Growing a Garden: Idaho’s Sawtooth Botanical Garden

To conceive and create a botanical garden is a daunting endeavor for anyone, anywhere, but in Idaho?

The Sawtooth Botanical Garden started as a community garden. In 1995 a small, yet determined, local group of gardeners and environmentalists acquired a former horse pasture – with the help of the Global Environmental Project Institute. The idea was to demonstrate sustainable gardening practices and allow community members to rent plots and grow vegetables and flowers.

As membership grew, so did the vision. By 2000, the Community Garden was renamed the Sawtooth Botanical Garden, with a vision to celebrate the unique beauty and diverse plant life of the region and to educate and inspire people to appreciate and live in balance with the natural world.

The Garden of Infinite Compassion

In the Northeast corner is the Garden of Infinite Compassion, a high altitude alpine rock garden designed for meditation by renowned landscape designer Martin Mosko. At its center is a beautifully carved Tibetan Prayer Wheel, installed in conjunction with a visit by the Dalai Lama in September, 2005 and blessed by His Holiness.

The 400 lb. copper Prayer Wheel, created by Buddhist monks in Dharamasala, is filled with over one million written mantras. As the Prayer Wheel spins, blessings and hopes for peace and compassion are sent worldwide. A journey through this garden begins with a path to the serenity pond, where benches offer a place to relax and enjoy the Healing Crystal. Placed throughout the garden, giant boulders keep watch over reflecting ponds and a quiet, meandering stream.

Riparian
Willow, Aspen and Cottonwood trees, along with other native riparian plants, line the banks of the spring-fed creek that runs through the garden. This creek is known as a Comstock Ditch which never freezes and flows year-round. It is a wetland wildlife habitat for birds, native trout, beaver, moose and insect life.

Home Demonstration Xeriscape Garden
Funded by a grant from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, these beds showcase a wide variety of colorful drought-tolerant plants and demonstrate low water usage with a drip irrigation system.

Herbaceous Perennial Display Garden
A project donated and installed by The Dig It Garden Club, this formally arranged garden displays perennials blooming spring to fall in the Wood River Valley’s high altitude climate.

For more information about building a community garden:

A Garden Traveler’s Pilgrimage: Charleston

Where’s your Holy Grail?

One day, are you going to follow the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James) across northern Spain, a route that has been walked by millions of pilgrims since the Middle Ages, and who, even today, make the journey on foot, or bicycle or mule? Are you one of the legions of Elvis fans across the world (including Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi when he visited the U.S.) who make the annual pilgrimage to Graceland in Memphis?

For gardeners, Charleston, known as “a city set in a garden” is Mecca. For me, within this Celestial City of Southern Gardens, my Mecca remains steadfast: Mrs. Whaley’s Charleston garden on Church Street.

It was early on a Sunday morning and, of course, the garden wasn’t open to the public the first time I made it there. But we were heading back to Atlanta and I could not/would not leave Charleston without making an attempt to see one of the most visited private gardens in America.

Like many of the gates and fences standing sentinel at the gardens of Charleston, the grillwork here was fashioned in black wrought-iron; a flirtatious Southern belle offering just a glimpse of a well-turned ankle. A charming gate, but still, it was keeping me outside of this particular Eden and I wanted to see more. Was that pittosporum (Pittosporum tobira) around the corner? I fancied that I caught a whiff of Confederate jasmine. Perhaps that sweet scent was a tea olive (Osmanthus fragrans)? Somewhere nearby a church bell was chiming. The current occupants of the house were undoubtedly enjoying a leisurely second cup of coffee, lingering over the Sunday paper, oblivious to this stranger lurking just outside. But I was to determined to, at the very least, catch a peek at the masterpiece the late Emily Whaley created, based on the plan originally drawn up for her in 1940 by Mr. Loutrel Briggs, the renowned landscape architect who designed many of the wonderful gardens in Charleston.

Alas, my traveling companion was tugging on my arm, mumbling about trespassing on private property, and I was forced to retreat with only a hasty look at my Holy Grail of Charleston’s gardens. In my mind I was not trespassing. After all, when your garden is the title of a book – Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden, by Emily Whaley in conversation with William Baldwin -- as well as the subject of numerous magazine and newspaper articles and has even appeared on the cover of the Charleston telephone book, it’s inevitable that stray gardener pilgrims will pop up from time to time.

Luckily for me (and everyone else), during Historic Charleston Foundation’s Annual Festival of Houses and Gardens, owners of the private gardens in the Historic District of Charleston graciously open their signature wrought-iron garden gates – and in many cases their front doors – to welcome visitors. During the month-long celebration, daily tours feature the interiors and gardens of nearly 150 historic private houses in 12 colonial and antebellum neighborhoods during the peak of the city's blooming season.

I have visited Mrs. Whaley’s garden several times – legitimately, courtesy of events like these in Charleston – and I am always inspired and always vow to return. After all, inspiration is what we’re all searching for, in one form or another.

The late Emily Whaley said it best. “Inspiration is the bottom line. Without it the first move could not be made. . . . We see, absorb, winnow, and sift, and finally our imaginations take wing and out of all this come our gardening plans.”

The gates will be open in Charleston, March 13 - April 12.

Announcing the Garden Conservancy’s 2008 Open Days

April 5, Vero Beach, Florida
My courtyard is typical of Andalusian courtyards in Spain, which were recreated in the Caribbean during the Spanish conquest.

April 5, Ithaca, New York
A unique collection of over 400 snowdrop varieties along with other very early spring flowers. The 1848 Greek Revival-style farmhouse was moved to this site in 1990.

April 27, Pasadena, California
Designed in the 1930s by Roland Coate, we are the second owners of this magnificent Monterey Colonial house which is surrounded by majestic old oaks, broad lawns, and a variety of gardens. We have a mature, old-fashioned, two-acre estate which offers peace, beauty, and woodland serenity.

Photo: Greenwood Gardens is a twenty-two acre formal garden in Short Hills, New Jersey, about twenty miles to the north of New York City.

From coast to coast, April through November, more than 300 private gardens like these will once again welcome visitors on scheduled days through the Garden Conservatory’s Open Days Program.

The Garden Conservancy is a national, nonprofit organization founded in 1989 to preserve exceptional American gardens. Gardens of unusual merit across the U.S. are identified and the Garden Conservatory works with their owners and other interested parties to ensure the gardens’ futures and to make them permanently accessible to the public.

The Open Days are self-guided tours, with a $5 admission fee per person per garden.
For more information, as well as the 2008 schedule, visit http://www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays/index.pl

Catch up: Indoor gardening

It’s winter and my garden really isn’t that inviting, but check out my terrariums! More and more gardeners are capturing nature in miniature and under glass.


Bring the outdoors in with miniature gardens
MSNBC - USA
Now’s the time to try three classic indoor gardening projects: terrariums, topiaries and bonsai.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22828363/

An inside job on terrariums
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA
A new generation of designers is reinventing the mini-garden, and devotees are lining up.
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-terrariums24jan24,1,2981593.story?ctrack=7&cset=true

Mini plants, major care
Mini plants, major care
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA
How should tend your terrarium? With anything from a heart surgeon's tweezers and surgical scissors to tools found in your kitchen drawer.
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-terrariumsside24jan24,1,2568933.story?ctrack=5&cset=true

Gardeners get ready: 2008 Flower and Garden Shows

Anxious to get out in the garden and start planting, but cold weather and gray skies holding you back? Gardeners put on your walking shoes and get ready. The 2008 Flower and Garden Show season is about to start and thousands of garden enthusiasts, from neophytes to master gardeners, will find garden design inspiration and advice to make this year’s garden the best ever.

Show highlights typically include professionally landscaped gardens; amateur and professional floral designs; seminars and demonstrations; horticultural information and advice for gardeners of all ages; and great shopping.

One of the first shows is the 21st annual Southeastern Flower Show.
This year’s theme: Imagine That!
Wednesday, January 30 – Sunday, February 3, 2008
Georgia World Congress Center, located across from CNN Center at Andrew Young International Boulevard and Marietta Street,
Atlanta, GA.

The granddaddy of all flower shows: the Philadelphia Flower Show.
This year’s theme: Jazz It Up
Sunday, March 2 - Sunday, March 9
Pennsylvania Convention Center
Philadelphia, PA

Begun in 1829, the Philadelphia Flower Show is the oldest U.S. flower show and the largest annual indoor flower show in the world, covering 33 indoor acres in all. The country's premier landscape designers and florists turn 10 acres of the Convention Center into a floral fantasy world with exotic plants and eclectic designs.

For other shows around the U.S. visit: http://http//www.gardentraveler.com/pages/events.htm

Emily’s Birthday

Some say Emily Dickinson (1830–86) is America’s greatest poet. I know that she’s definitely one of myFaves. Since today’s Miss Emily’s birthday, here are some of her thoughts.

To make a prairie it takes a clover
And one bee, ―
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

###

Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.

With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!

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Inside Out

The Art and Craft of Home Landscaping
By Jeff Hutton

Are you a gardener or a landscaper? According to Jeff Hutton, a landscape designer in Vernon, Connecticut, there’s a distinction.

After all, would you furnish your home by popping into a furniture store on a whim, buying whatever catches your eye and then shoving your I-don’t-care-if-it-is-too big -and-clashes-I-want-it-anyway sofas and chairs just anywhere and expect your home to look attractive and inviting? Well, if your whole house is furnished straight from Ethan Allen, yeah, you might. Most people, however, decorate their home with at least some thought to the basics of concepts like color, space, patterns, flow, scale — even if it’s only subconsciously.

These same basic design principles could and should apply to the landscape outside of your home as well, according to Hutton, who shares his more than thirty years of experience designing outdoor living spaces in his new book, Inside Out. Hutton advocates “. . . merging the surrounding landscape with the structure of the house.” Calling himself, “a great proponent of what I call ‘inside out’ – effectively blurring the border between architecture and landscape architecture, or interior and exterior design,” he contends: “Your yard is the canvas. Design is about composition, no matter what the application.”

Since too much of my garden canvas is now blank, courtesy of the ongoing drought here in Georgia, this book offers a much-needed landscape cache of information and ideas. Foundation beds, walkways and paths, decks and porches, patios and courtyards, retaining walls, ornamental grasses, ornamental and shade trees, foliage and flowers, as well as easy-to-follow discussions of integration, intersection, association, balance, composition, and color are all here in the wonderful book.

Hutton is also a self-proclaimed lifelong student of plant nomenclature and he includes a fascinating chapter on deciphering the Linnaeus Code, the methodology of classifying and naming living organisms organized by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, often called the Father of Taxonomy. According to Hutton, “It’s pretty satisfying to be able to read the label on a plant, and understand its character from its name.”

Do you think this is useless information? Not so. If you’re browsing the garden center for something to plant in that small wedge of ground next to your house, you’ll know enough to give the plant with giganteum on its label a pass.

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