private estate more than 140 years ago when Joseph Van Vleck Sr and his family moved to Montclair from Brooklyn in 1868. Like many successful businessmen of the era, Joseph Van Vleck Sr came to…
Omar B., a zone gardener with the New York Restoration Project (NYRP), shares entries from the journal he keeps about his work with the environmental non-profit founded by Bette Midler in 1995 to preserve and transform public green spaces in New York…
The Poquoson Learning Garden is located at the Poquoson Museum, the former sixteen acre William Freeman Dryden farm in the City of Poquoson, Virginia. The museum campus contains a circa 1900 farm house, agricultural out buildings, frontage along the…
Nestled within the thirty acres of one of the most beautiful zoos sits a small parcel of land dedicated to education, conservation and promotion of gardening at the Santa Barbara Zoo. The idea of an onsite garden had been bounced back and forth among…
“The Hill” is a steep, woodland slope at the corner of Nelson Street and College Parkway in Rockville, Maryland. The Garden Club of College Gardens (GCCG) has landscaped and maintained a garden there since the 1970s. The Club is part of the National…
The Arboretum is located in Sandpoint, Idaho on Lake Pend Oreille. In addition to the beautiful lake, there is a mountain resort for winter skiing. Locals often observe, “we’re almost in Canada,” in an area referred to as the Panhandle. It has…
As a student at New College of Florida in Sarasota, I fell in love with Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. Fellow students and I visited to luxuriate in orchid-filled nooks and get away from campus. When campus was steamy and oppressive, Marie Selby…
I live in South Bend Indiana, and most likely always will. Here is the story of a garden in my community. Here in South Bend we have a wonderful Japanese-style garden that has a good backstory. The Japanese garden was built near a park, near a public…
Following 2013 flood, Clemson architecture students rebuild the South Carolina Botanical Garden. Just more than one year ago, the summer of 2013 saw a flood wipe away most of the South Carolina Botanical Garden's nature trails and bridges. But thanks…
It came to the attention of the Fairbanks Garden Club that our city was in danger of losing a type of rose that was brought here over sixty years ago. The 'Pier Bugnet' rose has proven to be a very hardy one for our harsh environment. It thrives in…
Some of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen are located on the exquisite grounds at the Maymont estate in Richmond, VA. The house and surrounding land was owned by James Henry and Sallie Dooley, who resided on the property from 1893 through…
In 1937 Gustav George Gerbing transformed about seven acres of family property along the Amelia River into a public garden, Gerbing’s Azalea Gardens, with plans for massive plantings of azaleas and camellias for viewing and for sale. The entire…
