I’m processing through my notes and photos from my recent trips to Atlanta and New York City. Here’s a few thoughts I jotted down from the Atlanta Botanic Garden’s Spring Gardening Symposium.
DR. ANDY PULTE | REWILDING
The first talk was by Dr. Andy Pulte (pictured with me above) on Rewilding and naturalistic planting.
I have long been curious where the bedding plant craze originated. He shared how in Europe after the discovery of new annual plants, carpet bedding became the rage, and then it faded away as gardens became more wild. But, carpet bedding came to the United States after the Civil War, and he joked that it never left.
One of Andy’s biggest take aways was for gardeners to start small when shifting their gardens to become more naturalistic. He encouraged them to plant something for a butterfly and start to leave stems up in the winter.
Andy also shared this awesome app called Sunseeker that lets you know where the sun will be in the sky using your phone and augmented reality. It is really nifty for those of us interested in how sunlight and design interact at different times of the year.
ETHAN GUTHRIE | PLANTS WITH PROMISE
Ethan Guthrie, the greenhouse and nursery manager at Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Gainesville location, was next, and he shared a slew of plants that he felt offered promise in our gardens. A few that I noted as interesting:
Tricyrtis ‘Lemon Twist’, which he encouraged us to buy it if you find it
Iris × amplifolia ‘Ming Treasure’ is a flowering powerhouse of an iris!
Scutellaria ‘Appalachian Blues’, a new hybrid skullcap that is a hybrid between Scutellaria serrata and Scutellaria ovata
Agastache MEANT TO BEE ‘Queen Nectarine’, a plant that I also saw thriving in Dallas back in October
A new redbud for me was Cercis chuniana. It blooms on racemes where the flowers can have this lovely bicolor pink and white once the flowers fade a bit, and in the fall the tree offers red foliage, too.
Ethan is a magnoliaphile, and he shared the new Magnolia ‘Blackbird’, a hybrid between ‘Yellow Bird’ and ‘Genie’ that flowers later when the yellows typically bloom.
I also loved the Magnolia × soulangeana Verbanica Broom, which was a witch’s broom off a Magnolia × soulangeana ‘Verbanica’. Plants were probably three feet tall and loaded with flowers. This diminutive selection doesn’t have a cultivar name just yet.
JOHN WHITTLESEY | LIVING WITH BUMBLE BEES — BY DESIGN
John Whittlesey shared such fascinating information, and it was touching to see someone who cared so much about bumblebees. I learned so much that I didn’t previously know.
Bumblebees can generate their own heat. So, they can fly during chiller weather when flies are typically the only other pollinators out.
A bumblebee can visit 6000 flowers a day. When bumblebees visit a flower for the first time, it can take them about 10 tries to access nectar to learn how to get to it.
Male bumblebees don’t come back to the nest at night. We see them asleep on flowers the next morning.
He also talked about the fascinating process of sonication or buzz pollination, where bumblebees vibrate on a flower and cause the pollen to release.
He recommended books by Dave Goulson like A Sting in the Tail for us naturalists.
Jennifer Jewell | Invitations to and from the Garden: Cultivating Place & a Garden Culture of Care
Jennifer Jewell provided a wonderful close to the day by focusing on this idea of invitation and how gardens and plants can invite people from all walks to life to explore, grow, and thrive.
She talked about how all cultures have at sometime gardened in the past, and that her podcast Cultivating Place was a way for her to learn about the diversity of plant experiences out there. She talked about a few gardens and gardeners who she felt best imbued this sense of invitation.
Detroit Flower House was new to me. It was an incredible floral art exhibit in 2015 in Detroit where a run down house was filled with flowers by top floral artists. The house was later demolished and now features a park in its place.
She talked about the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, and how they had transformed a parking lot into a garden. To welcome people from all cultures, they had signage available in multiple languages. She said this garden changed the way people think about plants. For example, they taught people that instead of viewing dead plants as lifeless they could think this dead twig could be part of a hummingbird nest. She also shared the idea that there being just one type of beauty for gardens is insane. She knew an entomologist that said if I don’t have bug sounds in my ears the garden isn’t beautiful.
She also talked about the origin of Theodora Park in Charleston. It was a beautiful story about how David Rawle passed this unkempt, overgrown lot daily and decided he wanted to turn the spot into a garden in honor of his mother. She shared how not all the seating was bolted down in the garden because his research had shown people feel more comfortable if they can move chairs around and configure them. And, so far no chairs have been stolen. This park was a place of solace after the Mother Emanuel AME Church tragedy, which is only a block away.
Next week, I’ll be back with some of my favorite plants from the Atlanta Botanical Garden.