Frau Zinnie

Tea Talk: 2017 inspiration will play a major role in 2018 garden

Welcome back to Tea Talk — a fun virtual letter exchange between Angie from The Freckled Rose and me. In this series we often document our gardening adventures and the latest happenings in our gardens. You are welcome to join in by leaving a comment below! Pull up a chair, grab a hot drink and lets' catch up!

Dear Angie,

Happy spring! It was so great to see you at the Boston Flower Show after last seeing you in California for the NGB Plant Nerds Veggie Trial trip! There were so many beautiful display gardens in Boston that were a source of great inspiration not only for spring but also the upcoming growing season. As an added bonus, we were both able to finally meet Emily Murphy in person! I loved hearing Emily talk about her new book "Grow What You Love" and share photos from her gardens. You would think that we all hang out together all the time because spending the whole day together at the show felt so natural!

Angie from The Freckled Rose, author Emily Murphy ("Grow What You Love") and me at the Boston Flower Show. Photo credit: Emily Murphy.

I can't tell you how happy I am that winter is ending. Having four nor'easters in March was a real drag, but I am so happy that the last one fizzled out before it could wallop us again. Each day the sun sets a little later and it makes me so happy. I feel like I can get so much more accomplished with that extra bit of sunlight after work.

I have tried to keep busy with gardening in the winter (our “off season”) with houseplants and growing specialty plants such as orchids and amaryllises, but being outside in the garden is my ideal place to be. Not that indoor gardening is boring – I upped my amaryllis collection this fall and I had a beautiful double variety bloom first. I know you have been growing amaryllises too, and I thought your bloom map for extending them into the spring was so helpful! I always thought of amaryllises as a Christmas and later winter bulb — I never thought to stagger their plantings so I could have blooms as late as Mother’s Day!

Unfortunately, for me it wasn’t all beautiful blooms. One of the bulbs I purchased actually harbored the narcissus bulb fly — have you ever heard of that? It mimics a bee but sounds like a horsefly when it flies. Apparently one of the bulbs that did not bloom had them inside, and I didn’t piece it together until I asked twitter for help in bug identification. I had to get rid of the problem plant and since then that was the end of the fly invasion (I had three total flying around the kitchen)!

Your last letter highlighted the best of our garden travels in 2017. I learned so much about garden design by seeing so many great examples during the Garden Bloggers Fling and then later that summer I learned so much about growing vegetables during our trip to California! I feel like our gardening trips were very educational, and I’ve been looking at my garden from a different perspective since.

I’m trying to find ways to incorporate what I learned at the Fling in the D.C. area into this year’s garden. I’m totally stealing Jeff Minnich’s idea of using spider plants in window boxes (at right). I have one spider plant that is at least 10 years old that always has babies and last month I cut a bunch off and started to root them in water. Now they are potted up in newspaper pots and waiting for the weather to be warm enough to be used outside. I think I will be using them in shady containers, but he also paired them with Spanish moss and Tradescantia pallida 'Purple Queen' in window boxes.

No matter where we visited, there were so many great examples of container plantings.

I am really getting into agaves, but I never thought to cage them up! :)

Do you remember the giant tree and arborvitaes growing in the huge container outside the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.? (Above left.) Talk about dreaming big! And there were so many dreamy flower combinations at the gardens of Hillwood.

I realized what an art form container pairings is and I tried out a combo of annuals and perennials in large planters when I got home. I can’t wait to expand my repertoire this spring and summer with the combos we saw during the Fling as my inspiration. I also plan to expand my container growing to my edibles, too. As you know I have the Eco Garden System, a raised garden bed that contains a water reservoir underneath (and keeps plants’ roots very happy on those hot days!), and I want to see if I can adapt more driveway space into edible production this year.

Figuring out how to grow more edibles is a direct result of learning so much from our whirlwind trip to California as NGB Plant Nerds! Choosing seeds to grow in my garden this spring is actually harder because we learned about so many great varieties during our trip. (And yes, I totally bought 100 seeds of the new AAS winner Zinnia Queeny Lime Orange, which I fell in love with when we viewed it in the trial gardens!) I know I don’t have space for everything I wish I could grow, but you know how in winter everything seems possible? That’s how I still feel! I still have many seeds left over from last year (I actually ran out of room before I could even grow all those watermelon seeds I wrote to you about last year).

I have limited space in full sunlight and this year I think the raspberries are going to be the ones to lose their prime real estate along the driveway in the sun. I have been watching various gardening shows on HortusTV and one gardener planted raspberries in a circle! While we were out in California, one garden featured blackberries in a Texas weave. So it’s fair to say that the raspberries will be moved and planted in one of these ways!

I'm also trying my hand at more varieties of tomatoes and peppers after trying so many different versions out in California!

We certainly had a blast, didn't we?

In other garden news, last fall I ended up saving and storing so many dahlia tubers but then I went a little crazy and ordered even more! Last year I planted too many dahlias in part sun and learned the hard way that they really do need full sun in order to boom well! I love the dahlias you recently featured on your website. How many different dahlias will you be growing this year?

In addition to those gorgeous blooms, I really want to make my garden a pollinator paradise this year. I’m focusing on lots of flowers: zinnias (of course!), cosmos, milkweed, etc. I love to grow veggies, but I have such a soft spot for flowers!

I am really looking forward to seeing you again in Texas for this year’s Garden Bloggers Fling! I’m excited to see how southern gardens differ from what we are familiar with in the northeast.

This is going to be a great gardening year – I can feel it! See you soon!

Jen

This moth orchid began blooming this week!

We were supposed to get our fourth nor'easter the other day, but luckily the storm stayed south of us and now the snow that was leftover from the last storm is beginning to melt. Inside, the orchids and the Hollywood Hibiscus I am overwintering are blooming, which helps brighten the living room and kitchen!

Outside, the snowdrops and crocuses are blooming, and I can see the first of the daffodils appearing through the ground.

As for seed-starting, I am slightly behind, but the violas I started in February are getting larger.

Hollywood Hibiscus 'Chatty Cathy' knows it is springtime!

She has been blooming non-stop all week!

Hollywood Hibiscus 'First to Flirt' is blooming in my kitchen!

My new lady slipper orchid that I bought at the NYBG Orchid Show.

Another orchid I bought at the NYBG Orchid Show.

The snow is receding and the snowdrops and crocuses are reappearing.

Viola seeds getting larger.

What's blooming and growing in your garden (and home) this week?

To see what was blooming in the last Floral Friday, click here.

Looking up at the first orchid installation, which is 18 feet high.

BRONX, N.Y. — It's an orchid show for a new generation.

“I want this exhibition to attract visitors who are 30 to 55 years old,” said acclaimed Belgian designer Daniel Ost, who designed the 16th annual Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Ost implied that older individuals usually take the time to visit botanical gardens more than the younger generation does.

Daniel Ost.

The attendees' age was the follow-up question I asked Ost as the media were touring the second and last design installations because I felt it was so unusual that a designer was focused on attracting a younger audience to the exhibit. This year is definitely a standout year, and with events such as Orchid Evenings that begin tonight, where visitors explore the exhibition after hours and enjoy music and performers, there's even more reason for those 30 to 55 year olds to come out and experience this year's show.

Almost 7,000 orchids were used in this year's show, coordinated in a defined color palette as they dance through the Victorian-style greenhouse, using plastic tubing and bamboo to create living sculptures in homage to the flower.

A masterful designer, Ost has been hailed in Belgium as "the Picassso of flower arranging" and in France as "the international star of floral decoration." He is the first person to be invited from outside the NYBG staff to totally design the entire show — choosing the placement, color palette and companion plantings for the three major installations.

“What thrilled me the most was the way I was received here. To work with me is not a pleasure,” he joked as he stood in front of the first installation. Almost reaching the top of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory dome, the massive architectural structure uses plastic tubing to display individual orchids. As the orchids in various shades of pink and white ascend skyward, they become more clustered together, yet it’s still possible to identify them individually, an aspect Ost wants visitors to notice. "My teacher in Japan would say, 'sometimes one flower can say more than 10,000.'" (His teacher was Noboru Kurisaki, a grand master of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging.)

The first installment features several orchids that ascend to the ceiling of the conservatory dome.

“Mainly when you see exhibitions, the flowers are not growing,” Ost said, referring to shows were cut flowers are predominately featured. “I wanted to show the diversity and that most orchids are epiphytes — growing in trees, growing with other plants."

Ost said a role in his agreeing to design this year's Orchid Show was due to how impressed he was by the NYBG’s collection of orchids. “The heart they have for their collection. … No one else has a collection [like this].” The NYBG also plays a large role in plant research and conservation.

Plastic tubing is mean to represent water and the conservatory's glass.

The three exhibits

A view from behind the reflecting pool where the
first installation is on display.

Ost and his team worked with the NYBG team to complete three installations, each with a different color palette. “It shows orchids in a different way than we have seen before,” said Todd Forrest, Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections. “We worked on this for many months. We put our expertise and passion together with Daniel’s.”

Each installation created by Ost in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory features a different interpretation in the way orchids are presented as living structures. The color palette changes as the visitor advances through the conservatory.

As mentioned earlier, the first installation, at 18 feet tall, uses plastic tubing with orchids in pink and white hues that tower over visitors as they enter the conservatory with a 90-foot dome. “The tubing reflects and gathers the light. You are able to see thousands of individual orchids – they all resolve individually, which is Daniel’s brilliant idea," said Forrest. The structure is reflected in the water feature it resides in, accompanied by large floating bromeliads ('Vriesea odorata'). View more photos from the first installation here.

The second main installation features a bamboo structure with a ribbon of orchids weaved into it.

One view of the bamboo structure.

The second major installation uses a large bamboo structure softened by a ribbon of orchids cascading around it. The bamboo, sourced from north Georgia, is rather tall, and the orchids elongate its appearance. There are sections where you can see inside the structure and other portions where the flowers are so densely gathered that the golden, rust and salmon colors are all that meet the eye. The orchids were threaded through the bamboo structure, which is flanked by companion plantings of other tropical plants.

“The bamboo companion plantings are much different than the ones we’ve used before. Most of them have never left the Nolan Greenhouses," said Karen Daubmann, Director of Exhibitions and Seasonal Displays. View more photos from the second installation here.

In the last major installation, other non-orchid plants were brought out of the NYBG's collection to act as foils to orchid blooms. Ost chose a varied amount of colorful, tropical plants to compliment the orchids. Moss and ferns were used in the garden beds, providing a rich tapestry of green hues along the ground. In some places, the lady slipper orchids were planted in the moss. At eye level, plants such as rabbit's foot ferns (Davallia fejeensis), golden dewdrop (Duranta erecta 'Cuban Gold') and mother of hundreds (Kalanchoe mortagei) also show off for visitors.

An army of lady slipper orchids cover the ground in the third installation.

Bamboo and clear tubing is used to suspend orchids
from above.

It's the third installation that weaves both plastic tubing and bamboo elements together. Bamboo rafters and clear tubing are suspended above visitors, which is meant to mimic both the glass ceiling panels of the greenhouse and water. Woven into the bamboo and plastic are various varieties of orchids, with their roots either wrapped in moss and tied with twine or suspended freely. View more photos from the third installation here.

The orchid's roots that are suspended vertically (8 inches or more) are meant to remind the visitor that orchids are epiphytes. The combination of orchids with unusual foliage, which Forrest referred to as a "celebration of botanical diversity," creates a very different atmosphere than previous orchid shows.

"Daniel and his team have shown us something about plants that we might not have seen," said Forrest. "It was a real voyage for us. We didn’t know where it was going to end. The goal of the expedition is to delight and inspire our visitors, to make them fall in love with orchids.”

The 16th annual Orchid Show runs through April 22, 2018. For more information, visit The New York Botanical Garden website.

View more photos from the 16th annual Orchid Show here.

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