high haze: calm: 64ºF

As inevitable as fall fashions, this botanical garden changes too. Last week the display gardens were filled with colorful blousy majestic plants that would have done credit to a botanical garden in the subtropics. This morning the cannas, the pentas, and most of the hibiscus are gone. They’ve been replaced by an orderly arrangement of plump, squat mums with colors that lean more toward rusts and purples. The abandon of a tropical paradise was fun while it lasted, but now it’s time to get back home to rock-solid Midwestern monotony.

Blooming autumn clematis (Clemantis terniflora) has taken over the arbors at the far end of the perennial gardens. I’ll not say they look like billowing clouds or snow drifts, even if they do. Shimmering sheets of white, also is out. Floriferous, a word I like to use, but seldom get a chance to, works well to describe them. Definitely social creatures, these clematis blooms number in the thousands once they get started, and then they’ll keep the show going for a couple of weeks. They smell sweet too. I’ve never tried to grow autumn clematis, but I’m betting they thrive on neglect. Like white ooze, they are now draped over and along plenty of trees and shrubs in untended lots and are even climbing telephone poles along the sides of interstates.


For the first time, the imposing red, double wooden-doors to the newly dedicated Ottoman Garden were open this morning. We’ve been watching the garden take shape for months. Until today we have only seen the garden through a hedge of yews that borders one of the walls. So, it was a treat to get inside. I’ve read that this garden is the first Ottoman garden of its kind in the United States. What that claim means and what features go together to make an Ottoman garden, I don’t know yet. I’ll find out next month though when I take a tour with the horticulturalist in charge of the garden.

Right now, all I know is what I can see and what I’ve read in the botanical garden’s press release. The garden is inside a four-sided courtyard enclosed by walls or fences. Small evergreen trees of some kind (maybe cedar) have been planted in front of the fences to soften the look. In the middle of the courtyard there’s an eight-sided shallow pool with water spouts along the rim that throw arcs of water toward a central fountain.

The pool in the center is hidden by a tall slab of ornately decorated stone that has a water tap and a catch basin near the bottom. The press release says that the slab is a “cesme pedestal fountain” placed there to encourage visitors to wash their hands before they enter the garden. When we entered, the tap was not on. Curious that a tap for hand washing requires visitors to bend down to wash.

The wall opposite the entrance to the garden is decorated with murals of flowers done in earth tones. My favorite is this Turkish tulip with pointed petals longer than its stem and framed by wavy green leaves.

New varieties continue to fill in gaps in the beds of the iris garden. None of the new arrivals have permanent labels yet. Some still have paper identifying labels stapled to their clipped fans. A good number of the temporary labels identify the new irises as hailing from Cooley’s Gardens in Silverton, Oregon and Argyle Acres in Argyle, Texas.