The New York Botanical Garden is a museum of plants, an educational institution, and a scientific research organization. Founded in 1891 & now a National Historic Landmark, it is one of the greatest botanical gardens in the world. http://www.nybg.org/
I was given a lemon balm plant last year, and duly popped it in with all the other herbs. There it sat, looking vibrant, being fragrant, but untouched. I used and used and used the oregano, even chucking its flowers into tomato sauces, and then chopped it right down, hung large chunks in the kitchen, and used it all through the winter. Thyme, basil, sage, chives and loads of rosemary, all used and very much appreciated. But the lemon balm. Not even not so much. Just not.
Of the other, much-loved herbs, only the chives and parsely came back. Even the rosemary got too frozen to return. But the lemon balm popped up again, a very appealing bright spring green, and it’s already become a veritable bush. I’ll give it points for trying, but really, what are you supposed to *do* with it? I mostly like my tea with milk, and minus big floppy floating leaves.
Then! I realise that the millions of tiny little sprouts coming up all over the place - largely but not only in the same container as the lemon balm - is more bloody lemon balm. And the little oregano seedlings I had been so carefully nurturing were not oregano, but also lemon balm. No idea how that happened. It said oregano on the packet.
So I look it up, and lemon balm is related to mint, which would explain its expansionist tendencies. And there are about a million health reasons to be ‘taking’ it - calming for internal organs including belly and cramping uterus, and the mind apparently too. I may have to start drinking lemon balm tea to release my lemon balm tension - I SEE WHAT YOU ARE DOING, DON’T THINK I DON’T!
Oh my lord this made me laugh, because I have fought this very same battle! The woman that owned our house before us must have planted one lemon balm at some point, and when we took possession I was like “oh no, lemon balm!” So I started a one woman campaign against it. A few years later I think I finally have it under control, but it’s early days yet this year, so only time will actually tell. ~AR
We’re mostly moving away from specific plants this week, in terms of what’s beautiful now, in favor of landscapes. Bright, pulsating, incredibly dramatic, gorgeous, stunningly beautiful landscapes, to be specific.
That said, there are a few standout flowers that you should look for, including that peachy peony and her friends, lily of the valley, and ‘Hinomayo,’ one of the most outstanding shrubs on our grounds.
Things are definitely settling into a pattern here in terms of what’s beautiful. If you check last week’s report, and even the report from two weeks ago, many of the same gardens are holding strong. What can we say? It’s been an extraordinary spring!
So come visit us in the Bronx! You can plan your visit here. For day-to-day updates on what we’re seeing around grounds, be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter where we post daily updates from our staff and visitors. Also, need help getting around? Our iPhone app can help out there. It’s free and available in the App Store. ~AR
Recently, a bit of a controversy broke out after a prominent garden writer was seen as taking a too-light tone in talking about the downy mildew epidemic attacking the cheery garden flower. Impatiens, in case you don’t know, are one of the few garden annuals happy to bloom in shade. They are beloved by gardeners for adding color under trees and in shady corners. And apparently in India they are used in massive mass plantings to construct colorful pyramids! Now there’s an idea for real curbside appeal!
As an aside, the bottom photo shows a mass planting of wax begonia, a flower that is frequently recommended as a good alternative for impatiens. ~AR
Our colleagues in Atlanta have just opened what sounds like a really cool exhibition. Called “Imaginary Worlds: Plants Larger Than Life” it features enormous living sculptures made up of thousands upon thousands of plants. The sculptures include an ogre, a unicorn, and largest of all, the Earth Goddess. The sculptures are created by a company in Montreal, and contain specially made internal irrigation systems to help them last through Atlanta’s punishing summers. ~AR
Oh yes. Yes! This is an idea I can get behind! In my experience, almost all garden markers are useless. No matter what you use, they seem to fade or disappear by the end of the growing season. I am a big fan of making meticulous planting maps and keeping a garden diary. But these? These are garden markers I can get behind! Why? Because they’re awesome. And maybe, just maybe, they’re scary enough to frighten bunnies. Hope springs eternal! ~AR
Some people find gardening soothing to their psyche. Others, well … don’t. We’re here for you! If you’ve ever got a gardening conundrum, feel free to drop us a note and we’ll see what we can do to help out.
Remember to include your location, a description of the problem, and the name of the plant if you know it. We’re best at dealing with problems in the mid-Atlantic, so do keep that in mind. ~AR
Did you catch the Garden, last year’s summer exhibition Monet’s Garden, and NYBG scientist Amy Litt this on CBS News Sunday Morning talking about flower power and the amazing science of plant “feelings”? No? Well that’s okay, because you can watch it now and learn all about how plants know that their neighbors are hurt, how flowers know when to open, and how venus flytraps know when to snap shut. But don’t worry vegetarians, you don’t have to worry about eating plants now, too. It turns out they can’t feel that much! ~AR
This interview from Time for Kids with the maker of a new documentary about flowers and pollinators called Wings of Life is awesome. Louie Schwartzberg is obviously a man who loves his subject, his medium, and the audience he is speaking to.
What I think struck me most is his belief that if you love flowers you will do things to help flowers. If you understand what a flower means to you, you will make better choices that will help both the flowers and you. That’s a powerful lesson to teach kids, and I sincerely hope that his new film helps do that. Oh, and it sure doesn’t hurt that the movie is chock-full of time lapse video and narrated by Meryl Streep to boot. ~AR
Did you know there’s a term for seeing faces in places where they shouldn’t be? It’s called pareidolia. Regardless of whether or not your beans are literally happy, growing beans can make you happy. They’re high return on low investment, provide you with better soil, bumper crops, and seeds for next year’s harvest. I call that a true gardening win-win! ~AR
In college I had a little pot of ivy. Over Christmas break I decided to bring him home with me, which led to a strange conversation with a homeless man in Penn Station that ended with the homeless man naming my ivy Fred. I have been noticing a lot of posts recently where people introduce their houseplants by name. Without the intervention of the homeless guy I’m not sure I ever would have named my ivy, but in the end I was happy I did. So spill: Do you name your plants? ~AR
(I had a Venus flytrap named Robespierre. I don’t have even the crumbs of an explanation for that one. —MN)
Have you learned any life lessons from your plants? I sure have. Much like the author of this seemingly silly, and yet totally dead on, article, my plant-keeping efforts have taught me a lot. I think the one that has resonated the most deeply with me is how flexible plants can be, to drought, to being dropped, to being over watered, to be under fertilized. It has made me realize that many situations I think are untenable really just require a new form of flexibility on my part. And to think I got all that from something that can’t talk, walk, or emote. Plants are awesome. ~AR
“Linnaeus, and the Flower Clock (Carl Linnaeus is considered the father of Modern Taxonomy.
Linnaeus observed over a number of years that certain plants constantly opened and closed their flowers at particular times of the day, these times varying from species to species. Hence one could deduce the approximate time of day according to which species had opened or closed their flowers. Arranged in sequence of flowering over the day they constituted a kind of floral clock or horologium florae, as Linnaeus called it in his Philosophia Botanica (1751, pages 274-276). A detailed and extended account of this in English will be found in F.W.Oliver’s translation of Anton Kerner’s The Natural History of Plants, 1895, vol.2, pages 215-218. As many of the indicator plants are wildflowers and the opening/closing times depend on latitude, the complexities of planting a floral clock make it an impractical proposition.”
Okay, so it wasn’t Linnaeus’ greatest idea—planting a garden that would tell you the time of day whenever you happened to be in it. It’s not even a sure thing that the proposal went beyond the concept stage. But who could deny its madcap ambition?
If it weren’t for the fact that flowers are subject to the vagaries of locale, weather, and the qualities of their growing environments (among a million other variables), it might just have worked. —MN
I see dozens, if not scores, of people asking for identification of their mystery plants on Tumblr (especially in the Botany, Plants, and Gardening tags which we monitor frequently. We do not monitor the “flowers” tag because there is too much superfluous content), but very few of you actually pose your questions as questions, which makes answering your questions next to impossible.
If you have it enabled, Tumblr allows you to further enable a feature on many styles of post ending in a question mark with “allow people to answer this.” If you enable this, there is a good chance that someone will help you (including us and our staff of horticulturists and botanists). But since Tumblr makes it kind of hard for people to communicate with each other unless they are following each other, you’re probably not going to end up with an answer. So, remember kids, pose your questions as questions and leave the hashtags to the tags field. And if all else fails, include a way for people to get in touch with you outside of Tumblr, say like through Twitter or Instagram. ~AR
This lunchtime I was listening to the Sunday gardening programme on my local radio station. The regular presenter was joined by the head gardeners of two Cambridge colleges (Clare and Newnham), and the panel were answering callers’ questions, as usual. One woman phoned in to ask for advice about what kind of climber she ought to plant on a newly-bought trellis, given the constraints of the soil/aspect of her garden. After the panel had recommended a couple of unusual clematises and rambling roses, the woman mentioned that she had read about a plant called the ‘snail vine’, which looked very attractive. She wondered if they could tell her more about it, and if it would be appropriate for her site. Unfortunately none of the professional gardeners was familiar with this common name, and so the woman did her best to remember its Latin name, and ended up providing them with a vague approximation to ‘Phaseolus caracalla’. They were still stumped by this, and half-jokingly applauded the woman on finding a plant species with which none of them was familiar.
Much later in the programme, the trio were discussing techniques for rotating between leeks and peas, and this led on to a broader conversation about leguminous garden vegetables. One of the panel pointed out that the pea family of course provides us not only with edible staples, but also some delightful ornamental species. He was particularly keen to praise Vigna caracalla, which he claimed was very easy to grow in British gardens, and produced exquisite bundles of papilionoid flowers. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson once described this plant as ‘the most beautiful bean in the world’.
Alas, P. caracalla and V. caracalla are one and the same! This was one of several species (including mung bean) moved from Phaseolus into Vigna. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the horticultural trade is an example of a sector that is quite resistant to change, and so new names take a long time to be accepted. In the intervening period, both the old name (basionym) and new name are current in the botanophile community, leading to the sort of unfortunate confusion exemplified in a quite entertaining manner in this afternoon’s radio show.
A fantastic tale of gardening confusion. Sometimes referring to a plant by its Latin name isn’t even safe! And the Jefferson connection is true. I ordered these seeds from Monticello a few years ago, but they were done in by a cold, rainy growing season. Looks like Monticello is now circumventing that problem by shipping seedlings if you would like to try your hand at growing this stunning vine at home in the States. ~AR
