That’s right, the horticulture staff from the Garden will be making appearances at the Great Big Home and Garden Expo at the IX Center all week beginning February 6. We’ll be giving presentations covering a wide range of horticultural topics including: Sustainable Rose Care, Growing Orchids Successfully, The Best Beautiful Plants for Your Garden, Composting Basics, Container Gardening, Proper Houseplant Care and Selecting the Right Rhododendrons for Your Garden. We are once again sharing exhibit space with the Cuyahoga County Master Gardeners who will also be speaking throughout the week.

When you visit, you’ll notice that our garden display is quite different for the other landscapers’ gardens. We chose to showcase orchids and tillandsias on one side to make visitors aware of our upcoming Orchid Mania show, Feb 27-Mar 28. The opposite side of our garden was created by Shoko Morton, an expert in the Sogetsu School of Ikebana Japanese flower arranging. Our exhibits are unlike any other you will see at the IX Center! We hope that you will visit and enjoy our floral artwork!

 Part II: Ornamental native plants 

 

Part one – Holiday traditions 

Of course there are evergreen trees, three species this year. Most of them are Fraser fir (Abies fraseri), one of the best, for conical shape, deep green color, great fragrance, and excellent needle retention. Best of all, the needles are blunt, so no unexpected pokes and prickles. These friendly traits are shared by the concolor fir as well. The lavishly decorated, extra tall tree featured in the Ellipse is a concolor (Abies concolor.) The third tree species, included for its pretty color is Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens var. glauca.) No one will be hugging this one, those needles are sharp!

 

Also part of the holiday decor are long blooming Crown of Thorns (Euphorbia grandiflora and Euphorbia milii hybrids.) Have fun tracing the family resemblance between all these members of a fascinating plant family. And don’t miss the appropriately named Poinsettia called ‘Winter Rose’ – a decorator’s dream of form and texture.

Posted by Ann MCCulloh

Bringing the Outside In

Many cultural celebrations center around natural cycles or events. Thanksgiving is no exception. Parents need to get their kids outside, and parents need to bring the outside indoors.

There are a number of ways to bring the outdoors in over the coming winter months. Here are a number of ideas: 

1.  Walk through the yard, neighborhood or nearby park, collecting whatever materials you find on the ground (you could do a litter hunt one day and a nature hunt another). Take the materials home and make fantastic creatures or Thanksgiving decorations. I like to ask kids to draw their creature first and then make with the materials what they just drew.

2.  You can find lots of other craft ideas on the internet.  

3.  Purchase different flowering spring bulbs and force them to bloom early, like, say, February.

4.  Purchase houseplants that can spend the summer outside in Ohio. When you return them to the indoor environment each fall they serve as a reminder of green summer days.

Posted by Josh Steffen

Other Garden Connections

Yes, Hershey Children’s Garden is closed for the season. This is true, but it does not mean the opportunities for family fun are over. Here are some things you can do while you are here, and some upcoming opportunities:

• Give your child a journal and encourage them to write or draw pictures of what they saw, heard, smelled or touched
• See if you can find fungus, rocks, leaves and branches of different colors, shapes and sizes; look at them with a magnifying glass
• Collect different types of fallen leaves and draw them in a journal or press them flat in a large book, the leaves can be arranged into different animals on seasonally appropriate greeting cards
• Attend our last Little Buds class for the season
• Come to one of our Nature Tales Story Time sessions
• Attend our America Recycles Day

There are endless opportunities to create lasting memories with your child no matter the season. Let us help you facilitate those moments.

The autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale, is a lovely harbinger of cooler days to come. A chemical derived from this flower, called colchicine, is used by plant propagators to change the chromosome number in plants. For instance, in daylilies, many varieties have had their number of chromosomes doubled (going from diploids to tetraploids) using colchicine. This often results in plants that are hardier, larger and have more robust flowers and scapes. Colchicine is also used to treat gout in humans. But please don’t think about harvesting C. autumnale if you want to self-medicate. It’s very easy to overdose and there is no known antidote.

If you want to grow these darling little bulbs, plant them in the fall —  the foliage emerges in the spring. Unilke their cousins, the spring-blooming cocuses, the flowers of the autumn crocus are in full bloom right now. There are several varieties to consider including the single flowering, ‘Lilac wonder’ and the gorgeous double flowering ‘Water lily’. One great source from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com. In fact, Brent Heath himself will be here at the Garden on Sept 17th to talk about all the new and interesting bulbs that are about to be introduced. Don’t miss him — he’s one of America’s leading bulb experts.

The difference between an annual and perennial.

When to divide hostas.

How to prune a lilac.

Are these gardening questions you’ve wanted to know the answers to —  but were afraid to ask? Help is on the way, my friend.

Twice a year, the Garden offers a“Green Gardener and Public Horticulture Volunteer” certification program. And the even better news is there is still time to register before the August 28^th deadline. The bad news (for you, maybe) is that this class always sells out. We began offering this class in the winter of 2006, and every time since then, a fanastic little community of learners has been created by the participants. The class is 10 weeks long.  Half of the instruction is conveniently conducted online, and the other half consists of hands-on labs conducted here at the Garden. Throughout the class, you learn the basics of horticulture, botany, plant health, soil composition, good versus bad insects — enough to make you a proficient and prolific hands-on gardener.

The Green Gardener/Public Horticulture Volunteer certification program is a great way to learn more about something you love, meet some fun, like-minded people, and end up with certification that you can brag to your friends about! Why not just sign up already! 

On Sunday, July 26th, from 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm,  the Northern Ohio Daylily Society and the Botanical Garden will be showcasing daylilies in all their magnificent glory! This is a judged event by certified daylily judges so you can imagine that the best of the best daylily varieties will be on display. There are two main sections in the show: the scapes and the individual flowers. Only the scapes are eligible to be judged. The individual flowers are shown more as an educational tool for those guests who are thinking about obtaining the newest varieties. The Society will also be selling several types of dayliles at incredible prices so get here early if you’re interested in purchasing a few lilies for your garden.

Many daylily experts will be on hand to answer your questions and provide insightful tips on successfully growing daylilies. If you’re interested in entering a daylily scape or individual flowers, please download the booklet. You’ll see there are different categories in which to enter your scape or flowers depending on the size of the flowers and whether or not the flowers are spider forms.

  Don’t forget to visit the Garden on July 26th for the Daylily Show! It’ll be spectacular!

260 sustainable gardening enthusiasts, landscape professionals, educators, environmentalists, and others descended on the Garden this past Saturday for our 4th Annual Sustainability Symposium. The crowd lapped up wisdom from the Keynote Speaker, Tracy DiSabato-Aust, who had these many kind things to say about us on her blog.