sun, then clouds: calm: 82ºF

To compliment the Dale Chihuly exhibit of glassworks that are on display until fall, the keepers of the rose garden have planted a rose named ‘Chihuly.’ The rose was developed at Weeks Roses, a large California company that breeds, grows, and markets millions of the roses that are sold in nurseries and garden centers. The Chihuly Rose joins Weeks’ Celebrity Series that includes Bing Crosby, Chris Evert, George Burns, Julia Child, Marilyn Monroe, Betty Bopp, Rosie O'Donnell, and Santa Claus. I saw the Chihuly Rose while the morning sun was low. Low sun made for luminous colors in this rose of yellows, pinks, oranges, and reds. Like many of the multicolored roses, this one holds its spectrum of colors only while it is at peak bloom. As Chihuly ages, the colors wash to a mushy pink. Still, I’d agree with what Weeks Roses has to say: “In naming a rose to honor America’s famous glass artist, Dale Chihuly, it had to have impeccable style & an ever-changing array of flashy colors.”

It’s hard to resist taking pictures of Chihuly’s glass pieces. I’ve heard photographers complain that it’s impossible to photograph glass outdoors with getting burnout from the glint. Yet they persist, each trying to find some new angle or vista to view the works. So do I. I figured with so many folks aiming their cameras at the glass, there ought be some good ones posted to blogs by now. There were. Indigo Thoughts done by The St Louis Web Designer has a photo of the Walla Walla balls floating in a reflective pond outside the Climatron glasshouse. Stainless Steel Droppings displays pictures of the whole Chihuly exhibit, indoors and out, that were taken on a family trip to St. Louis. My favorite: a close-up photo taken by Jason Wall of the spiral curl at the end of one of the blue glass pieces.

I’m drawn to plants that have leaves with unpredictable shapes. They have contours that shouldn’t be. Outcroppings where I’d expect to see long continuous lines. This morning we spotted a shrub named Deinanthe bifida growing at the edge of the walk in a deeply shaded part of the English Woodland Garden. The sign says the small shrub is native to Eastern Asia, but I suspect it’s in this English Garden because it thrives in shady spots and takes easily to rich, woody soil. Each leaf is deeply notched at the tip. The effect is like Siamese twins joined at the hip.







clear: calm: 78ºF

I gave up growing tomatoes when I moved to a house with a smaller backyard and much too much shade. After I moved I sent a note to Burpee’s Seed Company asking them to discontinue sending me their catalog filled with page after page of pictures of luscious looking tomatoes. I always ended up buying more tomato seeds that I had room to plant because I had to have my old favorites-- Big Boy, Better Girl, Lemon Boy, Celebrity, and Rutgers. To those I would add a novelty tomato like Mr. Stripey, a yellow-skinned tomato with red strips, or Cherokee Purple, a tasty variety with a brownish purple flesh that only stern stomachs could tolerate. Then finally I would buy seeds for whatever Burpee was touting as the “must have” new variety of the season.

Even though I don’t have any tomato plants of my own now, I still like to see what the keepers of this botanical garden choose to plant and then to try to make a guess as to why they picked what they did. This season out of the hundreds of varieties that they might have picked they chose these twelve: Pink Girl, New Girl, Better Boy, Lemon Boy, Heartland, Brandy Boy, Legend, Razzleberry, Sugary, Health Kick, Red Agate, and Celebrity.

Health Kick, Razzleberry, Sugary, and Legend sent me back to the seed catalogs to see what these four had to offer. Burpee claims Health Kick is “healthier for you than others you can grow or buy” because it has 50% more cancer-fighting lycopene in it. Razzleberry is sold exclusively by Park Seed. They say it has a “silky smooth” texture that “literally seems to melt in your mouth.” Sugary was an All-American Selection winner last year. It has two things going for it: it’s supposed to be the sweetest cherry tomato ever and it is shaped like a piece of pulled taffy – a bulge in the middle that tapers at the ends. The sugary taste and candy-like shape is meant to entice tomato-phobic kids to try them. Legend is a new tomato developed by scientists at the Agricultural Experiment Station at Oregon State. It’s a self-pollinating tomato that is able to set fruit in early spring even before the bees become active. In the cool Northwest a Legend tomato ought to be the season’s first. Here in the Midwest, with our late season cold spells and hot humid summers, who knows how Legend will perform?

I plan to watch these four varieties this summer. The keepers of this botanical garden encourage watching. Picking and tasting: well, that’s another thing. Too bad the look of a tomato is so often just skin deep.

Plants have a way of veering off-course without warning. From spouts to mature specimens they do all that could be asked of them and then something happens. At the edge of one of the bulb gardens is a group of magnificent ‘Blue Angel’ hostas. Each clump has to be nearly three-feet tall and five-feet across. ‘Blue Angels’ are reputed to be one of the largest, bluest, and most reliable of the giant hostas. This week as they had just begun to flower, many of the leaves began to shrivel and curl from the margins inward. Why these healthy plants made it almost to flowering without a glitch and now, at their peak, show signs of withering, I can’t know. Last year, they were growing under an old crabapple tree. This spring the tree was removed. More sun? Less shelter? Whatever the reason, the Blue Angels will finish the season wounded.







clear: calm: 82ºF

Just scattered traces of spring remain: signs that identifyied daffodils and crocuses that have long since bloomed have to be pulled out and stored; in some spots the withered remains of tulips still show. Even so, most of the spring bulbs and the pansies that were interplanted with them are now gone, replaced by summer gardens that will stay until the mums get here.

All of the large display gardens in the botanical garden were planted sometime last week. How to choose what to plant? All of the display gardens are in full sun. All are in a part of the garden that even the most casual visitor is likely to see. So if it was up up to me, full and splashy blooms would be my choice. Their choice: for the reflecting ponds bordering the Linnean House, this year’s selections for the tall backdrop are Canna ‘Erebus’ and Rose of Sharon ‘Notwoodtwo’ White Chiffon. On the next tier are Pentas ‘Butterfly Light Lavender.’ For the border, some unnamed deep purple trailing petunias. The cannas will have salmon-pink flowers when they bloom. The Rose of Sharon shrubs promise to turn heads. They will have off-white colored blooms with short, white, frizzy strands that look like shredded paper dangling from their centers. This rose of Sharon will be nothing like the old-fashioned Rose of Sharon that was planted all around the 1920s house where I once lived. I read that the Rose of Sharon variety planted here happened by chance about ten years ago when an amateur flower breeder in England was trying to breed a better variety of pink Rose of Sharon. Instead he got an unexpected sport that was the start of White Chiffon. The plants in the display gardens are still quite small, so I don’t expect to see many blooms for about a month.

Last season the display gardens were bold and brassy with oranges, reds, and burgundy. This year, the planners were much more restrained. They chose a palette that swings on either side of purple. My wife’s book Color Harmony: A Guide to Creative Color Combinations by Hideaki Chijiiwa describes purple as a “sophisticated color, long associated with royalty” and favored by packagers of cosmetics for women. I wonder if this year the garden planners decided to let the exuberant glass works of Dale Chihuly on display throughout the garden all summer take center stage and let the flowers fill in as supporting cast?

Before today, I’d never seen a turtle in this garden. This morning I saw one crossing the walkway at the entrance to the English Woodland Garden. For a turtle, it was moving fast, its shell raised high. Oddly enough, I had just finished reading some of the observations that 18th Century English curate and nature writer Gilbert White made about Timothy, a turtle that he observed for more than a dozen years. White marveled at the turtle’s tenacity, value as a predictor of rain, and gratitude to those who feed it.

When I got home, I reread White’s observations about Timothy to see whether he might know why the turtle I saw might have hurried across the walk on this morning in early June? In a letter written in 1780, Gilbert White explains why: “. . .there is a season of the year (usually the beginning of June) when his exertions are remarkable. He then walks on tiptoe, and is stirring by five in the morning; and, traversing the garden, examines every wicket and interstice in the fences, through which he will escape if possible . . . The motives that impel him to undertake these rambles seem to be of the amourour kind: his fancy then becomes intent on sexual attachments , which transport him beyond his usually gravity, and induce him to forget for a time his ordinary solemn deportment.” So it turns out to be the same old story: the he turtle hustled across the path this morning to get to some she turtle on the other side.

I’ve also just started to read a book published early this year called Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg. “Abject Reptile” are the words Gilbert White used to describe the turtle that he observed in his garden. This book turns the tables. It gives Timothy his turn. In the book Timothy is the observer. He bares his feelings about what it’s like to be a turtle and to be closely watched (and often pestered) by humans. As I get further into the book I’m anxious see if Timothy will write more kindly of Gilbert White than White did of him. I want to see too whether Timothy has any thoughts about what happens to him in June.

I’ve been watching and waiting. Today’s the day. The magnificent Japanese Irises planted in beds along the zigzag bridge in the lake of the Japanese Garden have finally bloomed.